New Books Network
New Books Network features interviews with authors about their newly released books, covering a wide range of academic and general interest topics. Each episode allows authors to discuss their research, writing process, and key themes. The show aims to connect readers with the ideas behind recent publications. It also offers a premium membership option for supporters.
Episodes
Emmy Waldman, "Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form (Cambridge UP, 2026) by Dr. Emmy Waldman is the first book to place the autobiographical projects of canonical comics authors Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel alongside each other, focusing on new and neglected works (and with an epilogue on the Pulitzer Prize-winning tour-de-force debut of Tessa Hulls). The book offers a lively c
David L Hoffmann, "Women, Gender, and Socialist Ideology in Soviet Russia" (Routledge, 2026)
Women, Gender, and Socialist Ideology in Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2026) examines the place of women in Soviet Russia from the 1917 Revolution through the post-World War II period, discussing how the Soviet construction of gender perpetuated inequality even as it dramatically expanded women’s roles in society.
Chapters of this book explore Bolshevik activists’ ideals of women’s libera
Hanna David, "Erika Landau’s Contribution to the History of Gifted Education: Family Characteristics of Gifted Children" (Springer, 2025)
In this episode of New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with Dr. Hanna David about Erika Landau’s Contribution to the History of Gifted Education: Family Characteristics of Gifted Children (Springer, 2025), a study of gifted education, family background, gender differences, educational opportunity, and the legacy of one of Israel’s most influential pioneers in gifted education.
Drawing on
Justin Ellen, "Better Than Grandma's: Comfort Desserts We Grew Up Loving" (Rolling Pin Press, 2026)
We all love the desserts we grew up with-the ones tied to family, tradition, and the moments we remember most. But as much as we love those recipes, they don't always turn out the way we'd want. That's where this book comes in. From cakes and cookies to pies, breads, and more, each recipe in Better than Grandma's (Rolling Pin Press, 2026) takes a nostalgic classic and reworks it to be more flavorf
Catherine A John, "Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice" (Duke UP, 2026)
In Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice (Duke University Press, 2026), Catherine A. John addresses the underbelly of spiritual resilience shaping a range of African diasporic institutions, traditions, and practices. John argues that repressed forms of indigenous African knowledge systems manifest in a myriad of culturally embodied ways in African diaspora spaces and places.
Rebecca Lee, "Rogues, Widows and Orphans: Mischief and Misadventures in the World of Books" (Brandeis UP, 2026)
It’s a long journey from a writer’s mind to a finished book, and a lot needs to go right along the way. But isn’t it more interesting when things go wrong?
In Rogues, Widows and Orphans: Mischief and Misadventures in the World of Books (Brandeis University Press and Profile Books, 2026), Rebecca Lee, a senior editorial manager at Penguin Random House, guides readers through the secrets of the boo
Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan, "The Precarious Past in Premodern Java" (University of California Press, 2026)
The practice of history in premodern Java was profoundly influenced by precarious conditions of textual production and preservation: fragile manuscripts perished in the tropical environment, archival records were scattered far afield, and historical memories faded over many generations. InThe Precarious Past in Premodern Java, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan examines how Javanese societies between the fift
Samantha Barbas, "Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma" (U California Press, 2026)
The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma (U California Press, 2026), acclaimed legal historian Samantha Barbas chronicles the country’s legal and cultural battles over the regulation of hate speech in the last hundred years. Charting the hist
Tom Hulme, "Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Professor Tom Hulme's second book reconstructs the erotic and romantic lives of queer men in Belfast across roughly seventy years, from the recriminalisation of sex between men in the 1880s to the emergence of a mainstream public debate about homosexuality in the 1950s. It follows men cruising the city centre, reading and passing around homosexual novels, forging relationships across the lines of
R. Douglas Hurt, "The Country People: An Agricultural History of the American Revolution" (U Georgia Press, 2026)
Although historians have given considerable attention to the American Revolution, the agricultural history of the American War for Independence exists only in pieces found in scattered articles and passing references in various books dealing with the war. Nonagricultural historians have ignored it or treated it almost as an aside and unworthy of analysis, even when it is related to other war topic
Rod Carley, "The Great Catsby by Hilton" (Smart House Books, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author Rod Carley about The Great Catsby by Hilton, published by Canadian publisher Smart House (September 1, 2026). The Great Catsby by Hilton is the unforgettable and wildly entertaining new YA book by Rod Carley and his cat, Hilton. Yes, you read that right! The Great Catsby by Hilton adds some much-needed whimsy
Janos Fiala-Butora, "Implementing the Right to Decide Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Supporting the Legal Capacity of All Persons with Disabilities" (Hart, 2025)
Implementing the Right to Decide Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Supporting the Legal Capacity of All Persons with Disabilities (Hart, 2025) addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary human rights law: how can persons with severe cognitive disabilities make their own decisions?Historically, vulnerable persons have been considered incapable, a
Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor,
Ciara Breathnach, "Absence in the Archives" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Ciara Breathnach is Professor of Irish Gender History at University College Cork. She has published widely on Irish socio-economic, gender, cultural and health history. Her last monograph Ordinary lives, death and social class: Dublin City Coroner’s Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the American Conference of Irish Studies, James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize for Books on Hist
Donald A. Barclay, "The Reinvention of the U.S. Academic Library: 1990 to 2025" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Focusing on U.S. academic libraries, The Reinvention of the U.S. Academic Library: 1990 – 2025 (2025, Bloomsbury) provides a concise history of the traditional role and function of academic libraries from their earliest times up to the dawn of the Digital Age and the spread of digital technology into all aspects of academic research and scholarly communication. This book analyzes how digital techn
Ulices Piña, "Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
In Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2026), Ulices Piña shows that democracy in Mexico has never been the exclusive domain of elites, nor confined to the ballot box. Focusing on the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20, Piña explores how citizens forged a substantive democratic culture in the crucible of three succes
Jennifer Hoewe, "Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)" (MIT Press, 2026)
Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night TV monologues. Podcasts. The way news is delivered has changed dramatically and so has the way we consume it. Now, we no longer look to the news just to learn and be informed; we expect enjoyment as well. In Enjoyment Is Breaking N
Ming-sho Ho, "Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Protests" (Temple University Press, 2025)
During the eventful summer of 2019 in Hong Kong, the Be Water Revolution formed to resist the proposed extradition of fugitives to mainland China’s courts. With its name derived from martial arts master Bruce Lee’s adage “formless and shapeless like water,” the incident turned out to be the city’s largest episode of contentious politics and was unique for using impromptu communication among partic
Billy Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions" (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026)
What would a postcarbon future look like? What would it take to build and maintain a more just, regenerative world? How would it feel to live—and to thrive—in that world? In Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026), Billy Fleming and a wide set of contributors critically engage with the above questions and more.
Aro
John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)
In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. Applying an evolutionary and biological lens to these complex and universal human behaviours, the book distinguishes it
Isabela Seong Leong Quintana, "Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2026)
Los Angeles in the late nineteenth century was bustling with the rise of industrialization, but the growing labor force that propelled it, mostly consisting of Mexican and Chinese men, was met with exclusion policies and deportation campaigns. Nevertheless, Chinese and Mexican women, children, and men built vibrant residential and business districts—until they were all but eradicated in the 1930s.
Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges" (Fordham, 2025)
Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s edges, it tells a new story about those on the move, the technologies unleashed on them at borders, the racialized and col
R. Joshua Scannell, "The Carceral Surround" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
As law enforcement agencies deploy increasingly advanced technologies to suppress dissent, hunt migrants, and target marginalized communities, The Carceral Surround (U Minnesota Press, 2026) offers a powerful new theory of police and prison power in the digital age. Making sense of the rapid expansion of digital carceral infrastructure in a nation that claims to value freedom and individual r
Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and knowledge production in China–Africa relations. It examines how the People’s Republic of China has moved beyond simply establishing Chinese media organizations such as Xinhua and CGTN in Africa toward a much more dispersed system of
Han Hsien Liew, "Preaching Pious Rulership in Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Jawzi's Political Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Han Hsien Liew’s fascinating and insightful new book, Preaching Pious Rulership in Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Jawzi’s Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2026) offers a new way of understanding the political thought of one of medieval Islam’s most influential preachers, Ibn al-Jawzi. Although Ibn al-Jawzi is often remembered primarily as a preacher, moralist, and religious scholar, Han Hsie
Joseph G. Rosenstein, "Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)
What if Pirkei Avot has a bigger story to tell? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Joseph G. Rosenstein to discuss Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture (Academic Studies Press, 2026), a fresh approach to one of Judaism’s most beloved collections of rabbinic wisdom.
The 123 teachings of Pirkei Avot often seem to jump from one subject to another: Torah study, eth
Marjolijn Bol, "The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Panel painters in both the middle ages and the fifteenth century created works that evoke the luster of precious stones, the sheen of polished gold and silver, and the colorful radiance of stained glass. Yet their approaches to rendering these materials were markedly different. In The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500 (U Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Marjolijn
Gavin Healy, "A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests" (Cornell UP, 2026)
A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests (Cornell UP, 2026) by Gavin Healy explores how tourism was reshaped during the Mao era. It follows the transformation of once-private travel agencies after 1949, the efforts of China's state tourism bureaucracy to reconcile welcoming foreign visitors with earning foreign currency, and the ways tourism workers reimagined se
Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)
In Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (Norton, 2026), the architect and urban planner Stefan Al asks–– where is a good place to live? His answer In this succinct and eminently readable survey––almost everywhere and nowhere. He begins by showing homo sapiens and their hominid predecessors on the move, spreading across the globe looking for something to ea
Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)
In Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (Norton, 2026), the architect and urban planner Stefan Al asks–– where is a good place to live? His answer In this succinct and eminently readable survey––almost everywhere and nowhere. He begins by showing homo sapiens and their hominid predecessors on the move, spreading across the globe looking for something to ea
Francesca Lessa and Sebastián Santana, "Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent" (Storia, 2025)
In Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent (Storia, 2025), Francesca Lessa uncovers the shadowy machinery behind one of the most chilling transnational terror campaigns of the twentieth century. What began as a secret pact among South America's military dictatorships quickly grew into a coordinated system of surveillance, kidnappings, torture, and disappearances that reach
Michael E. Neagle, "Chasing Bandits: America's Long War on Terror" (UNC Press, 2025)
While the war on terror has been America's largest and most publicized attempt to root out foreign enemies this century, the quest to identify and destroy real or imagined threats to national security has long been a part of US history. Drawing on six case studies, Professor Michael E. Neagle spotlights the commonalities of how the United States has leveraged popular understandings of "bandit
Charles Lachman, "They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted" (Diversion Books, 2026)
May 1945. The Reich is in ruins. Hitler is dead. Yet for the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, the real war has just begun.
They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted (Diversion Books, 2026) by Charles Lachman is the true historical thriller following a secret unit of American agents, drawn from every walk of life, hunting Hitler’s inner circle—the
Christopher Freeburg, "Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life" (Yale UP, 2026)
Today’s guest, Christopher Freeburg, is the author of Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life (Yale University Press, 2026). This book explores the US history of black cultural life as a history of soul – a spiritual lived practice rooted in communally fostered music, religion, and politics. It makes the case that soul is forged through black community connections and that it’s sust
Patrick Griffin, "The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World" (Yale UP, 2023)
David Gellman interviews Patrick Griffin on The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World
The Age of Atlantic Revolution was a defining moment in western history. Our understanding of rights, of what makes the individual an individual, of how to define a citizen versus a subject, of what states should or should not do, of how labor, politics, and trade would be organ
Sanjay Joshi, "Brahmins of the Himalaya: Upper-Caste Ways of Belonging, 1850-1950" (SUNY Press, 2026)
Uses the everyday histories of Brahmin clans, communities, and families in a prominent small town in the Indian Himalaya to challenge the assumption that only grand metanarratives such as colonialism and nationalism matter. This everyday history of clans, communities, and elite families in Almora, a prominent town in the Indian Himalaya, puts questions of belonging at the heart of an expansive exa
Unseen Existences (with Brian Zahnd): How to See the Divine Mystery Here and Now
Brian Zahnd, a Christian leader and pastor of forty years and four-times pilgrim of the Camino de Santiago, completed this remarkable (and quite short) book, Unseen Existences: Of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery in All Things. You can read it in a long afternoon or a few sessions of a couple of hours each, sitting outside – perhaps under an oak or a fig tree – with a cup of tea. It
Charlie Walker, "On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance and Survival" (Duckworth, 2026)
In February 2022, British explorer Charlie Walker flew to Siberia's Sakha Republic to walk a thousand miles up frozen rivers to the Arctic Ocean, through Earth's coldest inhabited region. Days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Tamping down his concerns, he continued on his journey, meeting indigenous people and ice road truckers along the way.
Yet his trip ended in fear and confusion, with an
Ian Brown, "70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year" (Penguin Random House, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author and journalist Ian Brown about his memoir, 70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year (Penguin Random House, 2026).
Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon and the memoir Sixty, now recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy. Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real,
William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, "Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Political Scientists William Howell and Terry Moe have a new book out that explores how the United States constitutional system has given way to the establishment of a kind of strongman presidency, disconnected in many ways from the constraints designed to keep the American president from becoming autocratic or dictatorial. Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency (Princ
A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands
Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles With God (Restless Books, 2026) collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited change and continue to influence a growing nation. In this anthology, you wil
Robert A. Wilson, "Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences" (Oxford UP, 2026)
What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained by biological relationships. In Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences (Oxford UP, 2026), Robert Wilson proposes an alternative view that does not separate kin relations from biological facts about reproduction that
Mubanga Kalimamukwento, "The Shipikisha Club" (Cassava Republic Press, 2026)
Kabwe, Zambia: Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty.
But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier--with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man cal
Tom Lin, "Babylon, South Dakota" (Little Brown and Co, 2026)
When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and
Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North " (FSG, 2025)
Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken
Thomas Breimaier, "Tethered to the Cross: The Life and Preaching of Charles H. Spurgeon" (IVP Academic, 2020)
"Tethered to the cross" is how the renowned nineteenth-century English Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon (1834–1892) described the task of ministry and his approach to preaching. For nearly four decades, Spurgeon served as the pastor of the church at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. But what specifically guided the reading of Scripture by the man known as the "Prince of Preachers"? Tracin
Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026)
In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society. In this interview, Morteza Hajizadeh interviews Leonhard Emmerling about his book The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus (Seagull Books, 2026)
Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote about him; Dadaists and punks idolized him; artists like Warhol and Beuys mad
Ashish Koul, "Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2026)
Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals that caste, usually assumed to be a feature of Hindu society, was in fact a trans-religious phenomenon in colonial India, as it is today. Even in an Islamic religious milieu that was supposedly more egalitarian than hierarchical Hinduism, colonial Indian subjects thought and acted in terms of caste.
Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)
An account of the North American fentanyl crisis told through stories and photographs of its victims
Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026), edited by Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc., is a different kind of drug book. Part biography, part coffee-table photo collection, it seeks to put a human face on a public health crisis too often disc
Voices from North Korea: Refugees Tell Their Stories
n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North Korean refugees rebuild their lives through personalised English education, mentoring and public-speak
Daniela Gerson, "The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)
In The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), an immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to unearth a history of how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived Hitler’s Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin—a story that sheds light on the enduring power of hope and
Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)
Erin Maglaque's new book Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body (Astra House, 2026), is a work of early modern history and an account of what it is like to study the past as an embodied person. Having been trained as to disregard the physical self when writing history, Maglaque's worldview completely shifted following the birth of her child. What might it mean to instead, "fi
Ellen Prentiss Campbell, "Vanishing Point" (Apprentice House Press, 2026)
Beginning in the 1880s and spanning three generations through the 1980s, Vanishing Point (Apprentice House Press, 2026) explores the life and family of Pennsylvania artist George Hetzel and his large, complex family. We watch him and his wife, Mary Louise, mourn losses, celebrate triumphs, and struggle with the tension between their family life and Hetzel’s art. We learn about the l
Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)
As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots (1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and storyteller Lucas L. Johnson II reflects on the enduring legacy of Haley’s work through the voices of those it continues to move, including scholars, artists, genealogists, students, and original cast members like LeVar Burton and B
Stef Ferrari, "Pining for You" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)
In Pining for You (Simon & Schuster, 2026) the classic Hallmark holiday movie gets turned upside down when a teen leaves her small-town Christmas tree farm in pursuit of the city girl who swept her off her feet in this cheeky and cozy rom-com by Food Network competitor Stef Ferrari. Bennie Bosley has Christmas spirit on lock. Her borderline magical ability to give the perfect gift, encyc
Lee Alan Dugatkin, "Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City" (MIT Press, 2026)
In Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Lee Dugatkin chronicles this little-known crisis, revealing how the epidemic disrupted nearly every aspect of urban life. From coast to coast, livelihoods collapsed as horses lay sick, or worse dying, on stable floors, fires raged unchecked wit
Joy M. Perrin, "Efficiency by Design: Transforming Libraries and Archives through Process Management" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Efficiency by Design: Transforming Libraries and Archives through Process Management (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Joy M. Perrin offers library and archive professionals a comprehensive guide to optimizing processes, with a focus on improving efficiency, speed, effectiveness, and reliability. Professionals in libraries and archives often are asked to take on decades old processes and are not pro
Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026)
Love and Terror, The Helter Skelter History of the Manson Murders (Verso, 2026) is the most recent addition to the hundreds of books and films devoted to the killings committed by Charlie Manson’s followers in Los Angeles in August 1969.
What is different about this work is that the author Claudia Verhoeven is an intellectual historian whose previous book was on a Russian terrorist who
Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about content and production. In Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming (Princeton UP, 2026), Violaine Roussel examines the emergence of this new category of professionals at the heart of the
Francesca Sbardella, "Inhabiting Silence: An Anthropologist in the Cloister" (Berghahn Books, 2025)
Monasteries are typically characterized by physical and symbolic limitations on access as they are usually known through written texts and accounts by nuns who live in that world but do not allow others to have access. This has often resulted in research based on indirect sources. Inhabiting Silence: An Anthropologist in the Cloister (Berghahn Books, 2025) is the result of observant
Ketil Slagstad, "Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (U Chicago Press, 2025) traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sou
Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)
From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture came to govern the lives of enslaved and free people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent. She
Gabrielle Thomas, "The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought (Cambridge UP, 2026), Gabrielle Thomas questions the popular assumption that the devil served as the primary explanation for evil, sin, and suffering as early Christians grappled with all that is wrong in the world. Interrogating the status of the devil in the teachings of the Cappadocians – Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus
Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz eds. "Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: the Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver" (Common Notions, 2026)
“The general thrust of capitalist policy in this period aims at the intensified imposition of work in response to ongoing struggle against it.”
—Harry Cleaver, “Work Is Still the Central Issue: New Words for New Worlds,” in Points of Departure, ed. Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter, p. 35.
What changes if we begin the history of capitalism not with what capital does to workers, but wi
Jonathan Swift and David Womersley ed., "Gulliver's Travels: Cambridge Anniversary Edition" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Gulliver's Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver's adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnmhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed
Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer et al eds., "Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
What does medical anthropology look like in the twenty-first century?
That is the central question of Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century, a new edited volume by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, Junko Kitanaka and Eugene Raikhel, published by Rutgers University Press in 2026.
Rather than simply offering an overview of the field, the book invites us to rethink where medical anth
Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
What went wrong with global mental health?
Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) critically examines how the globalisation of mental health through the dominant medical model has created barriers to understanding and responding to distress with reference to cases from Malawi and Sri Lanka. Its authors argue that mental health must be un
Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)
In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026).
In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache,
Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)
They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet (MIT Press, 2026), Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climat
An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland
The story of Polish Jewry, pre-Holocaust Europe’s largest Jewish community, is often told as one of creativity and contestation. In his new book, An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland, University of Chicago professor Kenneth B. Moss traces instead a complex and painful story of Polish Jewish reckoning with diasporic vulnerability, nationalism’s terrible potencies,
Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Geomythography: Myth, Landscape and the Roots of Culture" (Luath Press, 2025)
What can we learn from our landscape? How can Geomythography help us understand our cultural heritage? What is Geomythography?
Geomythography is the interpretation of prehistoric and later societies at specific locales through a combination of oral tradition, place-names, landscape analysis and archaeology. The process is a means of finding new perspectives and interpretations to further the unde
Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II (U Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Emily Matson is an in-depth investigation of the Chinese Communist Party’s remapping of China’s World War II timeline from eight years (1937–1945) to fourteen years (1931–1945). Instead of the previously accepted starting date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Chinese Co
Marita Sturken, "Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era" (NYU Press, 2022)
Terrorism in American Memory argues that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and all that followed in its wake were the primary force shaping United States politics and culture in the post-9/11 era. Marita Sturken maintains that during the past two decades, when the country was subjected to terrorist attacks and promulgated ongoing wars of aggression, we have veered into increasingly polarized factions
Robert Shum, "Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? Despite landmark agreements and expanding knowledge, emissions have fallen unevenly and progress has repeatedly
Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been depicted countless times in movies, Broadway shows, books, music, and more, but somehow it’s only ever the stories of newsboys that are told. Scholarly literature too has focused mostly on boy newsies. Yet for nearly as long as
Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference
Examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together, Relative Strangers (U Toronto Press, 2024) sheds light on Romani life in Palestine. Arpan Roy presents an ethnographic portrait of Dom Romani communities living between Palestine and Jordan, zooming in on everyday life in working-class neighborhoods, and under conditions of perpetual war and instability
Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)
In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines.Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive”—the street music of South Africa—kept him company. Lent to
Agnes Mueller, "Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026), analysing the past two decades of literature on Holocaust memory and migration stories, Agnes Mueller engages with writers such as W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard, Edgar Hilsenrath, Benjamin Stein, Mirna Funk, Fred Wander, Barbara Honigmann, Julia Franck, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Olga Grjasnowa, and Kat K
Meghan Garrity, "Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities—genocide and mass killing—or toward forced migration more broadly.
Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Remo
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