Podcasts by New Books in Sociology

Out of TIme: Sacred Time and 'Time is Money' from 2023-01-31T09:00

Many of the earliest time technologies were used to mark sacred time -- time set apart for the divine. But with the Industrial Revolution, efficient time use became its own sacred value. We now liv...

Forbidden Fruit: Religious Fervor about Food from 2023-01-12T09:00

Contemporary diet culture is only the latest manifestation of a long history of religious fervor about food. GuestsIsabel Foxen Duke, health coach Alan Levinovitz, Professor of Religious Studies a...

White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect? from 2023-01-06T09:00

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. GuestsJoshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of History at Boston CollegeNancy Isenberg, author of ...

Generation Why?: Do We Need "Generations?" from 2023-01-04T09:00

Who gets to define generational cohorts and do they obscure more than illuminate? GuestsNeil Howe, author of Generations Tony Tulathimutte, author of Why There’s No ‘Millennial’ NovelLearn more a...

Generation Why?: Do We Need "Generations?" from 2023-01-04T09:00

Who gets to define generational cohorts and do they obscure more than illuminate? GuestsNeil Howe, author of Generations Tony Tulathimutte, author of Why There’s No ‘Millennial’ NovelLearn more a...

On Victor and Edith Turner's "The Forest of Symbols" from 2022-11-17T09:00

In the mid-20th century, British anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner studied the Ndembu people of present-day Zambia. They wrote about their findings in their 1967 book The Forest of Symbols. T...

On Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" from 2022-09-06T08:00

In 1930, Sigmund Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents and laid out his theory of civilization: civilization’s a problem, and it makes us unhappy. Freud felt humans were aggressive creatures...

The Renaissance of Marxist Studies: A Discussion with Babak Amini from 2022-04-21T08:00

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in academic research in Marxism and related fields, and many researchers have been stepping up to the plate to offer rigorous analysis and crit...

Sam Han, "(Inter)Facing Death: Life in Global Uncertainty" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration...

Jennifer Helgren, "American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War" (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book, American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Jennifer Helgren traces the creation of a new internat...

Rafia Zakaria, “Veil” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslim women are often the focus of debate when it comes to public conversations about Islam. Much of this centers on feelings and assumptions surrounding an object, the veil. Rafia Zakaria, journa...

Robert W. Gehl, “Reverse Engineering Social Media” (Temple UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Reverse Engineering Social Media: Software, Culture, and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism (Temple University Press, 2014) by Robert Gehl (University of Utah, Department of Communication) ...

James C. Scott, "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), ...

Anne Balay, "Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this multi-layered ethnography that centers truck drivers, Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) describes both the long-...

Kevan Harris, “A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevan Harris is the author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017). Harris is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cal...

Daniel Feierstein, “Genocide as Social Practice” (Rutgers UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

So I should start out with a confession. I don’t know much about the history of Argentina (I said something similar about Guatemala a year or so ago on the program). And I don’t think it would have...

Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...

John Pat Leary, "Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism" (Haymarket Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Pat Leary's Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2019) chronicles the rise of a new vocabulary in the twenty-first century. From Silicon Valley to the White House, from k...

Mandy Sayer, “Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History” (NewSouth Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), award-winning writer Mandy Sayer explores the neglected history of Gypsies, or Romani people, in Australia, fr...

Caroline Lee, et al., “Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemma of the New Public Participation” (NYU Press 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker are the editors of Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemma of the New Public Participation (NYU Press 2015). Lee is associate professor of sociology a...

Mary-Kate Lizotte, "Gender Differences in Public Opinion: Values and Political Consequences" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Political Scientist Mary-Kate Lizotte’s new book, Gender Differences in Public Opinion: Values and Political Consequences (Temple University Press, 2020) helps us to understand the concept of the g...

A. Harkins and M. McCarroll, "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (West Virginia University Press, 2019) is a retort, at turn rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow J.D. Vance’s Hillb...

Eli Cook, “The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I was joined by Eli Cook from Israel to talk about his amazing new book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life (Harvard University Press, 2017). While ...

Abdelwahab El-Affendi, “Genocidal Nightmares” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Genocide studies is one of the few academic fields with which I’m acquainted which is truly interdisciplinary in approach and composition. Today’s guest Abdelwahab El-Affendi, and the book he has e...

Diana Fu, "Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When advocacy organizations are forbidden from rallying people to take to the streets, what do they do? Diana Fu’s nuanced ethnography of Chinese labor organizations demonstrates how grassroots non...

Gökçe Günel, "Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whether in space colonies or through geo-engineering, the looming disaster of climate change inspires no shortage of techno-utopian visions of human survival. Most of such hypotheses remain science...

Kinneret Lahad, “A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender and Time” (Manchester UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why are you still single? This question is often asked of single women, especially those who are deemed by loved ones or friends to be too old to be single. In her newest book, A Table for One: A ...

James A. Holstein, Richard S. Jones, George Koonce, Jr., “Is There Life After Football? Surviving the NFL” (New York UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The health of former NFL players has received plenty of attention in recent years. The suicides of Junior Seau and Dave Duerson, along with stories of retired players in only their 40s and 50s affe...

Govind Gopakumar, "Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Automobiles and their associated infrastructures, deeply embedded in Western cities, have become a rapidly growing presence in the mega-cities of the Global South. Streets, once crowded with pedest...

Gwendoline M. Alphonso, "Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gwendoline M. Alphonso's new book Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) demonstrates how regional idea...

Carolyn Sufrin, “Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women behind Bars” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1976, the landmark supreme court case Estelle v. Gamble, established that under the Eighth Amendment “deliberate indifference” to the health needs of incarcerated individuals was tantamount to c...

Ervin Staub, “Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict and Terrorism” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After “Schindler’s List,” it became customary for my students, and I, to repeat the slogan “Never Again.” We did so seriously, with solemn expressions on our faces and intensity in our voices. But...

Joel Thiessen and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, "None of the Above: Nonreligious Identity in the US and Canada" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent decades, the number of Americans and Canadians who identify has nonreligious has risen considerably. With nearly one quarter of Canadian and American adults identifying as nonreligious, r...

Jerry T. Watkins III, "Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism" (UP of Florida, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the title suggests, Jerry T. Watkins III’s Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism (University Press of Florida, 2018) re-queers this North Florida tourist destin...

Roderic Broadhurst et.al., “Violence and the Civilising Process in Cambodia” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The work of sociologist Norbert Elias has had a renaissance in recent times, with Steven Pinker, among others, using it to argue that interpersonal violence has declined globally as states have exp...

Edward Telles and PERLA, “Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do race, ethnicity and appearance work on Latin America? Edward Telles‘ and the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America‘s (PERLA) new book Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in L...

Richard Lachmann, "First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Richard Lachmann’s First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (Verso, 2020) is a two-for-one deal. The first half of the book is a historical analysis ...

David Bissell, "Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities" (MIT Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What kind of time do we endure on our daily commutes? What kind of space do we occupy? What new sorts of urbanites do we thereby become? In Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities (M...

Pasquale Tridico, “Inequality in Financial Capitalism” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I was joined by Pasquale Tridico, Professor of Political Economy at Roma Tre University in Italy. His latest book, Inequality in Financial Capitalism, was published by Routledge in 2017. The issue ...

Victoria Hesford, “Feeling Women’s Liberation” (Duke University Press, 2013). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Victoria Hesford is an associated professor of Women and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University in New York. Her book Feeling Women’s Liberation (Duke University Press, 2013) examines the pivotal...

Adriana Mica, "Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended: From the Problem of Ignorance to the Discovery of the Possible" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sociology of unintended consequences is commonly depicted as a framework for understanding the outcomes that run counter to the initial intentions of social actors because of factors such as ignora...

Diane Tober, "Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The development of a whole suite of new reproductive technologies in recent decades has contributed to broad cultural conversations and controversies over the meaning of family in the United States...

Mindy Fried, “Caring for Red: A Daughter’s Memoir” (Vanderbilt UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Caring for Red: A Daughter’s Memoir (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016), Mindy Fried shares her experiences with providing care for her father at the end of his life. With rich sto...

Deana A. Rohlinger, “Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Deana A. Rohlinger has just written Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Rohlinger is associate professor of sociology at Florida State...

Kevin Duong, "The Virtues of Violence: Democracy Against Disintegration in Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin Duong, a political theorist in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia, has written a fascinating analysis of the way that violence has been used, in a sense, to create or promo...

Kristin D. Phillips, "An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Families in parts of rural Tanzania regularly face periods when they cut back on their meals because their own food stocks are running short and they cannot afford to buy food. Kristin D. Phillips'...

Michelle Murphy, “The Economization of Life” (Duke University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Economization of Life (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle Murphy pulls apart the late modern concept of “population” to show the lives this concept has produced and continues to produce,...

Lynn Chancer and John Andrews, “The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis: Diverse Perspectives on the Psychosocial (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014)is an edited volume. Its chapters document the central place of psychoanalysi...

Santiago Zabala, "Being at Large: Freedom in the Ago of Alternative Facts" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, questions around the nature of ?truth ?and ?facts have reentered public debate, often in discussions around journalistic bias, and whether politically neutral reporting is possible...

Ernest McGowen III, "African Americans in White Suburbia: Social Networks and Political Behavior" (UP of Kansas 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Relative wealth has given suburban African Americans employment opportunities and political resources--but not necessarily neighbors, coworkers, or elected officials who share their concerns. How d...

Sujatha Gidla, “Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her searing book Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), Sujatha Gidla traces her family’s history over four generations in ...

Steven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by the philosophy of Alfred North ...

Yassir Morsi, “Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims living in locations like Australia, Europe, or North America exist within a context dominated by white racial norms and are forced to grapple with those conventions on a daily basis. If the...

Jack Wertheimer, "The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Religion Today" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Countless sociological studies and surveys present a rather bleak picture of religion and religious engagement in the United States. Attendance at worship services remains very low and approximatel...

Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider, “The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Volatility. Instability. Insecurity. Precarity. There’s a burgeoning lexicon seeking to capture the grim economic state of more and more Americans. Join us as Jonathan Morduch describes what he and...

Carl H. Nightingale, “Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities” (U of Chicago Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We often think of South Africa or America when we hear the word ‘segregation.’ Or — a popular view — that social groups have always chosen to live apart.But as Carl H. Nightingale shows in his new ...

James M. Jasper, "Public Characters: The Politics of Reputation and Blame" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Did Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency in 2016 because he was a master of character work – able to sum up opponents in pithy epithets that encourage the public to see them as weak or immoral? Wha...

Susan Lepselter, "The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, and UFOs in the American Uncanny" (U Michigan Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we talk about stories of alien abduction in the United States, we often do so through a framework of belief vs. disbelief. Do I think this story is true, or do I think it’s false? Anthropologi...

Jeremy Milloy, “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-1980” (U. of Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the twenty first century, violence at work is often described in the context of a lone employee “snapping” and harming coworkers or management. In his new book, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence ...

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, “Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood” (UNC Press 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo is the author of Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood (UNC Press 2014). She is assistant professor of sociology at the University of ...

Ashley Mears, "Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ashley Mears’ new book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit (Princeton University Press, 2020) provides readers with a closer look at the global party circuit. A lif...

Jessica A. J. Rich, "State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jessica Rich’s new book, State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a fascinating and important examination of civil-state...

Neda Maghbouleh, “The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does a group become defined as white? And does that group define themselves that way as well? Neda Maghbouleh‘s new book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of...

Frank Pasquale, “The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hidden algorithms make many of the decisions that affect significant areas of society: the economy, personal and organizational reputation, the promotion of information, etc. These complex formulas...

Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action?" (Haymarket, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in ?The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action (2019)?, published as part of th...

Crystal Abidin, "Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online" (Emerald Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be famous on the Internet? How do people become Internet celebrities, and what can that celebrity be used to do? Dr. Crystal Abidin offers anthropological insight into these qu...

Kathryn Lofton, “Consuming Religion” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathryn Lofton is a professor of religious studies and history at Yale University. Her book Consuming Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2017) offers a collection of eleven essays of cultural c...

Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Lubienski, “The Public School Advantage” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Conventional thinking tells us that private school education is better than public schooling in the US. Why else would parents pay the hefty price tag often associate with private education, especi...

Yaacov Yadgar, "Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Yaacov Yadgar discusses his new book, Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2020) with Peter Bergamin. An important and topical contrib...

Melissa Johnson, "Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drawing from Sylvia Wynter’s call for rethinking our category of “human”, Melissa Johnson's ethnography Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize (Rutgers University Press, 2018) demonstrates how ...

Jo Littler, “Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power, and Myths of Mobility” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the idea of ‘meritocracy’ serve to reinforce social inequality? In Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility (Routledge, 2017) Dr Jo Littler, Reader in Culture and Creativ...

Scott Mainwaring and Anibal Perez-Linan, “Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scott Mainwaring and Anibal Perez-Linan are the authors of Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Mainwaring is the Eugene...

C. M. Driscoll and M. R. Miller, “Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion” (Lexington, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the study of religion there are various camps that each approach their subjects in unique ways. Each method is shaped by particular interpretive choices, such as to be objectively neutral, exper...

Tricia Bruce, "Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does a typical American Catholic parish look like? Tricia Bruce, an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society, argues in her new book that Americ...

Jennifer Randles, “Proposing Prosperity? Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Marriage is the foundation of a successful society,” proclaimed the Clinton-era welfare reform bill. Since then, national and state governments have spent nearly a billion dollars on programs desi...

Beth Driscoll, “The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty-First Century” (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is a cliche to suggest we are what we read, but it is also an important insight. In The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty First Century (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014), B...

T. Skocpol and C. Tervo, "Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we make sense of the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump? What forces moved American politics from the first African-American president and an all-Democratic Congress (2008) to ethno...

Emily Dawson, "Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning: The Experiences of Minoritised Groups" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who is excluded from science? What is the role of museums in this exclusion? In Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning: The Experiences of Minoritised Groups (Routledge, 2019), Dr Emily Da...

Steve Viscelli, “The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream” (U. Cal Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There may not be a more ubiquitous presence on American highways than the truck. The images are iconic: eighteen-wheelers with muddy steel and chrome, and a driver in aviator sunglasses and a mesh ...

Jacob N. Shapiro, “The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jacob N. Shapiro‘s The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2013) is a welcome addition to a field that sometimes depicts terrorist activity as an...

Sarah M. A. Gualtieri, "Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her latest book, Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California(Stanford University Press, 2019), Sarah M. A. Gualtieri uncovers the dynamic and complex stories of Arabic-speaking migrant communitie...

Eliot Borenstein, "Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, conspiratorial thinking has taken deep root in contemporary Russia, moving from the margins to the forefront of cultural, historical, and political dis...

David Goldstein, “Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by David A. Goldstein, author of the book Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017.) Goldstein explores the story of the Afric...

Janet K. Shim, “Heart-Sick: The Politics of Risk, Inequality, and Heart Disease” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Janet K. Shim‘s new book juxtaposes the accounts of epidemiologists and lay people to consider the roles of race, class, and gender (among other things) in health and illness. Heart-Sick: The Polit...

Julia C. Strauss, "State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2019) by Julia C. Strauss is a comparative study of regime consolidation in the People’s Rep...

Federico Varese, "Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories" (Princeton UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tonight we are talking with Federico Varese about his new book Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories (Princeton University Press, 2011). Whenever you read a book about tr...

Carla Joinson, “Vanished in Hiawatha: The Story of the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians” (U. Nebraska, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between 1902 and 1934, hundreds of Native American men, women, and children were institutionalized at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians; only nine of them, however, were officially committed by ...

Sam Friedman, “Comedy and Distinction” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is funny? What makes you laugh? We think of laughter as being universal idea that applies to everyone, no matter their age, ethnicity, gender or social class. In Comedy and Distinction: The Cu...

Cailin O’Connor, "The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? In The Misinformation Age:...

Leta Hong Fincher, "Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China" (Verso, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, five activists were detained by the police in China for their plans to distribute anti-sexual harassment stickers. Although such detainments usually...

Joshua Clark Davis, “From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2017), historian Joshua Clark Davis offers an unconventional history of the 1960s and 1970...

Paul Loeb, “The Impossible Will Take a Little While” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul Loeb is well known in sociology as the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times, and for the previous edition of the book reviewed here. His books are used in c...

Arlene Davila, "Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics (Duke UP, 2020), Arlene Dávila draws on numerous interviews with artists, dealers, and curators to explore the problem of visualizing Latinx art and ar...

Nancy J. Chodorow, "The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye" (Routledge 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye: Toward an American Independent Tradition (Routledge 2020) Professor Nancy J. Chodorow gives name and shape to an American middle group between th...

Mickey and Dick Flacks, "Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) is a chronicle of the political and personal li...

Jeffrey H. Cohen, “Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropological Theory and Method in the Real World” (U. Texas Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jeffrey H. Cohen, a professor at The Ohio State University, has managed a rare feat: placing anthropology classics like Argonauts of the Western Pacific in the context of eating grasshoppers. His i...

Dan Slater, “Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few books on Southeast Asia cover as much geographic, historical and theoretical ground as Dan Slater’s Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridg...

Katja M. Guenther, "The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Monster is an adult pit bull, muscular and grey, who is impounded in a large animal shelter in Los Angeles. Like many other dogs at the shelter, Monster is associated with marginalized humans and a...

Nick Prior, "Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society" (SAGE, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nick Prior—Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Edinburgh—discusses his new book, Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society (SAGE Publications, 2018). The book explores the soci...

Laurence Cox, "Why Social Movements Matter: An Introduction" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book Why Social Movements Matter: An Introduction (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), Senior Lecturer Laurence Cox, from Maynooth University, highlights how social movements have shaped the worl...

Christopher Baylor, “First to the Party: The Group Origins of Political Transformations” (Penn Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher Baylor is the author of First to the Party: The Group Origins of Political Transformations (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Baylor is an American Political Science Association ...

Steven Conn, “Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Americans have a paradoxical relationship with cities, Steven Conn argues in his new book,Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2014). Nearly ...

Lindsay Farmer, "Making the Modern Criminal Law: Criminalization and Civil Order" (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his latest book, Professor Lindsay Farmer offers a historical and conceptual analysis of theories of criminalization. The book shows how criminalization is inextricably linked to the making of t...

Stacy Wolf, "Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Stacy Wolf of Princeton University about her book Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America (Oxford University Pr...

John Komlos, "Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to Know" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I met with John Komlos, an American economic historian of Hungarian descent and former holder of the Chair of Economic History at the University of Munich. We spoke about his latest book, Foundatio...

Eric J. Pido, “Migrant Returns: Manila, Development, and Transnational Connectivity” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The government of the Philippines has for decades encouraged its citizens to seek work abroad and send money back to the country in remittances. But in recent years it has increasingly sought to en...

Marisol Sandoval, “From Corporate to Social Media” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What would a truly ‘social’ social media look like? This is the core question of From Corporate to Social Media: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in Media and Communication ...

Kelly Underman, "Feeling Medicine: How the Pelvic Exam Shapes Medical Training" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The pelvic exam is considered a fundamental procedure for medical students to learn; it is also often the one of the first times where medical students are required to touch a real human being in a...

T. Sangaramoorthy and K. Kroeger, "Rapid Ethnographic Assessments" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can researchers gather information quickly, for instance in the times of COVID-19? IN their new book, Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A Practical Approach and Toolkit for Collaborative Communit...

Racquel J. Gates, "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Racquel J. Gates’ new book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018), interrogates understandings of African-American representations on screen.  This book...

Jeffrey Kidder, “Parkour and the City: Risk, Masculinity, and Meaning in a Postmodern Sport” (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The meaning assigned to architecture is complex and varied. Urban architecture is often stripped of meaning when people abandon the neighborhoods or are absent of meaning at the time of their incep...

Amrita Pande, “Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India” (Columbia UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amrita Pande‘s Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press 2014) is a beautiful and rich ethnography of a surrogacy clinic. The book details the surrogacy...

Jill Massino, "Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania" (Berghahn, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, we meet Dr. Jill Massino, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina who is fascinated researching everyday life under dictatorships. We discuss her firs...

Nusrat S. Chowdhury, "Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few places are as politically precarious as Bangladesh, even fewer as crowded. Its 57,000 or so square miles are some of the world's most inhabited. Often described as a definitive case of the bank...

Kevin T. Smiley, "Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Are market cities better than people cities? Does the satisfaction that residents take in their city vary from market city to people city? In Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Fu...

Julia Beltsiou, “Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Immigrant experiences are complex and varied. People who leave their home countries for a new one often feel torn between two identities and struggle to feel at home in either place. Dr. Julia Belt...

Matthew Huber, “Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital” (U of Minnesota Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) is an incisive look into how oil permeates our lives and helped shape American politics during the twentieth...

James Staples, "Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bovine politics exposes fault lines within contemporary Indian society, where eating beef is simultaneously a violation of sacred taboos, an expression of marginalized identities, and a route to co...

Pasha Mahdavi, "Power Grab: Political Survival through Extractive Resource Mobilization" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why did Muammar Qaddafi and Hugo Chavez nationalize the oil industries in Libya and Venezuela? Machiavelli urged princes to attend to both acquiring and sustaining power. In Power Grab: Political S...

Levi S. Gibbs, "Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China" (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local, regional and national borders? What are the c...

Ryan D. Enos, “The Space Between Us: Social Geography and Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ryan Enos is the author of The Space Between Us: Social Geography and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Enos is associate professor of government at Harvard University. Scholars have lon...

Hugh F. Cline, “Information Communication Technology and Social Transformation” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There is no doubt that innovations in technology have had, and are having, a significant impact on society, changing the way we live, work, and play. But the changes that we are seeing are far from...

Lisa Adkins, et al., "The Asset Economy" (Polity, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The key element shaping inequality is no longer the employment relationship but rather whether one is able to buy assets that appreciate at a faster rate than both inflation and wages”. So argue L...

Forrest Stuart, "Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do young men use drill music and social media to gain power? In his new book, Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy (Princeton University Press, 2020), Forres...

Ward Keeler, "The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma" (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they...

Mya Guranieri Jaradat, “The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others” (U. Chicago/Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2017), Mya Guarnieri-Jaradat offers her readers an intimate, often devastatingly gloomy portrait of the lives o...

Philip Kretsedemas, “Migrants and Race in the US: Territorial Racism and the Alien/Outside” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Philip Kretsedemas is the author of Migrants and Race in the US: Territorial Racism and the Alien/Outside (Routledge, 2014). Kretsedemas is associate professor of sociology at University of Massach...

Julia 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 ...

Maria Rashid, "Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her spellbindingly brilliant new book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University Press, 2020), Maria Rashid conducts an intimate...

Jules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishin...

Walter Scheidel, “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2017 half of the world’s wealth belongs to the top 1% of the population. In his new book, The Great Leveler Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century ...

Deborah Mayersen, “On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined” (Berghahn Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I live and work in the state of Kansas in the US.  We think of ourselves as living in tornado alley and orient our schedules in the spring around the weather report.  Earthquakes are something that...

Matthew McManus, "The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shocked and surprised a number of commentators, especially because his own attitudes seemed to be in conflict with much of what people often associate with cons...

Candis Watts Smith, "Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Candis Watts Smith and Christina Greer are the editors of Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification (Routledge, 2019). Smith is assistant professor of public po...

Lisa M. Corrigan, “Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation” (U. Press of Mississippi, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. Prison P...

Vernadette V. Gonzalez, “Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez‘s Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2013), examines the intertwined relationship between tourism and milita...

Rebecca J. Kissane and Sarah Winslow, "Whose Game?: Gender and Power in Fantasy Sports" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Fantasy sports have the opportunity to provide a sporting community in which gendered physical presence plays no role—a space where men and women can compete and interact on a level playing field. ...

Michael Mario Albrecht, "Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television" (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Michael Mario Albrecht (he/his)--to discuss a sweeping exploration of ma...

Ron Mallon, “The Construction of Human Kinds” (Oxford University Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Social constructionists hold that the world is determined at least in part by our ways of representing it. Recent debates regarding social construction have focused on categories that play importan...

Hahrie Han, “How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century” (Oxford UP 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hahrie Han has written How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford UP, 2014). Han is associate professor of political science at Welle...

Tyler Bickford, "Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020), Tyler Bickford explores how the tween music market rose during the mid to late 2000s. Bickford address...

I. Gould Ellen and J. Steil, "The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates about Housing, Segregation, and Opportunity" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why do people live where they do? What explains the persistence of residential segregation? Why is it complicated to address residential segregation? Please join me as I meet with Dr. Ingrid Gould ...

Clayton Childress, “Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does a book come into being? In Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel (Princeton University Press, 2017), Clayton Childress, Assistant Professor in the Department...

Katherine Frank, “Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Katherine Frank‘s book, Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), is a fascinating look at the taboo of group sex. Her robust research spans...

Ayala Fader, "Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? Dr. Ayala Fader explores this question ...

Alex Colas et al., "Food, Politics, and Society Social Theory and the Modern Food System" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The consumption of food and drink is much more than what we put in our mouth. Food and drink have been a focal point of modern social theory since the inception of agrarian capitalism and the indus...

Stephen Pimpare, “Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Stephen Pimpare‘s new book, Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford University Press, 2017), the reader is encouraged to think about how we portray poverty...

Karl Spracklen, “Whiteness and Leisure” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our taken for granted assumptions are questioned in a new book by Karl Spracklen, a professor of leisure studies at Leeds Metropolitan University in England. Whiteness and Leisure (Palgrave, 2013) ...

Mythri Jegathesan, "Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, commodity chain analysis – the scholarly effort to piece together the production and consumption ends of various commodities – has really taken off. For goods ranging from cotton t...

Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...

Jamie Woodcock, “Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers” (Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the working conditions and what are the possibilities for change in the contemporary economy? In Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers (Pluto Press, 2017), Jamie Wood...

Matt Grossmann, “Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945” (Oxford University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matt Grossmann is back on the podcast with his newest book, Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2014). Grossmann is associate...

M. R. Michelson and B. F. Harrison, "Transforming Prejudice: Identity, Fear, and Transgender Rights" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consent...

Jessica Hardin, "Faith and the Pursuit of Health: Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jessica Hardin's new book Faith and the Pursuit of Health: Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa (Rutgers University Press, 2018)explores how Pentecostal Christians manage chronic illness in ways that...

Ruth Braunstein, “Prophets an Patriots: Faith in Democracy across the Political Divide” (U. California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ruth Braunstein is the author of Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy across the Political Divide (University of California Press, 2017). Braunstein is assistant professor of sociology at the ...

Marianne Constable, “Our Word is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts” (Stanford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our Word is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts (Stanford UP, 2014), by UC Berkeley Professor of Rhetoric Marianne Constable, impels its readers to reassess the dominant methods of considering what is ...

Jyoti Puri, "Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India (Duke UP, 2016), Jyoti Puri tracks the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of s...

Suk-Young Kim, "K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Given its expanding multimedia presence in Asia and around the world for many years now, K-pop is a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. This “animal that thrives on excess,” as Suk-Young Kim puts it...

Shaun Scott, “Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present” (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present (Zero Books, 2018), Shaun Scott critiques the America millennials inherited and using a pop culture len...

Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Difference, Distinction and Identity Work in Gap Year Travel” (Ashgate, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in the modern world. The book uses the example of...

Andre Brock, "Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Technology has been instrumental in allowing audiences to encounter expressions of culture to which they may have no direct connection. The popular commercial platforms like Twitter and Instagram m...

Prakash Shah, "Western Foundations of the Caste System" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Indian caste system is an ancient, pervasive institution of social organization within the subcontinent – or is it? Join me as I speak with Dr. Prakash Shah (Reader in Culture and Law at the Qu...

Keri Leigh Merritt, “Masterless Men: Poor Whites in the Antebellum South” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Masterless Men: Poor Whites in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017) reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist syst...

Martin Shaw, “Genocide and International Relations” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Works in the field of genocide studies tend to fall into one of a few camps.  Some are emotional and personal.  Others are historical and narrative.  Still others are intentionally activist and aim...

Katie Horowitz, "Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Published by Routledge in 2019, Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness is a comparative ethnography of drag king and drag queen performances in Cleveland Ohio. It uses the concept o...

Natalie Koch, "Critical Geographies of Sport: Space, Power, and Sport in Global Perspective" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Natalie Koch, Associate Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and editor of Critical Geographies of Sport: Sp...

Omar Valerio-Jimenez and Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez, eds. “The Latina/o Midwest Reader” (U. Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Latina/o Midwest Reader (University of Illinois Press, 2017) editors Omar Valerio-Jimenez, Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez, and Claire F. Fox bring together an exceptional cadre of scholars to disp...

Kevin Schilbrack, “Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Very often evaluative questions about cultural phenomena are avoided for more descriptive or explanatory goals when approaching religions. Traditionally, this set of concerns has been left to philo...

Paul M. Renfro, "Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Beginning with Etan Patz's disappearance in Manhattan in 1979, a spate of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children stoked anxieties about the threats of child kidnapping and exploitation...

Kartik Hosanagar, "A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives" (Viking, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our guest today is Kartik Hosanagar, the author of A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control(Viking, 2019). This is one of those r...

Rosemary Lucy Hill, “Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music” (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do women experience and participate in Metal? This question forms the core of Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), the new bo...

Darren Halpin, “The Organization of Political Interest Groups: Designing Advocacy” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Darren Halpin is the author of The Organization of Political Interest Groups: Designing Advocacy (Routledge 2014). Halpin is associate professor and reader in Policy Studies, and the Head of School...

Jathan Sadowski, "Too Smart" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The ubiquity of technology that collects massive volumes of all kinds of data lends itself to one overarching question: “What?” As in what is the purpose(s) of this collection? What are the benefit...

Rick Van Noy, "Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As climate change politics abound, Dr. Rick Van Noy’s Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South (University of Georgia Press, 2019) cuts through it all to get to the core. Wha...

Johanna Neuman, “Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the late 19th century New York socialites enjoyed a newfound celebrity status thanks to their conspicuous wealth and the attention of the rapidly expanding newspaper industry. Many of these wome...

Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), Amit Prasad, an associate professor of sociology at the Universit...

Fiona Vera-Gray, "The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety" (Policy Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever thought about how much energy goes into avoiding sexual violence? The work that goes into feeling safe goes largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world, and yet wom...

Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example of how the region is stereotyped and misunderst...

Brooke Erin Duffy “(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media and Aspirational Work” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is life like in the aspirational economy? In (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media and Aspirational Work (Yale University Press, 2017) Brooke Erin Duffy, an assistant ...

Benjamin Lieberman, “Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive? This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman‘s excellent new book Remaking Identities:  God, Natio...

Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...

Thomas F. Gieryn, "Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe" (U Chicago, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is the existence of truth coming to a screeching halt? Does truth still exist? In Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. Thomas F. Gieryn takes time to...

Gareth M. Thomas, “Down’s Syndrome Screening and Reproductive Politics: Care, Choice, and Disability in the Prenatal Clinic” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drawing on an ethnography of Down’s syndrome screening in two UK clinics, Gareth M. Thomas‘ Down’s Syndrome and Reproductive Politics: Care, Choice, and Disability in the Prenatal Clinic (Routledge...

William Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature of Religion” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What brings us together as scholars in Religious Studies? Are the various social phenomena commonly grouped together as religion really that similar? The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature...

Christopher D. Bader, "Fear Itself: The Causes and Consequences of Fear in America" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From moral panics about immigration and gun control to anxiety about terrorism and natural disasters, Americans live in a culture of fear. While fear is typically discussed in emotional or poetic t...

Martin Demant Frederiksen, "An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular" (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular (Zero Books, 2018) is an “exploration of what goes missing when one looks for meaning” (p. 1). The book is both an experimental ethnography and a theoretica...

Ivan Ascher, “Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction” (Zone Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio ...

Patrick Burkart, “Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The mid-’00s saw the rise of a political movement in Europe concerned with technocratic impositions on the ideals of free culture, privacy, government transparency and other technology policy issue...

Thomas Piketty, "Capital and Ideology" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations - ...

Bernadete Barton, "Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. Dr. Barton uses Stripped: More Stories from Exot...

Sarah Bond, “Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean” (U of Michigan Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dominant social norms and expectations shape how individuals and their public activities are understood. In Roman antiquity, various shifts influenced the production and dissolution of prejudices t...

David Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the value of music and why does it matter? These are the core questions in David Hesmondhalgh‘s new book Why Music Matters (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). The book attempts a critical defence of...

Baptiste Brossard, "Forgetting Items: The Social Experience of Alzheimer’s Disease" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alzheimer's disease has not only profound medical consequences for the individual experiencing it but a life-changing impact on those around them. From the moment a person is suspected to be suffer...

Jacob Johanssen, "Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2018), Jacob Johanssen, a senior le...

David Beer, “Metric Power” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do metrics rule the social world? In Metric Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) David Beer, Reader in Sociology at the University of York, outlines the rise of the metric and the role of metrics i...

Leilani Nishime, “Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture” (University of Illinois Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Leilani Nishime‘s Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2014) challenges the dominant U.S. cultural narrative that imagines multiracial peop...

Pawan Dhingra, "Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pawan Dhingra's new book Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough (NYU Press, 2020) is an up-close evaluation of the competitive nature of the United States ...

Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of ...

Jatinder Mann, “The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s-1970s” (Peter Lang, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s-1970s (Peter Lang Publishing, 2016), Jatinder Mann, an assistant professor of hi...

Isaac Weiner, “Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2004, the traditionally Polish-Catholic community of Hamtramck Michigan became the site of a debate over the Muslim call to prayer. Members of the Hamtramck community engaged in a contest about...

Carlo Caduff, "The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger" (U California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (University of California Press, 2015) is an ethnographic inquiry into pandemic anxieties in the mid-2000s when su...

Susan Thomson, "Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do you put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? Susan Thomson's new book Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace (Yale University Press, 2018) examines the postwar history of Rwanda to consider...

Tommy J. Curry, “The Man-Not: Race, Class, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood” (Temple UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press, 2017) is a book-length justification for the burgeoning field of Black Male Studies. The author posits t...

David Nemer, “Favela Digital: The Other Side of Technology” (GSA Editora e Grafica, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Inherently problematic in most mainstream discussions of the impact of technology is the dominant western or global northern perspective. In this way, the impact of technology on societies in devel...

Maura Finkelstein, "The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mumbai's textile industry is commonly but incorrectly understood to be an extinct relic of the past. In The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (Duke University Press, 2019), Maur...

Catherine Baker, “Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial?” (Manchester UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Catherine Baker’s fascinating new book poses a deceptively simple question: what does race have to do with the Yugoslav region? Eastern European studies has often framed the region as unimplicated ...

Victor Tan Chen, “Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy” (U. California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are nearly a decade removed from the start of the Great Recession, and many indicators show that the economy is doing relatively well. But during this economic catastrophe, a significant number ...

William Davies “The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition” (Sage, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty, and the Logic of Competition (Sage, 2014), William Davies, from Goldsmiths College University of London presents a detailed a...

Miriam J. Abelson, "Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American masculinity is being critiqued, questioned, and reinterpreted for a new era. In Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Miria...

David Ray Papke, "Containment and Condemnation: Law and the Oppression of the Urban Poor" (Michigan State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The law does things, writes David Ray Papke, and it says things, and if we are talking about poor Americans, especially those living in big cities, what it does and says combine to function as powe...

Franck Cochoy, et al. eds., “Markets and the Arts of Attachment’ (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand markets? In Markets and the Arts of Attachment (Routledge, 2017) Franck Cochoy, Liz McFall, and Joe Deville (from University Toulouse- Jean Jaures,Open University and Lanca...

Leah Hager Cohen, “No Book But the World” (Riverhead Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Works of fiction sometimes offer unique windows on society, and so it is with Leah Hager Cohen‘s novel No Book but the World (Riverhead, 2014). The story opens with Ava’s search for answers to how ...

Justine Howe, “Suburban Islam” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The study of Islam is often focused on subjects involved in legal debates or ritual practice. But our understanding of Muslims should also be informed by everyday practices found in the suburbs. In...

Allan H. Pasco, “Balzac, Literary Sociologist” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Balzac, Literary Sociologist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Allan H. Pasco explores the talents of the writer whose reputation has been primarily based on his extraordinary gift to compose captivat...

danah boyd, “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” (Yale UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Social media is ubiquitous, and teens are ubiquitous on social media. And this youth attachment to social media is a cause for concern among parents, educators, and legislators concerned with issue...

Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, "Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In their new book, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior (Princeton University Press, 2020), political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird explore the poli...

Caleb Simmons, "Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navaratri Festival in South Asia" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navaratri Festival in South Asia (SUNY Press, 2018), edited by Caleb Simmons, Moumita Sen, and Hillary Peter Rodrigues, is a diverse collection of cutting-edge inter...

Jon Dean, “Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction” (Policy Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction (Policy Press, 2017) by Jon Dean, a senior lecturer in politics and sociology at Sheffield Hallam University, explores and explains reflexivity as one of the esse...

Michael Salter, “Organised Sexual Abuse” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how certain types of violence can occur, and organized multi-perpetrator abuse certainly fits into this category. Ritual abuse, sadistic abuse and pedophilia rings ar...

Anna Bull, "Class, Control, and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between inequality and classical music? In Class, Control, and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anna Bull, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University ...

Jieun Baek, "North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society" (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With recent events having raised hopes that significant change may be afoot in North Korea, it is important to remember that DPRK society has in fact been undergoing steady transformation for a con...

Daniel P. Keating, “Born Anxious: The Lifelong Impact of Early Life Adversity” (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anxiety has become a social epidemic. People feel anxious all the time about nearly everything: their work, families, and even survival. However, research shows that some of us are more prone to ch...

Patricia Ventura, “Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism” (Ashgate, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Culture is inescapably linked to questions of political economy. In Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism (Ashgate, 2012), Patricia Ventura explores the relationship between cont...

Great Books: Denis Hollier on Lévi-Strauss' "Tristes Tropiques" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claude Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques is one of the great books of the 20th century: intellectually bold, morally capacious, and it aims to understand nothing less than the elemental workings of t...

Jonathan Birch, "The Philosophy of Social Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It seems to go against evolutionary theory for an individual to give up its own chances at reproducing in order to increase the fitness of others. Yet social behavior is found throughout nature, fr...

Erik Love, “Islamophobia and Racism in America” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Islamophobia and Racism in America (New York University Press, 2017), Sociologist Erik Love provides a historical and current snapshot of civil rights issues surrounding people fro...

Betsy Leondar-Wright, “Missing Class” (Cornell UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gender and race are visible markers of identity, regularly talked about both in the news and sociology circles. There is another marker, however, that is just as important and predictive, but much ...

J. S. Hirsch and S. Khan, "Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus" (Norton, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The fear of campus sexual assault has become an inextricable part of the college experience. Research has shown that by the time they graduate, as many as one in three women and almost one in six m...

Thomas Patton, "The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism" (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his recent monograph, The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism(Columbia University Press, 2018), Thomas Patton examines the weizz?, a figure in Burmese Buddhism w...

Mark Banks, “Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we address inequity and injustice in cultural and creative industries? In Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), Mark Banks, a professor ...

Vershawn Young et al., “Other People’s English” (Teacher’s College Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In linguistics, we all happily and glibly affirm that there is no “better” or “worse” among languages (or dialects, or varieties), although we freely admit that people have irrational prejudices ab...

Owen Whooley, "On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Psychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invoking the latest medical science in doing so. Bu...

Jessica Trisko Darden, Alexis Henshaw, and Ora Szekley, "Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars" (Georgetown UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2019), investigates the mobilization of female fighters, women’s roles in combat, and what happens to women when confl...

Jordan Lacey, “Sonic Rupture: A Practice-led Approach to Urban Soundscape Design” (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sonic Rupture: A Practice-led Approach to Urban Soundscape Design (Bloomsbury 2016) by Jordan Lacey offers a practice-led alternative approach to urban soundscape design. Rather than understanding ...

Paul-Brian McInerney, “From Social Movement to Moral Market: How the Circuit Riders Sparked an IT Revolution and Created a Technology Market” (Stanford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul-Brian McInerney is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of From Social Movement to Moral Market: How the Circuit Riders Sparked an IT Revolu...

Marco Z. Garrido, "The Patchwork City: Class, Space and Politics in Metro Manila" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In contemporary Manila, slums and squatter settlements are peppered throughout the city, often pushing right up against the walled enclaves of the privileged, creating the complex geopolitical patt...

Peter Hopsicker and Mark Dyreson, "A Half Century of Super Bowls: National and Global Perspectives on America's Grandest Spectacle" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Super Bowl is a singular spectacle in American culture. More than just a championship football game, the Super Bowl has become an unparalleled display of nationalism, consumerism, and culture. ...

Liana Christin Landivar, “Mothers at Work: Who Opts Out?” (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A big question in Sociology regarding work and gender is: which mothers opt out of the labor force to take care of children? Popularly known as “opting out,” this trend is often seen as a mother’s ...

Nick Yee, “The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us-and How They Don’t” (Yale UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The image of online gaming in popular culture is that of an addictive pastime, mired in escapism. And the denizens of virtual worlds are thought to be mostly socially awkward teenaged boys. In his ...

Katharina Pistor, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsiders, and, in spite of other differences, they s...

David J. Puglia, "Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore 'Hon': The Folk in the City" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Folklorist David J. Puglia is an assistant professor at the City University of New York and in his latest book - Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore “Hon": The Folk in the City (Lexington ...

Jessie Daniels and Arlene Stein, “Going Public: A Guide for Social Scientists” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jessie Daniels and Arlene Stein have written Going Public: A Guide for Social Scientists (University of Chicago Press, 2017). How can political scientists and other social scientists speak beyond c...

George E. Vaillant, “Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are very few studies like the Harvard Grant Study.  Started in 1938, it has been following its approximately 200 participants ever since, analyzing their physical and mental health and assess...

Jatin Dua, "Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2019) is a pirate story of a different kind. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork in Somalia, the UK ...

Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, "The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged" (Policy Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who gets in to top professions? In The Class Ceiling: Why it pays to be privileged (Policy Press, 2019), Drs Sam Friedman, an associate professor of sociology at LSE, and Daniel Laurison, an assist...

Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch, “Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Public scholarship takes many forms, from op-eds to activism to blog posts. In their new book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University Press, 2017), Associa...

Joshua Dubler, “Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In almost every prison movie you see, there is a group of fanatically religious inmates. They are almost always led by a charismatic leader, an outsized father-figure who is loved by his acolytes a...

V. Hudson, D. Bowen, P. Nielsen, "The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider pol...

John Torpey, "The Three Axial Ages: Moral, Material, Mental" (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since its initial postulation by Karl Jaspers, the concept of an “axial age” in the development of human thought and religion has exerted enormous influence in the fields of history and sociology. ...

“Latino City” Part I: An Interview with Dr. Erualdo Gonzalez from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots (Routledge 2017) Dr. Erualdo R. Gonzalez addresses the salient issue of gentrification and its effect on immigrant and working-class pop...

Gilbert Mireles, “Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields” (Lynne Rienner, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gilbert Mireles is the author of Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013). He is associate professor of sociology at Whitman College....

Gerald R. Gems, "Sport and the Shaping of Civic Identity in Chicago" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The city of Chicago is one of the US' most diverse cosmopolitan areas. Given the array of people who live in the city, it is reasonable to assume that the goals of the various communities differ in...

Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The production and removal of garbage, as a key element of the daily infrastructure of urban life, is deeply embedded in social, moral, and political contexts. In her book Garbage Citizenship: Vita...

Armando Salvatore, “Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power, Civility” (Wiley, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Armando Salvatore’s (Professor Global Religious Studies, McGill University) formidable new book Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power, Civility (Wiley, 2016) is a dense yet delightful meditation on ...

Leslie Irvine, “My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and their Animals” (Lynne Rienner, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Homelessness and stigma go hand in hand, and nowhere is this more apparent than pet ownership among the homeless.  From nasty looks to outright insults  – ” you can’t even take care of yourself, yo...

Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...

Jan English-Lueck, "Cultures@SiliconValley: Second Edition" (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Silicon Valley is understood to be one of the most fast-paced regions on earth, where innovation and upheaval are part and parcel of daily life. Imagine the challenge, then, when it’s your job to d...

Peter Balint, “Respecting Toleration: Traditional Liberalism and Contemporary Diversity” (Oxford University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The freedoms prized and secured in a modern liberal democratic societies give rise to significant forms of moral and social diversity. In many cases, these forms of diversity must be dealt with by ...

Sarah Franklin, “Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship” (Duke University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Franklin‘s new book is an exceptionally rich, focused yet wide-ranging, insightful account of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the worlds that it creates and inhabits. Biological Relatives: I...

Frederic C. Schaffer, "Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide" (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the third installment in our special series on interpretive political and social scientific research, Frederic C. Schaffer joins us to discuss his Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interp...

Marcia Morgan, "Black Women Prison Employees: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race" (Edwin Mellen Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With prison reform a topic of international conversation and debate, Marica Morgan’s Black Women Prison Employees: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race  offers an in-depth and unique analysis o...

Christopher Mele, “Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Urban sociologists typically use a few grand narratives to explain the path of the American city through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These include industrialization, mass immig...

Steven Engler and Michael Stausberg, eds., “The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Religious Studies” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In almost every graduate program in Religious Studies and many undergraduate majors you will find a course on theories and methods in the study of religion. Usually, in these types of courses you w...

Baptiste Brossard, "Why do We Hurt Ourselves? Understanding Self-Harm in Social Life" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does an estimated 5% of the general population intentionally and repeatedly hurt themselves? What are the reasons certain people resort to self-injury as a way to manage their daily lives? In W...

Jamal Elias, "Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his groundbreaking new book, Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies (University of California Press, 2018), Jamal Elias takes his readers on a riveting in...

Megha Amrith, “Caring for Strangers: Filipino Medical Workers in Asia” (NIAS Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you’ve been hospitalized in Europe, North America, Australia or the Middle East in recent years, chances are that at some point a nurse from the Philippines has had some part in your treatment. ...

Aswin Punthamabekar, “From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aswin Punthamabekar‘s From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry (New York University Press, 2013) offers a deeply researched and richly theorized look at the evolution of the...

Neil Selwyn, "What is Digital Sociology?" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The rise of digital technology is transforming the world in which we live. Our digitalized societies demand new ways of thinking about the social, and this short book introduces readers to an appro...

Katie Beswick, "Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage" (Methuen Drama, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has the council estate been represented on stage? In Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage (Methuen Drama, 2018),  Dr. Katie Beswick, a lecturer in drama at...

Richard E. Ocejo, “Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Readers will want to grab a cocktail and charcuterie board when they sit down to read Richard E. Ocejo‘s new book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press, 2...

John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, “In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi are the authors of In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism (Princeton University Press, 2013). Ahlquist is associate professor of political scie...

Tobie Stein, "Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Has can theatre confront racial inequality? In Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce (Routledge, 2020), Tobie S. Stein, Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater, Brookl...

Ellen Moore, "Grateful Nation: Student Veterans and the Rise of the Military-Friendly Campus" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I don’t know about the colleges and universities you’re familiar with, but the U.S. military has a pretty visible presence on my campus—through the ROTC, a newly remodeled Veterans Resource Center,...

Melissa L. Cooper, “Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) is a wide-ranging history that upends a long tradition of scrutinizing th...

Karen G. Weiss, “Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community” (Northeastern UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about her book, Party School: Crime, Campus...

Joseph Reagle, "Hacking Life: Systematized Living and its Discontents" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces a...

Derek Hird and Geng Song, "The Cosmopolitan Dream: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age" (Hong Kong UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

China’s global rise has been analysed from many perspectives in recent years. But pressing questions over how understandings of gender – and particularly masculinity – have been changing amidst inc...

Dorothy Ko, “The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China” (U. of Washington Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dorothy Ko‘s new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in...

Jarrod Gilbert, “Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand” (Auckland UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jarrod Gilbert is very lucky that he comes from a country the size of New Zealand. With only 4 million people he could carry out a project that would be beyond the abilities of someone from a large...

Andrew Leigh, "Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Are Changing Our World" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the unending quest to turn metal into gold to the major discoveries that reveal how the universe works, experiments have always been a critical part of the hard sciences. In recent decades soc...

Sarah Thomsen Vierra, "Turkish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany: Immigration, Space, and Belonging, 1961-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After years of being overlooked, there has been a growing interest among academic historians in the history of Turkish Guest Workers in West Germany. In her new book, Turkish Germans in the Federal...

Amy Ziettlow and Naomi Cahn, “Homeward Bound: Modern Families, Elder Care, and Loss” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The U.S. population is aging and we often rely on our family to care for us during our twilight years. But, families today can be quite complex, with divorce, step-families, and cohabitation changi...

Joseph Albini and Jeffrey S. McIllwain, “Deconstructing Organized Crime: An Historical and Theoretical Study” (MacFarlane, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joseph Albini and Jeffrey S. McIllwain, Deconstructing Organized Crime: An Historical and Theoretical Study (MacFarlane, 2012) is not, as some academics might think, a post-modern analysis of organ...

Ahmet T. Kuru, "Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ahmet T. Kuru’s new book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a ground-breaking history and analysis of the evoluti...

M. Evans, S. Moore, and H. Johnstone, "Detecting the Social: Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can detective fiction explain the social world? In Detecting the Social: Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Mary Evans and Hazel Johnstone, both from ...

David Garland, “The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is a welfare state? What is it for? Does the U.S. have one? Does it work at cross-purposes to a free-market economy or is it, in fact, essential to the functioning of modern, post-industrial s...

Patrick Burkart, “Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Conflicts” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Patrick Burkart‘s Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Conflicts (MIT Press, 2014) considers the democratic potential and theoretical significance of groups espousing radical perspectives on...

Erin Hatton, "Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do prisoner laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? According to sociologist Erin Hatton, they are all part of a growing workforce of coerced laborer...

Michele Gelfand, "Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World" (Scribner Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World(Scribner Books, 2018), Dr. Michele Gelfand leverages cultural psychology research to examine social norms and their implic...

Paul Hollander, “From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s true that Western “intellectuals” have not always been wrong about dictators fighting for a supposedly “brighter future,” usually (though not always) of the non-capitalist variety. Nonetheless...

Brent Nongbri, “Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept” (Yale University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We all know that religion is a universal feature of human history, right? Well, maybe not. In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale University Press, 2013), Brent Nongbri, Post Docto...

Elizabeth A. Wheeler, "HandiLand: The Crippest Place on Earth" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Throughout her new book, HandiLand: The Crippest Place on Earth (University of Michigan Press 2019), Elizabeth A. Wheeler uses a fictional place called HandiLand as a yardstick for measuring how fa...

Alf Gunvald Nilsen, "Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Almost a decade in the making, Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland(Cambridge University Press, 2018) draws on collaboratively collected oral histories of ...

Lotta Bjorklund Larsen,”Shaping Taxpayers: Values in Action at the Swedish Tax Agency” (Berghahn Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do you make taxpayers comply? Lotta Bjorklund Larsen‘s ethnography, Shaping Taxpayers: Values in Action at the Swedish Tax Agency (Berghahn Books, 2017) offers a vivid, yet nuanced account of ...

Emily Matchar, “Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity” (Simon and Schuster, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A couple of years ago I was living in a hip district of a university town in the Midwest. It had all the hip stuff you’d expect: a record store (and I mean record store), a big used bookstore, a gr...

Zahi Zalloua, "?Žižek on Race: Towards an Anti-Racist Future?" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek’s prolific quips on various cultural and political issues around race and related issues, found either in short YouTube clips or lengthy b...

Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, "The Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our evolutionary success, according to co-authors Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, lies in our ability to acquire cultural wisdom and teach it to the next generation. Today, we follow social media...

Stafanie Deluca, et.al. “Coming of Age in the Other America” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do you think that what poor people most need to escape poverty is grit? Join us as we speak with Stefanie Deluca, co-author, along with Susan Clampet-Lundquist and Kathryn Edin, of Coming of Age in...

Melissa Aronczyk, “Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity, Melissa Aronczyk locates the rise of nation branding as a response to the perceived need to sculpt national identity in the face of...

Diane Jones Allen, "Lost in the Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Increased redevelopment, the dismantling of public housing, and increasing housing costs are forcing a shift in migration of lower income and transit dependent populations to the suburbs. These sub...

Tania Li, "Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier" (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you want to read just one book to properly understand capitalism, let it be Tania Li’s award-winning 2014 book Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke University Press, ...

Carrie Jenkins, “What Love is: And What it Could Be” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Carrie Jenkins‘ new book is a model for what public philosophy can be. Beautifully written, thoughtful, and compellingly and carefully argued, What Love Is: And What it Could Be (Basic Books, 2017)...

Muhammed Ali Khalidi, “Natural Categories and Human Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The division between natural kinds – the kinds that ‘cut nature at its joints’ – and those that simply reflect human interests and values has a long history. The natural kinds are often thought to ...

D. A. Bell and W. Pei, "Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the arguments in favor of social hierarchies? Are there differences in how hierarchy is viewed and valued in China compared with other countries? Which forms of social hierarchy are morall...

Denis Provencher, "Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations" (Liverpool UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sometimes a book can take inspiration from a (not so) simple map. At the end of his previous book, Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship (Routledge, 2007), Denis Provencher ...

Donna Freitas, “The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (Oxford University Press, 2017), Donna Freitas investigates the darker side of social media use and e...

Tony Bennett, “Making Culture, Changing Society” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Making Culture, Changing Society (Routledge, 2013), Professor Tony Bennett aims to change the way we think about culture. The book uses four core ideas about the nature and meaning...

Tania Jenkins, "Doctors’ Orders: The Making of Status Hierarchies in an Elite Profession" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Doctors’ Orders: The Making of Status Hierarchies in an Elite Profession (Columbia University Press, 2020), Dr. Tania Jenkins engages readers in readers in a ethnography where she ...

Andrea Micocci and Flavia Di Mario, "The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I spoke with Flavia di Mario, a young scholar of political economy and industrial relations. She coauthored a very provocative book with Andrea Micocci, The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism (R...

Lynn Dumenil, “The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When America went to war against Germany in 1917, the scale of the conflict required the mobilization of women as well as men in order to achieve victory. In The Second Line of Defense: American Wo...

Ken MacLeish, “Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ken MacLeish offers an ethnographic look at daily lives and the true costs borne by soldiers, their families, and communities, in his new book Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Mil...

Nick Crossley, "Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does music tell us about society? In Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music (Manchester University Press, 2020), Nick Crossley, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, int...

Special Discussion: Approaches to Textbooks on Genocide from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do you write a textbook about genocide? Consider what such a textbook must do.  It needs to integrate insights from a variety of disciplines. It must make complicated legal and definitional iss...

Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United Sta...

Joanne Benham Rennick, “Religion in the Ranks: Belief and Religious Experience in the Canadian Forces” (University of Toronto Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of religion in the military? What are the roles of religious chaplains in the military? How are important issues such as post-traumatic stress, religious and ethnic diversity, and ...

Josh Seim, "Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of the ambulance in the American city? The prevailing narrative provides a rather simple answer: saving and transporting the critically ill and injured. This is not an incorrect de...

Seamus O’Hanlon, "City Life: The New Urban Australia" (NewSouth Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, City Life: The New Urban Australia (NewSouth Publishing, 2018), Seamus O’Hanlon, an Associate Professor at Monash University, explores the economic, social, cultural, and demograph...

Lizabeth Cohen, “Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lizabeth Cohen‘s Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 was originally published in 1990, and recently re-published in 2014. In this book, Cohen explores how it was that Chicag...

Ian Samson, “Paper: An Elegy” (Harper Collins, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In our digital world, it does seem like paper is dying by inches. Bookstores are going out of business, and more and more people get their news from the internet than from newspapers. But how irrel...

Ken-Hou Lin and Megan T. Neely, "Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ken-Hou Lin and Megan Tobias Neely's new book Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance (Oxford University Press, 2020) explores the rise of finance in American life over the last forty years and ...

Peter Hart-Brinson, "The Gay Marriage Generation: How the LGBTQ Movement Transformed American Culture" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How and why did public opinions about gay marriage shift? In his new book, The Gay Marriage Generation: How the LGBTQ Movement Transformed American Culture (New York University Press, 2018), Peter ...

Michael Diamond, “Discovering Organizational Identity: Dynamics of Relational Attachment” (U. of Missouri, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Psychological and psychoanalytic principles are often associated with individuals and therapist-client pairs, though they have plenty to bear on understanding and helping organizations in trouble. ...

Christopher Powell, “Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide” (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What exactly is genocide? Is there a fundamental difference between episodes of genocide and how we go about our daily life? Or can it be said that the roots of the modern world, or civilization it...

Theda Skocpol, "Upending American Politics" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since 2008, the Tea Party and the Resistance have caused some major shake-ups for the Republican and Democratic parties. The changes fall outside the scope of traditional party politics, and outsid...

Ashley Jardina, "White Identity Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the themes of the era of Donald Trump is whiteness and white identity. From his first steps into the public eye, Trump used race to frame his positions and relevance. His presidency has been...

Michael A. McCarthy, “Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal” (Cornell UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over half of Americans approaching retirement age report having no money saved for retirement, but how did we get here as a nation? In his book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and Amer...

David Beer, “Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation” (Palgrave, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation (Palgrave, 2013) is written by David Beer, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at York University in the UK. He blogs here and tweets here. The...

Jason Keith Fernandes, "Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa" (Orient BlackSwan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the mid-1980s, Goa witnessed mass demonstrations, violent protests and political mobilising, following which Konkani was declared the official language of the Goan territory. However, Konkani wa...

M. Maloney, S. Roberts, and T. Graham, "Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming Community" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can online social spaces like Reddit’s r/gaming reveal about gender attitudes, masculinized spaces, and turning points in gamer communities? In their new book Gender, Masculinity and Video Gam...

George Lakey, "How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning" (Melville House, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“One-off” protests don’t change the world; sustained direct action campaigns do. That’s one of the many insights from George Lakey in his new book, How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action C...

Lisa Wade, “American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus” (Norton, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Hookup” has become a buzzword, a misleading concept for students, parents and educators alike–one that confuses more than explains the nuances of this complex and pervasive trend. In American Hook...

Gayle Kaufman, “Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pretty much every day you can read an article–usually somewhat intemperate–about how women can or can’t “have it all.” Rarely, however, do you read anything about the way in which men try to balanc...

Jennifer M. Randles, "Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering (University of California Press, 2020), sociologist Jennifer Randles shares the stories of more than 60 marginalized men as they sought...

Jerome Whitington, "Anthropogenic Rivers: The Production of Uncertainty in Lao Hydropower" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jerome Whitington's Anthropogenic Rivers: The Production of Uncertainty in Lao Hydropower (Cornell University Press, 2019) examines the dynamics and discourses centered around the development of hy...

Irmak Karademir Hazir, "Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has European culture changed since the 1960s? In Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010 (Routledge, 2018), Dr. Ir...

Daina Ramey Berry, “The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation” (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Beacon Press, 2017) will have a ...

Mary Eberstadt, “How the West Really Lost God” (Templeton Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are a lot of theories that attempt to explain how Westerns came to leave their churches in great numbers. Some focus on ideas, particularly the idea that believing in God made no sense becaus...

Suraj Yengde, "Caste Matters" (India Viking, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“India is not yet a nation. It is still in an improvisational mode like a jazz band that needs to perform repeatedly together in order to uplift every voice in the chorus,” Suraj Yengde writes in h...

Jennifer E. Gaddis, "The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There’s a problem with school lunch in America. Big Food companies have largely replaced the nation’s school cooks by supplying cafeterias with cheap, precooked hamburger patties and chicken nugget...

Steve Stewart-Williams, "The Ape That Understood the Universe: How Mind and Culture Evolve" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, cross-posted from from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun takes a dive into evolutionary psychology with professor and author, Dr. Steve Stewart-Williams. ...

Brandon Kendhammer, “Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy and Law in Northern Nigeria” (U. Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brandon Kendhammer takes a fresh approach to the juxtaposition of Islam and democracy in his latest book, Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy and Law in Northern Nigeria (University ...

Fabian Drixler, “Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The book opens on a scene in the mountains of Gumna, Japan. A midwife kneels next to a mother who has just given birth, and she proceeds to strangle the newborn. It’s an arresting way to begin an i...

Chris Richardson, "Batman and the Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Batman and The Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2020), Chris Richardson presents a cultural analysis of the ways gender, identity, and sexuality are negotiated in the ri...

Richard Polt, "Time and Trauma: Thinking Through Heidegger in the Thirties" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For some time, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been treated with a certain level of skepticism because of his engagement with the Nazi party, a skepticism that has resurfaced with the p...

Till Mostowlansky, "Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In eastern Tajikistan, the Trans-Pamir Highway flows through the mountains creating a lunar-like landscape.  In his latest work, Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir High...

Cristina Bicchieri, “Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Humans engage in a wide variety of collective behaviors, ranging from simple customs like wearing a heavy coat in winter to more complex group actions, as when an audience gives applause at the clo...

Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2013), Sarah Banet-Weiser scrutinizes the spread of brand culture into other spheres of social life that the market–at leas...

Elizabeth Son, "Embodied Reckonings: 'Comfort Women,' Performance, and Transpacific Redress" (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a bustling city-center of Seoul, women in yellow vests protesting over the “final” resettlement between the Japanese and Korean governments every Wednesday is an iconic sight, testifying to the ...

Great Books: Peter Brooks on Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We want to be happy, we want to get what we want, we want to love and be loved. But life, even when our basic needs are met, often makes us unhappy. You can't always get what you want, Freud noted ...

Margot Finn, "Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution" (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You eat what you are and are what you eat, right? There is an increasing number of Americans who pay great attention to the food they eat, buy organic vegetables, drink fine wines, and seek out exo...

Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco, “The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The wish to transcend one’s mortality, and the anxiety associated with being unable to do so, are universal human experiences. People deal with these in their idiosyncratic ways, often by transgres...

Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the basic rules of human behavior is that people generally want to do what their peers do. If your friends like jazz, you’ll probably like jazz. If your friends want to go to the movies, you...

Andrea Jain, "Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 2020), Andrea Jain examines the interconnectedness between global spirituality and neoliberal capitalism through an...

Joseph O. Baker, "Deviance Management: Insiders, Outsiders, Hiders, and Drifters" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher D. Bader and Joseph O. Baker's book Deviance Management: Insiders, Outsiders, Hiders, and Drifters (University of California Press, 2019) examines how individuals and subcultures manage...

Victoria Cann, "Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures" (I.B.Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does cultural taste regulate our lives? In Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Dr. Victoria Cann, a l...

Andrew Causey, “Drawn to See: Drawing as Ethnographic Method” (U. Toronto Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method (University of Toronto Press, 2016) Andrew Causey argues that social science practitioners can cultivate new ways of experiencing the...

Matthew W. Hughey, “White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whiteness studies has confirmed that race is a social construction, even for whites, and that the identity we understand as white is also a social invention. Those who benefit from this invention a...

Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village with Associate Professor Holly High from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her latest book, Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village (University of Hawaii Press), due out in May 2021, Associate Professor Holly High argues that socialism remains an important c...

Patrick Inglis, "Narrow Fairways: Getting By and Falling Behind in the New India" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Processes of globalization—the liberalization of national markets, the rapid movement of goods, services, and labor across national borders—have had profound impacts on local contexts, perhaps espe...

Radhika Govindrajan, "Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In what is sure to become a classic, Radhika Govindrajan’s Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (University of Chicago Press, 2018) mobilizes the thematic of “in...

Quincy T. Mills, “Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America” (UPenn Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Business. Community. Politics. That’s the making of a barbershop. In Cutting Along the Color Lines: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), Dr. Quincy Mi...

David Garland, “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition” (Harvard UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is it that the United States continues to enforce the death penalty when the rest of the Western world abolished its use a little over three decades ago? That question, along with many other eq...

Dwaipayan Banerjee, "Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi (Duke UP, 2020) Dwaipayan Banerjee explores the efforts of Delhi's urban poor to create a livable life with cancer as patients and families n...

Kimberly Dark, "Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society" (AK Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society (AK Press 2019), sociologist and storyteller Kimberly Dark considers what it means to look a certain way. Integratin...

Hannah Holleman, "Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of 'Green' Capitalism" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

None of the climate news that we’re getting is good right now, especially now that a number of governments are reversing or failing to meet commitments they made as part of the Paris Climate Accord...

Michaela DeSoucey, “Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A heritage food in France, and a high-priced obscurity in the United States. But in both countries, foie gras, the specially fattened liver of a duck or goose, has the power to stir a remarkable ar...

Martha C. Howell, “Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600” (Cambridge UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that merchants in early modern Western Europe were “proto-capitalists.” I was never quite sure what that meant. If it meant they traded property for money,...

Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...

Annabel Cooper, "Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen" (Otago UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen (Otago University Press, 2018), Annabel Cooper, an Associate Professor in the Gender Studies Programme at the University o...

Kathleen McAuliffe, “This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society” (Mariner Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathleen McAuliffe‘s This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society (Mariner Books, 2017) unveils the world of parasites. From the influence of parasi...

Nancy Segal, “Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Identical twins, separated at birth, raised in different families, and reunited in adulthood. In 1979, psychology researchers in Minnesota found some twins who had been reunited after a lifetime of...

Jennifer B. Saunders, "Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances (Oxford University Press, 2019) tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious narrati...

Ana Paulina Lee, "Mandarin Brazil: Race, Representation, and Memory" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Mandarin Brazil: Race, Representation, and Memory (Stanford University Press, 2018), Ana Paulina Lee (Columbia University) analyzes representations of the Chinese in Brazilian cult...

Laurence A. Rickels, “The Psycho Records” (Wallflower Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Reading Laurence Rickels‘ The Psycho Records (Wallflower Press, 2016) gave me the urge to ask random strangers questions like: Are you haunted by Alfred Hitchcock’s famous shower scene? How do you ...

Paula Huston, “A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life” (Loyola Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Paula Huston wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Daughters of Song (Random House, 1995)...

Orly Clergé, "The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has the expansion of the Black American middle class and the increase in the number of Black immigrants among them since the Civil Rights period transformed the cultural landscape of New York C...

Sarah Banet-Weiser, "Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between popular misogyny and popular feminism? In Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny(Duke University Press, 2018), Sarah Banet-Weiser, Professor of Media and ...

Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Todd McGowan‘s Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (Columbia University Press, 2016) elegantly employs psychoanalytic thinking to unpack the lure of capitalism. He argues that w...

Elizabeth H. Pleck, “Not Just Roommates: Cohabitation after the Sexual Revolution” (Chicago UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most countries, believing that married people form a kind of demographic and political bedrock, promote marriage (and, of course, child-having within wedlock). Nonetheless, many couples choose to l...

matthew heinz, "Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse" (Intellect Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Published by intellect books in 2016, and currently distributed by The University of Chicago Press, Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse is a holistic study of the intersecting...

Snigdha Poonam, "Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing the World" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

49.91% of India’s population was below the age of 24 in the 2011 Census. By 2020 India will become the world’s youngest country with 64% of its population in the working age group of 15-64 years. T...

Joan Maya Mazelis, “Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A number of recent events (the Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign) have brought inequality and poverty into national conversation. In an age of economic u...

James Dawes, “Evil Men” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This week a Syrian rebel ripped the heart out of a loyalist fighter and ate part of it. You can see it on YouTube. Many people asked “How can people do things like this?” In his new book Evil Me...

Megan Burke, "When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Megan Burke considers the relationship of sexual violence to lived time by reexa...

Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan, "Transition Economies: Transformation, Development, and Society in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We spoke with the author Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan. His book Transition Economies: Transformation, Development, and Society in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Routledge, 2018) is a very in...

Travis Linnemann, “Meth Wars: Police, Media, Power” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If all you knew about methamphetamines came from popular culture (“Breaking Bad”) or government anti-drug campaigns (“Faces of Meth”), then you’d probably think that the typical meth user was a une...

Azar Gat, “Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When I went to college long ago, everyone had to read Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848). I think I read it in half-a-dozen classes. Today Marx is out. Benedict Anderson, however, is in. Y...

Randal Schnoor, "Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home (Indiana University Press, 2018), Alex Pomson and Randal Schnoor examine the impact of the family on Jewish identity. Through interviewing a sa...

McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...

Nancy Wang Yuen, “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we challenge the way film and television represents the world around us? In Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Rutgers University Press, 2017) Nancy Wan Yuen, and Associate Profe...

Neil Gross, “Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care?” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people think that professors are more liberal, and some much more liberal, than ordinary folk. As Neil Gross shows in his eye-opening Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care...

Virginia Eubanks, "Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor" (St. Martin's, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years?because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In L...

Sara Komarnisky, "Mexicans in Alaska: An Ethnography of Mobility, Place, and Transnational Life" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“There are Mexicans in Alaska?” This was the response Sara Komarnisky heard repeatedly when describing her research on three generations of transnational migrants who divide their time between Anch...

Brent Willock, et.al. “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Literature and training in diversity and multiculturalism typically emphasize cultural differences–how to identify them, and the importance of honoring them. But does such an emphasis neglect other...

David M. Halperin, “How to be Gay” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be gay? According to many people, gayness is simply homosexuality – a sexual orientation. However, as David M. Halperin argues in his new book How to be Gay (Belknap Press of H...

Caitlin Frances Bruce, "Painting Publics: Transnational Legal Graffiti Scenes as Spaces for Encounter" (Temple UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Public art is a form of communication that enables spaces for encounters across difference. These encounters may be routine, repeated, or rare, but all take place in urban spaces infused with emoti...

Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, "What Matters?: Talking Value in Australian Culture" (Monash UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we value culture? In What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (Monash University Press, 2018), Professors Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, from Flinders Univer...

Gregory Mitchell, “Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil’s Sexual Economy” (U. Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Moving through the saunas of Rio de Janeiro, the Amazonian eco-resorts of Manaus, and the Afro-Brazilian heritage of Bahia, Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazils Sexual Ec...

Nick Couldry, “Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice” (Polity Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity Press, 2012), Nick Couldry provides a sweeping synthesis of his important media theory over the last decade. Couldry reass...

Iyko Day, "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In our efforts to comprehend the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Israel, the notion that "invasion is a structure...

D.A. Silver and T.N. Clark, "Scenescapes: How Qualities of Place Shape Social Life" (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I don’t mean to make a scene, but please open your eyes and look around. There are complex scenes everywhere and we have all served witness to them. A scene is an experience in which we feel connec...

Patrick Phillips, “Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America” (W.W. Norton, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and ...

Christian J. Churchill and Gerald E. Levy, “The Enigmatic Academy Class, Bureaucracy, and Religion in American Education” (Temple UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to the Marriam-Webster dictionary, an “enigma” can be defined as “something hard to understand or explain.” What is it that is so enigmatic about education? Aren’t schools there to teach ...

Robert Frank, "Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street?our environments a...

Jessica Marie Falcone, "Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can we learn from the anthropological study of projects that are never realized, or of dreams that are never fulfilled? In her new book Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the...

Tyina Steptoe, “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” (U. California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do you know about Houston, Texas? That Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States? That Houston was the home of the 2016 NCAA Final Four in basketball and the home of the NFL’s Su...

Scott Melzer, “Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War” (NYU Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scott Melzer is the author of Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War (New York University Press, 2012). Scott earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside and now is an associate pro...

Angela Jones, "Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry (NYU Press, 2020), Dr. Angela Jones engages readers in a five-year mixed-methods study she conducted on the erotic webc...

John Sides, Michael Tesler, Lynn Vavreck, "Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (Princeton University Press, 2018), co-authors John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck explore the ...

Paul Harvey, “Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul Harvey is a professor of history at the University of Colorado. His book Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) provides an accessible...

Signe Rousseau, “Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet” (AltaMira Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The other day I found myself in a cooking situation that’s fairly common: I had a few odd ingredients–some oxidized strips of bacon, a withered red pepper, a bunch of half-wilted parsley–and needed...

James K. Wellman, Jr., "High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, the number of megachurches increased from 350 in 1990 to over 1,600 in 2011 with that number continuing to grow exponentially in subsequent years. By 2015, a Hartford Institut...

Jeong-Hee Kim, “Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research” (Sage Publications, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In today’s episode, I talked with Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim about her new book, Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research (Sage Publications, 2016). The book offers ...

Randy Stoecker, “Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement” (Temple UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s common for colleges in the U.S. to have service learning programs of one kind or another. These are sometimes criticized as being liberal or even radical endeavors — especially if “social just...

Keri E. Iyall Smith, “Sociology of Globalization: Cultures, Economies, and Politics” (Westview Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Globalization is one of those words we hear on an almost daily basis. The world today is interconnected in ways that would have been unimaginable even twenty years ago. It seems as if everyone know...

Shai M. Dromi, "Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand humanitarian NGOs? In Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Shai M. Dromi, a lecturer in sociolog...

Sohini Kar, “Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance” (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is microfinance the magic bullet that will end global poverty or is it yet another a form of predatory lending to the poor? In her new book Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfin...

Benjamin Schreier, “The Impossible Jew: Identity and the Reconstruction of Jewish American Literary History” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is Jewish about Jewish American literature? While the imaginative possibilities are numerous many scholars approach literary products with an established notion of a Jewish identity before the...

Brett Bebber, “Violence and Racism in Football: Politics and Cultural Conflict in British Society, 1968-1998” (Pickering & Chatto, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This past September an independent panel commissioned in 2009 by the British government released its 395-page report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of April 1989. The published findings and t...

Germaine R. Halegoua, "The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Place" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Place (NYU Press, 2019), Germaine R. Halegoua rethinks everyday interactions that humans have with digital infrastructures, nav...

Julie L. Rose, “Free Time” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though early American labor organizers agitated for the eight-hour workday on the grounds that they were entitled to “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” ...

Kerry Pimblott, “Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois” (U. Press of Kentucky, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When you think of black power, do you think about churches and religious institutions, or do you relate them more to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? How do the social justice stru...

Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, “Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life” (Verso Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Racism is a process by which people are segregated and discriminated against based on their race, and race is defined as a set of physical characteristics which certain groups share. Or is it? In R...

Matthew Gutmann, "Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (Basic Books, 2019), Matthew Gutmann examines how cultural expectations viewing men as violent and sex driven becomes a self-fulfilling pr...

David Charles Sloane, “Is the Cemetery Dead?” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is certain that we all will experience death in our life. What is less certain is how and where our bodies will be disposed of. In Is the Cemetery Dead? (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. ...

Harris Beider, “White Working-Class Voices: Multiculturalism, Community-Building, and Change” (Policy Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harris Beider is the author of White Working-Class Voices: Multiculturalism, Community-Building, and Change (Policy Press, 2015). Beider is chair in Community Cohesion at the Center for Trust, Peac...

Jini Kim Watson, “The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, a...

Jay Wexler, "Our Non-Christian Nation" (Redwood Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Less and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These non-Christians have increasingly been demanding ...

Randy Shaw, “Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America?” (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is housing so expensive in so many cities, and what can be done about it? Join us as we speak with long-time San Francisco housing activist Randy Shaw about his book Generation Priced Out: Who ...

Helen Glew, “Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900-1955” (Manchester UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What role has gender played in government institutions? In Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council 1900-1955, Helen Glew, a Senior Lecturer ...

David Chura, “I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup” (Beacon Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is easy to dismiss juveniles in prison as “bad seeds”, as people with which we have nothing in common, and of which we want only distance. David Chura, however, did not maintain his distance, an...

Gil Eyal, "The Crisis of Expertise" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many ...

Michelle Fine, “Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination” (Teachers College, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons...

Mical Raz, “What’s Wrong with the Poor: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In What’s Wrong with the Poor: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), Mical Raz offers a deep dive into the theoretical roots of the Head Start program...

Giusi Tamburello, “Concepts and Categories of Emotion in East Asia” (Carocci editore, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between language and the emotions? Where ought we look for evidence of emotion in historical and literary texts? Is it possible to talk about the emotional states of entire...

Caroline Starkey, "Women in British Buddhism: Commitment, Connection, Community" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Based on detailed ethnographic research, this book explores the varied experiences of women who have converted to Buddhism in contemporary Britain and analyses the implications of their experiences...

Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider, "Why Does Patriarchy Persist?" (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Activists have been working to dismantle patriarchal structures since the feminist and civil rights movements of the last century, and yet we continue to struggle with patriarchy today. In their ne...

Shannon Spaulding, “How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition” (Routledge, 2018)) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Social cognition includes the ways we explain, predict, interpret, and influence other people. The dominant philosophical theories of social cognition–the theory-theory and the simulation theory–ha...

Jayde Lin Roberts, “Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese” (U. Washington Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, scholarship on Burma, or Myanmar, has undergone a renaissance. Jayde Lin Roberts’ Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese (University of Washington Press,...

Sandra Chait, “Seeking Salaam: Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis in the Pacific Northwest” (University of Washington Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the Pacific Northwest, immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia coexist, making a life for themselves and their family in a new country. In the book Seeking Salaam : Ethiopians, Eritreans a...

John Durham Peters, "Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google, once compared the perfect search engine to “the mind of God.” As the modern face of promiscuous knowledge, however, Google’s divine omniscience traffics in news,...

Charlene Makley, "The Battle for Fortune: State-led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rebgong, in the Northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau (China’s Qinghai Province), is in the midst of a ‘Battle for Fortune.’ That is, a battle to both accumulate as much fortune, but also a batt...

Andrew C. A. Elliott, “Is That a Big Number?” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Andrew C. A. Elliott‘s Is That a Big Number? (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a book that those of us who feast on numbers will absolutely adore, but will also tease the palates of those for whom...

Tamar Carroll, “Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty and Feminist Activism” (U. North Carolina Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tamar Carroll is an Assistant Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology and the Program Director for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. Her book, Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Ant...

Barry Schwartz, “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less – How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction” (Harper Perennial, 2003) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is there such a thing as too much choice? In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less – How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction (Harper Perennial, 2005), author Barry Schwartz answers w...

Silvie Jacobi, "Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is an art school? In Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Dr Silvie Jacobi, a researcher and head of education at London School...

Jonathan A. C. Brown, "Slavery and Islam" (Oneworld Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his majestic and encyclopedic new book Slavery and Islam (Oneworld Academic, 2019), Jonathan A. C. Brown presents a sweeping analysis of Muslim intellectual, political, and social entanglements ...

Kate Parker Horigan, “Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative” (UP of Mississippi, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kate Parker Horigan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, and a co-editor of the Journal of American Folklore. In Consuming Ka...

Melissa Hidalgo, “Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands” (Headpress, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands (Headpress, 2016), Melissa Hidalgo examines the world of Morrissey fandom in US-Mexico borderlands. As the frontman of The Smiths, Morrissey is rega...

Kevin Young, “Sport, Violence and Society” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The one play of my football career that my father remembers most fondly came in my very first game, when I was eleven years old. Younger and smaller than the other players, I was positioned out of ...

Kathryn A. Mariner, "Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States (University of California Press, 2019) offers an ethnography of adoption processes in the United States through the inner ...

Ivan V. Small, "Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Overseas Vietnamese are estimated to remit 15 billion dollars annually to family that remains in Vietnam. Ivan V. Small moves beyond the numbers to examine how remittances affect sociality and huma...

Andrew L. Yarrow, “Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life” (Brookings Institution Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the era of #MeToo, Brett Kavanaugh, and Donald Trump, masculinity and the harmful effects that follow certain versions of masculinity have become national conversations. Now, like many other tim...

Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, eds “Digital Sociologies” (Policy Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we do sociology in the digital era? In Digital Sociologies (Policy Press, 2016) Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, Karen Gregory a Lectur...

Phil Zuckerman, “Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment” (New York University Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is not uncommon for many Americans to believe that morality and order comes from God and religion. A society without these elements would consequently be immoral and chaotic. When Phil Zuckerman...

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, "Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A startling look at the unexpected places where violent hate groups recruit young people. Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing f...

T. Mose "The Playdate" (NYU Press, 2016) and L. Crehan "Cleverlands" (Random House, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode we consider vital role of play, and what it does to expand a child’s creativity and resilience. Urban sociologist Tamara Mose is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, and auth...

Claudia Sadowski-Smith, “The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From Dancing with the Stars to the high-profile airport abandonment of seven-year-old Artyom Savelyev by his American adoptive parents in April 2010, popular representations of post-Soviet immigran...

Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken, “Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“There were black Germans?” My students are always surprised to learn that there were and are a community of African immigrants and Afro-Germans that dates back to the nineteenth century (and some...

Stephanie Coontz, “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap” (Basic Books, 2000) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“My mother was a saint.” ” In my time, we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps.” “A man’s home is his castle.” “The home is the foundation of society.” These are just some of the romantic catc...

Thomas 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...

Daniel Mattingly, "The Art of Political Control in China" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tocqueville and Putnam insist that civil society helps individuals flourish and resist authority, but Daniel C. Mattingly’s decade of research in rural China leads him to conclude that civil societ...

Adam Reich and Peter Bearman, “Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we hear about the “future of work” today we tend to think about different forms of automation and artificial intelligence—technological innovations that will make some jobs easier and others o...

Dave Gosse, “Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807-1838” (U. of the West Indies Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dave Gosse’s recent book Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807-1838 (University of the West Indies Press, 2012), looks at a crucial period in Jamaican history. The time between the a...

Matthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating nar...

Suma Ikeuchi, "Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1990, the Japanese government introduced the Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) visa and since then it has attracted more than 190,000 Nikkei Brazilian nationals to Japan. In Jesus Loves Japan: Re...

Sean Jacobs, "Media in Postapartheid South Africa: Postcolonial Politics in the Age of Globalization" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sean Jacobs, Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City. Jacobs is also the founder and editor of the acclaimed Africa is A Country website, a leader His new bo...

Gary Alan Fine, “Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people have heard of the Masters of Fine Arts–“MFA”–degree, but few know about the grueling process one must undergo to complete one. In Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice o...

Justin Parkhurst, “The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of evidence in the policy process? In The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence (Routledge, 2016), Justin Parkhurst, Associate Profess...

Matt Grossmann, “The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matt Grossmann, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, has authored the recently released book, The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation,...

M. Sobolewska and R. Ford, "Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the identity conflicts that define contemporary society? In Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics (Cambridge UP, 2020) Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, pro...

Allison Ochs, "Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?" (Amsterdam UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new books, Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?: A Modern Guide to Parenting Digital Teens, Derived from Lessons of the Past (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), Allison Ochs combines experie...

Lee Humphreys, “The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life” (MIT Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Physical journals, scrapbooks, and photo albums all offer their owners the opportunity to chronicle both mundane and extravagant events. But unlike social media posting, this analog memorializing o...

Anthony Lioi, “Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Anthony Lioi examines literature, film, television, and comics through an ecocritical study of nerd culture....

Marshall Poe, “A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is not every historian who would offer readers an attempt to explain human nature. In A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet (Cambridge Unive...

Andrea Chiovenda, "Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Against the backdrop of four decades of continuous conflict in Afghanistan, the Pashtun male protagonists of this book carry out their daily effort to internally negotiate, adjust (if at all), and ...

SpearIt, “American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam” (First Edition Design, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America has the largest incarcerated population in the world. This staggering and troubling fact has driven a great deal of scholarship. Much of this research has shown that mass incarceration in A...

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, “What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize what They Do” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to the Walk Free Foundation, there are currently 46 million slaves in the world. Despite being against international law, slavery is not yet culturally condemned everywhere. Despite being...

Andrew Scull, “Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The wish to understand mental suffering is universal and requires an appreciation for its history. Since Biblical times, humans have understood madness, or other deviations from normal mental funct...

Vorris Nunley, “Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric” (Wayne State UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vorris Nunley‘s Keepin it Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (Wayne State University Press, 2011), uses the black barbershop as a trope to discuss black talk within li...

Philip Jenkins, "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions" (Baylor UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions (Baylor University Press, 2020), Philip Jenkins maps the demographic revolution that has ta...

K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...

Rachel O’Neill, “Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy” (Polity , 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the seduction, or “pick-up artist,” industry work? In her new book Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy (Polity, 2018), Rachel O’Neill provides a sociological analysis of the...

Matthew Pehl, “The Making of Working-Class Religion” (U. Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matthew Pehl is an associate professor of history at Augustana University. His book, The Making of Working-Class Religion (University of Illinois Press, 2016), gives us a rich and deep study of wor...

Erica Prussing, “White Man’s Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community” (University of Arizona Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the past half century, Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step recovery program has been the dominant method for treating alcohol abuse in the United States. Reservation communities have been no e...

M. Newhart and W. Dolphin, "The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Medical marijuana laws have spread across the U.S. to all but a handful of states. Yet, eighty years of social stigma and federal prohibition creates dilemmas for patients who participate in state ...

Alexis Elder, "Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Various emerging technologies, from social robotics to social media, appeal to our desire for social interactions, while avoiding some of the risks and costs of face-to-face human interaction. But ...

Charlotte Greenhalgh, “Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain” (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What role did elderly Britons have in shaping the twentieth-century welfare state? In her new book, Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain (University of California Press, 2018), Charlotte Greenhalgh o...

Manisha Sinha, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition” (Yale UP, 2016). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for...

Jennifer Frost, “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism” (NYU Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Any pop culture scholar worth her salt will tell you that discussion of Beyonce’s baby bump or Charlie Sheen’s unique sex life is far from apolitical, but, at times, gossip columnists have engaged ...

Neil Shister, "Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World" (Counterpoint, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Written from Neil Shister’s perspective as a journalist, student of American culture, and six-time participant in Burning Man, Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World (Counterpoint, 2019)...

Andrea Boyles, "You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Black lives matter before death.” (p.132) In her powerful new book, You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America (University of California Press, 2019...

Peter Harries-Jones, “Upside-Down Gods: Gregory Bateson’s World of Difference” (Fordham UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The work of polymath Gregory Bateson has long been the road to cybernetics travelled by those approaching this trans-disciplinary field from the direction of the social sciences and even the humani...

Nicholas A. John, “The Age of Sharing” (Polity Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book The Age of Sharing (Polity Press, 2016), the sociologist and media scholar Nicholas A. John documents the history and current meanings of the word sharing, which he argues, is a cen...

James Unnever and Shaun L. Gabbidon, “A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is comedian and cultural critic Bill Cosby right–that black youth suffer from a cultural pathology that leads them to commit more crimes than their white counterparts? Is the remedy to the high rat...

Minjeong Kim, "Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and "Multiculturalism" in Rural South Korea" (U Hawai’i Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Studies on marriage migration often portray marriage migrants as victims of globalization and patriarchy. Although there are intersecting oppressions among female migrant workers, the tendency to c...

Helen Taylor, "Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why and how is fiction important to women? In Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives (Oxford University Press, 2020), Helen Taylor, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exet...

Bill Ivey, “Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America” (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bill Ivey’s Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America (Indiana University Press, 2018) advances the idea that we are entering a post-enlightenment world increasingly characterized by al...

Elizabeth Barnes, “The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are all familiar with the idea that some persons are disabled. But what is disability? What makes it such that a condition–physical, cognitive, psychological–is a disability, rather than, say, a...

Robert Thurston, “Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective” (Ashgate, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It takes a brave historian to take on the orthodoxy regarding the rise and fall of lynching in the United States. That orthodoxy holds that lynching in the South was a ‘system of social control’ in...

Kristin Plys, "Brewing Resistance: Indian Coffee House and the Emergency in Postcolonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 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 grou...

Lindsay Mayka, "Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America: Reform Coalitions and Institutional Change" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lindsay Mayka’s new book examines the idea and implementation of participatory institutions, asking the question about when they actually work, and when they do not work, and why this is the case, ...

S. Hayes and D. S. Wilson, “Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and Influencing Human Behavior” (Context Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Evolution science and behavioral science both have strong theories that can help us understand humans in context, and yet, until now, the two fields have been mostly separate. In this episode, cros...

Claudia Malacrida, “A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Albertas Eugenic Years” (U of Toronto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta’s Eugenic Years (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Claudia Malacrida explores the practices of the Michener Center in Red Deer, Northern Alberta, ...

Robert J. Corber, “Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, National Identity, and Hollywood Cinema” (Duke University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The study of non-heteronormative sexualities in the academy continues to be remarkably dynamic. Despite the usual attempts to harden the frame around this scholarship, it remains consistently excit...

Simone C. Drake, "Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Simone 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 blac...

Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger, "Re-Engineering Humanity" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting human...

Svetlana Stephenson, “Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power” (Cornell University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The title of Svetlana Stephenson’s book Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power (Cornell UP, 2015) invites a number of questions: How do criminal and legal spheres conflate? Is ...

Amir Hussain, “Muslims and the Making of America” (Baylor UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims and the Making of America (Baylor University Press, 2016) offers a succinct and gripping account of Muslim presence in the United States. The book gives attention to the contemporary moment...

Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, and Dru Pagliasotti, “Boy’s Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre” (McFarland, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Growing up in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indy-car racing offered my friends and me some very exciting heroes. As children, we played “Indy 500” on our bikes in the cul-de-sac. As we became teenag...

Francesca Sobande, "The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain" (Palgrave, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What 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 Studie...

Rachel Chrastil, "How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, Jana Byars talks with Rachel Chrastil, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and member of the history department at Xavier University, about her newest book, How to Be Childless: A ...

Lorenzo Zamponi, “Social Movements, Memory and Media: Narrative in Action in the Italian and Spanish Student Movements” (Palgrave, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do social movements remember the past? How do collective memories affect their current strategic choices? In his book Social Movements, Memory and Media: Narrative in Action in the Italian and ...

Devin Naar, “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford University Press, 2016) Devin Naar delves deep into the archives to produce this intimate and exciting portrait of Salonic...

Robert Lane Greene, “You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Politics of Identity” (Delacorte Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Isn’t it odd how the golden age of correct language always seems to be around the time that its speaker was in high school, and that language has been going to the dogs ever since? Such is the angu...

Tahseen Shams, "Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Tahseen Shams (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toront...

Catherine Besteman, "Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Catherine L. Besteman's book Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine (Duke University Press, 2016) is an important contribution to our understanding of the process of remaking one’...

Elana Buch, “Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are the vulnerabilities of older adults in need of care and their care workers intertwined? In Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care (New York University Press,...

Robert Aronowitz, “Risky Medicine: Our Quest to Cure Fear and Uncertainty” (U. Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Statistics have been on the minds of more people than usual in the run-up and post-mortem of this past U.S. presidential election; some feel as though they were misled by numbers intended to lend a...

Carrie Pitzulo, “Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Playboy is having (another) moment. Since its fiftieth birthday in 2003, the brand’s relevance has risen after a period of decline. The Girls Next Door, a reality television show about the goings-o...

Paul 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...

Safi Bahcall, "Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries" (St. Martins, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Safi Bahcall's Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (St. Martin's Press, 2019) reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteri...

Kathleen Belew, “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After the U.S. presidential election in 2016, discussions about white nationalism, supremacists, and neo-Nazis went from being a niche topic to mainstream news. For those who hadn’t been keeping ta...

Heath Brown, “Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Nonprofit Organizing in a Time of Demographic Change” (Cornell UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why do nonprofits representing immigrants participate (or choose not to participate) in electoral politics, and what forms does their participation take? In his new book, Immigrants and Electoral P...

Peter Baehr, “Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences” (Stanford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contemporary research into illiberal governments draws much inspiration from the writings of Hannah Arendt. In her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt claimed that Nazi Germany an...

Why 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...

Ben Green, "The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The “smart city,” presented as the ideal, efficient, and effective for meting out services, has capture the imaginations of policymakers, scholars, and urban-dweller. But what are the possible draw...

Michael Levien, “Dispossession Without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historically ubiquitous at least since the 15th century and integral to the rise and consolidation of capitalism, land dispossession has re-emerged as a hot button issue for governments, industries...

Corey D. Fields, “Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans” (U. of California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 2016 election cycle will be remembered as one for the history books. Many people are left asking questions as to what happened to lead to such an expected outcome, while still others are left w...

Jonathan Metzl, “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease” (Beacon Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Schizophrenia is a real, frightening, debilitating disease. But what are we to make of the fact that several studies show that African Americans are two to three times more likely than white Americ...

Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely, "Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach (Oxford University Press, 2018), Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely make a case for why interpretivism is the most philosophically cogent appro...

Wendy Bottero, "A Sense of Inequality" (Roman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand inequality? In A Sense of Inequality (Roman and Littlefield, 2020), Wendy Bottero, a Reader in Sociology at the University of Manchester offers a detailed and challenging n...

Steven Roberts, “Young Working-Class Men in Transition” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do young working-class men experience the transition to adulthood? In his new book Young Working-Class Men in Transition (Routledge, 2018), Steven Roberts talks directly to young men to gain th...

Vicki Lens, “Poor Justice: How the Poor Fare in Court” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s been said that for poor and low-income Americans, the law is all over. Join us for a conversation with Vicki Lens, who, in Poor Justice: How the Poor Fare in Court (Oxford University Press, 20...

Francesco Duina, “Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession” (Princeton University Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Winning is everything” is such a common phrase that we rarely question where it comes from and why we apply it to everyday experiences.  One can win a little league game, an election, the lottery,...

Ahalya Satkunaratnam, "Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practicing Bharatanatyam in Colombo, Sri Lanka" (Wesleyan UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“How can dance be sustained by its practitioners in the unstable political and geographical landscape of war?” Satkunaratnam asks this through her text, Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practici...

Josh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Seven decades of military spending during the cold war and war on terror have created a vast excess of military hardware – what happens to all of this military waste when it has served its purpose ...

Freeden Blume Oeur, “Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do schools empower but also potentially emasculate young black men? In his new book, Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools (University of Minnesota Press...

Marc Steinberg, “England’s Great Transformation: Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolution” (U. of Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marc Steinberg is a professor of sociology at Smith College. His latest book, England’s Great Transformation: Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2016) is a resp...

Teresa Gowan, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders-Homeless in San Francisco” (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why do people become homeless? Is it because some people have made bad decisions in their lives or can’t hold onto a stable job? Or is homelessness the result of a depilating mental illness or chem...

Rene Almeling, "GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rene Almeling’s new book GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health (University of California Press, 2020) provides an in-depth look at why we do not talk about men’s reproductiv...

Filippo Marsili, "Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to 'Religion' and Empire in Ancient China" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to 'Religion' and Empire in Ancient China (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China’s ea...

J. Lester, C. Lochmiller, and R. Gabriel, “Discursive Perspectives on Education Policy and Implementation” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The study of education policy is a scholarly field that sheds light on important debates and controversies revolving around education policy and its implementation. In this episode, we will be talk...

George T. Diaz, “Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande” (U. of Texas Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (University of Texas Press, 2015) Professor George T. Diaz examines a subject that has received scant attention by historians, but...

Thomas Wheatland, “The Frankfurt School in Exile” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I have a friend who, as a young child, happened to meet Herbert Marcuse, by that time a rock-star intellectual and darling of the American student movement. Upon seeing the man, he exclaimed “Marcu...

Fernando Domínguez Rubio, "Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do you keep the cracks in Starry Night from spreading? How do you prevent artworks made of hugs or candies from disappearing? How do you render a fading photograph eternal—or should you attempt...

Gediminas Lankauskas, "The Land of Weddings and Rain: Nation and Modernity in Post-Socialist Lithuania" (U Toronto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gediminas Lankauskas’ new book The Land of Weddings and Rain: Nation and Modernity in Post-Socialist Lithuania (University of Toronto Press, 2015) is “an ethnography concerned with the ambiguities,...

Azra Hromadži?, “Citizens of an Empty Nation: Youth and State-Making in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Despite all the buzz about the reconstruction of Mostar’s beautiful Old Bridge, Mostar remains a largely divided city, with Bosniaks on one side and Croats on the other. In Citizens of an Empty Nat...

Alison N. Novak, “Media, Millennials, and Politics: The Coming of Age of the Next Political Generation” (Lexington Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The millennial generation (those born from 1980 through the beginning of the 21st century) now comprises the largest voting bloc in the American electorate. In Media, Millennials, and Politics: The...

Joseph E. David, "Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why are we so concerned with belonging? In what ways does our belonging constitute our identity? Is belonging a universal concept or a culturally dependent value? How does belonging situate and mot...

John N. Singer, "Race, Sports, and Education: Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for Black Male College Athletes" (Harvard Ed Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

College sport is a multi-billion dollar industry. The men and women who lead the teams in the most important conferences often make millions of dollars between their coaching salaries and endorseme...

Spencer Piston, “Class Attitudes in American Politics: Sympathy for the Poor, Resentment of the Rich, and Political Implications” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It has long been a truism that Americans’ disdain for poor people–our collective sense that if they only worked harder or behaved more responsibly they would do well in this land of opportunity–exp...

Susan Greenbaum, “Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of the Moynihan Report on Cruel Images about Poverty” (Rutgers UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Patrick Moynihan’s Report on the Negro Family was a seminal document in Great Society-era racial politics and public policy. Join us as we talk with Susan Greenbaum about her new book, Blaming the ...

Adam Auerbach, "Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Good Provision in India’s Urban Slums" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

India’s urban slums exhibit dramatic variation in their access to basic public goods and services—paved roads, piped water, trash removal, sewers, and streetlights. Why are some vulnerable communit...

Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, "Aerial Imagination in Cuba: Stories from Above the Rooftops" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Aerial Imagination in Cuba: Stories from Above the Rooftops (Routledge, 2019), Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier looks up at the sky, and from there she begins her stories about wifi,...

Shelley Tremain, “Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability” (U Michigan Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand disability? In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Dr. Shelley Tremain explores this complex question from the perspective ...

LaShawn Harris, “Sex Workers, Psychics and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy” (U. of Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

LaShawn Harris is an assistant professor of history at Michigan State University. Sex Workers, Psychics and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy, (University of Illino...

Dave O’Brien, "Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It would be hard to overstate the importance of culture. It teaches us, heals us, rips us apart and puts us back together in new and surprising ways. Given its fundamental importance to the human e...

Robert Rozehnal, "Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience" (OneWorld, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when the digital world meets Sufism? This is the question raised in the exciting new book Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (OneWorld Academic, 2019) b...

Jan M. Padios, “A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines” (Duke UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jan M. Padios‘ new book A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines (Duke University Press, ) sheds light on the industry of offshore call centers in the Phil...

Rupa Viswanath, “The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India” (Columbia UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The so called “Pariah Problem” emerged in public consciousness in the 1890s in India as state officials, missionaries and “upper”caste landlords, among others, struggled to understood the situation...

Margaret Heffernan, "Uncharted: How to Map and Navigate the Future Together" (Simon and Schuster, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I spoke with Dr Margaret Heffernan about her latest book, Uncharted: How to Map and Navigate the Future Together (Simon and Schuster, 2020). Margaret produced programmes for the BBC for 13 ye...

Maria Veri and Rita Liberti, "Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food at the Football Tailgate" (U Arkansas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Maria Veri, Associate Professor of Kinesiology at San Francisco State University, and Rita Liberti, Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, East Bay. Togethe...

Tom Cliff, “Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang” (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Compared to the provinces’s native Uyghur population, Han Chinese settlers in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not attracted as much scholarly or indeed journalistic attention of late...

Jeffrey Gurock, “The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Community” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Community (New York University Press, 2016), Jeffrey Gurock, Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, ...

Chris 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...

Mark Bartholomew, "Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing" (Stanford Law Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Advertising is everywhere. By some estimates, the average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements each day. Whether we realize it or not, "adcreep"?modern marketing's march to create a wor...

Charles Umney, “Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain” (Pluto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is class? In Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain (Pluto Press, 2018), Charles Umney, an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations at the University of...

Doreen Lee, “Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2016) is a book about Indonesian youth activism both before 1998 and after. But it is no ordinary chrono...

Ellen Lamont, "The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ellen Lamont's new book The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date (University of California Press, 2020) offers an in-depth analysis of how gender shapes dating practices. Despite enormo...

John W. Traphagan, "Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan" (Cambria Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John W. Traphagan’s Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan (Cambria Press, 2020) presents a series of deeply contextualized ethnographies of small...

John Danaher, "Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The future is a constant focus of anxiety, and we are all familiar with the pressures that come distinctively from automation – the transformation by which tasks formerly assigned to humans come to...

Julia Miele Rodas, “Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe” (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ever since the first clinical account of autism was published by Dr. Leo Kanner in 1943, Western culture has tended to mythologise the disorder as impenetrable, non-verbal and characterised by sile...

Michael Copperman, “Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta” (U. Press of Mississippi, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anyone who has spent time in a school as an adult probably knows how hard it is for teachers to leave their work when they come home every night. There always seems to be more work for them to do, ...

Ani Maitra, "Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The politics of identity have played center stage in many political debates in the last few years, and is often seen somewhat pejoratively as an epiphenomenal manifestation of the dynamics of capit...

David Barash, "Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the similar ways in which animals and people try to intimidate others? In his new book, Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents (Oxford UP, 2020), David Barash explains. Barash is a rese...

Ajantha Subramanian, "The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is merit? How is it claimed? In her much-awaited book The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019), Ajantha Subramanian addresses the pertinent question ...

Harold Morales, “Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harold Morales, an associate professor of Religion at Morgan State University, is the author of the momentous new book, Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minorit...

Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: America’s Authoritarian Spring” (Amherst College Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

NB: Because Amherst College Press is open-access, this book is available free for download here. Just when I thought I had a pretty good handle on the ways and means of American politics, Donald T...

Amit S. Rai, "Jugaad Time: The Ecologies of Everyday Hacking in India" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In India, the practice of jugaad—finding workarounds or hacks to solve problems—emerged out of subaltern strategies of negotiating poverty, discrimination, and violence but is now celebrated in man...

Eric 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...

Jennifer Utrata, "Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New Russia" (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jennifer Utrata in her book, Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New Russia (Cornell University Press, 2015), investigates what she calls a “quiet revolution” in the Russian ...

Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Wilner, “Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas (Yale University Press, 2018), edited by Yale University History and American Studies Professor Ned Blackhawk and University of Chicago Pos...

Natalie Byfield, “Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story” (Temple UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story (Temple University Press, 2014) offers a timely reminder of how racial bias and prejudice continue to shape political perspectives ...

George Musgrave, "Can Music Make You Sick?: Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition" (U Westminster Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is often assumed that creative people are prone to psychological instability, and that this explains apparent associations between cultural production and mental health problems. In their detail...

Lea 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...

Jason Read, "The Politics of Transindividuality" (Haymarket Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many major political questions today revolve around questions of human nature; what sort of people we are and what sort of people we're capable of being constitute both the goals and limits of the ...

Laura Neitzel, “The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan” (MerwinAsia, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Laura Neitzel’s The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (MerwinAsia, 2016) is a chronicle of the large, government-sponsored housing projects called danch...

Damien M. Sojoyner, “First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Damien M. Sojoyner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, entitled First Strike: Educa...

Paulina O. Espejo, "On Borders: Territories, Legitimacy, and the Rights of Place" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When are borders justified? Who has a right to control them? Where should they be drawn? Today people think of borders as an island's shores. Just as beaches delimit a castaway's realm, so borders ...

Berit Brogaard, "Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is it that makes hatred so addicting? In her new book Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2020), Berit Bogaard explains. Berit is a Professor of Philosop...

Phoebe Moore, "The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Humans are accustomed to being tool bearers, but what happens when machines become tool bearers, calculating human labour via the use of big data and people analytics by metrics? Phoebe Moore's The...

Samira Mehta, “Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With rates of interfaith marriage steadily increasing since the middle of the twentieth century, interfaith families have become a permanent and significant feature of the religious landscape in th...

David Ensminger, “The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Punk has long been viewed as a subculture of anger, disruption, and alternative political and lifestyle choices. In The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets (Rowman and Littlefield...

Peter Mandler, "The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain's Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did public demand shape education in the 20th century? In The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War (Oxford UP, 2020), Peter Mandler, Prof...

Rogers M. Smith, "That Is Not Who We Are!: Populism and Peoplehood" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rogers M. Smith, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, has written a new book on the connection between our understanding of peop...

David Pettinicchio, "Politics of Empowerment: Disability Rights and the Cycle of American Policy Reform" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David Pettinicchio has written Politics of Empowerment: Disability Rights and the Cycle of American Policy Reform (Stanford University Press, 2019). He is assistant professor of sociology at the Un...

Michele Margolis, “From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this American Political Science Association special podcast, we welcome a special guest host – and former guest of the podcast – Andy Lewis. In addition to his recent book, The Rights Turn in Co...

Jason Pierce, “Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West” (UP of Colorado, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The West, particularly the mountain West of states like Colorado, Utah, Idaho, has long had an image as a land of white men. This image dates to the 19th century, yet it is counterintuitive. Before...

Emily J. H. Contois, "Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture (UNC Press, 2020), Emily Contois argues that the figure of The Dude was invented (or perhaps only capitalized on)...

Fabian Holt, "Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions (University of Chicago Press), Fabian In Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions (University of Chicago Pr...

Sandra Fahy, "Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The things that are happening to North Korea are happening to all of us…they are part of the human community. To say that this is just a problem for North Korea is to say that North Koreans are no...

Larisa Jašarevi?, “Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarevi? traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-He...

Sali Tagliamonte, “Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Teenagers get a lot of bad press. Whether it’s how they look, how they dress, the things they say, the way they say it – it sometimes seems as if they can’t get anything right. And when it comes to...

Sujatha Fernandes, "Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life" (Duke, UP 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cuban resourcefulness is on full display in Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life (Duke 2020), as sociologist Sujatha Fernandes presents an array of strategies not just for survival but fo...

Ziad Fahmy, "Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophon...

Xiao Liu, "Information Fantasies: Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

International and transnational historiography has given us vivid glimpses of the development and impact of cybernetics on a national scale in such countries as the Soviet Union, Chile and, of cour...

Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative ...

James E. Campbell, “Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

James E. Campbell has written Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America (PrincetonUniversity Press, 2016). Campbell is UB Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Buffal...

A. Kanna et al., "Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the nearly two decades that they have each been conducting fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula, Ahmed Kanna, Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora have regularly encountered exoticizing and exception...

Yves Citton, "Mediarchy" (Polity Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences shaped by the media. We assume that our social a...

Davin Phoenix, "The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the race for the best book of 2020, Davin Phoenix has placed himself in the lead. Phoenix has written The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He is...

Susan Greenfield, “You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity” (Notting Hill Editions, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What makes you who you are? What makes you distinct from me? What is identity? In the book You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity (Notting Hill Editions, 2016), Baroness Susan Greenfield scientif...

Kenneth Schaffner, “Behaving: What’s Genetic, What’s Not, and Why Should We Care?” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the genes vs. environment debate, it is widely accepted that what we do, who we are, and what mental illnesses we are at risk for result from a complex combination of both factors. Just how comp...

L. L. Paterson and I. N. Gregory, "Representations of Poverty and Place: Using Geographical Text Analysis to Understand Discourse" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Representations of Poverty and Place: Using Geographical Text Analysis to Understand Discourse (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) explores a novel methodological approach which combines analytical techniqu...

Fabio Rambelli, "Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Japan, a country popularly perceived as highly secularized and technologically advanced, ontological assumptions about spirits (tama or tamashii) seem to be quite deeply ingrained in the cultura...

Sidharthan Maunaguru, "Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War" (U Washington Press 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sidharthan Maunaguru’s Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War (University of Washington Press 2019) is an unusual ethnography of the ‘in-betweenness’ a...

Judith Weisenfeld, “New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A wave of religious leaders in black communities in the early twentieth-century insisted that so-called Negroes were, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic Muslims, or a raceless children of God. ...

Mary Chayko, “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” (SAGE, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

New technology has made us more connected than ever before. This has its advantages: instantaneous communication, expanded circles of influence, access to more information. And, of course, our conn...

Karl Gerth, "Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China's Communist Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Karl Gerth’s new book, Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China's Communist Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020) details how the state created brands, promoted and advertised par...

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in eac...

John H. McWhorter, “The Creole Debate” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John H. McWhorter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has written academic books on creole linguistics, including the book we’ll be talking about...

Mireya Loza, “Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mireya Loza’s Defiant Braceros How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) sheds new light on the private lives of migrant men wh...

Jennifer 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...

William Westermeyer, "Back to America: Identity, Political Culture, and the Tea Party Movement" (U Nebraska 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With his new book Back to America: Identity, Political Culture, and the Tea Party Movement (University of Nebraska, 2019), Professor William Westermeyer explores the once-powerful Tea Party Movemen...

Jacob Levine, “Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context” (Jacob Levine, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the landscape of our cannabis knowledge? In his new book Jacob Levine author of the Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context (Jacob Levine, 2018) gives readers an overview of the p...

Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Societies” (Palgrave, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can social theory offer to visions of an alternative society? In his new book, Social Theory for Alternative Societies (Palgrave, 2016), Dr Matt Dawson, a Lecturer in Sociology at the Universi...

Stephanie Newell, "Histories of Dirt: Media and Urban Life in Colonial and Postcolonial Lagos" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stephanie Newell, Professor of English at Yale University, came to this project, which explores the concept of “dirt” and how this idea is used and applied to people and spaces, in a rather indirec...

Andrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Disease is a social issue and not just a medical one. This is the central tenet underlying The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore (Utah State University Press 2019) by Andrea Kit...

Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, “The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez‘s new book, The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2018) traces how globalization, neolibe...

Prerna Singh, “How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Prerna Singh has written How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Singh is the Mahatma Gandhi Assistant Professor of Poli...

Timothy R. Clark, "The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation" (Berrett-Koehler, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does any organization invite the true, full participation of its members? In his new book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2...

Joshua Sperber, "Consumer Management in the Internet Age: How Customers Became Managers in the Modern Workplace" (Lexington, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Consumer Management in the Internet Age: How Customers Became Managers in the Modern Workplace (Lexington Books, 2019), Joshua Sperber analyzes online consumer management, a practice in which cu...

Andrew B. Kipnis, “From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have ima...

Paula S. Fass, “The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paula S. Fass is a professor of history emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Ch...

Joshua Esler, "Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese: Mediation and Superscription of the Tibetan Tradition in Contemporary Chinese Society" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While Tibetan Buddhism continues to face restrictions and challenges imposed by the state in contemporary China, it has in fact entered mainstream Chinese society with a growing middle-class and ev...

Zahra Ali, "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her powerful new book Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (Cambridge UP, 2018), Zahra Ali presents a detailed and fascinating account of Muslim feminist discourse...

Heather Schoenfeld, “Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did prisons become a tool of racial inequality? Using historical data, Heather Schoenfeld’s new book Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicag...

D. Asher Ghertner, “Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

D. Asher Ghertner explores why the ways things look are fundamental for Delhi’s transformation into a “world class”city. Based on deep ethnographic engagement in one of the city’s slums that is des...

Rachel 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...

Louis Hyman, "Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream became Temporary" (Viking, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It has become a truism that work has become less secure and more precarious for a widening swath of American workers. Why and how this has happened, and what workers can and should do about it, is ...

Damien Riggs, “The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities” (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In order to fully grasp the workings of racism, we cannot limit ourselves to examining it within majority cultures. Racism exists in minority cultures, such as the gay community, but the intersecti...

Ingrid Piller, “Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to the blurb, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press, 2016) “explores the ways in which linguistic diversity mediate...

James Carter, "Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai" (Norton, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shanghai’s status as a bustling, international place both now and in the past hardly needs much introduction, although the centrality of horse racing to the earlier incarnation of the city’s cosmop...

Miriam Driessen, "Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia" (Hong Kong UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I met Dr Miriam Driessen at Oxford University where she works at the China Centre. We spoke about her wonderful new book Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia (Hong...

Michelle Pannor Silver, “Retirements and its Discontents: Why We Don’t Stop Working, Even If We Can” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do different professionals experience retirement? Michelle Pannor Silver’s new book Retirements and its Discontents: Why We Won’t Stop Working, Even If We Can (Columbia University Press, 2018),...

Michael Lesher, “Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in the Orthodox Jewish Communities” (McFarland, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities (McFarland, 2014) analyzes how and why cases of child sexual abuse have been systematically concealed in Orthodox Jewish communit...

Katherine M. Young, "How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathryne M. Young, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has written a combination of a sociological study and self-help book about and for American law s...

Thomas Yarrow, "Architects: Portraits of a Practice" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal qu...

Rob Dekkers, “Applied Systems Theory” (Springer, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As Reader in Industrial Management in the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow, Rob Dekkers is well positioned to survey the currents of the vibrant systems tradition in the Unit...

John Mollenkopf and Manuel Pastor, eds. “Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration” (Cornell UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Mollenkopf and Manuel Pastor are the editors of Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration (Cornell University Press, 2016). Mollenkopf is Disting...

Diana 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...

Chris Arnade, "Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America" (Sentinel, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A lot of politicians like to say that there are “two Americas,” but do any of them know what life is really like for the marginalized poor? We speak with journalist and photographer, Chris Arnade, ...

Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Black Greek-Letter Organizations: Breaking the Line” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well as a free space for the black community. Despit...

Susan Cahan, “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The struggle for representation within the art museum is the focus of a timely and important new book by Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts at Yale College. Mounting Frustration: The Art Muse...

S. Lawreniuk and L. Parsons, "Going Nowhere Fast: Mobile Inequality in the Age of Translocality" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Going Nowhere Fast: Mobile Inequality in the Age of Translocality (Oxford UP, 2020) brings together more than a decade’s worth of research during one of the most consequential moments in Cambodian ...

Vicky Pryce, "Women vs. Capitalism: Why We Can't Have It All in a Free Market Economy" (Hurst, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Free market capitalism has failed women, and even the recent progress that had been made in closing the gender wage gap has leveled off in many rich democracies. Vicky Pryce helps us understand the...

Sabina Leonelli, “Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study” (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Commentators have been forecasting the eclipse of hypothesis-driven science and the rise of a new ‘data-driven’ science for some time now. Harkening back to the aspirations of Enlightenment empiric...

Phaedra Daipha, “Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Phaedra Daipha’s thoughtful new book uses a careful sociological study of a particular community of weather forecasters to develop a sociology of decision making. Based on fieldwork conducted over ...

Rachel V. González, "Quinceañera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer Identities" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A quinceañera is a traditional fifteenth birthday celebration for young women (though in contemporary times, it can also be for young men) in many Latinx communities. While the celebration has root...

R. Muirhead and N. L. Rosenblum, "A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From Pizzagate to Jeffrey Epstein, conspiracies seem to be more prominent than ever in American political discourse. What was once confined to the pages of supermarket tabloids is now all over our ...

Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, “Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It” (Penguin, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we learn from large system failures? In their new book Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It (Penguin Press, 2018), Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explore system f...

Brent Walker, “The Hidden South–Come Home” (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Hidden South–Come Home (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2016) is the result of an ongoing project that documents intimate stories of people who are often overlooked in society. Photographer and author Bre...

E. Bazzano and M. Hermansen, "Varieties of American Sufism" (SUNY Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sufism in America is now a developed sub-field of study that exists at the intersection of Islamic Studies, American religions, and popular spirituality. Varieties of American Sufism: Islam, Sufi O...

William D. Lopez, "Separated: Family & Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens to families and communities after immigration raids? William D. Lopez answers this question and more in his new book Separated: Family & Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Ra...

Megan Condis, “Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Battle for Online Culture” (U Iowa Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gaming has increasingly become part of mainstream culture, from the continued rise of console and PC gaming to the emergence of eSports. Gaming culture has also come under more scrutiny to the non-...

Eric Tang, “Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the NYC Hyperghetto” (Temple UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Tang’s book, Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the NYC Hyperghetto (Temple University Press, 2015), is an intimate ethnography of a single person, Ra Pronh, a fifty year old survivor of the Cam...

David Livingstone Smith, "On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, the lynching of African Americans, the colonial slave trade: these are horrific episodes of mass violence spawned from racism and hatred. We like to think that ...

Maziyar Ghiabi, "Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Iran has one of the planet's highest rates of addiction. Maziyar Ghiabi's Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a fascinating, n...

Sarah Igo, “The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

To write a book on such a multifarious and vast, if not ubiquitous, concept as privacy is a tall task for the historian. Sarah Igo, associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, took thi...

John Alba Cutler, “Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015), John Alba Cutler provides a literary history of Chicano/a literature that tracks the fields formation a...

Sai Balakrishnan, "Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations Along Urban Corridors in India" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the thoroughly researched, lucidly narrated new book Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations Along Urban Corridors in India (University of Pennsylvania Press), Sai Balakrishnan (Assistant Profe...

Deborah Lupton, "The Quantified Self" (Polity, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to p...

John O’Brien, “Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do the social worlds of teenage Muslim American boys look like? What issues do they grapple with and how do they think about issues that arise in their everyday lives? In his new book Keeping ...

Emily Schmitt and Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, “Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The application of behavioral science inside government has gained steam over the past few years with the creation of so-called “Nudge units” popping up in countries around the world. Their goals a...

Majid Daneshgar, "Studying the Qur’an in the Muslim Academy" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Consider the works of the renowned Nobel-prize-winning African American writer, literary and social critic, and activist Toni Morrison (b. 1931),” writes Majid Daneshgar. “Hers—like Said’s—are pop...

Victoria Reyes, "Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Increasing levels of globalization have led to the proliferation of spaces of international exchange. In her new book, Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines (S...

David Peter Stroh, “Systems Thinking For Social Change” (Chelsea Green, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While Systems Thinking has enjoyed an increasing amount of societal influence through work of such practitioner/authors as Peter Senge, it is also true that the vast majority of the popular literat...

Mingwei Song, “Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900-1959” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be young? Mingwei Song‘s new book explores this question in the context of a careful study of the nature and significance of the discourse of youth in modern China. Young China...

Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier, "The House on Henry Street: The Enduring Life of a Lower East Side Settlement" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On a cold March day in 1893, 26-year-old nurse Lillian Wald rushed through the poverty-stricken streets of New York’s Lower East Side to a squalid bedroom where a young mother lay dying—abandoned b...

Alexandra D'Arcy, "Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Context: Eight hundred years of LIKE" (John Benjamins, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Like is a ubiquitous feature of English with a deep history in the language, exhibiting regular and constrained variable grammars over time. Alexandra D'Arcy's book Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in...

Norah MacKendrick, “Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics” (U California Press, 2018). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Consumers today have a lot of choices. Whether in stores or online, people are inundated by an abundance of options for what to buy. At the same time, the products we consume seem to have more and ...

Alfred Frankowski, “The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning” (Lexington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning (Lexingto...

M. 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...

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...

Kelsy Burke, “Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we conceptualize religious conservatives and their relationship with sex? And how do Christians use digital media for sexual knowledge and pleasure? In her new book, Christians Under Covers:...

Andrew Woolford, “This Benevolent Experiment” (U of Nebraska Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I grew up in Michigan, in the United States, where I was surrounded by places named with Native American names. I drove to Saginaw to play in basketball tournaments and to Pontiac to watch an NBA t...

Angèle Christin, "Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are algorithms changing journalism? In Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press), Angèle Christin, an assistant professor in the Departmen...

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, "Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Everyday Life in an In-Between City" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato's Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Everyday Life in an In-Between City (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) is a book about home and not-home, eloquently told about the hopes and dreams...

Chris Brickell, “Teenagers: The Rise of Youth Culture in New Zealand” (Auckland UP, 2017), from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Teenagers: The Rise of Youth Culture in New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2017), Chris Brickell, Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Head of the Department of Sociology...

Adam Ferziger, “Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism” (Wayne State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Wayne State University Press, 2015), Adam Ferziger, S.R. Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement at Ba...

Mariana Mogilevich, "The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York" (U Minnesota Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a ...

Mila Dragojevi?, "Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does violence against civilians become permissible in wartime? Why do some communities experience violence while others do not? In her new book, Mila Dragojevi? develops the concept of amoral c...

Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the state could stop people and search them. Taking a...

Jonathon S. Kahn and Vincent W. Lloyd, editors, “Race And Secularism in America” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathon S. Kahn is an associate professor of religion at Vassar College. He is co-editor with Vincent W. Lloyd of a collection of essays entitled Race and Secularism in America (Columbia Universit...

Thea Riofrancos, "Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2007, Ecuador joined the Latin American “Pink Tide” by electing a left-wing president, Rafael Correa, who voiced opposition to US imperialism and advocated higher levels of redistribution and so...

Ann K. McClellan, "Sherlock’s World: Fan Fiction and the Reimagining of BBC’s Sherlock" (U Iowa Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Sherlock’s World: Fan Fiction and the Reimagining of BBC’s Sherlock (University of Iowa Press, 2018), Ann K. McClellan explores fan fiction inspired by one of the most-watch BBC series in histor...

Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent years, Guangzhou, the central manufacturing node in the world, has acted as a ma...

Valerie Sperling, “Sex, Politics and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The prevalence of media that reinforces a traditional masculine image of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, is at the core of Valerie Sperling‘s analysis of gender norms and sexualization as a means ...

Frederick Luis Aldama, "Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities" (U Arizona Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An early wave of research helped make visible the complex dynamics of sexuality and gender norms in Latino life, but a new generation of scholars is bringing renewed energy and curiosity to this fi...

Elizabeth Bernstein, "Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking and the Politics of Freedom" (U Chicago, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jana Byars talks with Elizabeth Bernstein, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College about her newest book, Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking and the Politics of Free...

James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of Protests” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do emotions affect participation in protests, and in politics more generally? In The Emotions of Protests (University of Chicago Press, 2018), James M. Jasper develops a solid critique to appro...

Rajika Bhandari and Mirka Martel, “Social Justice and Sustainable Change: The Impacts of Higher Education” (IIE, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rajika Bhandari, Deputy Vice President, Research and Evaluation Institute of International Education (IIE), and Mirka Martel, Assistant Director of Research and Evaluation at IIE, join New Books in...

Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang, "Off the Derech: Leaving Orthodox Judaism" (SUNY Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Off the Derech: Leaving Orthodox Judaism (SUNY Press, 2020), edited by Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang, combines powerful first-person accounts with incisive scholarly analysis to understand the phen...

Jonathan Rothwell, "A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Inequality in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the past decades -- on that there is agreement. There is less agreement on the causes of that inequality, the consequences of it, and, perhaps...

Paula Serafini, “Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institute f...

Ho-fung Hung, “The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ho-fung Hung‘s new book has two main goals: to to outline the historical origins of Chinas capitalist boom and the social and political formations in the 1980s that gave rise to this boom, and to e...

Albena Azmanova, "Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Utopia or Crisis" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Capitalism seems to many to be in a sort of constant crisis, leaving many struggling to make ends meet. This desperation was intensified in 2008, and for many never went away in spite of claims of ...

Ruha Benjamin, "Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. In Race Aft...

Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and identity tongzhi, which means “comrade” and in more recent decades has ...

Ira Lit, “The Bus Kids: Children’s Experiences with Voluntary Desegregation” (Yale UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many of us are familiar with the court-mandated bussing programs created in an effort to achieve school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Far fewer of us realize there were also voluntary trans...

Federico R. Waitoller, "Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace" (Teachers College Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Federico R. Waitoller about his book, Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace (Teachers College Press). This book highlights ...

Susan Opotow, "New York After 9/11" (Fordham UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the country have been widely discussed—but what about the impact on New York City, specifically? In their new anthology, New York After 9/11 (Fordham Uni...

Daisy Deomampo, “Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India (NYU Press, 2016), Daisy Deomampo explores relationships between Indian surrogates, their families, aspiring parents ...

Amy Randall, “Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Any time I prepare to do an interview, I make sure I read the blurb on the back of the book. One of the blurbs on the back cover of Amy Randall’s superb new collection Genocide and Gender in the Tw...

Dana M. Malone, "From Single to Serious: Relationships, Gender, and Sexuality on American Evangelical Campuses" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

College students hook up and have sex. That is what many students expect to happen during their time at university—it is part of growing up and navigating the relationship scene on most American ca...

Mark Alizart, "Dogs" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Man’s best friend, domesticated since prehistoric times, a travelling companion for explorers and artists, thinkers and walkers, equally happy curled up by the fire and bounding through the great o...

Amanda Huron, “Carving Out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Cooperatives in Washington, D.C.” (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is modern capitalism too far advanced in the U.S. to create common property regimes? Are there models for what an Urban Commons might look like? Join us as we speak with Amanda Huron, author of Car...

Malcolm James, “Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City” (Palgrave, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, introduces the...

Isabella Cosse, "Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Isabella Cosse’s Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic (Duke University Press) is the definitive account of the most famous comic from Latin America, the Argentine strip Mafalda...

Dana Fisher, "American Resistance: From the Women's March to the Blue Wave" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dana Fisher has written a big new book on the movement to oppose Donald Trump, titled American Resistance: From the Women's March to the Blue Wave (Columbia University Press, 2019). American Resist...

Rob Sullivan, “The Geography of the Everyday: Toward an Understanding of the Given” (U Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How to theorize what goes without saying? In The Geography of the Everyday: Toward an Understanding of the Given (University of Georgia Press, 2017), Rob Sullivan develops a general theory of every...

Brooke Schedneck, “Thailand’s International Meditation Centers” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her recent monograph, Thailand’s International Meditation Centers: Tourism and the Global Commodification of Religious Practices (Routledge, 2015), Brooke Schedneck examines Buddhist meditation ...

Matthew 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...

Quassim Cassam, "Conspiracy Theories" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

9/11 was an inside job. The Holocaust is a myth promoted to serve Jewish interests. The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School were a false flag operation. Climate change is a hoax perpetrated b...

Gordon C. C. Douglas, “The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393