Podcasts by NBN Book of the Day
The "NBN Book of the Day" features the most timely and interesting author interviews from the New Books Network delivered to you every weekday.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Bücher
All episodes
Daniel Deudney, "Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Space is again in the headlines. E-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are planning to colonize Mars. The Trump Administration has created a "Space Force" to achieve "space dominance" with expens...
ListenKevin Mattson, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford UP, 2020), Kevin Mattson documents punk rock in the early 1980s through a c...
ListenRobert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this strategic resource; that the "special" relationshi...
ListenJulia S. Charles, "That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this chronologically and thematically ambitious study of racial passing literature, Julia Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves—a place she terms that ...
ListenChas Smith, "Cocaine and Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair" (Rare Bird, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Surfers are the ultimate bad boys, living the counter-culture life of decadence and hedonism as they travel the world in search of the perfect wave, partying hard along the way. So, it’s not surpri...
ListenJamie Merisotis, "Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines" (RosettaBooks, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Are robots going to be our overlords? In Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines (RosettaBooks, 2020), Jamie Merisotis says they don't have to be. We can make them our friends. Jamie Merisotis is a...
ListenJohn Garrison Marks, "Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas" (U of South Carolina Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference cha...
ListenK. A. Lieber and D. G. Press, "The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2020), Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: the persist...
ListenCynthia Miller-Idriss, "Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us, and communities across America and around the globe ...
ListenF. H. Buckley, "American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Break-Up" (Encounter Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Francis Buckley, who is Foundation Professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, has written a fast-moving and provocative new book about the opportunities and possibilities ...
ListenThomas Abt, "Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do we promote peace in the streets? In his new book Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence--and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets (Basic Books, 2019), Thomas Abt ex...
ListenVictor Pickard, "Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"Few freedoms in the United States are as cherished as freedom of the press." So begins Chapter One of Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society (Oxford University Press...
ListenGina Rippon, "Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds" (Vintage, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For decades if not centuries, science has backed up society’s simple dictum that men and women are hardwired differently, that the world is divided by two different kinds of brains—male and female....
ListenJudith G. Coffin, "Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Judith G. Coffin discovered a virtually unexplored treasure trove of letters to Simone de Beauvoir from Beauvoir's international readers, it inspired Coffin to explore the intimate bond betwee...
ListenWilliam Germano, "Getting it Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books" (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When 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 p...
ListenRobert Plomin, "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Have 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 ...
ListenPhilip Cunliffe, "The New Twenty Years' Crisis: A Critique of International Relations, 1999-2019" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At 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, howe...
ListenMichael Walzer, "A Foreign Policy for the Left" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 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 r...
ListenPaul Howe, "Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Howe's book Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World (Cornell UP, 2020) offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity...
ListenWhy are Blacks Democrats?: An Interview with Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now also identi...
ListenIan Haney López, "Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America" (The New Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Greedy elites are purposefully stoking racial division and laughing all the way to the bank. That is the bottom line of Ian Haney López’s Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and S...
ListenJoel Miller, "Memoir of a Roadie: Axl Said I made a Great Cup of Tea…" (2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Memoir of a Roadie: Axl said I made a great Cup of Tea…Scott Weiland liked The Carpenters…and Ozzy Drinks Rosé (2020) Joel Miller recounts his time in the early 2000s as a road for...
ListenBoel Berner, "Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th-Century Medicine and Beyond" (Transcript Verlag, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra and anemia; proposed it...
ListenChris Heffer, "All Bullshit and Lies?: Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untruthfulness" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The implied answer to the titular question of All Bullshit and Lies? (Oxford University Press 2020) is no, it’s not. In this book, subtitled Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untru...
ListenStephen Wall, "Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In January 2020, the UK became the first country to leave the European Union after a troubled 47-year membership. What was at the core of the country’s semi-detachment to the EU? Was the UK’s event...
ListenHannah L. Walker, "Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hannah Walker’s new book, Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race (Oxford UP, 2020), brings together the political science and criminal justice disciplin...
ListenEric Weiner, "The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Places" (Simon and Schuster, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Living, as we do, in a time in which a U.S. president anoints himself “a very stable genius”, we are particularly appreciative of Eric Weiner, a former foreign correspondent for NPR who writes with...
ListenJeremy England, "Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“How did life begin? Most things in the universe aren't alive, and yet if you trace the evolutionary history of plants and animals back far enough, you will find that, at some point, neither were w...
ListenLea David, "The Past Can't Heal Us: The Dangers of Mandating Memory in the Name of Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Past Can't Heal Us: The Dangers of Mandating Memory in the Name of Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2020), Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, sugg...
ListenFrans de Waal, "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (W. W. Norton & Company) is a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals, beginning with Mama, a chimpanze...
ListenMichele Goodwin, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the criminalization of all aspects of reproduction, p...
ListenLaura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers won’t be able to put down, and that listeners from...
ListenGene Ludwig, "The Vanishing American Dream" (Disruption Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gene Ludwig cares. The former banker, government regulator, and serial entrepreneur cares deeply about the hollowing out of the American middle class over the past several decades, not least of all...
ListenG. Smulewicz-Zucker and M. Thompson, "An Inheritance for Our Times: Principles and Politics of Democratic Socialism" (OR Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Democratic socialism is on the lips of activists and politicians from both the left and the right. Some call it extremism; some call it common sense. What are we talking about? At a time when the c...
ListenJennifer Cobbina, "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How They Changed America" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Following the high-profile deaths of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, both cities erupted in protest over the unj...
ListenRachel M. Gillum, "Muslims in a Post-9/11 America" (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Muslims in a Post-9/11 America (University of Michigan Press, 2018) examines how public fears about Muslims in the United States compare with the reality of American Muslims’ attitudes on a range o...
ListenDiana Greene Foster, "The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion" (Scribner, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happens when a woman seeking an abortion is turned away? Diana Greene Foster, PhD, decided to find out. With a team of scientists—psychologists, epidemiologists, demographers, nursing scholars...
ListenChristopher Robertson, "Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance is Incomplete and What can be Done About" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today's guest is Christopher Robertson, Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and Professor of Law at the University of Arizona. His background and research interests overlap several academic ...
ListenAlexander Keyssar, "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The title of Harvard historian Alexander Keyssar,’s new book poses the question that comes up every presidential election cycle: Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? (Harvard University Pres...
ListenBen Burgis, "Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left" (Zero Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Logic, the study of how certain arguments either succeed or fail to support their conclusions, is one of the most important topics in philosophy, its importance illustrated by the common assumption...
ListenM. Ramirez and D. Peterson, "Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ign...
ListenR. Pollin and N. Chomsky, "Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet" (Verso, 2020 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is there a consensus on the best response to global warming? Not even close. Left and right both bring their own tools, math, and, most notably, agendas--climate related and non-climate related--to...
ListenPostscript: A Discussion of Race, Anger and Citizenship in the USA from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do we have a serious conversation about race that moves beyond the brevity of Twitter or an op-ed? In this episode of Post-Script (a New Books in Political Science series from Lilly Goren and S...
ListenIain Murray, "The Socialist Temptation" (Regnery Gateway, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Just thirty years ago, socialism seemed utterly discredited. An economic, moral, and political failure, socialism had rightly been thrown on the ash heap of history after the fall of the Berlin Wal...
ListenAnn-Sophie Barwich, "Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Smells repel and attract; they bring emotionally charged memories to mind; they guide behavior and thought nonconsciously; they give food much of its taste; and the loss of sense of smell can help ...
ListenJoshua Greenberg, "Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is money? No, really, what is money? It turns out the answer is not so simple. During the course of the 20th century, most of us have gotten used to the notion of a single medium of exchange b...
ListenMatthew Yglesias, "One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger" (Portfolio, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What would actually make America great? More people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means to lead. From one of ou...
ListenJohn Barton, "A History of the Bible: The Story of the World's Most Influential Book" (Viking, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Barton is no stranger to Holy Scripture. Having spent much of his academic career as a chaplain and professor of theology at the University of Oxford, his latest book is an attempt to shed lig...
ListenNathan J. Kelly, "America's Inequality Trap" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
America's Inequality Trap (University of Chicago Press, 2020) focuses on the relationship between economic inequality and American politics. Nathan J. Kelly, Professor of Political Science at the U...
ListenSimon Hall, "Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s" (Faber and Faber, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s (Faber, 2020), Simon Hall, a Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds, colorfully details an extraordinary...
ListenLisa Bortolotti, "The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There is something intuitive about the idea that when we believe, we ought to follow our evidence. This entails that beliefs that are the products of garden varieties of irrationality, such as delu...
ListenRafael Medoff, "The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust" (JPS, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Like so many Americans, American Jews supported President Roosevelt. They adored him. They believed in him. They idolized him. Perhaps they shouldn’t have. Based on recently discovered documents, T...
ListenPaul Moyer, "Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.” These famous lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth elicit popular images of sinister witches over their cauldrons, boiling evil potions. ...
ListenAdam Rutherford, "How to Argue With a Racist" (The Experiment, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Racist pseudoscience has become so commonplace that it can be hard to spot. But its toxic effects on society are plain to see—feeding nationalism, fueling hatred, endangering lives, and corroding o...
ListenLisa Selin Davis, "Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different" (Hachette Go, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We are in the middle of a cultural revolution, where the spectrum of gender and sexual identities is seemingly unlimited. So when author and journalist Lisa Selin Davis's six-year-old daughter firs...
ListenSteven Shapin, "The Scientific Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.” With this provocative and apparently paradoxical claim, Steven Shapin begins The Scientific Revolution (Universi...
ListenBjorn Lomborg, "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Should climate change policy be subject to a cost-benefit analysis leading to a variety of policy choices? Or is it so critical that the only "proper" path is immediate and extreme carbon reduction...
ListenGuy Raffa, "Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Guy Raffa, Associate Professor of Italian Studies at UT Austin, about his new book, Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy (Harvard ...
ListenJohn R. Hibbing, "The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump’s Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are the policy implications due to a fundamental distrust and dislike of “outsiders”? Today I talked to political scientist John R. Hibbing about his new book The Securitarian Personality: Wha...
ListenJered Rubin, "Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge UP, 2020) addresses one of the big questions in economics and economic history: why did the modern economy...
ListenC. Besteman and H. Gusterson, "Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can we understand computerization as a social process? Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World (University of Chicago Press, 2019) is a timely and welcome edited volume in ...
ListenJulia Rose Kraut, "Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the United States use immigration to suppress free speech? Should interests of “national security” take priority over individual liberties? What happens to democracy when the most vulnerab...
ListenJohn W. Compton, "The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving their Neighbors" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’re all familiar with the statistic that 81% of white evangelical voters supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. But what if a deeper trawl through the complex relationship betw...
ListenSatyan Devadoss, "Mage Merlin's Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are very few math books that merit the adjective ‘charming’ but Mage Merlin's Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries (MIT Press, 2020) is one of them. Satyan Devadoss and Matt Harvey have chosen a t...
ListenChristopher Newfield, "The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Christopher Newfield diagnoses what he sees as a crisis in American public h...
ListenDanielle Giffort, "Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the Quest for Medical Legitimacy" (U Minnesota Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for treating mental health problems. After a decade...
ListenStuart Ritchie, "Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype in Science" (Penguin Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
So much relies on science. But what if science itself can’t be relied on? In Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype in Science (Penguin Books, 2020), Stuart Ritchie, a profess...
ListenKim Adrian, "Dear Knausgaard: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle" (Fiction Advocate, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2009, a novel was released in Norway with a fairly simple premise; the author would simply write about himself, his life and his attempts to write. The autobiographical novel would be the first ...
ListenThomas Borstelmann, "Just Like Us: The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The American attitude towards outsiders has always been ambivalent. The United States, it is commonly said, is a nation of immigrants; today, it’s the most demographically diverse great power. But ...
ListenW. J. Perry and T. Z. Collina, "The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump" (BenBella Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, American nuclear policy continues to be influenced by the legacies of the Cold War. Nuclear policies remain focused on easily identifiable threats,...
ListenSamuel Morris Brown, "Joseph Smith's Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have translated ancient scriptures. He dictated an American Bible from metal plates reportedly buried by ancient Jews in a nearby hill, and produced an...
ListenPaula Fredriksen, "When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would ...
ListenSarah B. Rodriguez, "The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. James Burt believed women’s bodies were broken, and only he could fix them. In the 1950s, this Ohio OB-GYN developed what he called “love surgery,” a unique procedure he maintained enhanced the...
ListenSolomon Goldstein-Rose, "The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change" (Melville House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At age 26, Solomon Goldstein-Rose has already spent more time thinking about climate change than most of us will in our lifetimes. He’s been a climate activist since age 11, studied engineering and...
ListenTheresa Kaminski, "Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights" (Lyons Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Among the tens of thousands of Americans who volunteered their services during the Civil War was Mary Walker, a daring young woman who was one of the handful of female doctors in the nation at that...
ListenR. K. Jefferson and H. B. Johnson, "Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Before Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, nine highly qualified women were on the shortlist. What do the stories of these women tell us about the judiciary? G...
ListenJustin Gomer, "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Justin Gomer is the author of White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. White Balance explore...
ListenAndrew S. Baer, "Beyond the Usual Beating" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of Chicago police officers routinely tortured criminal suspects in their custody, while fellow cops, state attorneys and elected officials looked the other way. In h...
ListenJennifer Domino Rudolph, "Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity" (Ohio State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her incisive study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity (Ohio State University Press, 2020), Jennifer Domino Rudolph analyzes major league...
ListenMarc Zimmer, "The State of Science" (Prometheus Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
New research and innovations in the field of science are leading to life-changing and world-altering discoveries like never before. What does the horizon of science look like? Who are the scientist...
ListenChristina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate professor in the USC Annenberg School for Commu...
ListenE. Chemerinsky and H. Gillman, "The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Throughout American history, views on the proper relationship between the state and religion have been deeply divided. And, with recent changes in the composition of the Supreme Court, First Amendm...
ListenPeter Singer, "Why Vegan?: Eating Ethically" (Liveright, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Even before the publication of his seminal Animal Liberation in 1975, Peter Singer, one of the greatest moral philosophers of our time, unflinchingly challenged the ethics of eating animals. Now, i...
ListenGlenn Sauer, "Points of Contact: Science, Religion, and the Search for Truth" (Orbis Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a scientist and practicing Catholic, Dr. Sauer brings a unique perspective to several of the important issues related to finding a space for dialogue between the at times opposing fields of scie...
ListenPaul Morrow, "Unconscionable Crimes: How Norms Explain and Constrain Mass Atrocity" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The moral horrors of genocide and mass atrocity lead us to wonder how such things are even possible. A common and understandable reaction is to see events of this kind as arising from the collapse ...
ListenTom Rastrelli, "Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary" (U Iowa Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church’s ongoing scandals. Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Lo...
ListenJim Downs, "Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation" (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite the tremendous gains of the LGBT movement in recent years, the history of gay life in this country remains poorly understood. According to conventional wisdom, gay liberation started with t...
ListenFrederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies on Hysteria, the good doctor from Vienna conti...
ListenJim Mason, "An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature" (Latern Books, 2002) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
First published by Simon & Schuster in 1993 and then by Continuum in 1998, Jim Mason’s An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature has become a classic. With a new Lantern edition ex...
ListenJeremy Black, "George III: Madness and Majesty" (Penguin, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
King of Britain for sixty years and the last king of what would become the United States, George III inspired both hatred and loyalty and is now best known for two reasons: as a villainous tyrant f...
ListenNicholas Guyatt, "Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation" (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are created equal”? Racism is the usual answer. Yet Nicholas Guyatt argues in Bind Us Ap...
ListenMichael C. Davis, "Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Imagine you live in a freewheeling city like New York or London – one of the world’s leading financial, educational, and cultural centres. Then imagine that one of the world’s most infamous author...
ListenJimena Canales, "Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the enlightening power of reason, a new kind of demon...
ListenJoshua Gans, "The Pandemic Information Gap and the Brutal Economics of Covid-19" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March, a self-isolating and easily distracted economist resolved to take himself in hand. "I decided I would do what I was good at: I would write a book" about...
ListenConspiracy Theories are More Dangerous Than Ever: A Discussion with Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new—conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of gove...
ListenMatt Christman, "The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason" (Simon & Schuster, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Let’s face it, 2020 has been a hell of a year. We could all use a good laugh. But as historians and/or fans of history, we have to read something historically grounded, right? Well, fear not! Felix...
ListenEben Kirksey, "The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans" (St. Martin's Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans (St. Martin's Press, 2020), anthropologist Eben Kirksey visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask:...
ListenDan Callahan, "The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Camera Lies, published in 2020 by Oxford University Press, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946)...
ListenBen Bland, "Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia" (Penguin, 2021) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joko Widodo, or “Jokowi”, as he is popularly known, famously rose from a riverside shack to become president of Indonesia in 2014. In a country better known for decades of authoritarian rule, Jokow...
ListenRichard Ovenden, "Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Living in an age awash with information can sometimes obscure its extraordinary fragility. Indeed, as Richard Ovenden demonstrates in Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of K...
ListenSharon Marcus, "The Drama of Celebrity" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sharon Marcus’s new book, The Drama of Celebrity (Princeton UP, 2020), sets out to help us understand celebrity culture and how it has shifted and evolved since its contemporary inception in the ea...
ListenIan Ayres and Fredrick E. Vars, "Weapon of Choice: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the United States, gun violence is in a state of national crisis, yet efforts to reform gun regulation face significant political and constitutional barriers. In this innovative book, Ian Ayres ...
ListenNoel J. Pinnington, "A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Ky?gen from 1300 to 1600" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noel Pinnington's A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Ky?gen from 1300 to 1600 (Palgrave, 2019) traces the history of noh and ky?gen, the first major Japanese theatrical arts. Going...
ListenAdrian Wooldridge, "The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It" (HarperVia, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that governments matter again, that competent leadership is the difference between living and dying. A few governments proved adept at handling the crisis while m...
ListenTimothy Hampton, "Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work" (Zone Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcen...
ListenGemma Milne, "Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It" (Robinson, 2021) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Bombastic headlines about science and technology are nothing new. To cut through the constant stream of information and misinformation on social media, or grab the attention of investors, or convin...
ListenVirginia Postrel, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World (Basic Books, 2020), Virginia Postrel describes how humans coevolved with textiles. The story begins with our distant ancestors who used s...
ListenPaul Donovan, "Profit and Prejudice: The Luddites of the Fourth Industrial Revolution" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Donovan's Profit and Prejudice: The Luddites of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Routledge, 2020) is a great example of what Robert Shiller has championed as narrative economics--pointing out...
ListenNicolas Petit, "Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Consumers may love their products and services but, among politicians and activists, the big-technology companies are fast developing a reputation as the Robber Barons of the 21st century. Google r...
ListenChristina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2020-07-20T08:00
In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate professor in the USC Annenberg School for Commu...
ListenChristina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2020-07-20T08:00
In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate professor in the USC Annenberg School for Commu...
Listen