New Books in History
Kanāla detaļas
New Books in History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000...
Nesenie epizodes
702 epizodes
Colm Murphy, "Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation', the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973–1997" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
The transformation of the Labour Party by 1997 is among the most consequential political developments in modern British history. Futures of Socialism...
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts" (Yale UP, 2025)
Medieval Europe was preoccupied with magic. From the Carolingian Empire to Renaissance Italy and Tudor England, great rulers, religious figures, and s...
Caitlin Wiesner, "Between the Street and the State: Black Women’s Anti-Rape Activism Amid the War on Crime" (U Pennsylvania, 2025)
Beginning in the 1970s, a series of government agencies established to carry out the federal “war on crime” offered financial and ideological support...
Dan Edelstein, "The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Political thinkers from Plato to John Adams saw revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balan...
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships...
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo...
Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026)
Exploring 500 years of protest and resistance in US history—and how its force is foundational and can empower us to navigate our chaotic world
<...
Michal A. Piegzik, "Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway" (Naval Institute Press, 2025)
Driven by extensive Japanese primary sources, Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway (Naval Institute...
Philip Janzen, "An Unformed Map: Geographies of Belonging Between Africa and the Caribbean" (Duke UP, 2025)
In An Unformed Map: Geographies of Belonging Between Africa and the Caribbean (Duke UP, 2025), Philip Janzen traces the intellectual trajectories of...
The Nursing Clio Editorial Collective, "The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice (Rutgers UP, 2025) brings together essays that examine reproductive health thro...
Ayoush Lazikani, "The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing" (Yale UP, 2025)
When they gazed at the moon, medieval people around the globe saw an object that was at once powerful and fragile, distant and intimate—and sometimes...
Joseph Harley and Vicky Holmes eds., "Objects of Poverty: Material Culture in Britain from 1700" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Joseph Harley joins Jana Byars to talk about the book he edited with Vicky Holmes, Objects of Poverty: Material Culture in Britain from 1700 (Bloomsbu...
Ali Anooshahr, "Slavery in the Early Mughal World: The Life and Thoughts of Jawhar Aftabachi (1520s–1580s)" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Jawhar Aftabachi was enslaved as a child by the Ottomans in the Black Sea region in the early sixteenth century. He was then sold to the Ottoman admir...
Sarah F. Derbew, "Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Sarah Derbew’s new book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2022) asks how should articulations of blackness from the fifth century...
Francis Gavin, "Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy" (Yale UP, 2025)
In his timely, thought-provoking book Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy (Yale UP, 2025), Francis Gavin makes a powerful case f...
Anne Irfan, "A Short History of the Gaza Strip" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
In this episode, Joe Williams speaks to historian Anne Irfan about her new book, A Short History of the Gaza Strip (Simon & Schuster, 2025). Drawing o...
Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustrated...
James Lacey, "Rome: Strategy of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
From Octavian's victory at Actium (31 B.C.) to its traditional endpoint in the West (476), the Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years -- an impressive...
Brooke Barbier, "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father" (Harvard UP, 2023)
King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard UP, 2023) is a rollicking portrait of the paradoxical patriot, whose measur...
Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Feminism's Empire (Cornell UP, 2022) investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and demo...
The Library of Lost Maps: An Archive of a World in Progress
At the heart of University College London lies a long-forgotten map library packed with thousands of maps and atlases. Professor James Cheshire stumbl...
Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the...
Patricia Anne Simpson, "Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice" (Routledge, 2025)
Patricia Anne Simpson joins Jana Byars to talk about Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice (Routledge, 2025). The book exa...
Darcie Fontaine, "Modern France and the World" (Routledge, 2023)
As she taught university-level courses on modern French history, Darcie Fontaine felt like she could not find a textbook that provided an up-to-date n...
Jonathan Eig, "King: A Life" (FSG, 2023)
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (FSG, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon...
Allison Christine Meier, "Grave" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Allison C. Meier takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change....
Jenny Linford, "Repast: The Story of Food" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
Our insatiable appetite for creativity in the kitchen – or around the open fire – is reflected in the fascinating array of objects explored in this bo...
Natalie Porter, "Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides: A History of Badass Women Skateboarders" (ECW Press, 2025)
A vibrant, meticulously researched celebration of the women and non-binary skateboarders who defied a hostile industry and redefined skateboarding aro...
Maia Kotrosits, "After Transformation: Rewriting Time, Christian Late Antiquity, and the Present" (Duke UP, 2025)
In After Transformation, Maia Kotrosits offers a lyrical history of Christian late antiquity as it lives on in and with the present. Recasting the mo...
Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025)
Between the late 1840s and the late 1860s, the United States and Mexico had quite a bit in common. Both suffered from reactionary succession movements...
Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025)
In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s...
Renata Keller, "The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025)
Despite twenty-first-century fears of nuclear conflagrations with North Korea, Russia, and Iran, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest the United St...
Jim Cullen, "1980: America's Pivotal Year" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish...
Adam Jones, "Sites of Genocide" (Routledge, 2022)
Adam Jones will be familiar to anyone interested in the field of genocide studies. He's published one of the leading textbooks in the field. He's been...
Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025)
Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global histori...
Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to sug...
Carol Lilly, "Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans" (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S...
Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible?
Yanqiu Zheng’s ...
Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores some of Georgia’s earliest settlers, the Salzburg...
Emily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)
Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provoca...