New Books in History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode, scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. The network offers over 150 channels and 28,000 episodes, covering a wide range of academic topics. Listeners can explore the full catalog on the New Books Network website and subscribe to a free weekly newsletter for updates.
Episodes
Xian Aubin Wang, "Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024
(Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Xian Aubin Wang investigates
decades of contentious relations between the Communist party-state of
China and the Muslim community of southern Yunnan centered on the
village of Shadian, site of an incident of state violence in 1975 that
resulted in 1600 civilian deaths. Examini
Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A Conversation with Gregory Claeys
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking volumes that dramatically revise our previous understanding of his activities as a writer and his importance as a democratic theorist in the age of revolutions. It includes about 180 new letters and some two hundred works newly
Jonathan Schneer, "Nine Days in May: The General Strike Of 1926" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In May, 1926, nearly three million British workers downed tools to support nearly one million of their countrymen, miners whose employers meant to lengthen their working day and cut their pay. This General Strike brought the country to a grinding halt - which, according to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, represented a threat not merely to the nation but to the parliamentary system its
Kate Dannies, "Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Kate Dannies examines the gender and family dimensions of mobilisation for the First World War in the Ottoman Empire, situating the war in a long-nineteenth-century social history of Ottoman military reform for the first time. It focuses on the military legal concept of muinsizlik (sole br
Chiara Formichi, "Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia" (Stanford UP, 2025)
In her most recent publication, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia (Stanford UP, 2025), Chiara Formichi argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia's progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. While sidelined in the Dutch colonial project of hygie
Christopher de Bellaigue, "The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King" (Bodley Head, 2025)
What does a 16th century ruler reveal about the nature of power, past and present?
Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future are at the mercy of their own dynastic law: whichever of his five sons succeeds him must eventually kill all the others. So why not get a head start?For the next fifteen years, as Suleyman the Magnific
Fred S. Naiden, "Railroaded: A Motorman’s Story of the New York City Subway" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
Fred S. Naiden, professor emeritus of history of at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an authority on the ancient world. In the 1980s in New York City, however, he was New York City Transit Authority Employee number 4046. He cleaned subway platforms and restrooms, drove subways and locomotives, and belonged to Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union.
All of these experiences in
John Kapusta, "Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America" (U California Press, 2026)
John Kapusta's Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America (U California Press, 2026) is the story of an unexpected group of performing artists who led one of the most influential artistic movements in contemporary American history. After World War II, personal fulfillment emerged as a defining American cultural ideal. Self-realization--the quest to becom
Thomas S. Mullaney, "How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information" (W. W. Norton, 2026)
This is the third time I have the great fortune of interviewing Tom Mullaney. I can hardly think of a more worthy ambassador for the history discipline, and the work we are discussing today, I believe, will serve as the perfect bridge from Tom’s historical scholarship to the wider, reading public. We are discussing Tom’s latest book, How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information (W.W. Norton
Fabio Lanza, "Urban Revolution: People's Communes in Beijing" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
During the Great Leap Forward (1958-62), the collectivization of the Chinese countryside had catastrophic results, but how did this short-lived political experiment reshape urban life? In his new book, Urban Revolution: People's Communes in Beijing (Cambridge UP, 2026), Fabio Lanza examines the most radical attempts to remake cities under Mao. This first full-length history in English of China's u
Andy Byford, "Science of the Child in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Between the 1880s and the 1930s, children became the focus of unprecedented scientific and professional interest in modernizing societies worldwide, including in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. Those who claimed children as special objects of investigation were initially spread across a network of imperfectly professionalized scholarly and occupational groups based mostly in the fiel
Sharron Wilkins Conrad, "The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory" (UNC Press, 2026)
A striking triptych once displayed in countless African American households, the Trinity typically features Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. More than decoration, these portraits were deliberate acts of memory and quiet resistance, a medium through which African Americans asserted their own narratives of hope, leadership, and the fight for justice.
In this provocative hi
Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse eds., "The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family" (U Florida Press, 2026)
Understanding overlooked dimensions of the Cuban Revolution and its
impact on the global left in the 1960s and beyond. This volume, The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family (University of Florida Press, 2026) reconsiders
revolutionary Cuba's global influence by shifting the focus from
high-level political leaders to perspectives tradition
Ciruce A. Movahedi-Lankarani, "Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran" (Stanford UP, 2026)
Between the late 1940s and the end of the twentieth century, natural gas became Iran's bedrock energy source. Billed as a futuristic fuel for a future world power, gas became an avenue for the country's developmentalist ambitions. The ability to build technologically sophisticated infrastructures served as a powerful tool of state legitimation, both before and after the 1979 Revolution, and tied t
Olivier Krischer and Shuxia Chen, "Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s-1980s" (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025)
Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025) explores four transformative decades of photography in Taiwan, tracing its evolution amid the island’s emergence from Japanese colonialism and integration into Nationalist China, largely under martial law (1949–87). Through a dozen richly illustrated essays and interviews, the book bridges the gap betwe
Laura Borghetti and Thomas Arentzen, "Ecologizing Late Ancient and Byzantine Worlds" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
How can we study the late ancient and Byzantine history from ecological perspectives? How might one grapple with the more-than-human in sources and media created by humans? Exploring the diverse ways in which pre-modern texts engaged with the broader natural world, Ecologizing Late Ancient and Byzantine Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2025) presents scholarly ventures into the terrains of the past. From the a
Mesrob Vartavarian, "Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration on South Africa" (Ohio UP, 2026)
Mesrob Vartavarian has written a wonderful book. Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration on South Africa (Ohio UP, 2026) argues that the rise of privileged minorities – small, exclusive groups that dominate political and economic life – parallels the development of successful anticolonial movements. Vartavarian traces how distinct sociocultural groups in South Africa navigated and
Peter Paul Dobek, "The Public House in Central Europe: Inns, Tavern, and Alehouses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian Dynasty" (Lexington Books, 2024)
In his new book The Public House in Central Europe: Inns, Tavern, and Alehouses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian Dynasty (Lexington Books, 2024), Peter Dobek takes us into the daily life of the medieval tavern in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cracow. This is the ‘Golden Age’ of Poland Lithuania and the crepuscule between the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. The taverns were the public space
Alex Boodrookas, "Comrades Estranged: Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf" (Stanford UP, 2026)
In 1975, Kuwaiti workers orchestrated arguably the most powerful
citizen-led movement for noncitizen rights in the history of the Persian
Gulf. Their efforts built on decades of wide-ranging struggle over the
meanings and outlines of citizenship. During the twentieth century,
anticolonial nationalists, pro-democracy reformers, feminists, and labor
organizers joined forces to fight for a more
James O'Leary, "The Middlebrow Musical: Between Broadway and Opera in 1940s America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The premiere of Oklahoma! in 1943 is commonly called a
“turning point” in the history of the Broadway musical. Often
characterized as the first integrated musical―meaning that the songs and
other elements of the show are integrated into the story―James O’Leary
offers a different interpretation of Oklahoma! and other musicals at the beginning of Broadway’s Golden Age in The Middlebrow Musical:
Yoshiko Nakano and Georgina Challen, "Meiji Graves in Happy Valley: Stories of Early Japanese Residents in Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)
The connections between Hong Kong and Japan began far earlier than many realise. Yet only recently has Hong Kong’s historic Japanese community received the attention it deserves through Meiji Graves in Happy Valley: Stories of Early Japanese Residents in Hong Kong (Hong Kong UP, 2024). In this compelling book, Dr Yoshiko Nakano and Georgina Challen guide readers into the Meiji era, reconstructing
Cheryl Thompson, "Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919" (Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2026)
In the early twentieth century, as variety shows flooded Canadian stages, new forms of blackface, inspired by modern forms of amusements, changed the theatre. In this era marked by progressive social reforms, the stage embodied the modern ethos of imitation, mimicry, and change.
Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919 (Wilf
Cristina Florea, "Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Bukovina, when it has existed on official maps, has always fit uneasily among its neighbors. The region is now divided between Romania and Ukraine but has long been a testing ground for successive regimes, including the Habsburg Empire, independent and later Nazi-allied Romania, and the Soviet Union, as each sought to reshape the region in its own image. In this beautifully written and wide-rangin
Brook Wilensky-Lanford, "A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026)
Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant “city on a hill,” religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom—Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters—indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to prot
Pamela Walker Laird, "Self-Made: The Stories that Forged an American Myth" (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
"Self-Made" success is now an American badge of honor that rewards individualist ambitions while it hammers against community obligations. Yet, four centuries ago, our foundational stories actually disparaged ambitious upstarts as dangerous and selfish threats to a healthy society. In Pamela Walker Laird's fascinating history of why and how storytellers forged this American myth, she reveals how t
Derek R. Peterson, "A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda" (Yale UP, 2025)
Idi Amin ruled Uganda between 1971 and 1979, inflicting tremendous
violence on the people of the country. How did Amin's regime survive for
eight calamitous years? Drawing on recently uncovered archival
material, Derek Peterson reconstructs the political logic of the era,
focusing on the ordinary people—civil servants, curators and artists,
businesspeople, patriots—who invested their energy a
Sarah McNamara, "Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South" (UNC Press, 2023)
Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical,
working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the
Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar
industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the
Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a
neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries
Justin F Jackson, "The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines" (UNC Press, 2025)
In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experience in colonial administration, American troops also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inh
Aditya Deshbandhu, "The 21st Century in 100 Games" (Routledge, 2024)
The 21st Century in 100 Games (Routledge India, 2024) is an interactive public history of the contemporary world. It creates a ludological retelling of the 21st century through 100 games that were announced, launched and played from the turn of the century.
Aditya Deshbandhu is a Lecturer of Communications, Digital Media Sociology at the University of Exeter, UK. A researcher of video game studi
Bruce Dearstyne, "Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change" (SUNY Press, 2026)
Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change (SUNY Press, 2026), edited by Bruce Dearstyne and published by SUNY Press, examines what the volume calls the “unfinished revolutions” of the Empire State. In sixteen essays by a varied cast of authors, the book explores efforts to achieve what the editor describes as the full promise of the revolution. Central to the book are ordinary New Yorkers
Robert B. Marks, "Deep Time in the Mono Lake Basin: Nature and History Over the Last 10,000 Years" (U California Press, 2026)
"Deep Time," a way of understanding the distant past popularized in the late 20th century by the writer John McPhee, changes our perspective on history. When looked at in the context of tectonic movements long-term climate shifts, human affairs can seem small, even insignificant. However, in Deep Time in the Mono Lake Basin: Nature and History Over the Last 10,000 Years (U California Press, 2026
Sarah M. Cushman et al eds., "The Routledge Handbook to Auschwitz-Birkenau" (Routledge, 2026)
The Routledge Handbook to Auschwitz-Birkenau (Routledge, 2026) examines Auschwitz-Birkenau as both a site and a symbol of Nazi genocide. Scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives consider Auschwitz’s history by engaging with Holocaust historiography and its place in Holocaust memory and representation, illustrating their mutual influence.
The chapters bring new insights to topics that ot
Bruno Shirley, "Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215" (ARC Humanities Press, 2026)
Dr. Shirley's monograph, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215 (ARC Humanities Press, 2026), is now available open access, thanks to the generous support of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. This book offers a radical
reconsideration of the Poḷon-naruva period, long understood to be a
turning point in the history of Ther
Homa Katouzian, "Iran and the Revolution: A History" (Yale UP, 2026)
Iran is, once again, in global headlines, following U.S. strikes on the country earlier this year. Operation Epic Fury, as the Department of Defense called it, is the latest twist in Iran’s modern history, starting from the coup that brought the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power, through the 1956 coup against Mossadegh and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, to the present day’s tensions over Iran’s nu
Weipin Tsai, "The Making of China's Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation" (Harvard UP, 2024)
How did a vast, nationwide institution like a modern postal system
come into being in Qing China—right at the very end of the empire?
In The Making of China’s Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), Weipin Tsai
takes up this question by tracing the origins and early development of
China’s postal system. The book asks not only
Sean Scalmer, "A Fair Day's Work: The Quest to Win Back Time" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
Australia has a special place in the history of struggle for a Fair Day's Work.
In giving a history of Australian worker struggles over the length of the working day, Sean Scalmer historicises things that might otherwise seem universal and stable, including time, leisure and productivity. Decades before any attempt by Australian timekeepers to standardise time, Scalmer shows that some of the earl
Joanna Dee Das, "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America (University of Chicago Press, 2025) examines the history of Branson, Missouri’s entertainment industry within the context of America’s culture wars. The book explores how Branson became a major center for live performance rooted in patriotism, Christianity, and family centered values, attracting millions of visitors each year
Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026)
From The New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on race that every American should read Among America’s Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that
Christos Lynteris, "How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
Today, rats are nearly synonymous with plague, but this association is surprisingly recent. For centuries, plague devastated populations without being linked to animals. So how did the rat become the symbol of one of history's deadliest diseases? In How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Christos Lynteris unravels this story by focusi
Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)
In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One city was Korean, the other Japanese; one was a burgeoning colonial port, the other a provincial city buoy
Timothy Mason Roberts, "After Barbary: Algeria's Roles in the French and American Empires" (Cornell UP, 2025)
After Barbary: Algeria's Roles in the French and American Empires (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Timothy Mason Roberts explores the connection between the United States and North Africa between the Barbary Wars of the early nineteenth century and the era of European decolonization after World War II. Dr. Roberts offers a new approach to the study of empires, highlighting the significance
Timothy McCall, "Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Looking beyond the marble elegance of Michelangelo's David, the pugnacious, passionate, and--crucially--important story of Renaissance manhood.
Timothy McCall's book Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy (Reaktion, 2023) explores the images, objects, and experiences that fashioned men and masculinity in the courts of fifteenth-century Italy. Across the peninsu
H. A. Drake, "The Wisdom of the Ancients: Four Ideas That Changed the World" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Wisdom of the Ancients: Four Ideas That Changed the World (Oxford UP, 2025) is about four cornerstones of modern thought that were put in place by people living in the ancient Mediterranean world. It covers approximately 2,000 years in time (from ca. 1000 BCE to 1000 CE) and spatially moves from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (roughly, modern Iraq), through Greece and Rome, t
Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)
Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transnational exploration of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan’s ambitious, confused, and much maligned attempt to create a new bloc order in East and Southeast Asia during World War II. Yellen’s book is welcome both as the first book-length
Christopher S. Celenza, "The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
A rich and immersive reinterpretation of the history of Western thought, The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2025) – the first in a major trilogy – explores the transmission and development of philosophical ideas from Plato and Aristotle to Jesus, Paul, Augustine and Gregory the Great. Christopher Celenza recalibrates philosophy's sto
Patrick Wyman, "Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World" (HarperCollins, 2026)
There’s a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering bands to villages and cities, clans and chieftains to states and kings. But Lost Worlds offers a new narrative of humanity’s deep history. In Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World (HarperCollins, 2026) beloved podcast host Dr. Patrick Wyman focuses on the 10,000-year s
Julia F. Irwin, "Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century" (UNC Press, 2023)
Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (UNC Press, 2023) offers a sweeping history of US foreign disaster assistance, highlighting its centrality to twentieth-century US foreign relations. Spanning over seventy years, from the dawn of the twentieth century to the mid-1970s, it examines how the US government, US military, and their partners in the American vo
Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Jeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) explores the history, politics, and geography of United States psychological warfare in the 20th century against the backdrop of the contemporary 'post-truth era'. From its origins in the Second World War, to the United States' counterinsurgency campaigns
Mary T. Freeman, "Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Mary Freeman, associate professor of history at the University of Maine, joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), about how abolitionists harnessed the power of letter-writing to further their political aims. It highlights everyday Americans’ involvement in abolition, and shows in particular how women and Black Ame
Mary T. Freeman, "Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Mary Freeman, associate professor of history at the University of Maine, joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), about how abolitionists harnessed the power of letter-writing to further their political aims. It highlights everyday Americans’ involvement in abolition, and shows in particular how women and Black Ame
Ruth Balint, "Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe" (Cornell UP, 2021)
In this unique “history from below,” Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Cornell University Press, 2021) chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and
Kori Schake, "The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States" (Wiley, 2025)
One of the biggest worries of the US Constitution's Framers was the danger of a standing army to a democracy, so they designed a system to ensure civilian control over the state's armed forces. In The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States (Wiley, 2025), Kori Schake looks at how well this principle of civilian control has worked across US history. Writing
Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)
By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen comment
Denise Z. Davidson, "Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Denise Z. Davidson joins Jana Byars to talk about Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters (Cornell UP, 2025). The book explores how two wealthy and well-connected families with roots in Lyon responded to the French Revolution and the resulting transformations. In building a new political system based on liberty, equality, and fraternity, the French Revolution encouraged both individuals
Evan N. Dawley, "Taiwan: A People′s History" (Reaktion Books, 2026)
While most English-language histories of Taiwan focus on its geopolitical role, Taiwan: A People’s History (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Evan N. Dawley centres on the people of Taiwan themselves and explores how they have formed a unique polity, telling the story of the Indigenous Taiwanese, the Hoklo and Hakka who came from China before the twentieth century, Japanese colonialism and the Chinese who ar
Eloise Moss, "The Secret Life of the Hotel: Sex, Crime and Protest in British Guesthouses Since 1918" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Hotels represent nations, hosting visiting monarchs, politicians, and diplomats. Hotels underpin global networks of travel and communication, on which national and international prosperity have increasingly depended since the end of the First World War. Yet hotels are also places where people can be anonymous; where murderers and thieves mix with adulterers and con artists; and where prejudice fin
Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026)
Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026), his new book on policing in Jim Crow Mississippi, told through the lens of that state’s highway patrol. Using oral history and a wide range of archival sources, Randolph narrates efforts by elites in Miss
Gordon Simmons, "Mutiny in the Mountains: West Virginia Public Workers, 1969-2019" (PM Press, 2026)
Former chief steward and union organizer Gordon Simmons joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book on the history of labor struggles by public sector workers in West Virginia since 1969. With an emphasis on rank-and-file rebellion expressed through wildcat strikes and other job actions, Simmons provides a sweeping account of the past that has rich lessons for the present.
Highlights include:
Stephen F. Knott, "Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency" (UP Kansas, 2025)
Political Scientist Steve Knott has a new book that focuses on conspiracy theories within the American presidency and often promulgated by the president himself. This is not, per se, a book about conspiracy theories in general, but about the narratives that presidents have used—that constitutes a kind of conspiracy thinking—to engage voters and push for particular policy ideas and outcomes. Consp
Benjamin Robert Siegel, "Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics.
For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national developme
Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)
Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around th
Wil Haygood, "The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home" (Knopf, 2026)
Award-winning author Wil Haygood joins Michael Stauch to discuss The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (Knopf, 2026) his new book on the experiences of Black soldiers during the first war fought with an integrated military, the Vietnam War. Through the lives of seven soldiers, a pianist, and a wartime journalist, Haygood details how Black soldiers’ attempts to rise throu
Holly EJ Black, "The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art" (Yale UPs, 2026)
The significance of printmaking within the history of art is often underplayed, obscured or misunderstood. The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art (Yale UP, 2026) by Holly EJ Black tells the story of artist prints from across the globe in a manner that is accessible and engaging. It demystifies how prints are made – from woodblock to etching – and explores how, throughout history, printm
Angus Burgin on the Rise of the Internet
We were joined by Angus Burgin, Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and talked about how the arrival of the Internet remade life and politics in the 90s. Angus shared his thoughts on the motivations behind his upcoming book, which offers an intellectual history of the Internet.
Lee Vinsel is a professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech
Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her" (Sourcebooks, 2026)
From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her (Sourcebooks, 2026), the story of Lady Bird Johnson's groundbreaking trip during the 1964 election, and the women who rode with her.
"It takes women to have guts."
Deemed “the most important campaign effort ever undertaken by the wife of an Amer
Mark Peterson, "The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
A provocative new history of America's constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined
The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain's constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain's had faltered, planning for c
Julia Bowes, "Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism" (Princeton UP, 2026)
“Parental rights” is a rallying cry for today’s American conservatives, signaling opposition to mandatory vaccination and “woke” public school curricula. In Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism (Princeton UP, 2026), Dr. Julia Bowes traces the origins of the modern parental rights movement to the nineteenth century, when the introduction of compulsory sc
Julia Stephens, "Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire" (Princeton UP, 2025)
The British Empire covered much of the world during the 19th century–and each time someone moved through it, they left a paper trail in their wake. Julia Stephens, the author of Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire (Princeton UP, 2025), uses that archive of documents to try to piece together the stories of Indian migrants that traveled the empire throughout their live
Odd Arne Westad, "The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History" (Henry Holt and Co, 2026)
From a renowned Yale historian comes a chilling look at the looming threat of the next Great Power war and the urgent interventions necessary to avoid it in the twenty-first century.The vast majority of people alive today have come of age in a world of remarkable stability, presided over by either one or two Superpowers. This is not to say the world has been peaceful; but it has, to a great extent
Lerone Martin, "Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr." (Amistad, 2026)
We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism?
Before Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights leader, a Nobel Laureate, and a global hero, he was an emotional boy, a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, and dating. Lerone A. Martin, Faculty Director of the Martin Luther King Institu
Sophie Rose, "Intimacy and Social (Dis)Order in Dutch Colonial Expansion: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Family Life, 1600–1800" (Brill, 2025)
Explosive sexual scandals, bitter domestic conflicts, and dramatic changes in fortune. Sex, marriage, and family life were matters of enormous consequence in the highly complex societies that formed across the early modern Dutch overseas empire. This was not only true for the colonial authorities that administered settlements on behalf of the Dutch East and West India Companies (VOC and WIC), but
Benjamin Y. Fong and Paul Prescod, "Rustin's Challenge" (2026)
There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists today valorize Rustin on the basis of his multiple oppressed identities and civil rights organizing. On the other hand, many others dismiss him for being compromised by his commitment to the Democratic Party or by his deep suspicion of the new forms of
Alice Echols, "Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic" (Oxford UP, 2026)
A rich history of cross-racial coalitions and alliances of the Sixties' freedom movement, acclaimed historian Alice Echols's Black Power, White Heat reshapes our understanding of the entire era.
One of the most divisive issues in recent progressive politics has been what role, if any, allies might legitimately play in other people's movements. Despite the significance of this debate, it has taken
Paola De Santo, "The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy" (U Delaware Press, 2026)
Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Press, 2026). Drawing on literature, legal texts, and archival materials, The Ambassador and the Courtesan offers a comparative analysis of these two emerging roles in the early modern period and in Renaissance Italian society. While these two figures may
Michelle P. Brown, "Illumino: A History of Medieval Britain in Twelve Illuminated Manuscripts" (Reaktion, 2025)
The history of medieval Britain through twelve remarkable illuminated manuscripts.
Illumino: A History of Medieval Britain in Twelve Illuminated Manuscripts (Reaktion, 2025) explores the history of medieval Britain through the biographies of twelve remarkable illuminated manuscripts and of their creators and owners. The manuscripts each serve as portals into these lives and as springboards into t
Scott Kurashige, "American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism" (U California Press, 2026)
This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175
Dylan Baun, "Beirut Radical: A Global Microhistory from the Sixties to the Lebanese Civil War" (I.B. Tauris, 2026)
Imad Yusuf Nuwayhid was born in 1944 in the Lebanese village of Ras al-Matn. He came of age in the 1960s, splitting time between Beirut and Europe. And he died in 1975, the start of the Lebanese Civil War.
But who was Imad Nuwayhid? Was he a leftist intellectual? A self-interested hotel worker? A fighter dedicated to Palestinian liberation? A tragic symbol of what happened to those caught in the
Jason R. Young, "The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2026)
In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and curated a highly sanitized view of slavery. They imagined a once and future plantation society that would reestablish them as the proper heirs of the slave past. In the process, they crafted a set of dangerously durable and virulent stereotypes about sl
Anthony Kaldellis, "1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople" (Oxford UP, 2026)
A detailed account of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453, a watershed year that closed the book, once and for all, on the Roman Empire and confirmed for Europeans their worst fears about an expanding Ottoman Empire.Anthony Kaldellis offers a new narrative of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453, a watershed year that closed the book, once and for all, on the Roman Empire and co
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, "War and Community in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, War and Community in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, raids, and increasingly porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. While military and political historians have long grappled with this history, scholars of late antique society and culture rarely interrogate the
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