Shows / New Books in History
New Books in History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in History
Tomer Persico, "In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea" (NYU Press, 2025)
Dr. Tomer Persico is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Rubinstein Fellow at Reichman University, and a Senior Research Scholar at the UC…
- New Books in History
Sean Mathews, "The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East" (Hurst, 2025)
Where does Greece belong? Many look at the ancient Greek ruins of Athens, and see the cradle of Western civilization. But much of Greece’s history actually…
- New Books in History
Thomas Albert Howard, "Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
A sweeping history of the violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth century A popular truism derived from…
- New Books in History
Catherine Clarke, "A History of England in 25 Poems" (Penguin, 2025)
This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which…
- New Books in History
Elwin Hofman et al. eds., "The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe" (Leuven UP, 2022)
Elwin Hofman joins Jana Byars to talk about the volume he edited with Magaly Rodríguez García & Pieter Vanhees, The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex…
- New Books in History
Giles Tremlett, "El Generalísimo: A Biography of Francisco Franco" (Oxford UP, 2025)
From a scrawny, overlooked military graduate to the youngest general in Europe, Francisco Franco was known for his ambition, talent and calculated risk-taking…
- New Books in History
Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Rachel Midura joins Jana Byars to talk about Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP, 2025)…
- New Books in History
Jessica Kelly and Neal Shasore, "Reconstruction: Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the First World War" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Reconstruction explores the impact of the First World War on the built environment - examining the immediate effects and aftermath of the Great War on the…
- New Books in History
Lottie Whalen, "Radicals & Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern" (Reaktion, 2023)
Radicals & Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern (Reaktion, 2023) is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the…
- New Books in History
Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)
Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists…
- New Books in History
Sam Fullerton, "Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Samuel Fullerton joins Jana Byars to talk about Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England (Manchester UP 2024) to celebrate its paperback release. It recounts a…
- New Books in History
Helen J. Nicholson, "Women and the Crusades" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration. Helen J. Nicholson's book Women and…
- New Books in History
Q. Edward Wang, "Staple to Superfood: A Global History of the Sweet Potato" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Sweet potatoes were among the American crops Christopher Columbus brought back to Europe—where they were thought to be an aphrodisiac. In China, this versatile…
- New Books in History
Richard Fine, "The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany" (Cornell, 2023)
In The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany (Cornell, 2023), Richard Fine recounts the intense drama…
- New Books in History
Susanna Elm, "The Importance of Being Gorgeous: Gender and Christian Imperial Rule in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025)
In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern…
- New Books in History
Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and…
- New Books in History
Robert D. Bland, "Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation" (UNC Press, 2026)
The promise of Reconstruction sparked a transformative era in American history as free and newly emancipated Black Americans sought to redefine their place in…
- New Books in History
Bo Tao, "Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025) by Bo Tao uncovers the extraordinary world of a Japanese…
- New Books in History
Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 and 1800 by…
- New Books in History
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising…
- New Books in History
Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)
An engaging investigation of how 13 key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely…
- New Books in History
W. Ralph Eubanks, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land" (Beacon Press, 2026)
Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins…
- New Books in History
Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024)
In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the Ming…
- New Books in History
Theodore J. Karamanski, "Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Theodore Karamanski joins fellow Lake Michigan enthusiast Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan. Looking…
- New Books in History
Alison Stone, "Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers…
- New Books in History
Paul J. Gutacker, "The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bible alone."…
- New Books in History
Scott A. Mitchell, "The Making of American Buddhism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in…
- New Books in History
Baijayanti Roy, "The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism (2024) is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections that existed…
- New Books in History
D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to…
- New Books in History
Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)
What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important…
- New Books in History
Tony Spawforth, "What the Greeks Did for Us" (Yale UP, 2023)
Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a replica of the…
- New Books in History
Dejan Djokić, "A Concise History of Serbia" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Dejan Djokić's book A Concise History of Serbia (Cambridge UP, 2023) covers the full span of Serbia's history – from the sixth-century Slav migrations through…
- New Books in History
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal. Simple…
- New Books in History
Lisa Silverman, "The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity After the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In his influential Anti-Semite and Jew, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." In doing so…
- New Books in History
Marion Gibson, "Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials" (Scribner, 2023)
Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened…
- New Books in History
Andrew Porwancher, "American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island…
- New Books in History
Lin Hongxuan, "Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In contemporary Indonesia the idea that Islam and Marxism are inherently incompatible has become deeply entrenched. However, as Lin Hongxuan's work Ummah Yet…
- New Books in History
Lin Hongxuan, "Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In contemporary Indonesia the idea that Islam and Marxism are inherently incompatible has become deeply entrenched. However, as Lin Hongxuan's work Ummah Yet…
- New Books in History
Aaron G. Fountain Jr., "High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2025)
In High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2025), Aaron G. Fountain Jr. highlights the…
- New Books in History
Ruby Oram, "Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
In Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930 (U Chicago Press, 2025) historian Ruby Oram tells the story of how…
- New Books in History
Sven Beckert, "Capitalism: A Global History" (Allen Lane, 2025)
No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we…
- New Books in History
Simon Avenell, "A History of Postwar Japan: Recovery, Prosperity, and Transformation" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
This sweeping history tells the story of contemporary Japan from its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945 until the early decades of the new millennium. How…
- New Books in History
Riley Linebaugh, "Curating the Colonial Past: The 'Migrated Archives' and the Struggle for Kenya's History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In the early 1960s, British colonial administrations in East Africa organized the systematic destruction and removal of secret documents from colonies…
- New Books in History
Irvin Ibargüen, "Caught in the Current: Mexico's Struggle to Regulate Emigration, 1940-1980" (UNC Press, 2025)
Migration between the United States and Mexico is often compared to the river that runs along the border: a "flow" of immigrants, a "flood" of documented and…
- New Books in History
Deanna Ferree Womack, "Re-Inventing Islam: Gender and the Protestant Roots of American Islamophobia" (Oxford UP, 2025)
From the end of the American Civil War to the start of World War II, the Protestant missionary movement unintentionally tilled the soil in which American…
- New Books in History
Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author…
- New Books in History
Michael Braddick, "Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian" (Verso Books, 2025)
Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than 15 books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote the way…
- New Books in History
Terry Kirby, "The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
The Newsmongers unfolds the seedy history of tabloid journalism, from the first printed ‘Strange Newes’ sheets of the sixteenth century to the sensationalism…
- New Books in History
Jeff Roche, "The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right" (U Texas Press, 2025)
American conservatism as we know it today is a West Texas export, argues College of Wooster professor Jeff Roche in The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the…
- New Books in History
Amy Erdman Farrell, "Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA" (UNC Press, 2025)
When eight-year-old Amy Erdman Farrell moved with her family to Akron, Ohio, in 1972, she found herself adrift in a sea of taunting boys and mean girls. Shy by…
- New Books in History
Alexandra Ghiț, "Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest" (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) argues that women activists, wage workers, and…
- New Books in History
Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and political…
- New Books in History
David Nasaw, "The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II" (Penguin, 2025)
In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home…
- New Books in History
John Tolan, "Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A concise new narrative history of Islam that draws on the transformative insights of recent research to emphasize the diversity and dynamism of the tradition…
- New Books in History
Katrina Navickas, "Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England" (Reaktion, 2025)
A radical history of England, Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katrina Navickas is a gripping…
- New Books in History
Jerry Moore, "Cat Tales: A History" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
For as long as cats have coexisted with humans, they have been feared, revered and respected. They appear as dynamic hunters in Palaeolithic carvings and cave…
- New Books in History
Mike Bird, "The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset" (Penguin, 2025)
In The Land Trap (Portfolio / Penguin), Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the…
- New Books in History
Colm Murphy, "Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation', the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973–1997" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
The transformation of the Labour Party by 1997 is among the most consequential political developments in modern British history. Futures of Socialism overhauls…
- New Books in History
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts" (Yale UP, 2025)
Medieval Europe was preoccupied with magic. From the Carolingian Empire to Renaissance Italy and Tudor England, great rulers, religious figures, and scholars…
- New Books in History
Caitlin Wiesner, "Between the Street and the State: Black Women’s Anti-Rape Activism Amid the War on Crime" (U Pennsylvania, 2025)
Beginning in the 1970s, a series of government agencies established to carry out the federal “war on crime” offered financial and ideological support to the…