New Books Network
17,840 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★ - 123 ratingsInterviews with Authors about their New Books
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Episodes
Yuliya Zabyelina, "Between Immunity and Impunity: External Accountability of Political Elites for Transnational Crime" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
March 31, 2024 08:00 - 52 minutesHow do top-level public officials take advantage of immunity from foreign jurisdiction afforded to them by international law? How does the immunity entitlement allow them to thwart investigations and trial proceedings in foreign courts? What responses exist to prevent and punish such conduct? In Between Immunity and Impunity: External Accountability of Political Elites for Transnational Crime (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Dr. Yuliya Zabyelina unravels the intricate layers of impunity of...
Building the Future Buddha: A Discussion with Jundho Cohen
March 31, 2024 08:00 - 59 minutesJundo Cohen is a Zen Buddhist teacher and founder of Treeleaf Zendo, a digital Zen community with members in over 50 countries. He writes on the intersection of Buddhism, ethics, science, and the future of the planet. He resides in Tsukuba, Japan’s “Science City”. He is the author of The Zen Master’s Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe (Wisdom, 2020), and is co-host of The Zen of Everything podcast. In this episode I speak to Jundo about his new book, Buildin...
"Ploughshares" Magazine: A Discussion with Ladette Randolph
March 31, 2024 08:00 - 27 minutesLadette Randolph has served as editor-in-chief of Ploughshares literary journal since 2008, where she had acquired numerous notable essays and short stories. A publishing professional for 30 years, she is co-owner of the manuscript editing firm Randolph Lundine, and the author of five award-winning books, including A Sandhills Ballad, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice book, and most recently the novel Private Way. Under Ladette Randolph’s stewardship, Ploughshares is thriving with ...
Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, "Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America" (UNC Press, 2023)
March 31, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIn Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America (UNC Press, 2023), Elizabeth Engelhardt argues that modern American food, business, caretaking, politics, sex, travel, writing, and restaurants all owe a debt to boardinghouse women in the South. From the eighteenth century well into the twentieth, entrepreneurial women ran boardinghouses throughout the South; some also carried the institution to far-flung places like California, New York, ...
Ben Highmore, "Lifestyle Revolution: How Taste Changed Class in Late 20th-Century Britain" (Manchester UP, 2023)
March 31, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIn postwar Britain, journalists and politicians predicted that the class system would not survive a consumer culture where everyone had TVs and washing machines, and where more and more people owned their own homes. They were to be proved hopelessly wrong. Ben Highmore's Lifestyle Revolution: How Taste Changed Class in Late 20th-Century Britain (Manchester UP, 2023) charts how class culture, rather than being destroyed by mass consumption, was remade from flat-pack furniture, Mediterranean cu...
José Tenorio, "School Food Politics in Mexico: The Corporatization of Obesity and Healthy Eating Policies" (Routledge, 2023)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourFor decades now, we’ve all heard the refrain – we are in a war against obesity, with perhaps the most important battle being fought over the health of our children. What better place could there be to defeat the enemy of obesity than our schools, where children are fed and educated and educated about being fed on a daily basis? But how did we come to see health promotion in schools as the key solution to solving the problem of obesity? And is obesity really at the root of our problems to begi...
Matthew H. Hersch, "Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle" (MIT Press, 2023)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 36 minutesIn Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle (MIT Press, 2023), Dr. Matthew Hersch challenges the existing narrative of the most significant human space program of the last 50 years, NASA's space shuttle. He begins with the origins of the space shuttle: a century-long effort to develop a low-cost, reusable, rocket-powered airplane to militarize and commercialize space travel, which Hersch explains was built the wrong way, at the wrong time, and for all the wrong reasons. Describing the un...
Laura Bower, "The Imposter" (Gnome Road Publishing, 2024)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 43 minutesIn this heartwarming interview with Laura Bower, we celebrate the launch of her brand new, debut picture book, The Imposter, illustrated by Kerisa Greene, and published by Sandra Sutter, Gnome Road Publishing (2024). Laura talks about her life and writing career, the story behind The Imposter, and her advice for aspiring authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-net...
Cathryn M. Copper, "The Experimental Library: A Guide to Taking Risks, Failing Forward, and Creating Change" (ALA Editions, 2023)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 42 minutesUsing techniques garnered from startups and quickly evolving technology companies, in The Experimental Library: A Guide to Taking Risks, Failing Forward, and Creating Change (ALA Editions, 2023), Cathryn Copper explores how information professionals can use experimentation to make evidence-based decisions and advance innovative initiatives. The last five years have demonstrated that sticking with the status quo is not an option; instead, as the experiences of many libraries have shown, those ...
Thomas Lockley, "A Gentleman from Japan: The Untold Story of an Incredible Journey from Asia to Queen Elizabeth’s Court" (Hanover Square Press, 2024)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 37 minutesOn November 12, 1588, five young Asian men—led by a twenty-one-year-old called Christopher—traveled up the River Thames to meet Queen Elizabeth I. Christopher’s epic sea voyage had spanned from Japan, via the Philippines, New Spain (Mexico), Java and Southern Africa. On the way, he had already become the first recorded Japanese person in North America. Now Christopher was the first ever Japanese visitor to England, and no other would leave such a legacy for centuries to come. The story of Chr...
Teresa Ghilarducci, "Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutesThe issue of the future of Social Security, on which millions of Americans depend, produced great political theater at the State of the Union address. That highlighted a bigger problem of financing retirement as baby boomers seek to retire, often with limited resources. Many argue that the solution to the problem is for people to work longer. In Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy (U Chicago Press, 2024), Teresa Ghilarducci, a noted expert on retirement, ar...
David J. Dennis Jr. and David J. Dennis Sr., "The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride" (Harper, 2022)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 20 minutes"The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space to which I honestly never thought a book could take us. This is literally the Movement that made us and both Davids love us whole here with a creation that is as ingenious as it is soulfully sincere. Stunning."--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy. A dynamic family exchange that pivots between the voices of a father and son, The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride (Harper, 2022) is a unique wo...
Ya-Wen Lei, "The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 55 minutesSince the mid-2000s, the Chinese state has increasingly shifted away from labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing to a process of socioeconomic development centered on science and technology. In The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2023) Ya-Wen Lei traces the contours of this techno-developmental regime and its resulting form of techno-state capitalism, telling the stories of those whose lives have been transformed—for bet...
Robert Willim, "Mundania: How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary" (Bristol UP, 2024)
March 30, 2024 08:00 - 39 minutesRobert Willim's new book Mundania: How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary (Bristol University Press, 2024), takes the reader on a journey through the realm of Mundania, a realm that is both familiar and incomprehensible, banal and uncanny. Mundania is the realm in which technology, which seemed unspeakable before its arrival in our world, becomes an everyday fixture of life, and, more specifically, mundane. Jeff Adler is an ex-linguist and occasional contributor to New Books Network! Le...
Emma Frances Bloomfield, "Science V. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators" (U California Press, 2024)
March 30, 2024 04:00 - 35 minutesListen to this interview of Emma Frances Bloomfield, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We talk about her novel analytical tool for helping you narrativize research! Bloomfield's new book is Science V. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators (U California Press, 2024) Emma Bloomfield : "I'd love to see more direct incorporation of communication studies and communication skills into the science curriculum but also into a researche...
Aleksandar Bosković and Steven Teref, "Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourZenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism – an eclectic avant-garde movement that operated in the Yugoslav region between 1921 and 1927. The founder of Zenithism – poet Ljubomir Micić – envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, with the movement’s philosophy embodied in the figure of the Balkan Barbarogenius (barbarian-genius)...
Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen, "The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2024)
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourThe story of the fight against fascism across the African diaspora, revealing that Black antifascism has always been vital to global freedom struggles. At once a history for understanding fascism and a handbook for organizing against, The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024) is an essential book for understanding our present moment and the challenges ahead. From London to the Caribbean, from Ethiopia to Harlem, from Black Lives Mat...
Françoise N. Hamlin and Charles W. McKinney, "From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle" (Vanderbilt UP, 2024)
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 38 minutesBroadly speaking, the traditionally conceptualized mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement and the newer #BlackLivesMatter Movement possess some similar qualities. They both represent dynamic, complex moments of possibility and progress. They also share mass-based movement activities, policy/legislative advocacy, grassroots organizing, and targeted media campaigns. Innovation, growth, and dissension—core aspects of movement work—mark them both. Crucially, these moments also engender aggre...
Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age" (MIT Press, 2024)
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourThe fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing. A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age (MIT Press, 2024), Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible rid...
Tyler Fox, "Battle Surgeons: Care Under Fire in the 504th Parachute Infantry" (2023)
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 39 minutesThe pages of Battle Surgeons are inscribed with the 371 days of front-line duty worked by medics of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Set within the epic of European airborne missions, Battle Surgeons animates their band—the stalwart surgeons, their happy-go-lucky chaplain, and the youthful dentist—as they navigate World War II. Up the gray peaks of Italy they trod, where Captain Sheehan was shot; and in the marshlands of Anzio, where Captain Sheek withstood the worst malaria could throw...
Alessandro Columbu, "Zakariyya Tamir and the Politics of the Syrian Short Story: Modernity, Authoritarianism and Gender" (I. B. Tauris, 2023)
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 55 minutesZakariyya Tamir is Syria’s foremost writer of short stories, and his works are widely read across the Arab world. In Zakariyya Tamir and the Politics of the Syrian Short Story: Modernity, Authoritarianism, and Gender (I. B. Tauris, 2023), the first English-language monograph on Tamir’s entire oeuvre, Alessandro Columbu examines Tamir’s literary development in the context of changing political contexts, from his beginnings as a short story writer for local magazines in the late 1950s until the...
India’s Waste Problem: A Discussion with Pamela Das
March 29, 2024 08:00 - 30 minutesHow is India tackling its persistent wage management problems? And, are new infrastructural solutions the way forward? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen talks to Pamela Das about the new infrastructures that are increasingly being put in place to help Indian cities confront the problem of waste and how to handle it. Estimate suggests that by 2025, India will generate 1.3 billion metric tonnes of municipal solid waste every year. With a recycling rate at below 20 percent, the negative conseq...
Paul Carter, "Richard Nixon: California's Native Son" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
March 29, 2024 04:00 - 1 hourBorn in Yorba Linda and raised in Whittier, California, Nixon succeeded early in life, excelling in academics while enjoying athletics through high school. At Whittier College he graduated at the top of his class and was voted Best Man on Campus. During his career at Whittier's oldest law firm, he was respected professionally and became a chief trial attorney. As a military man in the South Pacific during World War II, he was admired by his fellow servicemen. Returning to his Quaker roots aft...
Jamie Goodall, "Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean" (History Press, 2023)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 42 minutesIn 1717, the Council of Trade and Plantations received "agreeable news" from New England. "Bellamy with his ship and Company" had perished on the shoals of Cape Cod. Who was this Bellamy and why did his demise please the government? Born Samuel Bellamy circa 1689, he was a pirate who operated off the coast of New England and throughout the Caribbean. Later known as "Black Sam," or the "Prince of Pirates," Bellamy became one of the wealthiest pirates in the Atlantic world before his untimely d...
Pravina Rodrigues, "A Sakta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside Down, Inside Out" (Lexington, 2023)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 27 minutesPravina Rodrigues' book A Sakta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside Down, Inside Out (Lexington, 2023) discusses the issue of the missing Hindu interlocutors in the disciplines of theology of religions, interreligious dialogue, and comparative theology. It fills the gap left by the missing Hindu interlocutors by offering a first-ever Śākta thealogy of religions and a Śākta method for comparative theology. For Śāktas, the thread of religious diversity is part of the rich tapestry of cosmol...
David E. Sutton, "Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples" (Berghahn, 2021)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 58 minutesWhat defines cooking as cooking, and why does cooking matter to the understanding of society, cultural change and everyday life? Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples (Berghahn, 2021) by Dr. David E. Sutton explores these questions by proposing a new theory of the meaning of cooking as a willingness to put oneself and one’s meals at risk on a daily basis. Richly illustrated with examples from the author’s anthropology fieldwork in Greece, Bigger Fish to Fry prop...
Robin Waterfield, "Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 50 minutesThe first ever biography of the founder of Western philosophy Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well-to-do family in wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. In his teens, he honed his intellect by attending lectures from the many thinkers who passed through Athens and toyed with the idea of writing poetry. He finally decided to go into politics, but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrate...
The Wood Between the Worlds (with Brian Zahnd)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourFor Christians, the central event in history and in universe is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. This killing of God (or deicide) is so mysterious and terrible that it’s hard to even approach: what kind of a God would choose to be tortured and murdered by his rebellious creatures? Pastor Brian Zahnd’s poetic theology of the Cross (in The Wood between the Worlds) takes a kaleidoscopic approach, which turns this way and that, until that terrible cross reflects t...
Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourToday’s book is: Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History (University of Illinois Press, 2024), which is an essay collection co-edited by Eric Fure-Slocum and Claire Goldstene. It explores why in the United States more than three-quarters of the people teaching in colleges and universities work as contingent faculty. This “gig” economy includes lack of job security and health care, professional disrespect, and poverty wages that can require some faculty to jugg...
Citizenship Across Time and Space with David Jacobson
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 44 minutesIn this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey discusses the past and future of citizenship with David Jacobson, Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida (Tampa). They discuss the origins of the concept of citizenship in the ancient Near East a few thousand years ago and how kinship notions shape the debate on citizenship even in our own time. In their recent book Citizenship: The Third Revolution (Oxford UP, 2023), Jacobson and his co-author, Manlio Cina...
Ignacio Cofone, "The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 27 minutesOur privacy is besieged by tech companies. Companies can do this because our laws are built on outdated ideas that trap lawmakers, regulators, and courts into wrong assumptions about privacy, resulting in ineffective legal remedies to one of the most pressing concerns of our generation. Drawing on behavioral science, sociology, and economics, Ignacio Cofone challenges existing laws and reform proposals and dispels enduring misconceptions about data-driven interactions. This exploration offers...
On "Righteousness" (Tzedek)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutesThis week, Modya and David discuss what can be learned about tzedek, or righteousness, from Tzav in the book of Leviticus (Lev. 6:1-8:36). What do priestly guidelines for conducting sacrifices tell us about righteousness and how to enact it in the world? What other character traits help us develop into people who advance righteousness, for ourselves and for others? And just what is righteousness, anyway? Listen and enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support ...
David Veevers, "The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire" (Ebury Press, 2023)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIt’s very easy to study the history of the British Empire from the perspective of, well, the British–and to extend the early 20th century version of the empire as a world-spanning entity backwards through history. David Veevers, in his new book The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire (Ebury Press, 2023) studies the English, and later British, empires from a different perspective: Not the British, but the Irish, Native Americans, Southeast Asians, and Indians they met, tra...
Jeffrey Ahlman, "Ghana: A Political and Social History" (Zed Books, 2023)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 41 minutesOver the last two decades, historians have steadily moved away from writing longue durée national histories. Especially in the wake of the global history wave, national histories can seem decidedly 20th century. But what if you’re asked to take up that task, and you accept the challenge? Today, I’m discussing that question with a historian who has grappled with what it means to write a national history in 2024. My guest, Jeffrey Ahlman, is here to discuss his new book, Ghana: A Political and ...
Sam McPheeters, "Mutations: Twenty Years Embedded in Hardcore Punk" (Barnacle Book, 2020)
March 28, 2024 08:00 - 49 minutesHow can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. And if someone has a strong belief about what punk is, odds are they have even stronger feelings about what punk is not. Sam McPheeters cha...
Michael Davis, "Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values in Hong Kong" (Association for Asian Studies, 2023)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour"What happened in Hong Kong is not an anomaly but a warning" - Hong Kong Human Rights defender Chow Hang Tung, speech written from prison upon receiving a human rights award. In our interview today, I spoke with Professor Michael C. Davis, author of Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong (AAS and Columbia UP, 2024). In his latest book, he writes about how one of the world's most free-wheeling cities has transitioned from a vibrant global center of culture ...
Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 32 minutesContemporary politics is characterized by the rise (and fall) of many new parties. But what tools do political scientists have to map and measure electoral volatility? How can we best capture this change? And what insights can political scientists draw from other disciplines? Join host Tim Haughton for a discussion with Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker, the authors of a new book, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2023). Their book draws on a database of 200 00...
Chia-ling Yang, "Appropriating Antiquity for Modern Chinese Painting" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourThe pursuit of antiquity was important for scholarly artists in constructing their knowledge of history and cultural identity in late imperial China. By examining versatile trends within paintings in modern China, this book questions the extent to which historical relics have been used to represent the ethnic identity of modern Chinese art. In doing so, this book asks: did the antiquarian movements ultimately serve as a deliberate tool for re-writing Chinese art history in modern China? In s...
Adam Lazarus, "The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams" (Citadel Press, 2023)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 53 minutesIt was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspace aboard matching Panther jets. John Glenn was an ambitious operations officer with fifty-nine World War II combat missions under his belt. His wingman was Ted Williams, the two-time American League Triple Crown winner who, at the pinnacle of his career, had been inexplicably recalled to active service in the United States Marine Corps. Together, th...
Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 41 minutesSociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 2022, Los Angeles became the US county with the largest population of unhoused people, drawing a stark contrast with the wealth on display in its opulent neighborhoods. In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles (U Chicago Press, 2024), sociologist Neil M. Gong traces the divide between the haves and ...
Michael Ortiz, "Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism" (Bloombury, 2023)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 53 minutesWhat is fascism? Is it an anomaly in the history of modern Europe? Or its culmination? In Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism (Bloomsbury, 2023), Dr. Michael Ortiz makes the case that fascism should be understood, in part, as an imperial phenomenon. He contends that the Age of Appeasement (1935-1939) was not a titanic clash between rival socio-political systems (fascism and democracy), but rather an imperial contest between satisfied and unsatisfied empires. Historians have lo...
Jeffrey R. Di Leo, "Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 36 minutesThe most exhaustive mapping of contemporary literary theory to date, Jeffrey R. Di Leo's book Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview (Bloomsbury, 2023) offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field of contemporary literary theory. Examining 75 key topics across 15 chapters, it provides an approachable and encyclopedic introduction to the most important areas of contemporary theory today. Proceeding broadly chronologically from early theory all the way throu...
Greg Wrenn, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" (Regalo Press, 2024)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 52 minutesA dazzling, evidence-based account of one man’s quest to heal from complex PTSD by turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants after traditional therapies failed—and his awakening to the need for us to heal the planet as well. Professor Greg Wrenn likes to tell his nature-writing students, “The ecological is personal, and the personal is ecological.” What he’s never told them is how he’s lived out those correspondences to heal from childhood abuse at the hands of his mother. Mot...
SunAh M. Laybourn, "Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants" (NYU Press, 2024)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 40 minutesDr. SunAh M. Laybourn’s Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants (NYU Press, 2024) explores the experiences of Korean adoptees, the largest population of adult transnational adoptees in the United States. Over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted into primarily white US families since the 1950s, and despite being raised as US citizens, still experience both legal and social barriers to national belonging. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Korean adoptee adults, online surve...
William Bain, "Political Theology of International Order" (Oxford UP, 2020)
March 26, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIs contemporary international order truly a secular arrangement? Theorists of international relations typically adhere to a narrative that portrays the modern states system as the product of a gradual process of secularization that transcended the religiosity of medieval Christendom. William Bain's Political Theology of International Order (Oxford University Press, 2020) challenges this narrative by arguing that modern theories of international order reflect ideas that originate in medieval t...
William W. Parsons and Regina M. Matheson, "The Pink Wave: Women Running for Office After Trump" (NYU Press, 2023)
March 26, 2024 08:00 - 43 minutesHow and why the election of Donald Trump inspired more women to enter politics. Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election shocked and dismayed many women, and motivated many to run for office at all levels of government. In The Pink Wave: Women Running for Office After Trump (NYU Press, 2023), Regina M. Matheson and William W. Parsons explore this inspiring phenomenon and its impact on women's representation. Drawing on national surveys and in-depth intervi...
Rana AlMutawa, "Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai" (U California Press, 2024)
March 26, 2024 08:00 - 38 minutesEveryday Life in the Spectacular City is a groundbreaking urban ethnography that reveals how middle-class citizens and longtime residents of Dubai interact with the city's so-called superficial spaces to create meaningful social lives. Rana AlMutawa shows that inhabitants adapt themselves to top-down development projects, from big malls to megaprojects. These structures serve residents' evolving social needs, transforming Dubai's spectacular spaces into personally important cultural sites. Th...
Vladimir Solonari, "A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944" (Cornell UP, 2019)
March 26, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourA Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944 (Cornell UP, 2019) is an in-depth investigation of the political and social history of the area in southwestern Ukraine under Romanian occupation during World War II. Transnistria was the only occupied Soviet territory administered by a power other than Nazi Germany, a reward for Romanian participation in Operation Barbarossa. Vladimir Solonari's invaluable contribution to World War II history focuses on three main aspects o...
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640" (U Texas Press, 2024)
March 26, 2024 08:00 - 44 minutesAcross the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640 (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sanjay Subrahmanyam presents a history of two centuries of interactions among the areas bordering the western Indian Ocean, including India, Iran, and Africa. Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, the regions bordering the western Indian Ocean—“the green sea,” as it was known to Arabic speakers—had increasing contact through commerce, including a slave trade, and underwent cultu...
Why, How, and Who to Marry: A Conversation with Brad Wilcox *01
March 26, 2024 08:00 - 48 minutesUniversity of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox *01 delves into some of the popular wisdom surrounding marriage and tells us what the data has to say: is it better to marry young or wait? To move in with your partner before or after marriage? Does marriage hurt your career prospects or your ability to set aside time for your own happiness? What groups in America are doing well with regards to marriage, and what groups aren't doing as well? Along the way, he also addresses some of the political...