New Books Network

Dependency Politics: How Foreign Aid Shapes Electoral Behaviour (Cambridge UP, 2026), by Ryan Jablonski, examines how democracy operates in countries dependent on foreign aid. Drawing on over six years of fieldwork, the book investigates the relationships between international donors and domestic politicians, exploring how aid dependency shapes policymaking and influences voters’ assessments of political performance. Challenging the assumption that voters simply reward politicians for attracting foreign aid, Jablonski demonstrates that electoral choices depend on citizens’ beliefs about how politicians influence the delivery of aid. This produces a ‘visibility-uncertainty’ paradox, whereby foreign aid can either strengthen or undermine democratic accountability. Combining surveys, interviews, focus groups, and field experiments, the book revisits conventional understandings of foreign aid and political behaviour, showing how aid can sometimes lead citizens to vote against their own interests and benefit opposition candidates over incumbents. By examining the political consequences of aid dependency, Jablonski offers important insights into the trade-offs between aid effectiveness, political capture, and state capacity-building. This research makes an important contribution to the study of comparative politics, democratic accountability, and the political economy of foreign aid.

How Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the “gospel of reincarnation,” mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford’s contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford’s efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world. This religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford’s archive, Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America (NYU Press, 2025) examines Ford’s mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford’s impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.

In Disability, Revolution (U California Press, 2026), Robert McRuer introduces alternatives to "one-dimensional disability," providing an accessible overview of disability justice movements and their relevance to larger emancipatory coalitions.

Most people know Israel through headlines. In Almost True: Stories From Jerusalem, Tal Shalev invites readers to discover it through stories. Set in Jerusalem and across Israel, these twenty-two stories introduce unforgettable characters navigating friendship, marriage, family, love, loss, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life. A wedding guest faces an impossible social dilemma. A husband struggles to save his marriage. Neighbors misunderstand one another, while parents and children search for common ground. With humor, compassion, and keen observation, Shalev captures the moments that reveal who we are-not only as Israelis, but as human beings. Beyond the headlines are ordinary people confronting extraordinary choices, finding grace in unexpected places, and discovering that life's deepest truths often arrive disguised as its smallest moments. Warm, witty, and deeply humane, Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem offers a rarely seen portrait of Israel while celebrating the complexity, resilience, and quiet beauty of everyday life. Host: Renee Garfinkel Guest: Tal Shalev

This is a special episode that we recorded a week after elections in both Brazil and Serbia saw the defeat of authoritarian forces. In this preview episode of the RESISTANCE research project, host Licia Cianetti is joined by Brazilian and Serbian colleagues Déborah Monte and Aleksrandra Krstić to talk about what happened in their respective countries and what made anti-authoritarian mobilisation successful against the odds. They talk about how, in both countries, online and offline mobilisation were combined to overcome skewed communication systems, the civic infrastructure that was needed to make that mobilisation possible, and their fears and hopes for the future. RESISTANCE – Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions is a research project that aims to uncover how authoritarian ideas, practices, technologies, and policies are produced and spread in a thickly interconnected world, how they create local authoritarian ecosystems, and how they can be resisted. It is funded by European Union’s Horizon-Europe grant no. 101286676 for the years 2026-2029. To know more and sign up to the project newsletter visit here Guests:                                                                                     Aleksrandra Krstić is Professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication, in the Faculty of Political Sciences, at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She is an expert in media and journalism studies, including on the role of local media in Serbian democracy. She co-leads the RESISTANCE project’s work stream on digital authoritarianism and surveillance technologies. Déborah Monte is International Relations Professor at the Federal University da Grande Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. She was Visiting Fellow at CEDAR/University of Birmingham in 2024-25 and co-hosted the People Power Politics Podcast episode on Militarization and Democracy in Contemporary Brazil. She recently started a new research project on “Autocratisation and democratic resilience: Brazil in global perspective” as the recipient of a CNPq/Fundect Research Productivity Fellow grant. Presenter: Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. She is the Principal Investigator of the research project “Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions” (2026-2029, funded by the European Commission under Horizon Europe grant no. 101286676). The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Transcript for this episode here.

In this episode, Chella Ward interviews Dr Asim Qureshi about the relationship between Islamophobia, the counter-terror framework and freedom of speech. Asim is the Research Director at CAGE International, and the author of numerous important books and articles about Islamophobia, racism and political prisoners including I Refuse to Condemn and A Virtue of Disobedience. His conversation with Chella took place as part of the Islamophobia Awareness Month events at the Open University in 2026.

From the preeminent scholar on Black masculinity in America, Save a Seat for Me: Notes on American Fatherhood (Simon & Schuster, 2026) is Mark Anthony Neal’s attempt to bring his scholarship on fatherhood to a broader audience. Save a Seat for Me embraces the nuances of how contemporary frameworks of masculinity informed by unprecedented advances in women and LGBTQ communities have necessitated a reimagining of the societal expectations a father plays in the public and private sectors of their homes. The soul of this book centers on Neal’s confrontation of the various political, cultural, historical narratives and messages that inform the role of Black fatherhood, and fatherhood at large, which has put him at odds with the way he fathers his own children. Raised by a working class father, during a time when American society conceived of the role of father as protector, provider, and disciplinarian, Neal struggles with these expectations as his education (a doctorate's degree), profession (tenured professor at one of the best colleges in the country), and financial position (making more money than his father ever did) are drastically different than that of his father. Linking his father to his own fathering of his two daughters, Neal grounds his intellectual arguments about Black fatherhood in experience and emotion makes for a vulnerable read, as well as a transformative one. In our culture, the public performance of fatherhood keeps us from wondering what the practice of being a father looks like in private. Neal is opening a long overdue door to the interiority that Black men particularly—and men living in a patriarchal society generally—have only learned existed in the last twenty years.

The War on Terror remained an enduring feature of American foreign policy for over two decades. The War on Terror(Agenda Publishing, 2025), by Professors Andrew Thomson and Rubrick Biegon, positions the War on Terror within the broader context of Cold War interventionism and the rise of various transnational threats to American (and global) security during the late twentieth century.

In this episode, James Farrer of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective and Alejandra Dorado-Vinay talk about their introduction to the new special section on migrant foodways and culinary mobilities in Japan. Taking listeners into the neighborhoods of superdiverse Tokyo through everyday experiences of markets, restaurants, and eating out in the street, they discuss how histories of power shape migrant foodways, and how migrants in Japan shape its local culture. Their conversation connects taste, fashion, and power in Japan’s vibrant migrant food scene, shedding light on the culinary imports of curry and ramen, the experience of Peruvian migration, and a cosmopolitan landscape of Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Brazilian, and East African and West African restaurants in a place where migrant foodways can often be largely invisible. The two-part special section in the Fall and Winter 2026 issues of Gastronomica brings together 10 articles on the movement of people, food, and ideas across borders with research on eateries, markets, community gardens, social media, school meals, and holiday rituals in Japan. Listeners can find "Introduction to Migrant Foodways and Culinary Mobilities in Japan" by James Farrer and Alejandra Dorado-Vinay, and their co-written follow-up piece, “Culinary Regimes: The Political Economy of Foreign Food in Tokyo” in Gastronomica (issues 26.3 and 26.4). James Farrer is a professor of Sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo and a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. He has published numerous books and articles on urban life, globalization, and cuisine and is currently at work on a comparative study of migrant-run restaurants in Japan and Germany. Alejandra Dorado-Vinay is completing a PhD in Global Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo, where her work focuses on Mexican and Peruvian food in Japan. Previously, as a student at El Colegio de México, she conducted research on the history of Japanese restaurants in Mexico City. Beyond her academic work, she also has experience in food and beverage consulting in Japan. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the latest episodes.

What should authors be doing to market their books, and when? Book marketing expert Jeffrey Yamaguchi, a writer and poet with 25+ years in publishing, joins Sarah Russo on “The Publishing Playbook” to explain why book marketing and book publicity aren’t the same thing, and why a successful campaign needs both.

Dov Baron is also the author of Fiercely Loyal and One Red Thread. He’s one of the world’s foremost authorities on authentic leadership and cultural transformation. He’s been ranked among the top 30 Global Leadership Gurus and honored by Inc. magazine as one of the top 100 leadership speakers. What do our formative years deliver each of us? The answer is an emotive “source code” that takes “hidden wounds” that magnifies them when we’re under stress on the job or elsewhere. What adds to workers’ stress? A pervasive feeling of loneliness created by circumstances in which people don’t feel like belong to an organization that cares about them. With compassion and eloquence, Dov Baron delves into everything from Vladimir Putin’s crippling lack of trust to Unilever’s success with purpose-driven training to lift employees’ intrinsic motivation in The Art of Belonging: How Conformity Silences Genius and How to Unleash It (Above the Noise, 2027). There’s even the bonus of learning what kind of music enthralls our guest, and why. Listening in here is, frankly, worth it even just for hearing Baron explain the dynamics of how stress is both helpful and not helpful in orchestrating change. Enjoy. To learn more or contact Dov please visit his website here. Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.comhttps://dovbaron.com/tag/belonging/

In this episode, novelist Imbolo Mbue and critic Sarah Dimick dive into the literary ecosystem from an author’s perspective. Imbolo recalls her formative experiences in public libraries when she first emigrated from Cameroon to the United States, and how her encounters with American literature, especially Oprah’s Book Club picks, shaped her sense of literary possibility. Imbolo’s first novel, Behold the Dreamers, was itself an Oprah’s Book Club selection. In a conversation that moves across Imbolo’s career, from Behold the Dreamers to How Beautiful We Were to the newly released Every Story Is a Love Story, Imbolo and Sarah probe multiple dimensions of the literary ecosystem. They take up networks of literary production: how Imbolo writes both with and against readers’ expectations and desires; how her reading shapes her writing, particularly the memoirs of forgiveness (or the lack thereof) that informed Every Story Is a Love Story; the editorial pressures against which she has been glad to stand her ground, and the ones that have shaped her work for (in her assessment) the better, including a critical intervention from Random House’s Andy Ward that moved Every Story is a Love Story away from punishment and toward the urgent if unsexy problem of forgiveness. They also address what Sarah suggests is another unity across Imbolo’s fiction, in addition to a formal and thematic interest in aftermath: namely, the energy infrastructures—oil, transit, cars—that allow characters to move forward through the world even as they enact extractive harm. Mentions: Oprah's Book Club Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Chinua Achebe Toni Morrison Jonathan Franzen Junot Díaz Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder Michelle Obama's Becoming Yiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow Roxane Gay, "Why I Can’t Forgive Dylann Roof" Random House's Andy Ward Verdi’s Aida Arundhati Roy's Mother Mary Comes to Me

A multimedia collection dedicated to John D. Smith on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, edited by Wendy J. Phillips Rodríguez and Simon Brodbeck. Open Access here

You Can See Everything is the new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of biotech startup Theranos, who was convicted of fraud and is currently serving a federal prison sentence. Or is it a work of performance art starring Nathan Fielder, the comedian behind Nathan for You, The Rehearsal, and The Curse? It's about truth, psychology, shame, simulacra, Silicon Valley, and a million other things besides. And we're going to get into it all.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Asia's colonial trade, commerce, and enterprise pivoted on five cities- Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Calcutta, and Bombay. Today, among these, only Calcutta no longer plays a significant role in the Asian or global economy. Why? Agents of Inertia: Business, Urban Crisis, and Economic Decline in Twentieth-Century Calcutta (Cambridge UP, 2026) answers this question by investigating how Calcutta's British and Indian businesses have engaged with the city's infrastructural and economic challenges. It throws up a startling result: through the first seven decades of twentieth century, Calcutta's businesses, in contrast to their counterparts elsewhere, staunchly resisted several measures that intended to update and improve the city's infrastructure. It is this resistance, Agents of Inertia argues, that led to Calcutta's postcolonial urban crisis and contributed to capital- flight and economic decline. One of the first full-length monographs on Calcutta's postcolonial urban-economic decline, it shows how big businesses not only make but can also break a city's fortunes. Gaurav C. Garg is a historian of modern South Asia, cities, mountains, and international development at Ashoka University, Delhi NCR. Soumyadeep Guha is a fifth-year PhD student in the History Department at Binghamton University, New York. He is interested in historical research focusing on themes such as Agrarian/Environmental History, History of Science and Tech, Global History, and their intersections. His prospective dissertation questions are on the pre-history of the ‘Green Revolution’ in Eastern India.

I sat down with Lydia Sizer to chat about her experience developing applied history initiatives at the US Department of State’s Office of the Historian. We talked about what it’s like to collaborate with policymakers and what it means to negotiate productive tensions between political science and historical methodologies. Lydia talks about her doctoral dissertation, in which she drew on political science, history, and her own experience at the State Department’s Libya Desk to analyze how diplomats make high-stakes decisions with very limited information. We discuss how history can be useful for analyzing institutional memory in government and private organizations, and how #applied history initiatives can help mitigate some of the institutional memory loss that is built into democratic politics. We discuss Lydia’s positive experience using #AI in her work and talks about her ongoing efforts to anticipate policy trends rather than merely respond to them. We also talk about the punk band The Clash and how their 1982 hit song “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” can help us understand practical approaches to history.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE In a groundbreaking global exploration of the ideas that drove the American Revolution, a prize-winning historian shines a light on the defiance of marginalized peoples all over the world. In her powerful new history of the American Revolution, Sarah M. S. Pearsall argues that the American Founding Fathers did not have a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit. The thirteen colonies that became the United States, she reminds us, were not even half of the British colonies that existed in the eighteenth century. In her sparkling and original Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution (Doubleday, 2026) Pearsall uncovers the insurgents, freedom lovers, and dreamers in India, West Africa, North America, Europe, China, and West Indian islands who shaped the nature of American rebellion and nationhood. In each fresh and compelling chapter of Freedom Round the Globe, Pearsall plucks a keyword from the Declaration of Independence—security, happiness, respect– finding its spark in a far-flung place. In an Edinburgh club where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to women and men of all sorts. She traces how novel forms of slavery provoked a new use of the word liberty in Connecticut petitions as well as in cries of “liberty or death.” On a Kolkata street where Indians protested relentless taxes, Pearsall finds a critique of oppressive imperial government that galvanized Americans in their protests and parties against the tea of the English East India Company. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to being civilized in a brutal war. In telling the extraordinary tales of Friends of Liberty protesting tyranny around the world, Pearsall restores these individuals and movements to their rightful place in the vital story of the American Revolution and the nation it created. The result is a stirring and surprising revisioning of our history.

Philippe Villeneuve has been chief architect of Notre Dame Cathedral since 2013. On the night of the shocking 2019 fire, he learned by phone that the building he had loved since boyhood, and modeled in miniature at just 16, was burning. In this conversation with host Ryan Schinkel, he traces how a career spent restoring fire-damaged monuments prepared him for the five-year effort to bring the cathedral back, and explains why he describes the result not as a restoration but as a restitution. Along the way he makes the case for Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as the father of his discipline, defends the judgment of the craftsman against the certainties of computer modeling, and recounts the three “miracles” he found in the ruins. Underneath it all runs a striking humility: the conviction that he is a single point in a long story, preparing the cathedral for generations he will never meet.

Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton UP, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, which explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other is valuable and worth preserving. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Dr. Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,” a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Dr. Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works. Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world. Our guest is: Dr. Allison Pugh, who is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and the 2024-25 Vice President of the American Sociological Association. She writes about how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at work and at home. She is the author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity and Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. Her writing has appeared in leading publications such as The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the New Republic. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Playlist for listeners: Talking To Strangers Making A Meaningful Life How to Human Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World More Than A Glitch Meditation and the Academic Life Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

Distinguished Oxford historian Sudhir Hazareesingh has written a stunning new study documenting the inevitable resistance that New World enslavement produced throughout its long terrible history. Joining John to speak with Sudhir is George Boulukos of SIU Carbondale, author of The Grateful Slave.

Anfal is an Arabic word from the Quran meaning "the spoils of war." Saddam Hussein gave the name to his 1988 campaign against Iraq's Kurds — eight stages of chemical attack, mass arrest and mass execution that killed some hundred thousand people, and that a later tribunal would call genocide. Joost Hiltermann helped document the genocide for Human Rights Watch. His first novel, The Resurrected (Afsana Press, 2026), is a fictionalized version of those events. It follows two men who survived a mass grave and made their way home to Kurdistan, and eventually to Virginia, giving voice to victims, perpetrators and bystanders alike. Joost Hiltermann is Special Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, where he previously directed the MENA program for a decade. He is the author of A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja. Joost, welcome to the show. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Resurrected. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

The oil industry today sponsors dozens of citizen advocacy organizations. Often called 'front groups' or 'astroturf,' they have become key actors in fossil fuel companies' political efforts across the US and Canada. People For Oil: Citizen Mobilization in the U.S. and Canadian Fossil Fuel Industries (Cambridge UP, 2026) by Dr. Tim Wood digs into these groups and the day-to-day ways they shape our energy future. Drawing on interviews with pro-oil organizers and citizen joiners, Dr. Wood explains why these groups form, why people join, and how these organizations intervene in governance. He shows that while we tend to think of all corporate grassroots mobilization as financially secretive, many campaigns today are openly sponsored and long-lasting. This allows industry lobbyists to stake a claim to representing citizen voice. By making sense of the backstage logics and affective politics of pro-oil organizing, People for Oil equips readers to better understand important new players in today's climate and energy politics. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference. It appears in political rhetoric, memory laws, public commemorations, and attacks on critical scholarship. YIVO’s Poland vs. Holocaust History series examines these dynamics and situates the Polish case within a broader European context. This lecture by Jan Grabowski will examine the phenomenon of Holocaust distortion in Poland within a broader comparative European framework. It explores how historical narratives about the Holocaust are reshaped, minimized, or selectively reinterpreted in public discourse, politics, education, and law. Particular attention will be paid to the interaction between state-sponsored memory policies, nationalist narratives, and scholarly research, as well as to the pressures faced by historians and educators. By comparing developments in Poland with those in other European countries—including Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, and Russia—the lecture highlights both shared patterns and national specificities in confronting difficult pasts. The discussion addresses legal instruments, public controversies, commemorative practices, and the role of civil society in shaping Holocaust memory. Ultimately, the lecture asks how and why Holocaust distortion emerges, what distinguishes distortion from legitimate historical debate, and what the consequences are for democratic culture, academic freedom, and Europe’s collective understanding of the Holocaust. Purchase Whitewash: Poland and the Jews by Jan Grabowski here This lecture originally took place on March 24, 2026.

It has become something of a cliché to say that social media is making us tribal. But what do self-styled tribespeople themselves think about social media, and how might they help us better understand the role of the internet in our current political moment? Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among Bedouin in Jordan, Social Media Tribes: Jordan's Bedouin and the Margins of the State (U Texas Press, 2026) underscores the varied but broadly intelligible ways in which distinctive groups domesticate social media to suit their needs. Organized around key concepts in Bedouin life (including tribalism, envy, and mercy), Social Media Tribes moves between Facebook-mediated tribal truces, upstart online media platforms, palatial urban villas where self-appointed sheikhs dispense justice, and street clashes organized over WhatsApp in rural communities ignored by state development projects. A meticulous researcher and insightful participant-observer, Geoffrey Hughes reframes social media as part of a global renegotiation of the state-society divide that both preceded the emergence of social media platforms and, in turn, feeds off of them. In this telling, the internet represents a new frontier that, like older frontiers, heralds both novel freedoms and novel forms of social control.

Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities involving sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and US soldiers provided the material foundations of the regional economy across Korea and Japan during the Korean War. Against the conventional view that illicit exchanges exist outside the formal economy and legal regulations, Dr. Jeongmin Kim examines how the interlinked markets for transactional sex and goods crucially constituted the transpacific formation of US military base capitalism in post-World War II East Asia. Going beyond what is commonly categorized as prostitution and violence in Cold War archives, Dr. Kim weaves together stories from the myriads of mundane records scattered around multilingual archives to document larger transnational webs of the war economy. From Korean women who brought camel blankets and whiskey to local markets in Seoul, to middle-aged Okinawan women dealing in US military notes, Dr. Kim uncovers the crucial roles that local women played in circulating war supplies and currency across the region through their sexual and intermediary labor. The result is an intimate and global history of the Korean War that urges us to rethink the often-antithetical relationship between sexual intimacy and market economies in the context of war and occupation. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast Ingrid Piller speaks with Professor Sandra Issel-Dombert. Sandra is Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Universität Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Her research focus is on everyday multilingualism, in the workplace, in healthcare, and in the family. We talk about Sandra’s new book Multilingualism, Migration, and Domestic Work: On the Sociolinguistic Situation of Filipina Domestic Migrant Workers in Madrid. The book was published by de Gruyter in 2025 and is available open access through UPL Open. The book explores the intersection of multilingualism and transnational migration in the global sector of domestic work in Spain, the second largest labor market in the EU. Over the course of three years, a corpus of field notes, narrative interviews, focus groups, language portraits and language maps was built with 25 Filipina domestic workers (FDWs) in Madrid, partly collected through participatory approaches. The analysis focuses on three main aspects: first, spatial repertoires; second, the multilingual everyday life and lived experiences of languages; and third, the agency of FDWs. The aim of this study is to better understand the dynamics that emerge from inequalities of multilingualism in the feminized sector of transnational domestic work. The book expands our understanding of multilingualism and transnational migration in the feminized sector of paid domestic work. It is a pioneering contribution to the growing field of language and migration, offering new insights into the sociolinguistic aspects of migration from Spain’s only former colony in Asia to Spain. Theoretically, the study adds a postcolonial and critical approach to language and migration, using a variety of methodological techniques. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

In Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers (Atmosphere Press, 2026), Anthony Flood traces Sellers's journey from Baptist pastor to independent Bible teacher, a man whose pursuit of the truth cost him his pulpit, his home, and his standing among the so-called "orthodox." Consecrating his life to "rightly dividing the Word of Truth," Sellers followed Scripture beyond the boundaries of inherited doctrine. What he learned about baptism made it impossible for him to remain a Baptist. Over time, traditional teachings about the soul, "born again," "the Lord's Supper," eternal life, and hell also fell before his meticulous study. In the depths of the Great Depression, Sellers left his pastorate and comfortable home, moving into his parents' attic with his young family to begin the work that would define the next six decades of his life. Virtually alone, he distinguished Christ's prophesied world government from His millennial presence on the Earth.

Today I sit down with Brendan Graham Dempsey, Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, where he thinks about human meaning-making systems. It’s rare that I have someone on the pod who doesn’t specialize in Asian traditions, but I thought a conversation with Brendan might help crystalize some of the ideas we’ve been discussing so far this season. We talk about what kind of spirituality is possible after postmodernism, the advantages of an integrative worldview, and how to decide which perspective should win out over others when they’re in conflict. In our conversation, it is apparent that Brendan and I are coming at this from different directions, but ultimately we discover some common ground. If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in multidisciplinary conversations about Asian religious, medical, healing, and mystical traditions, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. If you would be willing to help support the pod so we can pay our bills, please look us up on Substack and become a member! Each month our guests share downloadable PDFs of articles, book chapters, and other materials in our members area. Check it out! One last thing: we are planning an “Ask Me Anything” episode in the future, so reach out via Substack or my website here and let me know your questions. Ok, on with the show! Resources relevant to this episode: Discussion of Pierce’s publication in Metamodern Theory and Praxis: here Brendan’s main website: here Evolution of Meaning: here Ω (Omega): here Subscribe to Black Beryl Substack to unlock our members-only benefits, including a chapter from Brendan’s forthcoming book Evolution of Meaning (PDF). Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. See here.

Cybersecurity is often presented as a technological challenge: protecting computer networks, preventing attacks and investing in increasingly sophisticated security systems. Yet even the most advanced technology may prove inadequate if organisations cannot interpret threats, communicate their consequences or respond effectively. What role does communication play in building cyber resilience, and why should it matter to business leaders as much as to cybersecurity specialists? In this episode, Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo speaks with Nina Paine and Ashley Sweetman about Communicating Cyber Risk: Build Cyber Resilience Through Compelling Communication (Kogan Page, 2026). They discuss the book's origins and the distinction between cybersecurity and cyber resilience. Their conversation examines the role of organisational structures and management practices in shaping responses to cyber threats, as well as the challenges of communicating risk across organisational levels. Particular attention is paid to the financial sector, where banks depend on interconnected technological infrastructures, payment networks and external service providers. The discussion considers what makes cybersecurity particularly challenging in banking, how multinational financial institutions navigate diverse regulatory environments and organisational cultures, and whether lessons from large international banks can be applied to smaller financial institutions and fintech companies. The interview also addresses the relationship between organisational and systemic resilience. Financial institutions do not operate in isolation, and cyber incidents can have consequences extending well beyond individual firms. This raises questions about the responsibilities of banks, regulators, governments and other participants in the financial system, as well as the challenges of sharing sensitive information across institutional boundaries. Drawing on the authors' professional experience and their interviews with senior cybersecurity practitioners, the conversation considers what their research reveals about organisational responses to cyber risk and the extent to which these findings can be generalised across different institutional settings. Ultimately, the book invites readers to think about cybersecurity not simply as a technical responsibility but as an organisational challenge involving leadership, communication and the management of risk in an increasingly interconnected world. References and further reading: Arsenault, B. (Host). (2021, July 7). Leading an inclusive workforce: Emma Smith, Vodafone (No. 8) [Audio podcast episode]. In Security Unlocked: CISO Series with Bret Arsenault. Microsoft; The CyberWire Network. here Bátiz-Lazo, B. (Host). (2022, November 1). Ashley Sweetman, "Cyber and the City: Securing London's Banks in the Computer Age" (Springer, 2022) [Audio podcast episode]. In New Books Network. here Kaplan, J. M., Bailey, T., O'Halloran, D., Marcus, A., & Rezek, C. (2015). Beyond cybersecurity: Protecting your digital business. John Wiley & Sons. here Paine, N., & Sweetman, A. (2026). Communicating cyber risk: Build cyber resilience through compelling communication. Kogan Page. here Smith, E. (2026, July 29). Trust in a connected world: Why cyber resilience matters. Vodafone. here Sweetman, A. (2022). Cyber and the city: Securing London's banks in the computer age. Springer. here

Orson Welles is a foundational work of Welles criticism. First published by Joseph McBride in the British Film Institute's Cinema One series in 1972 when the author was twenty-four, it now has been extensively revised and updated to reflect the ongoing developments in the work of this great filmmaker. McBride—who, as Martin Scorsese has written, "has a clearer understanding of Welles and his films than almost anyone"—studied Welles at work for more than five years while playing an earnest young film critic and historian in The Other Side of the Wind. Among the new material in this third edition, Orson Welles: Revised and Expanded is McBride's first extended analysis of that film as well as an essay on Welles's acting career and revisions of the other chapters on his adventurous, multifaceted body of work, illuminating and setting the record straight on this often misunderstood director. Joseph McBride has written or edited twenty-six books, also including two other books on Welles; biographies of Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, and John Ford; the interview book Hawks on Hawks; critical studies of Ford (with Michael Wilmington), Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, the Coen Bros., and George Cukor; and I Loved Movies, But... In 2026, Sticking Place Books reprinted his long-lost edited collection Persistence of Vision, with an extensive new introduction. McBride covered the film industry for many years as a reporter and reviewer for Daily Variety. He is an emeritus professor of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

When Mario’s adventures escalated from Bros. to Land to World, the only direction left for an ambitious plumber was up into the stars. In Super Mario Galaxy, defeating Bowser means launching from planet to planet, pausing for just a moment in each Launch Star to wonder what pleasures and challenges await. The sheer joy of navigating Super Mario Galaxy’s varied, clever, and physics-defining planets to Mahito Yokota’s uplifting score is more than enough to satisfy Mario fans. And to casual players, brought into the hobby through the Wii phenomenon, Galaxy offered new delights beyond motion tennis and bowling. Yet the game also contains a surprisingly sophisticated hidden layer of Little Prince-esque melancholy, beautifully embodied by Rosalina and the Lumas. Director Yoshiaki Koizumi was so committed to the game's emotional core that he developed Rosalina’s heartwarming storybook at night and snuck it into the game without telling his boss, Shigeru Miyamoto. In this critical and personal appreciation Super Mario Galaxy, Jordan Minor takes on a game that influenced his career as a games journalist, offered a chance to bond with his wife, and—after years of watching the game go unsupported on modern consoles—made him a believer in game preservation. Today, with a Switch 2 remaster and a new animated movie out in the world, Galaxy’s legacy has never been more certain. Jordan Minor is a veteran entertainment and technology journalist. He is the author of the gaming history book VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since the early 1980s. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds three PhDs in game studies. Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm HNU, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

In this episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Maude Barlow, who has spent decades at the center of the global water justice movement. She is the honorary chairperson of the Council of Canadians, a co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, and served as senior advisor on water to the president of the United Nations General Assembly, where she helped win the 2010 resolution recognizing water as a human right. She has written or co-written nearly twenty books, including Blue Gold, Blue Covenant, and Still Hopeful. Her latest book, Earth for Sale: The Fight to Stop the Last Plunder of the Commons, was published by ECW Press in 2026. Most of us agree the natural world is in crisis. Barlow's prescient warning is about who we are trusting to fix it. Governments, claiming they cannot afford conservation on their own, are inviting the same energy, chemical, agribusiness, and bottled water corporations that caused the damage to manage the recovery. On the theory that the best way to save nature is to put a price on it. Behind friendly terms like "nature-based solutions" and "ecosystem services" lies a fast-growing market in carbon credits, debt-for-nature swaps, biodiversity offsets, conservation bonds, and water futures. Drawing on detailed examples from around the world, Barlow argues that this financialization of nature is a false solution. It is one that too few people, including many environmentalists, have noticed, and she makes the case for keeping the stewardship of the commons in public and community hands. Our conversation ranges from the rights of nature movement and the trouble with carbon trading to the new colonialism of finance conservation, the global water wars, and why, after a lifetime of activism, she still believes hope is a moral imperative. As I mention in the episode, what struck me even before we spoke is how well researched the book is, with every issue illuminated clearly and backed by a wide array of sources. It is one reason I am passionate about people reading it. Please enjoy getting to learn more about Maude and her work in this interview.

Home Team Away: Watching European Football in Urban China (U Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Yuan Gong calls for a rethinking of sport fandom that is divorced from an attachment to location. As the first comprehensive account of the European football fandom in China, this book explores how the Chinese middle class subjectivity is formed through the cross-cultural, digital consumption of the Big Five leagues. Dr. Gong captures the embodied experiences of fans and fan clubs, fan discourses and activities unfolding on digital platforms on Weibo, Weixin, and Hupu, combining fieldwork in Shanghai and virtual ethnography. Dr. Gong argues that Chinese fans’ decisions to follow and engage with European football result from their material conditions, ideological contestation, and technology appropriation as a new demographic bloc arising during China’s transition to authoritarian digital capitalism. By engaging with their home teams away, the Chinese middle class fans perform as citizens with a global vision despite the resurgence of the nationalist and anti-Western sentiments. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

From the inside flap: In Alive in the Sound: Black Music as Counterhistory (Duke UP, 2025), Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities—spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always embedded in Black music, Radano shows they developed not simply from performance but from musicians’ status as laborers inhabiting an enduring racial-economic contradiction: Black music originated publicly as an exchangeable property owned by people whose subhuman status granted them—as “natural” musicians—indelible properties of sound. As a contradiction of the rules of ownership, wherein enslaved property was forbidden the right to own, modern Black music emerges after emancipation as a primary possession, moving dialectically into commercial markets and counterhistorically back into Black worlds. Slavery’s seminal contest of ownership underlie modern musical sensations of aliveness, which become the chief measure of value in popular music. By reconceiving US Black music history as a history of value, Radano rethinks the music’s place in US and global culture. Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu

How do poor Black communities co-exist with downtown revitalization? How do Black social movements respond to urban renewal to ensure access to better housing and city spaces? Dr. John Tilghman investigates these interlocking questions in Jim Crow from the Harbor: Black Freedom Struggle and Downtown Baltimore, 1945–1980 (Temple UP, 2026). Looking at Baltimore, Maryland’s redevelopment in the post-war era of deindustrialization and population decline through white flight, Dr. Tilghman tells the story of how Black activists clashed with urban regimes. Dr. Tilghman follows the money—redevelopment profits—which created tensions that prompted anti-freeway campaigns and affirmative action efforts. Through grassroots activism, protests, and community building, participants in the Black Freedom Struggle undermined downtown interests’ efforts to reinforce racial segregation as well as other civil, political, and economic inequalities. While their efforts met with both success and limitations, Dr. Tilghman emphasizes the strengths of this minority majority population as they strove for urban equality. Jim Crow from the Harbor provides a new perspective that helps explain what has provoked today’s struggles in Baltimore for Black Americans. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

What happens when a devout imam and a secular Jewish former federal prosecutor decide to talk about the things that divide them rather than the things they share? In I Am the Other: Debating the Role of Islam in a Divided America (Liminal Space Publications, 2025), Imam Azhar Subedar and Robert Gary offer an unusual model of dialogue. It is not a search for common ground but a sustained, candid engagement with disagreement. Their collaboration began when Gary, attending one of Subedar’s talks at a Florida church, asked a deliberately provocative question about a difficult Qur’anic passage. Subedar answered it directly rather than deflecting, and a friendship and five-year writing partnership followed. In this conversation, Subedar and Gary reflect on how September 11 reshaped the place of Muslims in American public life. They discuss how selectively quoted scripture and the actions of extremist groups have sustained Islamophobia, and what Subedar sees as the American Muslim community’s own failures of silence and disengagement. They describe how the book, nearly finished on October 7, 2023, had to be reopened. Even so, their dialogue survived a moment when many Jewish–Muslim partnerships collapsed. Subedar argues that much interfaith work failed because it was built on agreement alone. Gary contends that Jews and Muslims, so often targeted by the same forces, have a shared stake in the survival of American democracy. The conversation closes on their proposals for rebuilding trust through engagement and fact-checking. It also addresses the resistance their public dialogues have met, and why they believe that differing without demonizing is the work this moment requires. Imam Azhar Subedar is a Canadian-raised Islamic scholar and has served as an imam in American Muslim communities since 2002. Robert Gary is a former prosecutor in the Organized Crime Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and teaches on the Qur’an and geopolitics at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Iqbal Akhtar is teaches in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University and is the Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. His recent book is Covenantal Pluralism, an open-access book published by Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-31479-6

This episode features a conversation with historical anthropologist Lisa Mitchell and political theorist Hari Ramesh whose recent books make a case against anti-state thinking in social and political theory.

If Dog Day Afternoon is Network Jr., then Nicholas Ray’s 1956 Bigger Than Life is The Shining’s little brother. Ed Avery (James Mason), like Jack Torrence, unlocks a part of him that he finds liberating and intoxicating but which his family finds terrifying. There are many similarities, yet there’s an important difference: the ghosts in The Shining bring out something in Jack that was always there, but the cortisone in Bigger Than Life seems to cause Ed to become a sinister version of himself. Does evil lurk within us, ready to escape, or do we invite it into our lives?  Bumper music by John Deley. Fans of James Mason will want to read Madeline King Porter’s new biography, James Mason: The Movie Star Hollywood Forgot. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.

In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full of greedy and licentious bees trade their vices for virtues and immediately fall into economic and societal collapse. Outrage among the reading public followed; philosophers took up their pens to refute what they saw as the fable’s central assertion. How could it be that an immoral community thrived but the introduction of morality caused it to crash and burn? In Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe (Princeton UP, 2025) John Callanan examines Mandeville and his famous fable, showing how its contentious claim—that vice was essential to the economic flourishing of any society—formed part of Mandeville’s overall theory of human nature. Mandeville, Callanan argues, was perfectly suited to analyze and satirize the emerging phenomenon of modern society—and reveal the gap between its self-image and its reality. Callanan shows that Mandeville’s thinking was informed by his medical training and his innovative approach to the treatment of illness with both physiological and psychological components. Through incisive and controversial analyses of sexual mores, gender inequality, economic structures, and political ideology, Mandeville sought to provide a naturalistic account of human behaviour—one that put humans in close continuity with animals. Aware that his fellow human beings might find this offensive, he cloaked his theories in fables, poems, anecdotes, and humorous stories. Mandeville mastered irony precisely for the purpose of making us aware of uncomfortable aspects of our deepest natures—aspects that we still struggle to acknowledge today.

Many of today's libraries and their workers are facing a skills crisis. By some estimates, an employee's current skills are only relevant for a maximum of five years, but other estimates put the longevity of current skills at only 18 months. Though it's crucial that library workers continuously upskill and reskill to keep up with technological changes, including those brought about by AI, libraries have limited time, budgets, and resources to devote to helping staff keep up. But as Ann Medaille demonstrates in Upskilling for Library Workers: A Guide for Future-Ready Professionals (ALA Editions, 2026, which draws on lessons learned from a three-year research project, it's still possible to adopt an inspiring, forward-thinking approach to upskilling, one that positions staff to succeed both now and in the future. Library administrators, managers, trainers, program leaders, branch heads, and staff members who work in public or academic libraries and are involved in learning or teaching new skills, or creating a skills strategy for their library, will discover why upskilling and reskilling are urgently needed by library workers to navigate information in the context of ever-changing technologies, and which skills are the most important; lessons that libraries can learn from the innovative approaches to workplace upskilling that are taking place in the corporate learning and development space; an incisive overview and analysis of learning initiatives currently underway at academic and public libraries in the United States and Canada; key concepts related to learning and instructional design; the four E's of upskilling (education, experiences, exposures, and environment) and where they fit into library workplace training and development; research-based guidance on facing such challenges as how to get started, knowing what skills to plan for in the future, deciding upon appropriate learning initiatives, motivating staff to continually learn, evaluating skill development initiatives, and confronting issues related to cost, time, and organizational culture; and hands-on strategies for the integration of upskilling into library work across a broad range of skill types and library applications, including suggested activities, reflection points, examples, and tips throughout the book. Guest: Ann Medaille is Professor/Director of Research and Instructional Services at the University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. She is also Editor-in-Chief for the journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice and a faculty member of the Medical Library Association’s Research Training Institute. She holds a PhD in education and an MS in library science. She is the author of The Librarian's Guide to Learning Theory: Practical Applications in Library Settings. She is also co-author of Visual Literacy for Libraries: A Practical, Standards-Based Guide. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services and served for ten years as the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator at Delaware County Community College.

Whatever happened to the working class? A compelling new social history of Britain since 1945 From the picket lines of the Miners' Strike to the Amazon warehouses of today, the British working class has been pushed from the center of political life to its margins, though not without a fight. But how did a force that once shaped nations become invisible? Historian Ewan Gibbs reconstructs what was lost—and what was taken. Through vivid first-hand accounts, he traces the transformation of a class forged in mines and shipyards into one scattered across call centers and gig economy apps. This is the story of council estates sold off, unions broken, mill towns hollowed out, and a sense of solidarity ground down by decades of insecurity. Yet, as inequality deepens and class roars back into political debate, Gibbs confronts the essential question: who now speaks for labour? Richly researched and deeply humane, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class (Verso, 2026) is the definitive history of British post war working-class life. Ewan Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. He writes about energy, industry, work and protest for the London Review of Books, Financial Times, The Times, Prospect, Break Down, Dissent and Jacobin. His first book, Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland, was shortlisted for the Scottish History Book of the Year. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

In this episode of the Books for Better Understanding series from Notre Dame Press, David Carlson hosts Jonathan A. Anderson and James Elkins for a discussion of Anderson's new book, The Invisibility Of Religion In Contemporary Art (U Notre Dame Press, 2025). Order your copy here

Zion’s Last Frontier: LDS Ranchers, Federal Regulators, and the Clash of the New West in Capitol Reef Country, Utah (U Arizona Press, 2026) is a historical ethnography that documents the uniquely Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) ranching community around Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah over the last 150 years. From the arrival of the first LDS pioneers in the 1870s to fifth- and sixth-generation descendants of those pioneers today, anthropologist Thomas E. Sheridan documents their ongoing struggles with the federal and state agencies that control 96 percent of the land they ranch. Changing policies and management philosophies profoundly impact the ranchers’ livelihoods and ways of life. Sheridan argues that the ranchers should qualify as Traditionally Associated People. Only one allotment on the Park remains, but the Park still allows ranchers to drive their cattle on horseback along the few canyons that cut through the Waterpocket Fold as they move their herds from their traditional summer grazing lands to their winter grazing lands. Pushing beyond binary arguments, Sheridan offers an empathetic look at the lived experiences of rural communities often mischaracterized in debates over public lands and environmentalism. Tensions have been aggravated by a massive increase in the number of tourists that swarm the area in the warmer months and a steady increase in the number of seasonal residents who build second homes there. Zion’s Last Frontier provides an in-depth look at the clash of cultures between the agrarian Old West and the New West of tourism and second-homers that is playing itself out across so many parts of the rural West today. This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for The University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert, investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that forever changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

In this episode of International Horizons, John Torpey speaks with Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, special counsel at Human Rights First and author of Through the Gates of Hell: American Injustice at Guantanamo Bay (Humanitas Media, 2025). Drawing on his work representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Colangelo-Bryan recounts the legal battles, harsh detention conditions, and personal relationships that shaped his experience. He also reflects on the legacy of Guantanamo, the erosion of due process, and the troubling parallels between the post-9/11 response to terrorism and the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants today. Their conversation explores what Guantanamo reveals about the fragility of human rights and the enduring importance of legal protections against government abuse.

Romantic Media and Wartime Networks (Stanford UP, 2026) by Dr. Deven Parker tells the story of how Britain revolutionized its state communication networks on an unprecedented scale during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, setting the stage for our modern infrastructure state where connectivity and surveillance go hand in hand. Dr. Parker argues that Romantic literary representations of this state communications network managed to reveal—and, on occasion, to resist—its ideological functions. In a wide-ranging study drawing upon an archive of military surveys, spy reports, trial records, and even ladies' hand fans, Dr. Parker reveals the scope and impact of the British government's investments in shutter telegraphs, mapping projects, and postal routes across two decades of war with France. The writers of the Romantic period, meanwhile, were cognizant of the political motivations undergirding the state's overhauled networks, which were designed to facilitate and speed up but also to more easily control communications. Taking up familiar writers including Lord Byron, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Charlotte Smith, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey—as well as lesser-known figures such as radical playwright John Dent, inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and the proto-science fiction novelist Jane Loudon—Dr. Parker reads Romantic literature for its astute chronicling and interrogation of the material hardware of the state's media ecology. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Mediating God: Muhammad Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in 20th century Egypt (Oxford UP, 2025) is a fascinating and compelling intellectual biography of the Egyptian Muslim theologian, scholar, and activist, Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917–1996). Al-Ghazali shaped the views of multiple generations of Muslim activists and was a one-time leading intellectual of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Mediating God charts his rise as a leading theologian in the Brotherhood during the 1940s, his subsequent clash and expulsion from the group in 1953, and his extensive post-Brotherhood career during the Nasser years. To tell this story, it excavates a massive collection of writings by Brotherhood members and their affiliates, many of which have never before been utilized in secondary scholarship. Through an analysis of this collection, Mediating God provides the first in-depth view at the richly cosmopolitan and eclectic intellectual milieu of the Brotherhood and its affiliates from the 1930s through the 1960s. It focuses particular attention on the underexamined, though voluminous, writings al-Ghazali and his colleagues dedicated to charting God as real and meaningful presence in all arenas of human life, from the mundane realms of daily life to political struggles and scientific enterprises. Ultimately, by highlighting the centrality of God as an inscrutable and incalculable-yet intimately known and felt-presence in al-Ghazali and his colleagues' project of spiritual and social uplift, Mediating God provides a way of understanding modern Islamic politics beyond the scholarly framework of Islamism and attendant claims about the functionalization, objectification, and systemization of Islam in modernity. Dr. Zarate is an assistant professor of Global Humanities at San Jose State University. He completed his PhD at Columbia University and is now a historian of the modern Middle East whose research explores Islam, theology, politics, science, and spirituality in twentieth-century Egypt. His scholarship has appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. His work combines historical research with approaches drawn from religious studies and anthropology, building on his training at Columbia University as a historian of global Islam. He has conducted extensive archival research in Egypt and the United States and works with Arabic-language primary sources. Dr. Amanie Yahia Antar is a post doctoral fellow at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada whose research concentrates on the history of Islamophobia in the premodern era, with a focus on sixteenth century Iberia.

Nicole Paquin's Kate: The Secrets Within These Walls (Paquin, 2026) tells of a century of buried secrets surrounding the mysterious death of Kate Morgan have been trapped within the walls of The Hotel Del Coronado. Only assumptions could be made when her lifeless body was found near the tumultuous seaside. However, the curiosity of why an affluent young woman would be traveling alone in the year 1892, has sparked many elaborate tales. It's rumored that her spirit remains to linger the hallways of the elegant hotel.This is her story. On the one-hundred-year anniversary of Kate's death, a young clairvoyant, Sofia, numinously draws Kate into materialization. For the first time, Kate communicates with the living- to help the girl from suffering a similar fate, and unravel the secrets preventing her unsettled spirit from eternal rest. With the help from the ghost of Kate Morgan, Sofia reveals the truth of a small-town paradise where not everything is as it seems.

The national parks are loved by many Americans and visitors from around the world. Yet, few realize how often these landscapes and their history have been shaped by questions answered in the courts. With more than 3,500 lawsuits involving the National Park Service, litigation has shaped and defined the character of the parks. Litigation has determined how land can be added to national parks, answered questions about treaty and free speech rights on park land, and settled numerous other disputes that have helped determine what the parks look like today. In her new book National Parks and the Supreme Court: Groundbreaking Legal Battles (University of Nevada Press, 2026), Carla Chung Mattix examines five landmark Supreme Court cases involving national parks over the course of nearly a century. These cases provide readers with a new lens to understanding the parks and help them understand the role of the courts in the nation's public lands. In this episode, Mattix, who was an attorney for the National Park Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of the Solicitor for 25 years, discusses her new book and the Court's influence on the national parks.

When German occupiers rolled into Paris in June 1940, they arrived wary of the French Catholic Church. In a country where more than 80 percent of citizens were Catholic, bishops held enormous moral sway. During the 1930s, many used their positions to forcefully condemn the rise of Nazism. But as the persecution of Jews escalated during the Occupation, every bishop in France maintained a deafening silence. In fact, the Church stood publicly alongside Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime. Even when bishops famously broke silence to protest the deportation of Jews in 1942—a moment long remembered as one of moral awakening—they quickly retreated, discouraging further defiance. The French Church’s public silence during the Holocaust is no secret. But as Aliza Luft shows, private interactions between bishops, French Jewish leaders, and Vichy officials were just as consequential. Turning to letters, diaries, and records of private conversations, Luft traces the moral dilemmas and calculated choices that shaped these hidden negotiations. As Jewish leaders turned to the Church for information and protection, bishops repeatedly assured them of the Church’s sympathy and support. These guarantees from the nation’s highest moral authorities, combined with the false promises of Vichy officials, encouraged French Jews to place their faith in relationships and republican ideals that proved tragically hollow. Drawing on years of archival research, Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2026) is a harrowing account of how genocide unfolds day by day—not only through spectacular violence, but also through misleading assurances, quiet capitulations, and broken promises.

With Art for the White House: A Changing Portrait of America (White House Association, 2026), Leslie Greene Bowman presents a wholly new perspective on the White House fine arts collection, revealing how all two-hundred and fifty years of America’s history can be told through the collection. Art for the White House begins with the story of how the collection was created—slowly and cautiously—as our young nation was eager to distinguish itself from artwork that could be associated with the patronage and luxuries of European monarchs. The very first work of art authorized by Congress was a painting that remains one of the greatest works of art in any collection of American art, George Washington by leading American portrait artist, Gilbert Stuart. This is the painting Dolley Madison saved in 1814 when the British set the White House afire and this painting has presided on the walls of the State Rooms longer than any other work of art. Bowman explains, “It is a touchstone to America’s violent and aspirational birth and a tribute to the success of its fragile experiment in the face of globally dominant, centuries-old monarchies.” Despite the symbolism of the first acquisition, the collection that was created and ultimately grew to more than 500 paintings, illustrations, and sculptures, was slow to develop both because the nation was young and trying to define itself and also because of the government’s lack of resources. American art had matured in the 19th century, establishing strengths in landscape, still-life, and genre scenes, but the White House’s collection remained limited. Bowman attributes much of the credit for the growth of the collection to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy who “made the nation’s history a priority for her expansion of art holdings.”  In less than three years, Mrs. Kennedy had transformed the house and art collection. Not only had it doubled in size, it represented the nation’s finest artists and included a variety of subject matter including still lifes, landscapes, history, and genre scenes. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Rongbin Han is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, where he studies Chinese politics and the internet. Han’s latest book—and the topic of this New Books Network episode—is Make China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism (Columbia UP, 2026). Make China Great Again delves into a subgenre of Chinese web novels that attempt to re-imagine the country’s history in ways that align with Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” and the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. In these novels, characters might go back in time to foment a communist revolution decades before the PRC’s establishment, industrialize the late Ming dynasty, or bring elements of democratic elections to the Song dynasty. Given the popularity of web novels in China—almost half of Chinese netizens read internet literature—such alternate histories provide a window into how an authoritarian state can negotiate the consent of its citizenry using popular culture. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

Local democracy doesn’t work as it should, declares Brian Adams in Activism, Majority Rule, and Local Democracy (Temple UP, 2026). Local politics is where citizens have the most opportunity for direct participation, control, and influence, but that activism doesn’t necessarily translate into majority rule. While greater local engagement can produce policy that better reflects activists’ strong preferences, Adams explains that activists are not representative of the public-at-large and states that a reconceptualization of how the public should be able to influence local officials is required. Based on interviews with activists in San Diego, California, Adams concludes that activism can be beneficial, but we need to view it as distinct from majority rule, with a focus on managing the tension between the two. Improving local democracy is not just a matter of generating more activism. It requires articulating when we want policy to reflect majority preferences and when we want activists to hold sway.

Two women, bound by blood and betrayal, must break silence across centuries--or be silenced forever, in the dazzling new novel by New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin. Lilith Legare's life is unraveling. Since her mother's death, strange things have been happening - plants turn toward her touch, animals linger in her path, and the birthmark on her arm has started tingling. Worse still is her recurring nightmare of being burned alive at the stake. Her search for answers brings her from Savannah to England, to the decaying Brackenmere Manor where the past blurs with the present. There, Lilith discovers a legacy she never asked for and along with it, the threat of peril. History must be rewritten, or she too will die. In 1645 Suffolk, Sybil Brantham stands accused as a witch. An educated, wealthy widow, she is branded a threat by men who fear her independence. As arrests begin and suspicion abounds, Sybil must protect her younger sister, even as betrayal takes root within her household. Across centuries, Lilith and Sybil are bound by blood and by danger. To save themselves, and each other, they must confront the silence that has stolen women's power for generations--and dare to claim their voices before it's too late. Listen to this interview about A Time of Witches (Hanover Square Press, 2026)

Irina Shevelenko's Russian Archaism: Nationalism and the Quest for a Modernist Aesthetic (Cornell University Press, 2024) discusses the late-19th and early 20th century search for an archaic Russian folk tradition that could ground Russian art in an idiom independent of “The West.” While the [re]discovery of 14th and 15th century icon painting partially achieved this goal, Russian Modernists most often ended up creating art that was entirely new and which owed little to Russian folk tradition; the audience for this art was, after all, that same Western and Westernized elite.

Strikingly clear, humane and helpful, this is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand autism and the autistic spectrum. Drawing on many years of clinical experience and research, as well as the testimonies of autistic people, Autisms (Penguin, 2026) is an up-to-the minute account of the many indicative features of autism and how they have been assessed and treated over almost a century. As rates of autism diagnosis escalate in almost all high-income countries, researchers today mostly agree that there is no single cause or even single clinical picture of autism. Rather than a neat and well-defined entity, autism is described as a spectrum or constellation of traits, varying in intensity, distribution and severity, with practically everyone in the general population showing at least some autistic trait or feature. At the same time, there has been a radical split between the ways in which autism is perceived. For many, it is a disorder, a pathology based on a deficit, whereas for others it is an identity, a natural variation in human cognitive and behavioural diversity. For anyone facing the special challenges of autism, it can be hard to find clarity amid such complexity and contradiction, making Darian Leader’s illuminating guide to the field of autism research and treatment particularly welcome.

When her family moves to a new country, Ren is heartbroken to leave Popo and her magical stories behind. In her new home, nothing feels familiar―until Ren discovers that, with her pencil, she can bring to life what she can’t find the words to say. Through drawing, she bridges the gap between her two worlds and transforms her loneliness into a meaningful connection. Tune in to this interview with author Bo Lu about Ren's Pencil: A Picture Book (Abrams, 2026) Bo Lu is an author-illustrator, and winner of an Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Honor. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He writes Making People, a newsletter on parenthood through history. Brian Van Zyl is a researcher and budding illustrator.

Todd Berliner's Hollywood Renegade: Elaine May, Mikey and Nicky, and the Making of a Masterpiece (U Texas Press, 2026) examines Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky with stands out in the history of Hollywood. After a troubled production, massive cost overruns, and lawsuits between May and the studio, the film received scathing reviews and failed at the box office. But the very qualities that initially alienated viewers and reviewers led later generations to regard the film as an overlooked masterpiece. Written and directed by the period’s only female New Hollywood filmmaker, Mikey and Nicky has not received the attention given to other unconventional films of the 1970s. But May worked for years to give each moment of the movie multiple areas of interest. She made every character, even peripheral ones, nuanced and memorable. And she designed every scene, even minor ones, as a performance event. Her lead actors, Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, thrived under her unorthodox directing style, earning acclaim even from reviewers who hated the movie. Decades in the making—years of scriptwriting, a shoot that spanned ten months, and three years spent editing—Mikey and Nicky shows us what Hollywood cinema can accomplish when talented filmmakers challenge Hollywood’s limited notion of professionalism, rejecting the harsh time pressures of commercial filmmaking in order to get the most out of every scene.

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Waubgeshig Rice about his novel, Moon of the Turning Leaves (Penguin Random House Canada, 2023). In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout. For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home in the wake of the power failure that brought about societal collapse. Since then they have survived and thrived the way their ancestors once did, but their natural food resources are dwindling, and the time has come to find a new home. Evan Whitesky volunteers to lead a mission south to explore the possibility of moving back to their original homeland, the “land where the birch trees grow by the big water” in the Great Lakes region. Accompanied by five others, including his daughter Nangohns, an expert archer, Evan begins a journey that will take him to where the Anishinaabe were once settled, near the devastated city of Gibson, a land now being reclaimed by nature. But it isn’t just the wilderness that poses a threat: they encounter other survivors. Those who, like the Anishinaabe, live in harmony with the land, and those who use violence. WAUBGESHIG RICE grew up in Wasauksing First Nation on Georgian Bay and now lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and three sons. He is the author of the short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge and the novels Legacy, Moon of the Crusted Snow, Moon of the Turning Leaves, and Early Bird. He graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002, and spent most of his news media career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left full-time journalism in 2020 to focus on his literary career. He also holds an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Nipissing University, a diploma in Anishnaabemowin and Program Development from Georgian College, and a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.

What are Taiwan’s ties with the Baltic States? This episode puts Estonia in the spotlight and familiarizes listeners with key developments in Estonia-Taiwan relations against the backdrop of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania’s decision to open a Taiwanese Representative Office in Vilnius, and growing tensions between the EU and China. The guest - Mart Tšernjuk from the University of Tartu - has been working on this topic for a number of years and published both in Estonian and English. One of his most recent publications is a chapter in an open-source book Partners in Need, Partners Indeed? Tracking Europe-Taiwan Relations Amidst Global Disruption (Central European Institute of Asian Studies, 2025). Mart Tšernjuk works at the University of Tartu as a lecturer in Chinese language and culture and as the Coordinator of Taiwanese Affairs at the Asia Centre. He is also President of the Estonian Oriental Society. The episode is hosted by Linas Didvalis, an Associate Professor at Centre for Asian Studies at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

Eating Grasshoppers: Chapulines and the Women Who Sell Them (U Texas Press, 2025) is an approachable ethnography of how grasshoppers are harvested, sold, and consumed in Oaxaca. Chapulines (toasted grasshoppers) are not a delicacy in Oaxaca. They are just food—good food—and a protein-rich seasonal snack that is the product of a long-standing industry based overwhelmingly on the labor of women. Jeffrey Cohen has interviewed dozens of these chapulineras, who harvest insects from corn and alfalfa fields, prepare them, and sell them in urban and rural marketplaces. An accessible ethnography, Eating Grasshoppers tells their story alongside the broader history of chapulines. For tourists, chapulines are an experience—a gateway to the “real” Oaxaca. For locals, they are ordinary fare, but also a reminder of Indigenous stability and rural survival. In a sense, eating chapulines is a declaration of independence from a government that has condemned eating insects as backward. Yet, while chapulines are a generations-old favorite, eating them is not an act of preservation. Cohen shows that the business of this traditional food is thoroughly modern and ever evolving, with entrepreneurial chapulineras responding nimbly to complex and dynamic markets. From alfalfa fields to online markets, Eating Grasshoppers takes readers inside one of the world’s most fascinating food cultures. Jeffrey H. Cohen is a professor in the department of anthropology at Ohio State University and the author or coeditor of several books, including Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropological Theory and Method in the Real World (UT Press, 2015). Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Jason Pargin about his new novel, There Are No Giant Crabs in this Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs (St. Martin's Press, 2026). New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin's nightmarishly hilarious John Dies at the End series is back to entertain all who dare enter. A massive, sticky pile of severed human limbs suddenly appears in the parking lot of a vacant department store in a desolate small town. A set of footprints is found trailing away in the snow, as if a single pair of bare feet had wandered off the pile. If this wasn’t puzzling enough, the cops soon find that no one seems to be missing the limbs. Some of the fingerprints on the severed arms belong to living people with all their appendages intact, others match no one on file, and the rest of the limbs somehow have no prints at all. This sounds like a case for local weirdos John, David, and Amy, partly because the cops don’t want the headache and partly because David’s own arm is in the pile, despite an identical copy of it still being attached to his body. When a mysterious man then shows up at David’s home claiming to be in pursuit of an entity he calls “the Penetrator,” it seems clear the trio is in for a long weekend. In addition to stopping whatever this nonsense is, the gang will also have to quell the panicked headlines that threaten to ensue, which could prompt the feds to try to just wipe the whole town off the map (again). As such, the first thing you need to know is that, contrary to whatever ugly rumors you may have heard, there are no giant crabs in this novel. Jason Pargin used to write under the pseudonym David Wong. He is the New York Times bestselling author of the John Dies at the End series and the Zoey Ashe novels. He is the former Executive Editor at Cracked.com and now writes fiction full time. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.

Yunus Turabi, a bus driver in Tehran, leads an unremarkable life. A solitary man since the unexpected deaths of his father and mother years ago, he is decidedly apolitical—even during the driver’s strike and its bloody end. But everyone has their breaking point, and Yunus has reached his. Handcuffed and blindfolded, he is taken to the infamous Evin prison for political dissidents. Inside this stark, strangely ordered world, his fate becomes entwined with Hajj Saeed, his personal interrogator. The two develop a disturbing yet interdependent relationship, with each playing his assigned role in a high stakes psychological game of cat and mouse, where Yunus endures a mind-bending cycle of solitary confinement and interrogation. In their startlingly intimate exchanges, Yunus’s life begins to unfold—from his childhood memories growing up in a freer Iran to his heartbreaking betrayal of his only friend. As Yunus struggles to hold on to his sanity and evade Saeed’s increasingly undeniable accusations, he must eventually make an impossible choice: continue fighting or submit to the system of lies upholding Iran’s power. Gripping, startling, and masterfully told, Then the Fish Swallowed Him (HarperVia, 2020) is a haunting story of life under despotism. Amir Ahmadi Arian started his writing career as a journalist in Iran in 2000. He has published two novels, a collection of stories, and a book of nonfiction in Persian. He also translated from English to Persian novels by E.L Doctorow, Paul Auster, P.D. James, and Cormac McCarthy. Since 2013 Amir has been writing and publishing exclusively in English. In recent years his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, LRB, Harpers, Paris Review, and the New York Review of Books, etc. He was the recipient of The Axinn Foundation/E.L. Doctorow Fellowship for 2016 - 2018 from NYU. His next novel, The Season of Wild Poppies, will be published in 2027 with Heny Holt. Recommended books: Vargas Llosa, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Jane Harper, The Dry Jeff Lemire, The Underwater Welder Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

Globally, we spend around $3 trillion dollars a year on research, roughly 2% of global GDP. This activity is the source of many breakthroughs and innovations, not only in the sciences but in all domains of life. Without research, we wouldn’t have as detailed an understanding of past events or cures to once-deadly diseases. Research, however, is also a source of skepticism and suspicion. The activity conjures fears of viral lab leaks, misaligned artificial intelligence, deadly weapons of war, and wasting of taxpayer money. Research: A Manifesto presents a history of the idea and activity of research to demystify a process that despite being so prevalent is so little understood.

In this episode, Amina and Chella had a wide ranging conversation with Shahed Ezaydi about her recent book, which explores the interconnectedness between white feminism and Islamophobia, and how Muslim women are frequently harmed by both. This episode took us into discussions around Iran, Afghanistan and Europe, and the Orientalism still prevalent in these exchanges. Shahed Ezaydi is an award-winning writer, specialising in features and reporting on culture, social issues and feminism. Shahed is also the author of The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women (Pluto Press, 2026), which is her debut book.

A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Simon and Schuster, 2017) is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave who risked everything to escape the nation’s capital and reach freedom. When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary and eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about whom little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. With impeccable research, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked it all to gain freedom from the famous founding father. Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. She seeks the extraordinary in the ordinary, and reinterprets the historical narrative in both traditional and creative forms. She supports her work-life balance with long walks and her love of photography, which you can find here. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In March 1942, Japanese troops landed on Java's north coast and were welcomed by many of the Indonesians they had come to conquer. It’s an indication of just how much the Second World War undermined the foundations of European empire, setting up a postwar order that still governs Asia today. Hans van de Ven’s new book Blood Dawn: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia (Basic Books, 2026) starts in the 19th century, as European empires spread across Asia—only for Japan’s invasion of China in 1937, followed by its rapid advance south in 1941, to undermine the rationale for Western influence and control in China, Indonesia and India—and then, even after Japan’s defeat, the West was forced to retreat from the region. Hans van de Ven is a professor of modern Chinese history at Cambridge University and a visiting chair professor in history at Peking University. He is the author or editor of ten previous books on Chinese history and the history of warfare. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Blood Dawn. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism (Essentia Books, 2025) is a compelling exploration of fundamental questions about existence, reality, and the meaning of life that challenges the traditional scepticism of Western thought. It presents evidence for a systematic, comprehensive, and fundamental world-theory, and places the reader in a position to judge its merits and plausibility for themselves. Peter G. Jones explains the ongoing failure of Western philosophers to comprehend metaphysics as a consequence of not engaging with the only world-theory that survives analysis, the one endorsed by the writers of the Indian Upanishads, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Meister Eckhart and, many would say, Jesus and Muhammad. The findings of philosophers in the Western analytical ‘rational’ tradition are compared with the teachings of the Perennial tradition and shown to be in complete harmony. In Pursuit of the Inconceivable presents a philosophical explanation of mysticism, an apology for Abrahamic religion, a solution for all metaphysical problems, and an appeal for a significant change of attitude in the academic and scientific communities.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington (Pantheon, 2026), the untold story of the pioneering Black women artists and activists who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington. There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day's headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom. In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these singular women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker, civil rights activist Rosa Parks, gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program; and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women’s work. How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries—some famous, others soon to be—in novelistic detail and like never seen before. Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

In this episode, danah discusses proposed changes to the census that could lead to population undercounts, distort congressional apportionment, and have other far-reaching consequences. The public comment period closes November 2, 2026. You can submit a comment here. Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census (U Chicago Press, 2026) is an eye-opening story of the people who make the census, the United States’ largest and most consequential dataset, and the growing threats to their crucial work. By many measures, the US census is the government’s largest non-wartime operation, and one of the world’s oldest and biggest data-making endeavors. The 2020 census required more than a decade of planning and technical work—not to mention managing nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers simultaneously—to collect data about the American public. That data was then processed to count each of 331,449,281 residents once—and only once—and in the right place. The operation is also one of the country’s most consequential. Census data determine how political power and federal funding are allocated. Census data make politics, and consequently, politics make census data. In this urgent book, danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amidst a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians’ methods. With rare insider access to the Census Bureau, boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government civil servants who made the 2020 census. By documenting the perspectives of government workers, Data Are Made, Not Found provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy’s data. Each chapter reveals a different challenge—ranging from the last-minute fights about a citizenship question to the not-so-helpful help of well-intended stakeholders to avoid undercounts—and shows how civil servants responded to each problem, controversy, and hurdle. Boyd shows how many of the challenges that the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of political operatives, data users, and various stakeholders playing what boyd calls “Jenga politics,” weakening the administrative state for short-term political gains by removing support and adding more requirements. Civil servants saved the 2020 census, but future censuses—and other data-making efforts related to elections, health, and the economy—are precarious. Boyd’s message is clear and compelling: protecting democracy means protecting the people and institutions that produce this data. danah's website here

Based on the groundbreaking podcast of the same name, Last Day: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis (Gallery/Lemonada Books, 2026) is borne of Stephanie Wittels Wachs’s determination to shed light on the ongoing opioid epidemic in America. After the tragic and untimely death of her brother Harris Wittels to an opioid overdose, Stephanie connected with Jessica Cordova Kramer, whose brother died under nearly identical circumstances. Together they launched Last Day, a podcast that facilitates unflinching conversations with addiction specialists, harm reductionists, people in long-term recovery, public policy experts pushing for reform, and many others, to determine what could have saved their brothers lives and how we can prevent overdose deaths moving forward. This August, Steph published a book by the same name. Last Day weaves together a heartbreaking story of personal loss and an unflinching investigation of what could have prevented it. Alongside expert voices on opioid addiction, this book issues a clarion call for change in an ongoing and overwhelming opioid crisis. In this episode, Steph and host Emily Dufton discuss Steph's transformational journey from acute grief to investigative reporting on the state of American drug treatment today. While she still struggles with the loss of Harris, Last Day, in book and podcast form, offer hope for potential solutions and a guidebook for people still in the thick of the struggle. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America and Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs.

How reading the Declaration of Independence as a document of history explains its intended meaning Thomas Jefferson chose his words carefully. Few could have been more deliberate than “When in the Course of human events,” the phrase with which he opened the Declaration of Independence. As Steven Sarson shows in The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States (U Virginia Press, 2025) , the original Declaration moved through the ages of human history from Creation to American independence, assessing it according to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The Declaration’s history and historical consciousness therefore help answer one of American history’s great questions: How did the founders reconcile their lofty views on equality and liberty with the inequities and iniquities that they maintained in their time? The contingencies of history and the complexities of natural law, Sarson demonstrates, meant that the Declaration’s eloquent promises of equality and liberty only applied partially to women and poor men, and not at all to Loyalists, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved people. The Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” has since become a promise of universal equality and liberty. As we reach its 250th anniversary, it is important to understand its original context as well as to continue the mission of making its promises a lived reality for all.

We are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media (U California Press, 2025) Niall Docherty looks closely at this belief and exposes the complex relations of power expressed through its articulation and enactment. Docherty creatively and empirically shows how the discourses, designs, and habits of online well-being push user conduct in certain directions, at the expense of others. This is a contingent mode of governance that combines logics of neoliberalism, practices of psychologized person-making, and persuasive capitalist interfaces. By highlighting the damaging effects of this current arrangement, Healthy Users charts a path that will change how we understand and study social media well-being in the future.

How has Yoweri Museveni remained in power for four decades – and what happens when he is gone? In this episode of the People, Power, Politics podcast, Nic Cheeseman talks to Mesrob Vartavarian about three important books on Uganda and his argument that the country has become a "militarised family state". Their discussion explores whether Museveni's durability rests on coercion, patronage and political manipulation or negotiation with powerful social institutions; how far today's system reflects deeper patterns in Uganda's history – and whether a political order increasingly dependent on Museveni, his family and the military can survive him.                                                                               Mesrob Vartavarian is an independent scholar based in the United States whose research focuses on democracy, authoritarianism, state formation, nationalism and political change, with a particular interest in Africa and the Middle East. Mesrob’s work examines how political orders are constructed and maintained, and the relationship between formal institutions, social structures and political power. His recent review essay, "Coercion, co-optation and kinship: Uganda's militarised family state" in the Journal of Modern African Studies, brings together three major studies of contemporary Uganda to examine the durability and transformation of Yoweri Museveni's rule. Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Transcript here

Every year, NBN speaks with the president of AUPresses in anticipation of University Press Week. This year, press week will take place from November 9 through the 13th, with the theme: #PowerUP.

Be the main character in the story that is your life – that is the ambition of eight remarkable women featured in Anne Fernald’s collective biography, Her Own Voice, guided by Virginia Woolf

In 2018, Gyula Remes died in the underpass at Westminster tube station, just steps from the Houses of Parliament and luxury developments worth millions. How could this happen in one of the richest cities on Earth? Episode one introduces Gyula and the world he died in: a Westminster plagued by the twin crises of homelessness and empty homes. In a London borough where extreme wealth exists alongside extreme poverty, Kojo traces the circumstances of Gyula’s death and a troubling question emerges. What begins as a local tragedy opens the door to a much larger system, which we open onto a strange land called ‘offshore’.

A University of Houston - Clear Lake MHA/MBA grad who climbed from revenue cycle to COO, and then wrote the roadmap for everyone behind her.

The Rediscovery of George "Nash" Walker: : The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America (SUNY Press, 2025) is the first biography dedicated to the life and cultural contributions of this actor, writer, and producer who revolutionized Black American theatre during the early twentieth century. In 1892, Walker left his hometown with a medicine show and quickly formed a partnership with comedian Bert Williams that would last nearly eighteen years. Under the moniker of “The Two Real Coons,” Williams and Walker used their comedy to erode the stereotyped White image of minstrel-style “cooning.” Their theatrical company produced many popular plays, including Clorindy/A Lucky Coon (1899–1900), Policy Players (1900–1901), Sons of Ham (1901–1902), In Dahomey (1902–1905), Abyssinia (1905–1906), Bandanna Land (1907–1909), and Mr. Lode of Koal (1909–1910), even performing on Broadway and abroad. An activist at heart, Walker insisted that audiences receive carefully curated Black entertainment, told from a uniquely Afro-American perspective. Unfortunately, Walker contracted syphilis and was forced to retire in 1909, marking the end of the first golden age of Black theatre. Despite his landmark contributions, Walker’s story has been largely forgotten. Drawing on archival resources, newspaper accounts, memoirs, oral histories, and manifestos written by Walker, this book celebrates the accomplishments of the vanguard generation of Black artists who were active between the close of the Civil War and the start of World War I. Daniel Atkinson’s research and commitment to the legacy of George Walker and his generation is deep and authentic. Listen in on this fantastic conversation and check out also previous episodes with Dr. Cheryl Thompson and Es-pranza Humphry, both scholars of this era. And when you’re finished, head over to the Additions to the Archive Substack where we continued our conversation. Daniel E. Atkinson is an independent scholar who earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington where he specialized in Afro-American music and culture. You can find Daniel on Instagram and LinkedIn. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

What is magic, and why does it keep returning in new disguises? For a special Halloween episode, host Ryan Shinkel is joined by essayist and novelist Tara Isabella Burton, author of Social Creature, Here in Avalon, Strange Rites, and Self-Made, to trace the Western esoteric tradition from the Renaissance to the present. Burton describes learned magic as the search for hidden correspondences between things, a humanist project that promised not union with God but the chance to become godlike through secret knowledge. The conversation follows that promise through Ficino’s Hermetic translations at the Medici court, the 19th-century occult revival and its turn from proto-science toward art, reaction, and the unstable self, and the American arrival of New Thought, which gave us manifesting. Along the way: why the technocratic class keeps finding itself at the center of the magical worldview, what the tradition’s two-tier esotericism has in common with the noble lie, and how occult imagery shaped modern propaganda. Burton also discusses how her own search for beauty led her to Anglo-Catholicism, whether demons can possess a chatbot, the nature of charisma, and what a human writer can offer that a large language model cannot.

El Salvador Reborn: Abortion, Environment, and the Politics of Survival in a Postwar Nation ( examines the nation’s efforts to reshape its identity after the Peace Accords amid declining Cold War tensions. The book explores activism in postwar El Salvador by focusing on two key organizations, Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto and Foro del Agua, highlighting their political strategies during a critical moment in El Salvador’s formation.

Karmic Winds: Reflections from “The Smartest Guy in Hollywood” (Rare Bird Books, 2026) is a memoir of power, collapse, and reckoning by Peter M. Hoffman, a Yale-trained lawyer and Hollywood insider who once stood at the center of the independent film boom and later found himself stripped of status, freedom, and certainty. As president of Carolco Pictures, Hoffman helped steer an era-defining slate that included Terminator 2, Basic Instinct, and Rambo, navigating a world of massive egos, creative brilliance, and financial brinkmanship. But ambition has its cost. After the industry turns, legal battles mount, and a federal conviction leads to imprisonment, Hoffman is forced into a confrontation far more exacting than any boardroom negotiation: a reckoning with his own choices, illusions, and moral blind spots. Set partly within the quiet, disorienting confines of Terminal Island federal prison, Karmic Winds traces a journey through humiliation and loss toward clarity and acceptance. Drawing on philosophy, Buddhism, and a lifelong search for meaning, Hoffman examines the nature of justice, the seductions of power, and the invisible forces—personal and systemic—that shape our lives. Neither a tell-all nor a plea for absolution, Karmic Winds is a deeply reflective account of success and failure, told with intellectual rigor and emotional restraint. It is a story of what remains when the titles disappear, the noise falls away, and one is left alone with the self...and the winds that carried them there.

The history of the environmental movement-from environmentalism of the nineteenth century to the environmental justice struggles of the late twentieth century-has often been portrayed as a series of efforts led by white environmentalists. In Stewards of the Land, Stevie Ruiz reassesses the movement and reveals that it has always been a multiracial endeavor. From Southern California berry fields to Japanese American concentration camps, from Chinese cooks in national parks to Chicano Civilian Conservation Corps workers, Ruiz traces how the racialized labor and environmental knowledge of Asian migrants and Chicana/o communities built the material foundations of modern environmentalism. Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West (UNC Press, 2026) argues that environmental justice was never just a reaction to pollution in the 1970s but has a much longer history tied to land theft, labor exploitation, and the everyday struggles of frontline communities to live and work with dignity. Drawing from comparative ethnic studies and archival research and with a commitment to decolonial praxis, Ruiz recovers the stories of those who labored-often invisibly-to build, maintain, and reimagine environmental spaces in the American West. Stevie Ruiz is a Professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at California State University, Northridge and a historian, author, and environmental justice scholar. His research focuses on the intersection of labor, immigration, and the American environmental movement — the work of building, maintaining, and stewarding the land that is so often left out of the story. For more information about his work, see his website. Kalani Foster is a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester whose research focuses on the intersection between biodiversity conservation, data and technology, and coloniality. For more information, and ways to contact him, see his research profile.

Wartime leaders should understand the link between violent means and political ends. They should also have a sense of how strategic decisions will affect the post-war peace. Yet they often fail to make these connections. Mistaking strategy for grand strategy, or misunderstanding the relationship between them, can frustrate soldiers and statesmen alike. Sometimes it can lead to national ruin. In this Adelphi book Strategy and Grand Strategy (Routledge, 2025), Joshua Rovner offers a lucid analysis of strategy (a theory of victory) and grand strategy (a theory of security). He demonstrates vividly how these concepts interact in case studies from antiquity to the present, and he describes the implications for war and peace at a time of extraordinary technological change. Rovner’s work will prove indispensable to policymakers, scholars and anyone seeking to grasp these essential but often misunderstood concepts.

Caught between wars raging in both Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Greece is an island of relative stability. Popularly considered the cradle of Western civilisation, this is a Christian Orthodox state on the edge of the Islamic world. And, after a half-century of integration into NATO and the EU, Greece is now reabsorbing into the Near East, as the West fractures and new Middle Eastern powers rise. The country’s importance as a cultural and geopolitical hybrid is growing. Travelling through the region, Sean Mathews explores at ground level the tectonic shifts reshaping Europe and the Middle East. He meets the last Greek merchants in Cairo, and hears from Istanbul’s remaining Greeks about Turkey’s break with the West. In Jerusalem, he discovers a budding alliance between Greece and Israel; and in a faded Ottoman port, he encounters football hooligans loyal to a Russian oligarch. The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East (Hurst, 2025) is a bold reappraisal of Greece as a Near Eastern nation uncovers its Byzantine and Ottoman past as a key to survival in today’s chaotic, shrinking world. Sean Mathews is a Greek-American journalist who has covered a wide swath of the Middle East. He is a correspondent with Middle East Eye, and has also written for The Economist and Al-Monitor, among others. He calls Athens home and travels often in the region. This is his first book. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review. He is also a host on the Thinking Global podcast for E-International Relations.

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Agi Bodis speaks with Dr Carly Steele (Curtin University, Perth) about researching education with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and how to enable culturally and linguistically responsive teaching. They discuss the importance of positionality when working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context, and why it matters in collaborative work with communities. Through her professional experience in the On-Country Teacher Education program in Western Australia, Carly reflects on the way educational scholarship is rooted in community engagement. The conversation provides insights into the needs of teacher education to better prepare graduate teachers and an example for an innovative pedagogical approach co-created with community and one that reflects the local language, culture and Country. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

Few things delight a historical novelist more than true stories of forgotten individuals remembered, if they are remembered at all, for one dramatic moment or act. Flora Cordier—a Belgian glove maker who apparently married the last effective Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamid II (1876–1909), before his accession to the throne—is just such a person. Flora left almost no impression in the historical record, not much more than a newspaper account and a few references to her outside the empire in later life, yet the question of how a European craftswoman might not only have set up shop in nineteenth-century Istanbul but have also crossed the path of a prince from the House of Osman begs to be told. Christina Ståhle tackles this problem with aplomb in Before He Was Red (Pebble Press, 2025), her debut novel. The title refers to Abdulhamid’s later nickname, Red (in the sense of bloody), reflecting his use of terror and violence to suppress his enemies. Here he goes by the name Hamid, a choice made in part out of necessity (heirs to the Ottoman throne in the 1870s are not supposed to leave the palace) and in part to conceal his true identity from Flora and from the numerous rebels, mostly students, massing in the streets of Istanbul to protest the actions, or lack thereof, of the government. It’s a tense time, with the Russian Empire stirring up rebellion among the Christian populations of the Balkan states, still officially under Ottoman rule, and the British Empire doing its best to control the Turks both financially and politically. Ståhle does a wonderful job of juggling the historical, political, and romantic plot lines, maneuvering a large cast of characters, some of whom have multiple identities, without ever losing sight of the drama inherent in the romance between Flora and Hamid. Born in London to Swedish parents, Christina Ståhle grew up in various countries—including the UK, Italy, and Saudi Arabia—and speaks four languages. A political scientist, she has lived in Belgium for the last thirty years. Before He Was Red is her debut novel. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including one co-written with P.K. Adams. Her latest book, Song of the Silk Weaver, appeared in September 2026.

What keeps political power aimed at the good of those it governs? Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton, joins host Ryan Shinkel to discuss her book Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political (Princeton UP, 2026). She distinguishes rule, any hierarchical relationship of direction, from office, which is bound by term limits, eligibility requirements, limited powers, and accountability. Lane argues that the Republic, far from Karl Popper’s vision of unconstrained power, is a book about constitutional design: its very title, Politeia, meant a city’s offices and laws, and Plato surrounds his rulers with legal safeguards rather than trusting virtue alone. The conversation also takes up the noble lie, the written law code of the Laws and its dawn-meeting council, and the Statesman’s account of weaving a city divided between hawks and doves — a problem we’d now call polarization. Lane closes on why no AI can do the work of reading Plato for you and an invitation for listeners to live with these texts themselves.

In the United States, hundreds of thousands of elected and appointed officials serve more than 50,000 subnational governments, making important decisions about services ranging from education to infrastructure to policing. The provision of critical city services shapes citizens’ everyday lives. Supposedly, local politicians are the elected representatives closest to the people they serve, but are they actually accountable to their constituents? Justin de Benedictis-Kessner shows that they are not: local elections routinely fail to punish bad politicians or reward strong performers. The Fog of Accountability: How Institutions Keep Voters from Holding Their Local Governments Accountable  argues that this is because urban politics is defined by minimally effective competition, complex institutions that confuse voters, and a lack of effective media coverage. These institutional features combine to stymie even well-intentioned voters and make accountability difficult. Fixing these problems is challenging, but, as de Benedictis-Kessner shows, change is possible if we can enable citizens to reclaim and assert their political power. Justin de Benedictis-Kessner is the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His work has received the Clarence Stone Emerging Scholar Award and the Norton Long Young Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association, and has been published in peer-reviewed journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Science Advances. Host Ursula Hackett is the Churchill Associate Professor of U.S. Politics at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Her award-winning book, America’s Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State is published with Cambridge University Press.

Mapping Medical Modernity: Urban Space and Public Health in Tokyo, 1868–1920 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026) by Professor Susan L. Burns explores the history of medical modernization and public health in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tokyo, a city undergoing rapid transformation from the seat of power of the Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period to the capital of a modern nation-state and its expanding empire in the Meiji period. Tracing the development of institutions and policies designed to improve medical care and public health in a dense urban environment, Professor Burns examines tensions between the involved parties—including doctors and policymakers, police and civil officials, residents and those who governed them—and provides case studies focused on three of the city’s major challenges in public health: syphilis, cholera, and mental illness. Drawing upon a wide range of archival materials and contemporary accounts, Dr. Burns also employs geographic information system analysis in mapping the complicated relationships interlinking aspects of the urban environment, social life, public policy, and commercialized medical culture to demonstrate visually how policy decisions and medical capitalism gradually reshaped existing spatial arrangements in the city as well as the social relations that unfolded within them. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

What is the place of poetry in the modern world? In Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public (Columbia UP, 2025), Keegan Cook Finberg, an Associate Professor of English at University of Maryland, Baltimore County narrates the contemporary history of poetry as the emergence of a public literary form. The book shows poets' engagement with social and economic changes, such as the rise of bureaucracy and office jobs, suburbanisation, feminism, and neoliberalism, alongside changes in literary forms and literary practices In doing so, the analysis demonstrates both the importance of poetry to reflect social and economic change, as well as its potential as a critical force in our moment of social and economic crisis. Ranging widely across individual poets, artistic collectives, and performance activities, the book will be of interest across the humanities, as well as anyone interested in why poetry matters today.

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Jennifer LoveGrove about her poetry collection, The Tinder Sonnets (Book*hug Press, 2026). From acclaimed writer Jennifer LoveGrove comes an electric poetry collection exploring female sexual desire, contemporary dating, misogyny, and middle age that reflects and embodies our social media-saturated times. Unabashedly confessional and radically vulnerable, The Tinder Sonnets rallies against the long-standing demand that “women of a certain age” politely accept being rendered non-sexual. Each poem is based on a date, relationship, or contemporary dating insight, and highlights how misogyny impacts the way we connect in the modern world–or don’t. Juxtaposing folklore and the natural world against the digital sphere of texting and dating apps, this is poetry that defies invisibility and instead confronts and subverts it through a discerning feminist lens. While experimenting with the traditional form of the sonnet, these sonically textured poems are playful and wry, erotic and joyful, all while refusing to shy away from palpable anger, frustration, and disappointment. Centring strength and resilience in the face of a resurgence of misogynistic chauvinism, The Tinder Sonnets is a staunch refusal to recede from view, to cede sexual space, or to be quiet and polite. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and is a 2026 Giller Prize finalist. Her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.

In Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs (AK Press, 2026), Michael Doan explores the work and legacy of James and Grace Lee Boggs, two of the most influential American radical thinkers of the twentieth century. Grace Lee Boggs earned a PhD in philosophy in the 1940s, though facing obstacles to an academic career as a young Chinese American woman, she left and became a political organizer in Detroit, where she met and married James Boggs, a Black autoworker and labor organizer from Alabama who had moved North during the Great Migration. Over the course of more than forty years of partnership and participation in labor, civil rights, Black Power, anticolonial, and feminist movements, the Boggses articulated a philosophy of long-term revolutionary strategy they called “dialectical humanism.” Rejecting state socialism and traditional Marxism, dialectical humanism instead attributes social change to the conscious, collective activity of people engaged in place-based organizing with a view to transforming everyday life, with hallmark projects such as community gardens, daycare networks, and mediation programs. Above all, revolution is not a fixed program but must evolve as ideas, movements, and institutions are changed through collective practice. Through their life work and publications, James and Grace Lee Boggs modeled how to do philosophy from within movements. In Rehearsing the Future, Doan lays out the intellectual history of dialectical humanism, the far-reaching theory and practice that continues to guide movement-building around the world, inspiring forms of activism such as visionary organizing and emergent strategy. Michael D. Doan is a Canadian-born father, educator, activist, and philosopher. He joined the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in 2016 and is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oakland University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025).

American Amazigh: Remaking North African Indigeneity and Belonging in the Diaspora (NYU Press, 2026) by Dr. Heide Castañeda examines the complex identity negotiations of Amazigh people—also known as Berbers—as they build community and claim visibility in the American landscape. These distinct ethnic groups, whose histories predate the arrival of Arabs in North Africa, unsettle categories of race and ethnicity in the U.S., challenging dominant assumptions about what it means to be African, Indigenous, and Muslim. Their experiences also disrupt familiar immigration narratives, revealing the complexities and challenges of legal migration processes such as family reunification and the Diversity Immigrant Visa program. In seeking to make their struggles for recognition legible within the American context, Amazigh communities grapple with conditional belonging while also bearing the legacy of marginalization in their home countries, which is rooted in colonial divisions, postcolonial nationalism, and Arabization policies, fostering systemic discrimination. In the diaspora, Amazigh identity is being actively reshaped as individuals and organizations engage with new ideological frameworks, global Indigenous rights movements, and recent political gains in North Africa, where they have long fought for linguistic, cultural, and legal equality. The Indigenous perspective has been largely missing from the literature on migration. Drawing on four years of ethnographic research, and framed around the concept of diasporic indigeneity, the book explores how the Amazigh people forge new anchors of belonging and create spaces of social cohesion. By uncovering both the opportunities and challenges presented in the American context, the book moves beyond conventional migration narratives to illuminate how identity and belonging are continually translated and reconfigured within new places. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Chekhov liked to joke that he was a doctor by profession and merely did literary work in his spare time. Behind the joke lies an intriguing truth. We remember Chekhov as a towering literary figure, but medicine and humanitarian work occupied much of his life and profoundly shaped the way he encountered human suffering. Nowhere is this more striking than in his remarkable journey across Siberia to Sakhalin Island. Travelling through an immense and unforgiving landscape to investigate conditions in the penal colony, Chekhov undertook an expedition that he would remember as one of the defining experiences of his life. Written by a neuroscientist and practising clinician, Chekhov’s Sakhalin Journey: Doctor, Humanitarian, Writer (Bloomsbury, 2023) follows Chekhov along this extraordinary route, drawing on his own account to reveal the doctor, humanitarian and observer behind the celebrated author. The result is a richer portrait of Chekhov, one that asks us to see his medicine and literature not as competing lives, but as different expressions of the same searching attention to human experience and the determination to not ‘do nothing’ to improve human lives. Professor Jonathan Cole (MA, MSc, DM, FRCP, FTPS), is a British consultant clinical neurophysiologist, author, and researcher known for combining neuroscience with first-person patient narratives. He serves as a consultant at the University Hospital in Dorset, a visiting professor at Bournemouth University, and has served as the President of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Inspired by his mentor and friend Oliver Sacks, Cole’s work heavily emphasizes the subjective, lived experience of individuals surviving rare or severe neurological conditions. Jonathan is one of those rare scientists who combines both the rigor of scientific investigations with literary endeavours and even theatre.  I will include both Jonathan’s personal website and his website for his collaborations in theatrical productions. Dr. Anya Daly is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics in the School of Arts and Society, University of Tasmania. Interdisciplinary collaborations are at the core of Anya’s research interests. She investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy.

John Madden retired abruptly from coaching in 1979, five months after receiver Darryl Stingley suffered a paralyzing injury against his Raiders. The tragedy would never leave him. He had no intention of entering broadcasting. Yet, within a decade—BAM!—he had become the most recognizable voice in football and a driving force behind America’s most powerful sports league. Veteran sports journalist Scott Howard-Cooper reveals how Madden recast himself at exactly the right moment. Television was transforming sports, and the NFL needed a translator to turn complex strategy into entertainment. Madden didn’t just analyze football; he redefined how it was watched and loved—from the telestrator and pregame film study to Thanksgiving football. But BAM! goes beyond the booth, tracing Madden’s personal life, unguarded moments, unexpected turns, and his influence through advertising, network wars, labor battles, concussion debates, and the Madden NFL video game—which reshaped gaming and brought football to new generations. Yet, Madden could never entirely escape what the game demanded from the men who played it. BAM!: John Madden, the NFL Explosion, and the Video Game that Changed Sports (Diversion Books, 2026) is the story of how one rumpled, affable man became a defining figure in football’s greatest boom—and its reckoning —and why the NFL cannot stop invoking his name.

After the groundbreaking success of his debut film, Boyz N the Hood in 1991, filmmaker John Singleton (1968–2019) gained worldwide acclaim, earned the respect of major film industry figures, and became the topic of both scholarly and popular culture film conversations. He also made history by becoming the youngest—and the first African American—nominee for the Academy Award for Best Director. However, lukewarm reception for his sophomore release, Poetic Justice in 1993, dampened the momentum of his early promise, and critical interest in his subsequent work waned. Once Upon a Time in South Central LA: John Singleton’s Hood Trilogy (UP of Mississippi, 2026) seeks to reframe Singleton’s legacy and reaffirm his significance as a filmmaker. Author Mark D. Cunningham argues that Singleton’s so-called “hood trilogy”—Boyz N the Hood, Poetic Justice, and Baby Boy (2001)—offers a vital cinematic lens into the lived experiences of young African American men and women. Blending film analysis with literature, music, sociology, and cultural studies, the volume positions Singleton’s work as a critical intersection of African American history, identity, and popular culture. Cunningham explores Singleton’s portrayal of Black masculinity, the social environment of South Central Los Angeles, and the impact of hip-hop culture on gender dynamics. By revisiting Singleton’s early career and the cultural weight of his films, Once Upon a Time in South Central LA reasserts the filmmaker’s place in the cinematic canon and highlights the enduring influence of his work on African American youth and storytelling. Dr. Mark D. Cunningham is professor and chair of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at Austin Community College. His research focuses on film and television studies, with an emphasis on Black filmmakers, screen adaptations, and representations of race and identity in popular media. His scholarship engages figures such as directors John Singleton, Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, and rapper/actor Ice-T. His work has appeared in The Atlantic and The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and he has contributed to numerous edited volumes in film, television, and media studies. You can find Mark on Instagram. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Sullivan's Substack for a continued conversation between she and Mark, as they discuss the hood trilogy's impact in the 21st century.

From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious texts The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever found, were discovered in a cave by a shepherd and his goat. This story is mostly true, and it is not the first such tale about long-lost books. Legend has it that the Zohar--the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah--was lost for centuries before being discovered in a cave by a farmer, who sold it to spice merchants as packing material. It was only when a scholar picked through a trash heap and joined the fragments together that the world recovered its mystical secrets. These are just two of many tales recounting the discovery of ancient religious manuscripts. Tracing a time-honored pattern of storytelling about lost and recovered sacred texts, in Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles: How We Discover the Sacred Past (Yale UP, 2026) Eva Mroczek reveals a surprising feature of Jewish and Christian thought: the idea that scripture is not complete--that it is partly lost, destroyed, or hidden--is not only the stuff of fantasy novels and conspiracy theories. Mroczek shows that modern scholarly mythmaking is more tightly bound with Jewish and Christian legends than we may think. Through the lens of discovery tales, this innovative book explores how traditions live in tension with the possibility of unknown pasts and surprising discoveries. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Eva Mroczek is Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies; Professor; Religious Studies; Undergraduate Advisor for Religious Studies Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

How has Donald Trump’s return to the White House transformed the relationship between Canada and the United States? In this episode of International Horizons, John Torpey speaks with Randall Hansen, Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the University of Toronto, about Mark Carney’s response to U.S. tariffs and annexation rhetoric, rising Canadian nationalism, and the challenges facing the two countries. They explore whether this crisis could become an opportunity for Canada to reduce its economic dependence on the United States and redefine its place in the world. Link here