New Books Network
18,353 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 days ago - ★★★★ - 128 ratingsInterviews with Authors about their New Books
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Episodes
Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China" (Stanford UP, 2019)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn the past decade alone, more than ten million corpses have been exhumed and reburied across the Chinese landscape. The campaign has transformed China's graveyards into sites of acute personal, social, political, and economic contestation. In The Chinese Deathscape. Grave Reform in Modern China, three historians of China, Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke, Christian Henriot, and Thomas S. Mullaney, chart out the history of China's rapidly shifting deathscape. Each essay grapples with a different dimensi...
Gregory Forth, "A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 58 minutesGregory Forth, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has studied the Nage people of the eastern Indonesian island of Flores for more than three decades. In A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019), he focuses on how the Nage understand metaphor and how their knowledge of animals has helped to shape specific expressions. Based on extensive field research,...
Anne Louise Bannon, "Death of the Chinese Field Hands" (Healcroft House, 2020)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 30 minutesWhen Anne Louise Bannon heard her husband, then archivist for the City of Los Angeles, speak about the how early Angelenos dug a large ditch (a zanja) to cull water from the Porciuncula River (now known as the Los Angeles River), her first thought was that the Zanja would be an interesting place to find a dead body. Death of the Zanjero and Death of the City Marshall were the first two in her Old Los Angeles series (both delightful), and now comes Death of the Chinese Field Hands (Healcroft H...
Anthony L. Gardner, "Stars with Stripes: The Essential Partnership between the European Union and the United States" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 41 minutesIf the US is – in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – the "indispensible nation" then the economic, democratic and institutional alliance between the US and the EU is the “essential partnership”. So argues Tony Gardner, Barack Obama’s ambassador to the EU and advisor to Joe Biden’s campaign for president in his new book Stars with Stripes: The Essential Partnership between the European Union and the United States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), The EU-US partnership has it...
Kristin Plys, "Brewing Resistance: Indian Coffee House and the Emergency in Postcolonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 38 minutesIn 1947, decolonization promised a better life for India's peasants, workers, students, Dalits, and religious minorities. By the 1970s, however, this promise had not yet been realized. Various groups fought for the social justice but in response, Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution, and with it, civil liberties. The hope of decolonization that had turned to disillusion in the postcolonial period quickly descended into a nightmare. In Brewing Resistance: Indian Coffee Hous...
Sara Luna, "Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border" (U Texas Press, 2020)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 41 minutesSex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. During the years 2008 and 2009, a time of intense drug violence, Sarah Luna met and built relationships with two kinds of migrants, women who moved from rural Mexico to Reynosa to become sex workers and American missionaries who moved from the United States to forge a fellowship with those workers. Luna examines the entanglements, both...
William Germano, "Getting it Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books" (U Chicago Press, 2016)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWhen I put down Getting it Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (U Chicago Press, 2016) I looked up and began to wonder. I wondered about the book on gnomic poetry in Medieval Greek I had read over the weekend, I wondered about the PDF conference volume on my desktop between other PDFs downloaded at my university library. Casting an eye to the bookshelves along my wall, I looked at the spines of all those books there, upright and peaceful in their rows, ...
Ellen Wayland-Smith, "The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 48 minutesEllen Wayland-Smith is an associate professor of writing at University of Southern California. Her book The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (University of Chicago Press, 2020) follows the career of adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub who in the mid-twentieth century created the advertising campaigns selling consumer products to the average American housewife. More than products, Rindlaub sold a dream of domesticity and prosperity delivered through free-m...
Lisa B. Thompson, "Underground, Monroe, and the Mamalogues: Three Plays" (Northwestern UP, 2020)
October 23, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourLisa B. Thompson is equally renowned as a scholar of African and African-American studies and as a playwright. Her latest book Underground, Monroe, and the Mamalogues: Three Plays (Northwestern University Press 2020) collects plays from throughout her two decades as a playwright. "Underground" is a tense two-hander exploring themes of race, class, and masculinity through the story of two friends with very different ideas about how to change the world. Monroe draws on Thompson’s family’s histo...
Frank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWhen you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will talk about the Bataan Death March. Younger people, coming of age in the 1990s, will mention the Rape of Nanking or the comfort women forced into service by the Japanese army. Occasionally, someone will mention biological warfare. Frank Jacob has offered a valuable service by surveying Japanese mistreatment of civilians and soldiers comprehensively. H...
Lost Temples of the Jungle: A History of Mrauk-U with Dr. Bob Hudson
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 17 minutesDeep in the jungles of Myanmar lie the remains of an ancient kingdom, the 15th-century royal city of Mrauk-U. Located in the Bay of Bengal and separated from the rest of the country by the Arakan mountain range, Mrauk-U Township boasts a stunning rural landscape dotted with the hundreds of spires of stone temples, remnants of the former glories of the Arakan Kingdom. Long abandoned by local authorities, the Buddhist temple complex of Mrauk-U was brought back to the spotlight in 2017, when for...
Scott Laderman, "The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right" (Routledge, 2019)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourOn November 3, 1969 Richard M. Nixon addressed the nation in what would come to be known as “The Silent Majority Speech”. In 32 minutes, the president promoted his plan for a “Vietnamization” of the war and called upon “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans” to support his plan “to end the war in a way that we could win the peace”. Arguing against the immediate cessation of hostilities, Nixon warned of a Communist bloodbath should American troops leave too quickly. Hypocritically, ...
Robert Plomin, "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" (MIT Press, 2019)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourHave you ever felt, “Oh my God, I’m turning into my mother (or father)!” ? Robert Plomin explains why that happens in Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (MIT Press, 2019). A century of genetic research shows that DNA differences inherited from our parents are the consistent lifelong sources of our psychological individuality―the blueprint that makes us who we are. Robert Plomin’s decades of work demonstrate that genetics explains more about the psychological differences among people than ...
Simone C. Drake, "Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Duke UP, 2020)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 56 minutesSimone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson's Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP, 2020) is an engaging and interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary black popular culture and how to think about this broad and diverse landscape, especially in relation to power, capitalism, gender identity, and presidential politics. Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson have pulled together a fascinating array of scholars of popular culture, cultural critics, as well...
JC de Swaan, "Seeking Virtue in Finance: Contributing to Society in a Conflicted Industry" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 52 minutesJC de Swaan does not shy from a challenge. In his new book, Seeking Virtue in Finance: Contributing to Society in a Conflicted Industry (Cambridge University Press, 2020), de Swaan, argues that it is possible to work in finance and not fall prey to the worst ethical ills of a profit maximizing industry. A lecturer at Princeton and partner in at Wall Street hedge fund, de Swaan spent years chronicling examples of virtuous behavior in finance. He distills his research into four "pillars" of eth...
Michael E. McCullough, "The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code" (Basic Books, 2020)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 35 minutesWhy Give a Damn About Strangers? In his book The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code (Basic Books, 2020), Michael E. McCullough explains. McCullough is a professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego, where he directs the Evolution and Human Behavior laboratory. Long interested in prosocial behavior and morality, he’s conducted research on forgiveness, revenge, gratitude, empathy, altruism, and religion. His other books include Beyond Revenge...
Li Zhang, "Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy" (U California Press, 2020)
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourThe breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (University of California Press, 2020) offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an un...
Francesca Sobande, "The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain" (Palgrave, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 34 minutesWhat are the possibilities and what are the inequalities of the digital world? In The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave, 2020), Francesca Sobande, a lecturer in Digital Media Studies at Cardiff University explores the experiences of Black women as producers and as consumers of digital media. The book offers a rich combination of archival and interview material, along with a theoretical framework crossing boundaries of digital, media, and communication studies, along with femin...
Heather Lende, "Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics" (Algonquin Books, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourHeather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines—a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane—isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be: from a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling t...
Richard L. Hasen, "Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy" (Yale UP, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutesAs the 2020 presidential campaign begins to take shape, there is widespread distrust of the fairness and accuracy of American elections. In Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy (Yale UP, 2020), Richard L. Hasen uses riveting stories illustrating four factors increasing the mistrust. Voter suppression has escalated as a Republican tool aimed to depress turnout of likely Democratic voters, fueling suspicion. Pockets of incompetence in election administ...
Dan Royles, "To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS" (UNC Press, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement. They struggled not only to overcome the stigma and denial surrounding a "white gay disease" in Black America, but also to bring resources to struggling communities that were often dismissed as too "hard to reach." To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American S...
D. Bilak and T. Nummedal, "Furnace and Fugue. A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s 'Atalanta fugiens' (1618)" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 58 minutesIn 1618, on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, the German alchemist and physician Michael Maier published Atalanta fugiens, an intriguing and complex musical alchemical emblem book designed to engage the ear, eye, and intellect. The book unfolds as a series of fifty emblems, each of which contains an accompanying "fugue" music scored for three voices. Historians of alchemy have long understood this virtuoso work as an ambitious demonstration of the art’s literary potential and of the possibili...
Nadia Nurhussein, "Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 40 minutesIn Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth century African American cultural engagement with and literary depictions of imperial Ethiopia. Widely celebrated as one of two African nations to resist European colonization in the age of modern imperialism, Ethiopia captured the attention of a host of African American journalists, artists, writers, adventurers, and even financiers. Drawing on ...
Rachel Manekin, "The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia" (Princeton UP, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 53 minutesIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, over three hundred young Jewish women from Orthodox, mostly Hasidic, homes in Western Galicia (now Poland) fled their communities and sought refuge in a Kraków convent, where many converted to Catholicism. Relying on a wealth of archival documents, including court testimonies, letters, diaries, and press reports, in The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia (Princeton University Press, 2020), Rachel Manekin ...
Robert Bartlett, "Against Demagogues: What Aristophanes Can Teach Us about the Perils of Populism and the Fate of Democracy" (U California Press, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 50 minutesWith Against Demagogues: What Aristophanes Can Teach Us about the Perils of Populism and the Fate of Democracy (University of California Press, 2020), Robert Bartlett provides a stirring argument for the relevance of comic playwright Aristophanes as a serious political and philosophical thinker. In his translations of two lesser-known plays, The Acharnians and The Knights, Bartlett presents an Aristophanes who is equally a thinker of his times and a prescient voice warning about the fragility...
Philip Cunliffe, "The New Twenty Years' Crisis: A Critique of International Relations, 1999-2019" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutesAt the end of the 20th century, the liberal international order appeared unassailable after its triumph over the authoritarian challenges of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Twenty years later, however, the assumptions underlying the system appear discredited as international relations devolve into confrontation and conflict. In The New Twenty Years' Crisis: A Critique of International Relations, 1999-2019 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020), Philip Cunliffe considers the factors in this decline and the...
James Simpson, "Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism" (Harvard UP, 2019)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourThe Protestant Reformation looms large in our cultural imagination. In the standard telling, it’s the moment the world went modern. Casting off the shackles and superstitions of medieval Catholicism, reformers translated the Bible into the vernacular and democratized religion. In this story, it’s no wonder that Protestantism should give birth to liberalism. But this story is wrong, or so argues James Simpson in Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism (Harva...
Melissa Crouch, "The Constitution of Myanmar: A Contextual Analysis" (Hart, 2019)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 41 minutesThe tail end of the twentieth century was a good time for constitutional lawyers. Leapfrogging around the globe, they offered advice on how to amend, write or rewrite one state constitution after the next following the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it, the communist bloc. Largely overlooked in the flurry of constitution drafting in this period, officials in Myanmar worked away on a new constitution without any experts from abroad—or, for that matter, many of those at home. Soldiers wa...
Valerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWhat if outer space is not outside the human environment but, rather, defines it? This is the unusual starting point of Valerie Olson’s Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth (U Minnesota Press, 2018), revealing how outer space contributes to making what counts as the scope and scale of today’s natural and social environments. With unprecedented access to spaceflight worksites ranging from astronaut training programs to life science labs and architecture studio...
Eric San Juan, "The Films of Martin Scorsese: Gangsters, Greed, and Guilt" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourFew mainstream filmmakers have as pronounced a disregard for the supposed rules of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. His inventiveness displays a reaction against the “right” way to make a movie, frequently eschewing traditional cinematic language in favor of something flashy, unexpected and contrary to the way “proper” films are done. Yet despite this, he’s become one of the most influential directors of the last fifty years, a critical darling (though rarely a box office titan), and a fan favo...
Alexey Golubev, "The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia" (Cornell UP, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 59 minutesThe Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia (Cornell UP, 2020) is a social and cultural history of material objects and spaces during the late socialist era. It traces the biographies of Soviet things, examining how the material world of the late Soviet period influenced Soviet people's gender roles, habitual choices, social trajectories, and imaginary aspirations. Instead of seeing political structures and discursive frameworks as the only mechanisms for shaping Soviet citizens, Al...
Chinua Thelwell, "Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourExporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond (U Massachusetts Press, 2020) by Dr. Chinua Thelwell is a rich, well-researched, and sobering investigation of blackface minstrelsy as the “visual bedrock of a transcolonial cultural imaginary.” In tracing minstrel globalization across the Anglo-colonial and British imperial worlds beginning in the 1800s, Thelwell explores the ways that blackface minstrelsy helped to construct and maintain notions of exclusionary citizenship ...
Elisabeth Paquette, "Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWhat is Badiou’s theory of emancipation? For whom is this emancipation possible? Does emancipation entail an indifference to difference? In Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) (Minnesota University Press, 2020), Elisabeth Paquette pursues these questions through a sustained conversation with decolonial theory, particularly the work of Sylvia Wynter. Through consideration of Négritude and the Haitian Revolution, Paquette argues for a theory of emanc...
Shakira Croce, "Leave It Raw" (Finishing Line Press, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 33 minutesLike a storm waiting to break over a plain, Shakira Croce pulls at tensions and heartstrings in a debut collection filled with longing, wit, and intelligence. Through masterful imagery, Croce floats between the rural and urban with ease, pulling back the veil to see what lies beneath. These poems do not shy away from looking at life in all its beauty, violence, or complexities because within those boundaries we can begin to understand what it means to be human. As she writes in Homecoming, "I...
Christopher Lupke (trans.), "A History of Taiwan Literature" (Cambria Press, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourYe Shitao was a Taiwanese public intellectual who rose to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century. His encyclopedic A History of Taiwan Literature was published in 1987, the same year that the island’s decades-long period of martial law came to an end. The book provides a thorough overview of the major themes and representative works of each stage in the development of Taiwanese literature from the days of the Qing Dynasty through the Japanese colonial period and the postwar er...
Martyn Rady, "The Habsburgs: To Rule the World" (Basic Books, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn The Habsburgs: To Rule the World (Basic Books, 2020), Martyn Rady, Masaryk Professor of Central European History at University College London, tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built -- and then lost -- over nearly a millennium. From modest origins in what is to-day southern Germany and Switzerland, the Habsburgs gained control first of Austria in the 12th century and then the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in just a few decades, their possessions rapidl...
Michael Walzer, "A Foreign Policy for the Left" (Yale UP, 2018)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn my old age, I try to argue more quietly, though I still believe that sharp disagreement is a sign of political seriousness. What engaged citizens think and say matters; we should aim to get it right and to defeat those who get it wrong. I understand the very limited impact of what I write, but I continue to believe that the stakes are high. – Michael Walzer (2018) These thoughts, from the preface of A Foreign Policy for the Left (Yale University Press, 2018), reflect the understated wisdom...
Sianne Ngai, "Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form" (Harvard UP, 2020)
October 20, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (Harvard University Press, 2020), Sianne Ngai continues her theoretical work of demystifying the vernacular aesthetic categories encountered in late capitalist daily life. In this witty and penetrating book-length treatment of the affective experience of the “gimmick,” Ngai draws upon formalist literary criticism, post-Kantian aesthetic philosophy, and Marxist political economy in order to illuminate the historical production of...
Janet Jakobsen, "The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics" (NYU Press, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesWhy are Americans, and American politicians more specifically, obsessed with sex? Why, in the words of Janet Jakobsen, are gender and sexuality such riveting public policy concerns the United States? In The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics (NYU Press, 2020), Jakobsen answers this question by breaking apart the standard narrative that religion is primarily responsible for the moral regulation of sexuality. Instead of viewing religion as the devil of the story, Jak...
Tamura Lomax, “Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture” (Duke UP, 2018)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourOne of the central threads in the public discourse on Black womanhood is the idea of the “Jezebel.” This trope deems Black women and girls as dishonorable and sexually deviant and the stereotype is circulated from the big screen to the pulpit. Tamura Lomax, Associate Professor at Michigan State University, outlines a historical genealogy of the discursive “Jezebel” and reveals its contemporary legacy in Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture (Duke University P...
K. Grenier and A. Mushal, "Cultures of Memory in the Nineteenth Century: Consuming Commemoration" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 50 minutesCultures of Memory in the Nineteenth Century: Consuming Commemoration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) explores commemorative practices as they developed in the nineteenth century. The editors of the volume, Katherine Grenier and Amanda Mushal, and its contributors invite the readers to consider memorial practices as insights into the culture of both the public and the private. Through a number of investigations that range from the explorations of music to the study of photographs, the volume empha...
Stefan Bauer, "The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between Renaissance and Catholic Reform" (Oxford UP, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 32 minutesStefan Bauer has written an outstanding study of one of the most important Catholic historians in early modern Europe. Bauer, who has just taken up a new position teaching history at Warwick University, UK, has spent much of the last decade working on the life and work of Onofrio Panvinio. The result, The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between Renaissance and Catholic Reform (Oxford UP, 2020), updates our knowledge of Panvinio’s biography and interprets his work in both Catholic...
Spencer Critchley, "Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next" (McDavid Media, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourAmerica is in a Cold Civil War, between people who see each other as threats to the country — but themselves as patriots. How can that be? They are patriots of two nations. In Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next (McDavid Media), national media commentator and presidential campaigns veteran Spencer Critchley shows why our current hyper-partisan division has been inevitable since the founding of the United States, as has the election of Donald Trump or someon...
Morris Ardoin, "Stone Motel: Memoirs of a Cajun Boy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 56 minutesIn the summers of the early 1970s, Morris Ardoin and his siblings helped run their family's roadside motel in a hot, buggy, bayou town in Cajun Louisiana. The stifling, sticky heat inspired them to find creative ways to stay cool and out of trouble. When they were not doing their chores—handling a colorful cast of customers, scrubbing motel-room toilets, plucking chicken bones and used condoms from under the beds—they played canasta, an old ladies’ game that provided them with a refuge from t...
H. Shelest and M. Rabinovych, "Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesThe articles presented in Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) aim to explore the current political and administrative challenges that Ukraine is facing. The volume draws particular attention to the issues that have been escalated and intensified since the inception of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. From a diversity of perspectives, the contributors explore the nature of the current challenges, as well as possible ways for dealing w...
Adam Knowles, "Heidegger’s Fascist Affinities: A Politics of Silence" (Stanford UP, 2019)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourThe German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s influence over the last several decades of philosophy is undeniable, but his place in the canon has been called into question in recent years in the wake of the publication of his private journals kept throughout his life, including during his involvement with the Nazi Party. This has led to a renewal of an intense series of debates about the relationship between Heidegger’s thought and his politics, and the broader implications this relationship may ...
Kristina M. Lyons, "Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics" (Duke UP, 2020)
October 19, 2020 08:00 - 42 minutesIn Colombia, decades of social and armed conflict and the US-led war on drugs have created a seemingly untenable situation for scientists and rural communities as they attempt to care for forests and grow non-illicit crops. In her new book Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke University Press, 2020), Kristina M. Lyons presents an ethnography of human-soil relations. By following the practical engagements of soil scientists and peasants across labs, forests, and farm...
Bihani Sarkar, "Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship" (Oxford UP, 2017)
October 16, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourHeroic Saktism is the belief that a good king and a true warrior must worship the goddess Durga, the form and substance of kingship. This belief formed the bedrock of ancient Indian practices of cultivating political power. Wildly dangerous and serenely benevolent at one and the same time, the goddess's charismatic split nature promised rewards for a hero and king and success in risky ventures. Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship (Oxford UP, 2017) is the first expans...
Alexandra J. Finley, "An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade" (UNC Press, 2020)
October 16, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutesAlexandra J. Finley is the author of An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. An Intimate Economy examines the history of American slavery and capitalism by foregrounding women’s labor in the Antebellum slave trade. Finley explores a variety of topics included, domestic, reproductive, and sexual labor enslaved and free Black women performed at various points in the slave trade. This work adds to...
Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr., "Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in 18th-Century South America" (UNC Press, 2020)
October 16, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn his new book, Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America (UNC Press, 2020), Dr. Jeffrey Erbig charts the interplay between imperial and indigenous spatial imaginaries and shows the critical role that indigenous actors played in imperial border-making between the Spanish and the Portuguese in the Río de la Plata region during the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Dr. Erbig demonstrates how this process does not fit neatly into concepts of resistance or...