New Books in History

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University's Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he's currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing.  In this conversation, we explore:  the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey  2001's strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.” why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking's voice didn't make it into the voice of Siri the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. With the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, séances invited participants to contact ghosts using material things, from ordinary household furniture to specialized technologies invented to register the presence of spirits. In its supernatural object lessons, Victorian spiritualism was not just a mystical movement centered on the dead but also a practical resource for learning how to negotiate the uncanniness of life under capitalism. Dr. Briefel explores how spiritualism compelled séance participants to speculate on the manufacture of spectral clothing; ponder the hidden histories and energies of parlor furniture; confront the humiliations of consumerism as summoned spirits pelted them with exotic fruits; and comprehend modes of mechanical reproduction, like photography and electrotyping, that had the power to shape identities. Dr. Briefel argues that spiritualist practices and the objects they employed offered both believers and skeptics unexpected frameworks for grappling with the often-invisible forces of labor, consumption, exploitation, and exchange that haunted their everyday lives. Ghosts and Things reveals how spiritualism's explorations of the borderland between life and death, matter and spirit, produced a strange and seductive combination of wonder and discomfort that allowed participants to experience the possibilities and precarities of industrial modernity in novel ways. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture (Princeton UP, 2024) is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of the thought, culture, society, and history of the Greeks, Jennifer Roberts traces not only the common values that united them across the seas and the centuries, but also the enormous diversity in their ideas and beliefs.Examining the huge importance to the Greeks of religion, mythology, the Homeric epics, tragic and comic drama, philosophy, and the city-state, the book offers shifting perspectives on an extraordinary and astonishingly creative people. Century after century, in one medium after another, the Greeks addressed big questions, many of which are still very much with us, from whether gods exist and what happens after we die to what political system is best and how we can know what is real. Yet for all their virtues, Greek men set themselves apart from women and foreigners and profited from the unpaid labor of enslaved workers, and the book also looks at the mixed legacy of the ancient Greeks today.The result is a rich, wide-ranging, and compelling history of a fascinating and profoundly influential culture in all its complexity—and the myriad ways, good and bad, it continues to shape us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Reform Judaism looks different today than it did a century ago. There are a lot of factors that lead to that change, but among these is Rabbi Alexander Schindler (1925-2000). Doing most of his work in the middle of the 20th century, Schindler was either part of or directly responsible for the changes in Reform (and even American) Judaism that we see today. In his biography of Rabbi Schindler, Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler (CCAR Press), Dr. Michael Meyer paints a picture of an extraordinarily influential leader in the history of Reform Judaism. From 1973 to 1996, he served as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (today's Union for Reform Judaism), where his charisma and vision raised the Reform Movement to unprecedented influence. Never afraid to be controversial, he argued for recognizing patrilineal descent, institutionalized outreach to interfaith families and non-Jews, and championed LGBTQ rights and racial equality. He was a tireless advocate for Israel while maintaining diaspora Jews' right to speak out independently on the Jewish state. In this conversation, historian Michael A. Meyer brings Rabbi Schindler to life. His book, which he discusses with us, is based on extensive archival research and interviews and paints a definitive portrait of Schindler's life. Michael Meyer is the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he taught since 1967. A leading scholar of modern Jewish history, Meyer has authored several award-winning books, including The Origins of the Modern Jew, Response to Modernity, and recent biographies of Rabbis Leo Baeck and Alexander Schindler. He served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies and the Leo Baeck Institute, and held visiting positions at Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, and others. Honored internationally, he received the Moses Mendelssohn Award and the Order of Merit from the German Federal Republic. Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is most recently the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Historians have thoroughly documented the vast devastation of the Civil War. In the attention they have paid to aspects of that destruction, however, one of the most obvious ramifications appears routinely overlooked—Confederate widowhood. Dr. Jennifer Lynn Gross's Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South (LSU Press, 2025) helps rectify that historical omission by supplying a sweeping analysis of women whose husbands perished in the war. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Fifty-five years after the terrible shooting at Kent State University, I spoke with Brian VanDeMark, a Professor of History at the US Naval Academy, about his new book, Kent State: An American Tragedy (Norton, 2024). Cutting through the reductive narratives of the shooting, VanDeMark offers a definitive history of the fatal clash between Vietnam War protestors and the National Guard, illuminating its causes, lasting consequences, and cautionary lessons for us all. On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political fires that had been burning across America during the 1960s exploded. Antiwar protesters wearing bell-bottom jeans and long hair hurled taunts and rocks at another group of young Americans―National Guardsmen sporting gas masks and rifles. At half past noon, violence unfolded with chaotic speed, as guardsmen―many of whom had joined the Guard to escape the draft―opened fire on the students. Two reductive narratives ensued: one, that lethal state violence targeted Americans who spoke their minds; the other, that law enforcement gave troublemakers the comeuppance they deserved. For over fifty years, little middle ground has been found due to incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence. Kent State meticulously re-creates the divided cultural landscape of America during the Vietnam War and heightened popular anxieties around the country. On college campuses, teach-ins, sit-down strikes, and demonstrations exposed the growing rift between the left and the right. Many students opposed the war as unnecessary and unjust and were uneasy over poor and working-class kids drafted and sent to Vietnam in their place. Some developed a hatred for the military, the police, and everything associated with authority, while others resolved to uphold law and order at any cost. Focusing on the thirteen victims of the Kent State shooting and a painstaking reconstruction of the days surrounding it, historian Brian VanDeMark draws on crucial new research and interviews―including, for the first time, the perspective of guardsmen who were there. The result is a complete reckoning with the tragedy that marked the end of the sixties. Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on a book about the reversal in US grand strategy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at andrew.pace@usm.edu or via https://www.andrewopace.com/. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus (Doubleday, 2025) she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world.The book reads like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question and answering it based on the gospels Jesus's followers left behind. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth? Why do we say he rose from the dead? Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean?The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just does Jesus comes to life but his desperate, hunted followers do as well. We realize that some of the most compelling details of Jesus's life are the explanations his disciples created to paper over inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn't illegitimate, his mother conceived by God; Jesus's body wasn't humiliatingly left to rot and tossed into a common grave—no, he rose from the dead and was seen whole by his followers; Jesus isn't a failed messiah, his kingdom is a metaphor: he lives in us. These necessary fabrications were the very details and promises that electrified their listeners and helped his followers' numbers grow.In Miracles and Wonder, Pagels does more than solve a historical mystery. She sheds light on Jesus's enduring power to inspire and attract. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Why did so many rulers throughout history risk converting to a new religion brought by outsiders? In his award-winning Unearthly Powers (2019), Dr. Alan Strathern set out a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between religion and political authority based on a distinction between two kinds of religion - immanentism and transcendentalism - and the different ways they made monarchy sacred. Please listen to his interview on that book on the New Books Network! This ambitious and innovative companion volume Converting Rulers: Global Patterns, 1450–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) tests and substantiates this approach using case studies from Kongo (1480–1530), Japan (1560–1614), Ayutthaya (Thailand, 1660–1690) and Hawaii (1800–1830). Through in-depth analysis of key turning points in the careers of warlords, chiefs and kings, a tapestry of unique characters and stories is brought to light. However, these examples ultimately demonstrate that global patterns of conversion can be established to illuminate the religious geography of the world today. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

This week on International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey interviews historian Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars (W.W. Norton, 2023). Zahra reflects on the historical parallels between the current backlash against globalization and the anti-globalist movements of the interwar period. She highlights how economic insecurity, the rise of mass politics, and anxieties over immigration and trade shaped political reactions in both eras, while noting key differences—such as the role of environmentalism today and the absence of a world war in recent memory. Zahra also discusses the collapse of the international economic system in the 1930s, the ideological diversity of anti-globalist movements, and the legacy of Bretton Woods. She proposes that revisiting elements of the post-WWII international order, including regional cooperation and economic stabilization, may offer insight into managing today's fractured global landscape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of today's leading voices in environmental studies, Daniel Macfarlane, as we explore his new book The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024). Please see the description of the book below, then tune in to hear Dr. Macfarlane share the insights, research, and stories that shaped this important work. Lake Ontario has profoundly influenced the historical evolution of North America. For centuries it has enabled and enriched the societies that crowded its edges, from fertile agricultural landscapes to energy production systems to sprawling cities. In The Lives of Lake Ontario Daniel Macfarlane details the lake's relationship with the Indigenous nations, settler cultures, and modern countries that have occupied its shores. He examines the myriad ways Canada and the United States have used and abused this resource: through dams and canals, drinking water and sewage, trash and pollution, fish and foreign species, industry and manufacturing, urbanization and infrastructure, population growth and biodiversity loss. Serving as both bridge and buffer between the two countries, Lake Ontario came to host Canada's largest megalopolis. Yet its transborder exploitation exacted a tremendous ecological cost, leading people to abandon the lake. Innovative regulations in the later twentieth century, such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements, have partially improved Lake Ontario's health. Despite signs that communities are reengaging with Lake Ontario, it remains the most degraded of the Great Lakes, with new and old problems alike exacerbated by climate change. The Lives of Lake Ontario demonstrates that this lake is both remarkably resilient and uniquely vulnerable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses-all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone-even Americans, even women-transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft. In a faraway land, these "spitfires" lived like women decades ahead of their time. Risking their lives in one of the deadliest jobs of the war, they ferried new, barely tested fighters and bombers to air bases and returned shot-up wrecks for repair, never knowing what might go wrong until they were high in the sky. Many ferry pilots died in crashes or made spectacular saves. It was exciting, often terrifying work. The pilots broke new ground off duty as well, shocking their hosts with thoroughly modern behavior. With cinematic sweep, in Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger during World War II (Bloomsbury, 2025) Becky Aikman follows the stories of nine of the women who served, drawing on unpublished diaries, letters, and records, along with her own interviews, to bring these forgotten heroines fully to life. Spitfires is a vivid, richly detailed account of war, ambition, and a group of remarkable women whose lives were as unconventional as their dreams. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Marc Jaffré joins Jana Byars for a lively conversation about The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610- 1643 (Oxford University Press, 2025). Louis XIII's court has long been a feature of the popular imaginary, thanks in part to the many movie and TV adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers. Yet it remains misunderstood, commonly mischaracterised as weak, unimportant, or wholly subservient to the whims of Louis XIII. Seeking to correct this narrative, Marc Jaffré here offers a comprehensive analysis of the court's institutional, political, social, cultural, ceremonial, and financial development, across its very wide range of active participants, from courtiers, financiers, merchants, to lower-ranking household members.  The close study engages with the key issues of Louis' reign: the delegitimizing role of Cardinal Richelieu minister-favourite; the turbulent family dynamics that led Louis to wage wars against his mother, his brother, and his cousins; the backdrop of war, both with the Huguenots and within the context of the Thirty Years War; and the transformative rise of salon culture. In so doing, the court is shown to be a central, vibrant, and misunderstood element of early modern and pre-Louis XIV French history and culture. Courtiers, artisans, merchants, and financiers, among others, are shown to have played key roles in shaping the institutional, political, cultural, economic, and military framework of the court, and Louis XIII's reign more generally. In challenging the top-down paradigm prevalent in court studies, this monograph provides crucial correctives to the existing narrative that Louis XIII's court was weak or unimportant and simultaneously revises how early modern courts and their development have been understood historiographically. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping to inspire the creation of both the Environmental Protection Agency and Earth Day. But what role did the history of Santa Barbara itself play in this? In Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970 (U Chicago Press, 2025), Pollyanna Rhee shows, the city's past and demographics were essential to the portrayal of the oil spill as momentous. Moreover, well-off and influential Santa Barbarans were positioned to “domesticate” the larger environmental movement by embodying the argument that individual homes and families—not society as a whole—needed protection from environmental abuses. This soon would put environmental rhetoric and power to fundamentally conservative—not radical—ends. Pollyanna Rhee is assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and affiliate faculty in history, sustainable design, and theory and interpretive criticism. Twitter.  Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Michael David Fox's Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule (Harvard UP, 2025) provides a local, close-up look at the everyday workings of Nazi and Soviet power, in a particular region. It discusses such themes as the Soviet Terror of the late 1930's and the trauma of the collectivization of agriculture, earlier in the decade, as well as the further traumas of Nazi occupation. Especially interesting is its focus on life-trajectories of specific individuals who had daily to navigate the intricate workings of power, in brutalized, violent circumstances. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Ever wonder who's to blame for the noise and distraction of the open office? Our guest has answers. Joseph L. Clarke is a historian of art and architecture and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His 2021 book Echo's Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space won a 2022 CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title. It's a fascinating history of how architects have conceived of and manipulated the relationship between sound and space. His most recent publication is “Too Much Information: Noise and Communication in an Open Office.”  In this episode we'll talk about media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his architecturally inspired theory of acoustic space, which went on to have its own influence in the field of architecture. We'll also dive deep into the history of the open plan office, the theories of acoustic communication that inspired it, the sonic disaster it became, and the new media technologies that were invented in response. If you've ever been driven to distraction by noise in a cubicle farm or open office and wondered how such a space came to be, this episode's got answers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Covering the period from the end of the Anglo-French alliance in 1731 to the declaration of war between the two powers in 1744, British Politics and Foreign Policy, 1727-44  (Routledge, 2014) charts a turbulent period in British politics that witnessed the last decade of the Walpole ministry, the attempt to replace it by a Patriot government, and the return of the Old Corps Whigs to a process of dominance. In particular it reveals how ministerial change and political fortunes were closely linked to foreign policy, with foreign policy both affecting, and being affected by, political developments. The book draws upon a great range of foreign and domestic sources, but makes particular use of foreign diplomatic records. These are important as many negotiations were handled, at least in part, through envoys in London. Moreover, these diplomats regularly spoke with George II and his ministers, and some were personal friends of envoys and could be used for secret negotiations outside normal channels.  The range of sources consulted ensures that the book offers more than any previous book to cover the period as a whole, whilst not simply becoming a detailed study of a number of episodes. Instead it retains the strong structural aspects of the relationship between foreign policy and politics necessary to examine questions about political stability, motivation and effectiveness. Following on from Jeremy Black's previous studies on eighteenth-century foreign policy, 'Politics and Foreign Policy under George I' (covering the period 1714-27) this new book takes the story up to 1744 and continues to illuminate the complex and often opaque workings of the British state at a turbulent period of European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America (St. Martin's Press, 2024) tells the extraordinary story of how Irish and Jewish immigrants worked together to secure legitimacy in America.Popular belief holds that the various ethnic groups that emigrated to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century regarded one another with open hostility, fiercely competing for limited resources and even coming to blows in the crowded neighborhoods of major cities. One of the most enduring stereotypes is that of rabidly anti-Semitic Irish Catholics, like Father Charles Coughlin of Boston and the sensationalized Gangs of New York trope of Irish street thugs attacking defenseless Jewish immigrants. In Opening Doors, Hasia R. Diner, one of the world's preeminent historians of immigration, tells a very different story; far from confrontational, the prevailing relationships between Jewish and Irish Americans were overwhelmingly cooperative, and the two groups were dependent upon one another to secure stable and upwardly mobile lives in their new home. The Irish had emigrated to American cities en masse a generation before the first major wave of Jewish immigrants arrived, and had already entrenched themselves in positions of influence in urban governments, public education, and the labor movement. Jewish newcomers recognized the value of aligning themselves with another group of religious outsiders who were able to stand up and demand rights and respect despite widespread discrimination from the Protestant establishment, and the Irish realized that they could protect their political influence by mentoring their new neighbors in the intricacies of American life. Opening Doors draws from a deep well of historical sources to show how Irish and Jewish Americans became steadfast allies in classrooms, picket lines, and political machines, and ultimately helped one another become key power players in shaping America's future. In the wake of rising anti-Semitism and xenophobia today, this informative and accessible work offers an inspiring look at a time when two very different groups were able to find common ground and work together to overcome bigotry, gain representation, and move the country in a more inclusive direction. Hasia R. Diner is a professor emeritus of American Jewish History and former chair of the Irish Studies program at New York University. She is the author of numerous books on Jewish and Irish histories in the U.S., including the National Jewish Book Award winning We Remember with Reverence and Love, which also earned the Saul Veiner Prize for most outstanding book in American Jewish history, and the James Beard finalist Hungering for America. Diner has also held Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships and served as Director of the Goren Center for American Jewish History. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University's Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson's exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country's most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine's chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine's members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country's largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today. Alongside the Shrine's story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism. The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America (FSG, 2024) offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces—both ideological and physical—where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future. The Black Utopians is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History.  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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

A powerful new history detailing the most significant military clashes between Islam and Christendom over the 1,300 years of the Muslim caliphate.  From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. In this powerful new history of the era, acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East and the Crusades Simon Mayall focuses on some of the most significant clashes of arms in human history: the taking and retaking of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Crusader states; the fall of Constantinople; the sieges of Rhodes and Malta; the assault on Vienna and the 'high-water mark' of Ottoman advance into Europe; culminating in the Allied capture of Jerusalem in World War I, the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the sultanate and the caliphate, and the formation of modern Europe and the modern Middle East.  The House of War: The Struggle Between Christendom and the Caliphate (Bloomsbury, 2024) offers a wide, sweeping narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military, who determined their conclusions and their consequences. Simon Mayall is a former soldier in the British Army, and an acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East, and of the Crusades. Much of his 40-year professional career was focussed on the Middle East, and he has strong family and academic interests in the region. His last appointments were as the British Government's Defence Senior Adviser for the Middle East, and the Prime Minister's Security Envoy to Iraq and the Kurdish Region. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Christopher Harding's The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) is a fascinating survey of two millennia of Western encounters with Eastern culture, thought and religions. From Herodotus to Alan Watts, Harding profiles a range of engaging figures who have had a sometimes-overlooked impact on the way we in the West engage with and understand Asia. From the myths of antiquity through to the impact of the hippie movement, the book asks; ‘What is real? Who says? How should I live?', and provides a wealth of historical analysis, anecdotal sketches and philosophical insight to explore how the Western and Eastern ways of thinking about these fundamental questions have intersected, conflicted with and complemented each other. Guest: Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian History at The University of Edinburgh. His previous books include The Japanese: A History in 20 Lives (2020) and Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 to the Present (2018). A frequent contributor to BBC Radio, he also writes the Illuminasia Substack. Host: Matt Fraser writes and podcasts for the Ill-Read Millennial. He lives in Berlin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In 1968, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, asserting his control of China 15 years later, Deng Xiaoping launched the reform and opening up period, putting China on the path to becoming an economic powerhouse. But what happens in between these two critical periods of Chinese history? How does China go from Mao's Cultural Revolution to Deng's embrace of reforms? Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian together fill in this history in The Great Transformation: China's Road from Revolution to Reform (Yale University Press: 2024) Odd Arne Westad is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. His books include The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge University Press: 2012), winner of the Bancroft Prize, and Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750 (Basic Books: 2012). Chen Jian is Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at NYU and NYU Shanghai and Hu Shih Professor of History Emeritus at Cornell University. His books include China's Road to the Korean War (Columbia University Press: 1994), Mao's China and the Cold War (The University of North Carolina Press: 2001), and Zhou Enlai: A Life (Harvard University Press: 2024). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Great Transformation. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization (Princeton UP, 2024) shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations.Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history. Martin Thomas is professor of imperial history and director of the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict at the University of Exeter. A fellow of the Leverhulme Trust and the Independent Social Research Foundation, he is the author of Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940; Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and the Roads from Empire; and other books. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Shaun Walker, The Illegals (Knopf, 2025) is the definitive history of Russia's most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.” During the Second World War, illegals were dispatched behind enemy lines to assassinate high-ranking Nazis. Later, in the Cold War, they were sent to assimilate and lie low as sleepers in the West. The greatest among them performed remarkable feats, while many others failed in their missions or cracked under the strain of living a double life.Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, as well as archival research in more than a dozen countries, Shaun Walker brings this history to life in a page-turning tour de force that takes us into the heart of the KGB's most secretive program. A riveting spy drama peopled with richly drawn characters, The Illegals also uncovers a hidden thread in the story of Russia itself. As Putin extols Soviet achievements and the KGB's espionage prowess, and Moscow continues to infiltrate illegals across the globe, this timely narrative shines new light on the long arc of the Soviet experiment, its messy aftermath, and its influence on our world at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In our conversation about The Battle of Manila (Oxford University Press, 2025), Nicholas Evan Sarantakes explains how U.S. forces under General Douglas MacArthur won a climactic battle in the Pacific during World War II, but at a terrible cost. In 1945 the United States and Japan fought the largest and most devastating land battle of their war in the Pacific, a month-long struggle for the city of Manila. The only urban fighting in the Pacific theater, the Battle of Manila was the third-bloodiest battle of World War II, behind Leningrad and Berlin. It was a key piece of the campaign to retake control of the Philippine Islands, which itself signified the culmination of the war, breaking the back of Japanese strategic power and sealing its outcome.In The Battle of Manila, Nicholas Sarantakes offers the first in-depth account of this crucial campaign from the American, Japanese, and, significantly, Filipino perspective. Fighting was building by building, with both sides forced to adapt to the new combat environment. None of the U.S. units that entered Manila had any previous training in urban warfare—yet, Sarantakes shows, they learned on the fly how to use tanks, flamethrowers, air, and artillery assets in support of infantry assaults. Their effective use of these weapons was an important factor in limiting U.S. casualties, even as it may also have contributed to a catastrophic loss of civilian lives.The battle was a strategic U.S. victory, but Sarantakes reveals how closely it hinged upon the interplay between a series of key decisions in both U.S. and Japanese headquarters, and a professional culture in the U.S. military that allowed the Americans to adapt faster and in more ways than their opponents. Among other aspects of the conflict, The Battle of Manila explores the importance of the Filipino guerillas on the ground, the use of irregular warfare, the effective use of intelligence, the impact of military education, and the limits of Japanese resistance.Ultimately, Sarantakes shows Manila to be a major turning in both World War II and American history. Once the United States regained control of the city, Japan was in a checkmate situation. Their defeat was certain, and it was clear that the United States would be the dominate political power in post-war Asia and the Pacific. This fascinating account shines a light on one of the war's most under-represented and highly significant moments. Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on a book about the reversal in US grand strategy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at andrew.pace@usm.edu or via https://www.andrewopace.com/. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. 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. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Through its focus on the relationship between foreign and domestic politics, Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727 (Routledge, 2016) provides a new perspective on the often fractious and tangled events of George I's reign (1714-27). This was a period of transition for Britain, as royal authority gave way to cabinet government, and as the country began to exercise increased influence upon the world stage. It was a reign that witnessed the trauma of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, saw Britain fighting Spain as part of the Quadruple Alliance, and in which Britain confronted the rise of Russia under Peter the Great.  There has been relatively little new detailed work on this subject since Hatton's biography of George I appeared in 1978, and that book, while impressive, devoted relatively little attention to the domestic political dimension of foreign policy. In contrast, Black links diplomacy to domestic politics to show that foreign policy was a key aspect of government as well as the leading battleground both for domestic politics and for ministerial rivalries. As a result he demonstrates how party identities in foreign policy were not marginal, to either policy or party, but, instead, central to both. The research is based upon a wealth of both British and foreign archive material, including State Papers Domestic, Scotland, Ireland and Regencies, as well as Foreign. Extensive use is also made of parliamentary and ministerial papers, as well as the private papers of numerous diplomats. Foreign archives consulted include papers from Hanover, Osnabruck, Darmstadt, Marburg, Munich, Paris, The Hague, Vienna and Turin. By drawing upon such a wide ranging array of sources, this book offers a rich and nuanced view of politics and foreign policy under George I. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration.  Why did these erstwhile foes end their schism and begin to make peace?  In this riveting study, Udi Greenberg shows that ecumenism grew out of a shared desire to protect against perceived threats to Christian life.  The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s (Harvard UP, 2025) overturns conventional wisdom about this revolutionary change by showing that the cause was not growing mutual tolerance but solidarity against the threats of socialism, feminism, and liberation movements. By working together Christians could defend their dominance in European life by maintaining and reinforcing the inequality inherent in Christian hierarchical order. Peacemaking between the confessions was accelerated by the rise of the Nazis, when Christian denominations debated their relations to each other and to nationalism, and was further pressed by the Cold War and decolonization, when Catholic and Protestant authorities formally declared each other "brethren in faith".  Working together, Catholics and Protestants designed Europe's economic policies, regulated its sexual practices, and shaped postwar relationships with the Global South. This coalition of Christians has grown more cohesive over time as they leveraged their alliance to maintain influence across a politically fractured Europe. Related:  Listen to the New Books Network interview with Udi Greenberg about The Weimar Century: German Emigres and the Ideological Foundation of the Cold War Author recommended reading: The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century by Dagmar Herzog Hosted by Meghan Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (Norton, 2024), a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep-seated in the American past as the founding ideals. A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That's not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology. Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis. Steven Hahn is an acclaimed historian whose works include A Nation Under Our Feet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize, and A Nation Without Borders. He is professor of history at New York 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. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. 150 million lifetime downloads. Advertise on the New Books Network. Watch our promotional video. Learn how to make the most of our library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-brother Sir Charles Stewart has received far less attention despite his own prominent part in the politics and diplomacy of those years. In War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era: Sir Charles Stewart, Castlereagh and the Balance of Power in Europe (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Reider Payne describes the adventurous life of the third Marquess of Londonderry and the roles he played in the events of his time. As a young man Charles Stewart initially pursued a career in the military rather than one in politics, and served in the cavalry during Great Britain's war against revolutionary France in the 1790s. After a brief period in the War Office he resumed his military career and served with the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War. His record as an officer and his relationship with his half-brother led to his appointment as an ambassador – first to Prussia, then to Austria – in which roles he represented Britain at the courts of her most prominent allies during the final stages of the Napoleonic Wars. Though Charles was often better known for his social escapades, he served ably as Britain's ambassador to Austria until his brother's suicide in 1822, during which time he was active in both post-Napoleonic diplomacy and the efforts to collect incriminating evidence against Princess Caroline of Brunswick in aid of the Prince Regent's effort to divorce her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examines low culture in the late 1990s. From pro wrestling and Pokémon to Vince McMahon and Jerry Springer, Benes reveals its profound impact and how it continues to affect our culture and society today.  The year 1999 was a high-water mark for popular culture. According to one measure, it was the "best movie year ever." But as Benes shows, the end of the '90s was also a banner year for low culture. This was the heyday of Jerry Springer, Jenna Jameson, and Vince McMahon, among many others. Low culture had come into its own and was poised for world domination. The reverberations of this takeover continue to shape American society. During its New Year's Eve countdown, MTV entered 1999 with Limp Bizkit covering Prince's famous anthem to the new year. The highlights of the lowlights continued when WCW and WWE drew 35 million American viewers each week with sex appeal and stories about insurrections. Insane Clown Posse emerged from the underground with a Woodstock set and platinum records about magic and murder. Later that year, Dance Dance Revolution debuted in North America and Grand Theft Auto emerged as a major video game franchise. Beanie Babies and Pokemon so thoroughly seized the wallets and imagination of collectors that they created speculative investment bubbles that anticipated the faddish obsession over nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The trashy talk show Jerry Springer became daytime TV's most-watched program and grew so mainstream that Austin Powers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Wayans Bros., The Simpsons, and The X-Files incorporated Springer into their own plots during the late '90s. Donald Trump even explored a potential presidential nomination with the Reform Party in 1999 and wanted his running mate to be Oprah Winfrey, whose own talk show would make Dr. Oz a household name. Among Springer's many guests were porn stars who, at the end of the millennium, were pursuing sex records in a bid for stardom as the pornography industry exploded, aided by sex scandals, new technology, and the drug Viagra, which marked its first full year on the US market in 1999.  According to Benes, there are many lessons to learn from the year that low culture conquered the world. Talk shows and reality TV foreshadowed the way political movements grab power by capturing our attention. Pro wrestling mastered the art of "kayfabe"--the agreement to treat something as real and genuine when it is not--before it spread throughout American society, as political contests, corporate public relations campaigns, and nonprofit fundraising schemes have become their own wrestling matches that require a suspension of disbelief. Beanie Babies and Pokémon demonstrate capitalism's resiliency as well as its vulnerabilities. Legal and technological victories obtained by early internet pornographers show how the things people are ashamed of have the ability to influence the world. Insane Clown Posse's creation of loyal Juggalos illustrates the way religious and political leaders are able to generate faithful followers by selling themselves as persecuted outsiders. And the controversy over video game violence reveals how every generation finds new scapegoats. 1999 is not just a nostalgic look at the past. It is also a window into our contentious present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2024) is the first comprehensive history of India's secret Cold War. It examines interventions made by the intelligence and security services of Britain and the United States in post-colonial India and their strategic, political, and socio-cultural impact on the subcontinent. It showcases how the interventions of these intelligence agencies have had a significant and enduring impact on the political and social fabric of South Asia. The specter of a 'foreign hand', or external intelligence activity, real and imagined, has occupied a prominent place in India's political discourse, journalism, and cultural production. The book probes the nexus between intelligence and statecraft in South Asia. It analyses how the relationships between agencies and governments helped shaping Indian democracy. Through a lively cast of characters and an analysis of covert operations, the book explores Western (US and UK) as well as Soviet perceptions of India during the Cold War. At the same time, it points to India's agency in plying the Cold War game. The book also moves beyond the Cold War to explore Indian intelligence in the post-Cold War years and in the aftermath of 9/11. Looking at the relationship between intelligence, politics, society, and (pop)culture, the book asks why, in contrast to Western assumptions about surveillance, South Asians associate intelligence with covert action, grand conspiracy, and justifications for repression. In doing so, it uncovers a fifty-year battle for hearts and minds in the Indian subcontinent. Paul McGarr is a lecturer in intelligence studies at King's College London. He has published over two dozen peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on South Asian security and intelligence issues These have appeared in Intelligence & National Security, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Diplomatic History, The International History Review and many other journals and edited collections. He is also the author of two monographs, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945-1965 published by Cambridge University Press in 2013 and Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States and India's Secret Cold War published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Mentioned: The Church Committee Report (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1976), Paul Mc Garr, The Cold War in South Asia (2013) Luca Trenta, The President's Kill List (2023) Hugh Wilford, The CIA: An Imperial History (2024) JFK Assassination Records Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

September 2 will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan's formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS. Missouri, ending the Second World War. The U.S. decision to drop two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—what drove Japan to surrender, at least in popular history—is still controversial to this day. How did the mass U.S. bombing campaign come about? Did the U.S. believe the atomic bomb was the only possible or the least bad option? Did the atomic bomb really push Japan to surrender—or was it on its last legs anyway? Famed historian Richard Overy tries to tackle these questions, and more, in his latest work of Second World War history: Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan (Allen Lane / W.W. Norton: 2025) Richard Overy is Honorary Research Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain's most distinguished historians. His major works include The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia (W. W. Norton & Company: 2004), winner of the 2005 Wolfson Prize, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilization, 1919-1939 (Penguin: 2010) and The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945 (Penguin: 2013), which won a Cundill Award for Historical Excellence in 2014. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Rain of Ruin. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The city was one of the central and defining features of the world of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. Challenging the idea that the ancient city 'declined and fell', Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues that memories of the past enabled cities to adapt and remain relevant in the changing post-Roman world. In the new kingdoms in Italy, France and Spain cities remained a key part of the structure of control, while to contemporary authors, such as Cassiodorus in Ostrogothic Italy, Gregory of Tours in Merovingian Gaul, and Isidore in Visigothic Spain, they remained as crucial as in antiquity. The archaeological evidence of New Cities founded in this period, from Constantinople to Reccopolis in Spain, also shows the deep influence of past models. The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity: A Study in Resilience (Cambridge UP, 2025) reveals the adaptability of cities and the endurance of the Greek and Roman world. Sheds fresh light on one of the most important social and cultural developments in the transition from classical antiquity to the world of the Middle Ages Explores developments through the eyes of contemporary writers and documents as well as the archaeological record Of interest to all those concerned with how cities can adapt in a radically changing world ANDREW WALLACE-HADRILL is Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He is a Roman cultural historian and his books include Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars (1983), Augustan Rome (1993), Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994), Rome's Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2008) and Herculaneum: Past and Future (2011). Former Director of the British School at Rome, he has directed archaeological projects at Pompeii and Herculaneum. This book is the result of his project on the Impact of the Ancient City, which received funding from the European Research Council. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell (Dey Street Books, 2025), Gabe Henry presents a  brief and humorous 500-year history of the Simplified Spelling Movement from advocates like Ben Franklin, C. S. Lewis, and Mark Twain to texts and Twitter. Why does the G in George sound different from the G in gorge? Why does C begin both case and cease? And why is it funny when a philologist faints, but not polight to laf about it? Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to write in English has, at one time or another, struggled with its spelling. So why do we continue to use it? If our system of writing words is so tragically inconsistent, why haven't we standardized it, phoneticized it, brought it into line? How many brave linguists have ever had the courage to state, in a declaration of phonetic revolt: "Enough is enuf"?  The answer: many. In the comic annals of linguistic history, legions of rebel wordsmiths have died on the hill of spelling reform, risking their reputations to bring English into the realm of the rational. This book is about them: Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, Eliza Burnz, C. S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin, and the innumerable others on both sides of the Atlantic who, for a time in their life, became fanatically occupied with writing thru instead of through, tho for though, laf for laugh, beleev for believe, and dawter for daughter (and tried futilely to get everyone around them to do it too). Henry takes his humorous and informative chronicle right up to today as the language seems to naturally be simplifying to fit the needs of our changing world thanks to technology--from texting to Twitter and emojis, the Simplified Spelling Movement may finally be having its day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy (Lund UP, 2024) examines important events in the life of the Swedish diplomat, but this is not a traditional biography. Starting from Wallenberg's time in Budapest during 1944–1945, the book analyses how Wallenberg went from being a highly sensitive topic in Swedish politics to becoming a personification of humanitarian effort during the Holocaust, as well as a ‘brand' in Swedish foreign politics. Fictional portrayals of Wallenberg are another essential feature. Looking at the many ways in which his life has been represented in monuments, on opera stages, in a television serial, and in a feature film, it becomes apparent that scholarly historical perspectives have not set the agenda for engagement with Wallenberg. Finally, this study raises a vital issue: how can Wallenberg's memory be kept alive as the distance to those events with which he was so powerfully connected recede into the background? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil rights. At the same time, a new paradigm for parenting was unfolding that put emphasis on permissiveness, defined by what it permitted – the free and unfettered impulses of children. Others worried that the wildness of children, personified by the characters in Maurice Sendak's 1963 classic children's book, Where the Wild Things Are, was destructive, disruptive and disrespectful. Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America (NYU Press, 2025) centers on the exploding, contentious national conversation about the nature of childhood and parenting in the postwar US emblematized by Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. Renowned scholar Henry Jenkins demonstrates that the language that shaped a growing field of advice literature for parents also informed the period's fictions—in film, television, comics, children's books, and elsewhere—produced for and consumed by children. In particular, Jenkins demonstrates, the era's emblematic child was the boy in the striped shirt: white, male, suburban, middle class, Christian, and above all, American. Weaving together intellectual histories and popular texts, Jenkins shows how boy protagonists became embodiments of permissive child rearing, as well as the social ideals and contradictions that permissiveness entailed. From Peanuts comic strips and TV specials to The Cat in the Hat, Dennis the Menace, and Jonny Quest, the book reveals how childhood and the stories about it became central to Cold War concerns with democracy, citizenship, globalization, the space race, science, race relations, gender, and sexuality. Written by a former boy in a striped shirt, Where the Wild Things Were explores iconic works, from Mary Poppins to Lost in Space, contextualizing them through a critical but respectful engagement with the core animating ideas of the permissive imagination. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social conflict and social progress―for sports clubs and ball games, jam sessions and concerts, offered entertainment, enlightenment, and encouragement. At times, they have also offered a means of escape from the harsh realities of everyday life. Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience (Georgetown UP, 2025) tells the story of these musicians and athletes who have used their skills and their determination to achieve success in the face of discrimination. Jackson begins with pioneers such as James Reese Europe, who formed the first musicians' union and fought as a member of the Harlem Hellfighters in World War I, and ends with giants of the twentieth century, such as Duke Ellington and Georgetown University basketball coaching legend John Thompson Jr. Readers interested in the history of Washington, DC, the civil rights movement, racial justice, music, and sports will draw important lessons from these stories of the Black men and women who found in sports and music spaces to combat racial prejudice and bring people in the District of Columbia together. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

For last 100 years, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City has stood as the capital of Black America and the capital of the global African diaspora. Yet Harlem is so big and so varied that it contains smaller sections with distinct identities and histories of their own. Davida Siwisa James explores two parts of Harlem in her book Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton's Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries, published by the Empire State Editions imprint of Fordham University Press. Exploring four centuries of life in a part of upper Manhattan that stretches from 135th Street to 165th Street and from Edgecombe Avenue to the Hudson River, James looks at the encounters between the Lenape and Dutch settlers, the rural village that was Harlem, and the Harlem Renaissance luminaries who lived in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill. James blends the personal and the historical to illuminate great events, fascinating people, and amazing architecture. In a time when Harlem is going through great demographic and cultural changes, she explores both the long history of Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill and their significance for the history Black America. Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian, professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University, and the author of When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers (Cornell, 2025). Email: rwsnyder@rutgers.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

For last 100 years, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City has stood as the capital of Black America and the capital of the global African diaspora. Yet Harlem is so big and so varied that it contains smaller sections with distinct identities and histories of their own. Davida Siwisa James explores two parts of Harlem in her book Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton's Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries, published by the Empire State Editions imprint of Fordham University Press. Exploring four centuries of life in a part of upper Manhattan that stretches from 135th Street to 165th Street and from Edgecombe Avenue to the Hudson River, James looks at the encounters between the Lenape and Dutch settlers, the rural village that was Harlem, and the Harlem Renaissance luminaries who lived in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill. James blends the personal and the historical to illuminate great events, fascinating people, and amazing architecture. In a time when Harlem is going through great demographic and cultural changes, she explores both the long history of Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill and their significance for the history Black America. Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian, professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University, and the author of When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers (Cornell, 2025). Email: rwsnyder@rutgers.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Those who fought in the Civil War were expected to overcome their fear of injury or death as they charged into a hail of bullets. Soldiers could expect erupting artillery shells or Minié balls to maim or tear their bodies apart. The 11th New York Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas Infantry were no different. They charged into battle with high, perhaps even inflated, expectations of glory on the field of battle. After all, they had already shown their bravery at home especially in the case of the Fire Zoaves. Yet when they marched into battle at the fields of Bull Run or Shiloh, falter as a unit they did. Afterwards, members of both units faced charges of cowardice casting a lingering shadow on their regiments and personal reputations. Over time charges of cowardice would fade to be replaced with the rhetoric of martial heroism leading some historians to insist that all Civil War soldiers were heroes. In her latest work , Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the America Civil War (Cambridge UP, 2024), Dr. Lesley Gordon seeks to offer a fuller understanding of the experiences of Civil War soldiers and sufferings of war. Dr. Gordon is the Charles Boal Ewing Chair in Military History at West Point and the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at the University of Alabama. Dr. Gordon received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and specializes in civil war history.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, in Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life (Princeton University Press, 2025) Dr. Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers, many of whom have filled in the gaps of what can be known of Leonardo's life with claims to decode secrets, reveal mysteries of a vanished past, or discover lost masterpieces of spectacular value. In this original and provocative book, Dr. Campbell examines the strangeness of Leonardo's words and works, and the distinctive premodern world of artisans and thinkers from which he emerged. Far from being a solitary genius living ahead of his time, Leonardo inhabited a vibrant network of artistic, technological, and literary exchange. By investigating the politics and cultural tensions of the era as well as the most recent scholarship on Leonardo's contemporaries, workshop, and writings, Dr. Campbell places Leonardo back into the milieu that shaped him and was shaped by him. He shows that it is in the gaps and contradictions of what we know of Leonardo's life that a less familiar and far more historically significant figure appears. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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 episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Geographic labels are sometimes misnomers. The Dead Sea's name is not, for the most part. Its high salinity levels kill most forms of life, barring a couple hardy microbes and algae—and even these are threatened by environmental change. Except the Dead Sea has been part of human history for millennia. Jericho, the world's oldest city, sits nearby. It features prominently in the Bible. Greeks, Romans, Jews, Arabs, Europeans all interact with the Dead Sea. And it's now a tourist hotspot, a source for resources extraction–and a political hotspot, shared between Jordan, Israel, and the contested area of the West Bank. Nir Arielli, professor of international history at the University of Leeds, covers this history in his new book The Dead Sea: A 10,000 Year History (Yale University Press, 2025). Nir is also the author of From Byron to bin Laden: A History of Foreign War Volunteers (Harvard University Press: 2018) and Fascist Italy and the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan: 2010). He has also written contemporary political commentary for the Globe Post, Haaretz, and the Conversation. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Dead Sea. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history