New Books in Intellectual History

The term “Heimat,” referring to a local sense of home and belonging, has been the subject of much scholarly and popular debate following the fall of the Third Reich. Countering the persistent myth that Heimat was a taboo and unusable term immediately after 1945, Geographies of Renewal uncovers overlooked efforts in the aftermath of the Second World War to conceive of Heimat in more democratic, inclusive, and pro-European modes. It revises persistent misconceptions of Heimat as either tainted or as a largely reactionary idea, revealing some surprisingly early identifications between home and democracy. Jeremy DeWaal further traces the history of efforts to eliminate the concept, which first emerged during the Cold War crisis of the early 1960s, and reassesses why so many on the political left sought to re-engage with Heimat in the 1970s and 1980s. This revisionist history intervenes in larger contemporary debates, asking compelling questions surrounding the role of the local in democracy, the value of community, and the politics of place attachments. Guest: Jeremy DeWaal (he/him), is Lecturer in European History at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on German cultural history, spatial history, memory, and the history of emotions. DeWaal's work on Heimat and democracy has been supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Central European History Society, and the Berlin Programme at the Free University of Berlin. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Martin Luther - monk, priest, intellectual, or revolutionary - has been a controversial figure since the sixteenth century. Most studies of Luther stress his personality, his ideas, and his ambitions as a church reformer. In Luther, Conflict, and Christendom: Reformation Europe and Christianity in the West (Cambridge UP, 2018), Christopher Ocker brings a new perspective to this topic, arguing that the different ways people thought about Luther mattered far more than who he really was. Providing an accessible, highly contextual, and non-partisan introduction, Ocker says that religious conflict itself served as the engine of religious change. He shows that the Luther affair had a complex political anatomy which extended far beyond the borders of Germany, making the debate an international one from the very start. His study links the Reformation to pluralism within western religion and to the coexistence of religions and secularism in today's world. Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in History at Queen's University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How has evolutionary theory shaped educational thinking over the past two centuries? ‘Evolutionary Theory and Education: The Influence of Evolutionary Thinking on Educational Theory and Philosophy' (Brill, 2025) explores the considerable but under-appreciated influence of evolutionary ideas on educational theory and the philosophy of education. The book reveals the interplay between educational and evolutionary perspectives along the concepts of ‘adaptation', ‘selection', ‘inheritance', and ‘progress'. It tracks these ideas across the works of various influential educational thinkers, including Herbert Spencer, Jean Piaget, John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky, and examines their continuing significance for how we understand and practice education today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

What is reliable knowledge? Listen to philosopher Michael Strevens, author of The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, to understand how science discovers the truth. At the current moment, when expertise is under attack and the idea of truth is contested from all sides, Strevens explains the remarkable success of science's “irrational” method to settle debates, regardless of philosophical, religious, or aesthetic preferences. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—our host Uli Baer's all-time favorite non-fiction book—, Karl Popper, and others, Strevens shows how science became the most effective tool for uncovering the secrets of nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Covering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Cornell University Press, 2018; paperback ed. 2020) is a fascinating interdisciplinary study that pushes us to rethink our ideas about both the military and the Enlightenment in and beyond a France that was a global, as well as a continental European imperial power. As Pichichero shows, the (long) eighteenth century holds the key to our understanding historical concepts and transformations that we tend to associate with later developments in military thought and practice, from conventions around "good" and "humane" conflict to ideas about community and civility between soldiers fighting together and on opposing sides. The book's five chapters explore a broad range of compelling events and sources, from the work of well known Enlightenment thinkers and authors such as Voltaire and Choderlos de Laclos, to military manuals and debates regarding how wars would and should be waged, how soldiers should be trained to think and act in battle. Now available in a new paperback edition, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the longue durée of military culture and warfare, as well as those with an interest in all that the Enlightenment did and could mean. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire.She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud's favorite translator and Melanie Klein's earliest and most loyal supporter. In her new book The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality (Routledge, 2018), Marion Bower puts Joan Riviere herself, the woman and the psychoanalyst, in the spotlight. She shows how Riviere made use of the latest psychoanalytic ideas in a highly creative and original way, expressing herself with clarity and emotional depth in seminal works about the inner life of female sexuality and treatment impasses. She was able to draw from a lifetime of challenging and fruitful experiences. After a childhood rife with emotional neglect, she stepped into the rich ferment of the dying Victorian era and came in touch with major progressive forces of the time like the suffragettes and the Society for Psychical Research. As a dressmaker's apprentice, she was among the first wave of women entering the work force. When the shifting soil of her childhood proved unstable, she entered analysis with Ernest Jones and, after becoming an analyst, with Freud himself. This personal connection proved fortuitous to the newly formed British Psychoanalytic Society, as it provided a solid anchor against the dividing drift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Bower paints an intimate portrait of a woman with a stern and sometimes vitriolic public persona and a shy and fragile personality that was saved by her involvement in psychoanalysis. In her best moments she was able to bridge that gap in her psychoanalytic writing, revealing herself through her theoretical musings. Marion Bower has trained as a teacher, social worker and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She has worked for many years in the child mental health services, including the Tavistock Clinic, and has edited and co-edited four books on various applications of psychoanalysis. She is currently co-editing a book on sexual exploitation. Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

This monograph outlines the core principles of equity and trusts in Sanskrit jurisprudence (Dharmaśāstra) and traces their application in the practical legal administration of religious and charitable endowments throughout Indian history. Dharmaśāstra describes phenomena that, in Anglo-American jurisprudence, are associated with courts of equity: the management of religious and charitable trusts; and the guardianship of those who lack legal capacity. Drawing on Sanskrit jurisprudential and philosophical texts, ancient inscriptions, Persian legal documents, colonial-era law reports, and contemporary case law, Equity and Trusts in Sanskrit Jurisprudence demonstrates that India's rulers have drawn on rich and venerable Sanskrit jurisprudential principles of equity and trusts in their efforts to regulate religious and charitable endowments. This book presents the history of India as a history of trusts, revealing how the contemporary law of Hindu religious endowments is subtended by a rich mélange of Sanskritic, Persianate, British, and constitutional jurisprudential principles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of the collapse and the post-Soviet transition, embarked on a spirited and highly visible search for new meaning. Amid profound disorientation, these seekers found direction in their horoscopes, or behind gurus in saffron robes or apocalyptic preachers, or by turning from the most basic premises of official science and history to orient themselves anew. The beliefs they seized on and, even more, the questions that guided their search reveal the essence of late-Soviet culture and its legacy in post-Soviet Russia. To skeptical outsiders, the seekers appeared eccentric, deviant, and above all un-Soviet. Yet they came to their ideas by Soviet sources and Soviet premises. As Joseph Kellner demonstrates, their motley beliefs reflect modern values that formed the spiritual core of Soviet ideology, among them a high regard for science, an informed and generous internationalism, and a confidence in humanity to chart its own course. Soviet ideology failed, however, to unite these values in an overarching vision that could withstand historical change. And so, as The Spirit of Socialism shows, the seekers asked questions raised but not resolved by the Russian Revolution and subsequent Soviet order—questions of epistemic authority, of cultural identity, and of history's ultimate meaning. Although the Soviet collapse was not the end of history, it was a rupture of epochal significance, whose fissures extend into our own uncertain era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism--Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides--After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law. Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Córdoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam. You can pre-order this book now, and it will be published on August 5, 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

 Today I'm speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learning tool that allows educators and studies to create digital timelines, network visualizations, and interactive presentations. Founded by UT Austin history professor Erika Bsumek, ClioVis is made for professors and teachers by current professors and scholars. I'm thrilled to get the chance today to speak with Marcus about this software to share with our listeners how they can enhance their own work and teaching. Visit ClioVis' website to learn more: Click Here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking—an “economic style of reasoning”—became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates over public policy today. Introduced by liberal technocrats who hoped to improve government, this way of thinking was grounded in economics but also transformed law and policy. At its core was an economic understanding of efficiency, and its advocates often found themselves allied with Republicans and in conflict with liberal Democrats who argued for rights, equality, and limits on corporate power. By the Carter administration, economic reasoning had spread throughout government policy and laws affecting poverty, healthcare, antitrust, transportation, and the environment. Fearing waste and overspending, liberals reined in their ambitions for decades to come, even as Reagan and his Republican successors argued for economic efficiency only when it helped their own goals.A compelling account that illuminates what brought American politics to its current state, Thinking like an Economist also offers critical lessons for the future. With the political left resurgent today, Democrats seem poised to break with the past—but doing so will require abandoning the shibboleth of economic efficiency and successfully advocating new ways of thinking about policy. Elizabeth Popp Berman is Director and Richard H. Price Professor of Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine (Princeton). 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/intellectual-history

A unique and thorough work of intellectual history and legal scholarship Stereoscopic Law: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Legal Education (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Alexander Lian, a practicing commercial litigator, reconstructs Oliver Wendell Holmes' as a pioneering legal pedagogue and sophisticated theoretician of law and the ‘reality of practice'. Lian advances the thesis that the most famous article in American jurisprudence, Oliver Wendell Holmes's “The Path of the Law,” presents Holmes' perspective on legal education. Through meticulous analysis, Lian cogently shows that Holmes' ‘theory of legal study' broke down artificial barriers between theory and practice. For contemporary legal educators—and anyone interested in the history of America's legal tradition—Stereoscopic Law reformulates Holmes' fundamental message: the law must be seen, taught, and practiced three-dimensionally. Alexandar Lian practices commercial litigation in Miami, FL. Since 2008, he has been a solo practitioner. Alexander Lian is a graduate of both the Graduate and Law Schools of Vanderbilt University. He has represented clients in a variety of contested matters ranging from high dollar contract disputes and real property disputes to the prosecution and collection of large judgments totaling in the millions. He is also a Florida Supreme Court Qualified Arbitrator and, formerly, president of COLBAR (Colombian American Bar Association). Ayushi Singh is a graduate student at IIT Gandhinagar, India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Samuel K Cohn, Jr. joins Jana Byars to talk about Popular Protest and the Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford University Press, 2025). This work, now out in paper, is the first study to analyse popular protest across the Italian peninsula and the Venetian colonies during the early modern period, 1494 to 1559. Drawing on over 100 contemporary chronicles and diaries, the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo's diplomatic dispatches, mercantile letters, and commentary, and 586 collective supplications scattered through archival sources from towns and villages in the Grand duchy of Milan, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. places these incidents and their patterns in comparative perspectives, first with the late medieval heyday of popular revolt and then with regions north of the Alps. Cohn finds new developments during the early modern period such as an increase in women rebels, mutinies of soldiers, and new tactics of revolts such as shop closures, peaceful demonstrations of strength, and use of religious processions for discussions of tactics and strategies for obtaining logistic advantage. At the same time, these protests show convergences with the medieval Italian past, with leaders coming almost exclusively from the ranks of nonelites, religious ideology playing a surprisingly minor role, and the majority of revolts centring overwhelming in towns and cities. Finally, this study demonstrates that democracies do not just die under the duress of military occupation and growing powers of autocratic regimes. Ideals of representation and equality not only persisted; they could emerge in new forms and with greater sophistication. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out of Europe, merchants of knowledge—multilingual and transregional Jewish scholars—became an important bridge among the powers. With this book, Robert Morrison is the first to track the network of scholars who mediated exchanges in astronomy, astrology, Qabbalah, and philosophy. Their books, manuscripts, and acts of translation all held economic value, thus commercial and intellectual exchange commingled—knowledge became transactional as these merchants exchanged texts for more intellectual material and social capital. While parallels between medieval Islamic astronomy and the famous heliocentric arrangement posited by Copernicus are already known, Morrison reveals far deeper networks of intellectual exchange that extended well beyond theoretical astronomy and shows how religion, science, and philosophy, areas that will eventually develop into separate fields, were once interwoven. The Renaissance portrayed in Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe (Stanford UP, 2025) is not, from the perspective of the Ottoman Muslim contacts of the Jewish merchants of knowledge, hegemonic. It's a Renaissance permeated by diversity, the cultural and political implications of which the West is only now waking up to. Robert G. Morrison is a professor at Bowdoin College. He is the author of The Light of the World: Astronomy in al-Andalus (2016). 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx's ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, but Marx is rarely considered alongside these figures. Yet his ideas are the most relevant today because of capitalism's centrality to American life.In  historian Andrew Hartman argues that even though Karl Marx never visited America, the country has been infused, shaped, and transformed by him. Since the beginning of the Civil War, Marx has been a specter in the American machine. During the Gilded Age, socialists read Marx as an antidote to the unchecked power of corporations. In the Great Depression, communists turned to Marx in hopes of transcending the destructive capitalist economy. The young activists of the 1960s were inspired by Marx as they gathered to protest an overseas war. Marx's influence today is evident, too, as Americans have become increasingly attuned to issues of inequality, labor, and power.After decades of being pushed to the far-left corner of intellectual thought, Marx's ideologies have crossed over into the mainstream and are more alive than ever. Working-class consciousness is on the rise, and, as Marx argued, the future of a capitalist society rests in the hands of the people who work at the point of production. A valuable resource for anyone interested in Marx's influence on American political discourse, Karl Marx in America is a thought-provoking account of the past, present, and future of his philosophies in American society. Andrew Hartman is professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, published by the University of Chicago Press, and Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School. He is also the coeditor of American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt's Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against anticipatory despair in the face of the Trump administration's relentless campaign of lies, half-lies, bluster, and bullshit by turning for inspiration to his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt. Half a century ago, in "Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers" (1971) she showed how expedient occasional lies spread to become omnipresent--not just in how America's campaigns in Vietnam were reported, but throughout Nixon-era governance. Recall this Book 153 is simply John reading the article aloud. It is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side) in soliloquy. Reach out and let us know if you think it should be the first of many, or simply a one-off. Mentioned in the episode: M. Gessen, Surviving Autocracy Harry Frankfurt, "On Bullshit" Vaclav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless" (1978) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers (Anthem Press, 2025) edited by Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth is a collection of articles by an international group of leading experts has its special focus on the relevance of Karl Jaspers's philosophy for the social sciences. It also includes classical evaluations of Jaspers's thinking by renowned authors Talcott Parsons and Jürgen Habermas. Several chapters are devoted to the relationship between Jaspers and his teacher (Max Weber), his famous student (Hannah Arendt) and crucial figures in his intellectual world (Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel). Others deal with his relevance for disciplines from psychiatry to the study of religion and the historico-sociological research about the Axial Age, a term coined by Jaspers. In his introduction, editor Hans Joas tries to systematise Jaspers's relevance for the contemporary social sciences and to explain why Parsons had called him a ‘social scientist's philosopher'. The contributions to this volume deal, on one hand, with thematic areas for which Jaspers's work has been crucial: the Axial Age debate, a non-theological and non-reductive theory of religion; the understanding of psychoanalysis and psychiatry; and the possibilities of a diagnosis of one's own age. On the other hand, they put Jaspers in contrast with Max Weber, Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel and Hannah Arendt. The volume also contains important chapters by Talcott Parsons, who called Jaspers ‘a social scientist's philosopher', and by Jürgen Habermas, who contrasts his own views on the role of communicative ethics in an age of religious pluralism with those of Jaspers. The book promises to become an indispensable source in the re-evaluation of Jaspers's thinking in the years to come.Hans Joas is the Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Matthias Bormuth is Professor for Comparative Intellectual History at the University of Oldenburg and is also the Director of the Karl Jaspers Haus.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

For centuries, Jewish thinkers have asked two parallel questions. First, what is the reasoning behind an individual commandment and second, why bother heeding a command at all, something Dr. Brafman terms “reasons for” vs “reasons of” the commandments. In his newest book, Critique of Halakhic Reason: Divine Commandments and Social Normativity (Oxford UP, 2024), Dr. Brafman looks closely at the second of these questions. After considering answers from some of the most important Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, Joseph Soloveitchik, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Eliezer Berkovits, Dr. Brafman introduces his own system of thought. For him, the reasons for the commandments depend on a number of factors. We don't follow them blindly. And they don't always have to adhere to perfect and pure reason. Instead they are, to use a term he employs throughout is book, “constructed” based on any number of factors including our relationship with God and the norms that exist within our society. In conversation with some of the most important secular legal theorist and philosophers of the past 100 years, Dr Brafman charts a new course in Jewish theology, both defending and reimagining the place of our obligation to halakhah, Jewish law, for the 21st century. Professor Yonatan Brafman is Associate Professor of Modern Judaism in the Department of Religion, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Literary and Cultural Studies at Tufts University. 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/intellectual-history

Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete's temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, which transformed his thinking and led him to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars. Said's subsequent writings, which cast light on the interplay between cultural representation and the exercise of Western political power, caused a seismic shift in scholarly circles and beyond. In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Said's political thought. Through analysis of Said's seminal works and the debates surrounding them, Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) traces the influence of Foucault on Said, and how Said eventually diverged from this influence to arrive at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation. He consequently affiliated more closely with Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, and more contemporaneously, with his friends the late Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Said held that it is the intellectual's responsibility to expose lies and deceptions of the holders of power. A passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause, his solidarity did not prevent him from launching a sustained critique of the Palestinian leadership. Hovsepian charts both Said's engagement with the Palestinian national movement and his exchanges with a host of intellectuals over Palestine, arguing that Said's interventions have succeeded in changing the parameters of the discourse in the humanities, and among younger Jews searching for political affiliation. Drawing on his diaries, in which he recorded his meetings with Said, as well as access to some of Said's private letters, Hovsepian illuminates, in rich detail, the trajectory of Said's political thinking and the depth and breadth of his engagement with peers and critics over issues that continue to resonate to this day. Nubar Hovsepian is associate professor emeritus of political science at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is the author of Palestinian State Formation: Education and the Construction of National Identity, and he edited and contributed to The War on Lebanon. Hovsepian has devoted enormous time to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and served, from 1982 to 1984, as political affairs officer for the United Nations Conference on the Question of Palestine. Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

An exploration of the mind of one of America's most beloved Founding Fathers and most brilliant minds, through the books he read and his social circles in the United States and Europe. Arguably the most intellectual, creative, cosmopolitan, and curious of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is the only top-tier Founder not to have served as president. Despite not becoming the Chief Executive, Franklin played an active role in American politics and served the aspiring and young United States in the key European capitals. His prodigious reading and appetite for learning are epic. As he did in works about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Kevin J. Hayes interprets the life and mind of Franklin through what he read.  Undaunted Mind: The Intellectual Life of Benjamin Franklin (Oxford University Press, 2025) tells the story of the development of Franklin's intellect, starting with the earliest books he read as a child before examining his formal schooling and his independent study after his father pulled him from school. As an apprentice in his brother's printing house, Franklin's intellectual life developed through his contact with the Couranteers, the group of his brother's friends who contributed to his newspaper, and through his attention to his brother's excellent office library. After Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, he developed a new group of friends, all of whom loved reading. In many ways, the story of Franklin's intellectual odyssey is the story of the friends he made along the way. His time in London in his late teens introduced him to several important intellectuals who encouraged him to develop his mind.  After returning to Philadelphia from London, he and some friends formed the Junto, a club for mutual improvement that made reading and writing important activities. With other members of the Junto, he formed the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first subscription library in colonial America. His role as a printer put him in contact with the best eighteenth-century American writing and kept a steady flow of imported books coming from Britain. He became a scientist, assembling a great scientific library, which helped his electrical research. An educational reformer, Franklin founded the Philadelphia Academy, which would become the University of Pennsylvania. As agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly, Franklin lived in London for many years, where he befriended some of Britain's greatest minds. Different concentrations of books in his library reveal Franklin's interests in travel and exploration, warfare, and slavery. His time in Paris toward the end of his life gave Franklin another great intellectual experience, but he ultimately returned home to live the last five years of his life in Philadelphia, where he imparted his knowledge and experience to a new generation of Americans. In this gripping work, Benjamin Franklin is given a biography as rich and complex as his own intellectual life by master literary historian Kevin J. Hayes. Kevin J. Hayes is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Central Oklahoma. Caleb Zakarin is editor of 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/intellectual-history

Today I'm speaking with Bernd Roeck about his book, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 2025). Bernd is professor of modern history at the University of Zurich and director of the German Centre for Venetian Studies in Venice. Translated by Patrick Baker, The World at First Light is a truly magisterial work. Much ink and paint has been spilled illuminating and interpreting the cultural flourishing known as Europe's rebirth. The Renaissance was chiefly marked by a revival in classical literature and philosophy, artistic and scientific innovations embodied by polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and William Shakespeare. In exploring this historical period, Bernd offers the most authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the Renaissance. Caleb Zakarin is editor of 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/intellectual-history

In Bookish Words & their Surprising Stories (Bodleian, 2025) by Dr. David Crystal, explore how books have played a pivotal role in the history of English vocabulary. The noun itself is one of the oldest words in the language, originating from boc in Old English, and appears in many commonly used expressions today – by the book, bring to book and bookworm – to name a few. Alongside the arrival of the printing press came the development of the newspaper industry. Terminology such as stop the press, front page news and hit the headlines have developed into common English vernacular over time. Still, the emergence of the internet continues to change all languages. This anthology presents a selection of more than 100 words which show the influence of writing, reading and publishing books on our everyday vocabulary over the centuries, telling the stories behind their linguistic origins, and uncovering some surprising twists in the development of their meaning through time. 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/intellectual-history

Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana, 1850 to Recent Times (2001); and Drink, Power and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Present Times (1996). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. As a former chair of the Committee on African Studies, he has been instrumental, along with Professor Gates, in creating the Department of African and African American Studies and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

We all know about art forgeries, but why write fake classical music? In Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon (Oxford University Press, 2025), Dr. Frederick Reece investigates the methods and motives of mysterious musicians who sign famous historical names like Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert to their own original works. Analyzing a series of genuinely fake sonatas, concertos, and symphonies in detail, Dr. Reece's study exposes the shadowy roles that forgeries have played in shaping perceptions of authenticity, creativity, and the self within classical music culture from the 1790s to the 1990s.Holding a magnifying glass to a wide array of phony works, Forgery in Musical Composition explains how skillful fakers have succeeded in the past while also proposing active steps that scholars and musicians can take to better identify deceptive compositions in the future. Pursuing his topic from case to case, Dr. Reece observes that fake historical masterpieces have often seduced listeners not simply by imitating old works, but rather by mirroring modern cultural beliefs about innovation, identity, and meaning in music. Here forged compositions have important truths to tell us about knowing and valuing works of art precisely because they are not what they appear. 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/intellectual-history

The Unseen History of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2025) locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine editions of Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis (IBP) published between 1625 and 1650. Meticulously reconstructing the publishing history of these first nine editions and cataloguing copies across hundreds of collections, The Unseen History provides fundamental data for reconstructing the impact of IBP across time and space. The authors, Dr. Mark Somos, Dr. Matthew Cleary, Dr. Pablo Dufour, Dr. Edward Jones Corredera, and Dr. Emanuele Salerno, also examined annotations that thousands of owners and readers have left in IBP copies over four centuries, offering original insights into the development of international law.Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis has been commonly regarded as the foundation of modern international law since its first appearance in 1625. Most major international law scholars have engaged with IBP, often owning and richly annotating their own copies. At key moments - including the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, the fall of Napoleon, and the end of both world wars - IBP was reissued with new commentaries by multinational projects devoted to restarting the international order. Despite the enormous literature on IBP's reception and influence, we cannot fully understand its impact without uncovering the history of IBP as a physical object, with hundreds of thousands of unpublished annotations arguing or agreeing with the text, updating and adapting its contents.Approaching Grotius' seminal work as a physical vehicle of the author's, the publishers', owners', and readers' engagement, The Unseen History radically expands and revises our understanding not only of IBP, but also of the academic discipline and lived practice of modern international law over the last four centuries. In addition to delving into the first nine editions' printing history, descriptive bibliography, and both Grotius' and the publishers' marketing and donation strategies, the book explores Grotius' subsequent impact on pro-slavery and abolitionist litigation as a case study of how the census' original findings can be applied to specific areas of reception. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

"Princeton University Press is thrilled to share news of a major new initiative: the publication of The Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung. As the longtime publisher of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung in North America, PUP is honored to be global publisher of the Critical Edition, having recently secured world language rights and the support from the Foundation of the Works of C. G. Jung in Zürich, who will be facilitating and guiding access to documents and letters and providing its expertise to this major undertaking based on family archives. Led by general editor Sonu Shamdasani, an esteemed historian of psychiatry and psychology and a preeminent expert on Jung, this ambitious, multi-year undertaking will result in 26 volumes of material, all newly translated by Caitlin Stephens, that will bring the Swiss psychologist's formidable work to new life for a new generation of readers. Astrid Freuler, an independent professional translator, will provide proofreading for the translations. Volumes will feature a scholarly apparatus, including historical introductions, contextual annotations that will draw heavily on Jung's unpublished correspondences, and variorum presentations of works that went through multiple editions, noting revisions. Alongside the general editor, Jung historians Gaia Domenici, Martin Liebscher, and Christopher Wagner will serve as volume editors." -From Princeton University Press' announcement Sonu Shamdasani is a professor at University College London, co-director at the health humanities center, and recognized as one of the world's most renowned scholars of psychologist, Carl Jung. Caleb Zakarin is editor of 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/intellectual-history

A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism.Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond, (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism.In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive sensibility—at once deeply atheist and richly religious. Experiments in Mystical Atheism argues that these “godless epiphanies” hold the key to renewing philosophy today.You can download the supplementary materials here. Other works recommended by Brook Ziporyn in this Interview Mercedes Valmisa, All Things Act, Oxford UP. Jana S. Rošker, Chinese Philosophy in Transcultural Contexts, Bloomsbury Academics Gregory Scott Moss, Absolute Dialetheism, forthcoming. But for a taste of a similar argument in a book chapter format, please check here. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Whiat is Intelligence? Penguin Random House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper gave a spirited philosophical defence of the Open Society in his two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. In this book, J. McKenzie Alexander argues that a new defence is urgently needed because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, many of the values of the Open Society have come under threat once again. Populist agendas on both the left and right threaten to undermine fundamental principles that underpin liberal democracies, so that what were previously seen as virtues of the Open Society are now, by many people, seen as vices, dangers, or threats. The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves interrogates four interconnected aspects of the Open Society: cosmopolitanism, transparency, the free exchange of ideas, and communitarianism. Each of these is analysed in depth, drawing out the implications for contemporary social questions such as the free movement of people, the erosion of privacy, no-platforming and the increased political and social polarisation that is fuelled by social media. In re-examining the consequences for all of us of these attacks on free societies, Alexander calls for resistance to the forces of reaction. But he also calls for the concept of the Open Society to be rehabilitated and advanced. In doing this, he argues, there is an opportunity to re-think the kind of society we want to create, and to ensure it is achievable and sustainable. This forensic defence of the core principles of the Open Society is an essential read for anyone wishing to understand some of the powerful social currents that have engulfed public debates in recent years, and what to do about them. The book is publicly available via the following link The Open Society as an Enemy | LSE Press J. McKenzie Alexander is a Professor in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method in the London School of Economics. From 2012 to 2018, Professor Alexander served as one of the Academic Governors on the Council of the LSE, as well as a member of the Court of Governors. From 2018–2021, he served as the Head of Department. Before joining the department, Alexander was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of California – San Diego (between 2000 and 2001). Although J. McKenzie Alexander's original field of research concerned evolutionary game theory as applied to the evolution of morality and social norms, more recently he has worked on problems in decision theory, more broadly construed, including topics in formal epistemology. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper gave a spirited philosophical defence of the Open Society in his two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. In this book, J. McKenzie Alexander argues that a new defence is urgently needed because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, many of the values of the Open Society have come under threat once again. Populist agendas on both the left and right threaten to undermine fundamental principles that underpin liberal democracies, so that what were previously seen as virtues of the Open Society are now, by many people, seen as vices, dangers, or threats. The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves interrogates four interconnected aspects of the Open Society: cosmopolitanism, transparency, the free exchange of ideas, and communitarianism. Each of these is analysed in depth, drawing out the implications for contemporary social questions such as the free movement of people, the erosion of privacy, no-platforming and the increased political and social polarisation that is fuelled by social media. In re-examining the consequences for all of us of these attacks on free societies, Alexander calls for resistance to the forces of reaction. But he also calls for the concept of the Open Society to be rehabilitated and advanced. In doing this, he argues, there is an opportunity to re-think the kind of society we want to create, and to ensure it is achievable and sustainable. This forensic defence of the core principles of the Open Society is an essential read for anyone wishing to understand some of the powerful social currents that have engulfed public debates in recent years, and what to do about them. The book is publicly available via the following link The Open Society as an Enemy | LSE Press J. McKenzie Alexander is a Professor in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method in the London School of Economics. From 2012 to 2018, Professor Alexander served as one of the Academic Governors on the Council of the LSE, as well as a member of the Court of Governors. From 2018–2021, he served as the Head of Department. Before joining the department, Alexander was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of California – San Diego (between 2000 and 2001). Although J. McKenzie Alexander's original field of research concerned evolutionary game theory as applied to the evolution of morality and social norms, more recently he has worked on problems in decision theory, more broadly construed, including topics in formal epistemology. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In the last third of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between totalizing doctrines—nationalist, Marxist, and religious—and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence and a widespread sense of malaise, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, injustice, failed development, and successive defeats by Israel. The foundational account of these responses, Contemporary Arab Thought illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab also connects Arab debates to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions. Since its first publication in 2009, this book has stood as the foremost account of contemporary Arab debates on culture, philosophy, modernity, tradition, identity, and liberation. It is widely used in Middle Eastern studies courses, and it has become a classic in the field of Arab intellectual history. Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (Columbia UP, 2025) now features an extensive new introduction that reconsiders post-1967 Arab intellectual history in light of the 2011 uprisings and the upheavals that have occurred over the intervening years. Kassab critically reflects on the book's arguments and the responses it has provoked, and she surveys the new preoccupations that have emerged in Arab debates since 2011. As crises again overtake the Middle East, this landmark work continues to offer indispensable insight into the richness of contemporary Arab thought. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is associate professor of philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Her books include Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia, 2019). The Arabic edition of Contemporary Arab Thought received the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court, even more than the presidency or Congress, aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution's Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.The Reconstruction Amendments, which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights, converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation's founding conceit, that all men are created equal, real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness. Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today's federal courts lurch rightward. Brando Simeo Starkey is a writer and scholar. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the New York Bar, he taught law at Villanova Law School and wrote for several years for ESPN's The Undefeated (now Andscape). Born and raised in Cincinnati, he lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons. You can find him online at The Braveverse, and on his YouTube channel of the same name. You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Brando continue their conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION: Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2023). Holly Case, The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond by Holly Case (Princeton University Press, 2018) Civilizations have faced challenges and debated how to manage them probably as long as civilization has existed. In our era we talk about these challenges as issues, or crises when perceived as more urgent. In the nineteenth century, what we now call issues or problems tended to be spoken of as questions. In this sprawling conversation, ranging from nineteenth-century “trolls” to the scalability of democracy in a various media ecosystems, Leslie Butler and Holly Case talk not only about the 19th-century questions that have captivated them as scholars, but also how, where, by whom, and to what ends these questions were discussed. When did posing questions serve to bring rationality and even-handedness to debates and when was it a rhetorical strategy intended to steer towards a particular end? Butler's analysis of the “Woman Question” in America's pursuit of “consistent democracy” distinguished between public opinion and published opinion while Case implicates the internationalization of the public sphere in the emergence of an “Age of Questions.” Have a listen as these erudite scholars contemplate the ways historians might navigate between the Scylla of cynicism and Charybdis of overly earnest naiveté in analyzing the past as well as in our current moment. Leslie Butler is a Professor of History at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. She is an American intellectual and cultural historian, with an emphasis on the nineteenth century. Holly Case is a historian of modern Europe at Brown University in Providence, RI. Her work focuses on the relationship between foreign policy, social policy, science, and literature in the European state system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philosophy. In Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Christoph Schuringa proposes a radically different reading of Marx's intellectual project and demonstrates that from his earliest writings his aim was the 'actualization' of philosophy. Marx, he argues, should be understood not as turning away from philosophy, but as seeking to make philosophy a practical force in the world. By analysing a series of texts from across Marx's output, Schuringa shows that Marx progressively overcame what he called 'self-sufficient philosophy', not in order to leave philosophy behind but to bring it into its own. This involves a major reinterpretation of Marx's relationship to his ancestors Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, and shows that philosophy, as it actualizes itself, far from being merely a body of philosophical doctrine, figures as an instrument of the revolution. Christoph Schuringa is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London. He has published widely on the history of philosophy and on Marx and Marxism, and is editor of the Hegel Bulletin. 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/intellectual-history

In Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History Museums (Penguin, 2025), zoologist Jack Ashby shares hidden stories behind the world's iconic natural history museums, from enormous mounted whale skeletons to cabinets of impossibly tiny insects. Look closely and all is not as it seems: these museums are not as natural, Ashby shows us, as we might think. Mammals dominate the displays, for example, even though they make up less than 1 percent of species; there are many more male specimens than females; and often a museum's most popular draw – the dinosaur skeletons – are not actually real. Over 99 percent of museum collections are held in immense, unseen storehouses. And it's becoming clear that these institutions have not been as honest about their complex histories as they should be. Yet natural history museums are also the only museums that can save the world – it is just starting to be understood that their vast collections are indispensable resources in the fight against biodiversity loss and climate catastrophe. Weaving together fresh historical research with surprising insights, Nature's Memory is a love letter to the joys, eccentricities and planet-saving potential of the world's best-loved museums. 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/intellectual-history

Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the historical narrative the only legitimate medium through which the past can be made known? Are novelists and historians as far apart as convention has it? In an age when history grounds any claims to national status, these are important questions and they have implications for how Scottish history has evolved, and how Scottish identity has been understood up to the present day. Scottish history is not simply the distillation of Scotland's past: authors shape what we know and how we judge our forebears. The Caledoniad: The Making of Scottish History (John Donald, 2024) by Dr. Catriona MacDonald investigates who decided which Scottish voices of the past would be heard in history's pages and which would ultimately be silenced. It sketches a picture of a narrow and privileged cultural elite that responded belatedly to a more democratic age and only slowly embraced women writers and the interests of ‘average' Scots. Integrating historical fiction and popular histories in its appreciation of the Scottish historical imaginary, it most importantly tells the story of why, despite the interests of politicians and others, a truly British history has never emerged. 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/intellectual-history

Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state.Zionism: An Emotional State (Rutgers UP, 2023) expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world. Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was in inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies. Penslar has published a dozen books, most recently Zionism: An Emotional State (2023). He is currently writing a book titled The War for Palestine, 1947-1949: A Global History. Penslar is a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

What many people don't realize is that Zionism is not a monolithic term. From its inception there were rigorous debates about the nature and direction of the movement? Thinkers had argued about some of the fundamental questions around Israel. Where would a future Jewish state be located? What language would they speak? Should Israel come about through a slow evolution or a radical revolution? In his book, Zionism and Jewish Culture: A Study in the Origins of a National Movement (Academic Studies Press, 2024), Yithak Conforti situates us in these debates, zeroing in on the leaders of what has become known as “cultural Zionism.” These group of thinkers stood across the aisle from more politically minded voices like Theodor Herzl. As Prof Yizhak Conforti explains, their approach was quite different, highlighting a more Jewish, more ethnic, more culturally centered Zionist vision. Zionism and Jewish Culture examines the history of Zionism from a new perspective, arguing that Zionism was not only a political project, but also a major cultural force in modern Jewish life. In exploring these topics, this book enables a deeper understanding of the forces that continue to shape Zionism and Israel today. Prof. Yitzhak Conforti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, specializing in modern Jewish history, Jewish nationalism, and Zionist historiography. In addition to Zionism and Jewish Culture, se is the author of several influential works, including Past Tense: Zionist Historiography and the Shaping of the Zionist Memory and Shaping a Nation: The Cultural Origins of Zionism, 1882–1948. 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/intellectual-history

Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime's perception of itself. Although satire has always been a primary literature of state affairs, and although it has always been used to intervene in ongoing discussions about political theory and practice, there has been no attempt to examine this fascinating and unusual literature across the full chronological horizon. In State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Dan Sperrin provides the first ever longue durée history of political satire in British literature. He traces satire's many extended and discontinuous trajectories through time while also chronicling some of the most inflamed and challenging political contexts within which it has been written.Dr. Sperrin begins by describing the Roman foundations and substructures of British satire, paying particularly close attention to the core Roman canon: Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. He then proceeds chronologically, populating the branches of satire's family tree with such figures as Chaucer, Jonson, Dryden, Swift, Pope, and Dickens, as well as a whole series of writers who are now largely forgotten. Satire, Dr. Sperrin shows, can be a literature of explicit statements and overt provocation—but it can also be notoriously indirect, oblique, suggestive, and covert, complicated by an author's anonymity or pseudonymity. Dr. Sperrin meticulously analyses the references to transient political events that may mystify the contemporary reader. He also presents vivid and intriguing pen portraits of the satirists themselves along the way. Dr. Sperrin argues that if satire is to be contended with and reflected upon in all its provocative complexity—and if it is to be seen as anything more than a literature of political vandalism—then we must explore the full depth and intrigue of its past. This book offers a new starting point for our intellectual and imaginative contact with an important and fascinating kind of literature. 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/intellectual-history

Early modernity has long been seen as a crucial period in the history of biblical scholarship, witnessing rapid advances in studies of Hebrew, Greek, and the ancient Jewish and Christian past. Historians have devoted much attention to how these developments were received by the academic and clerical elite, and yet there is little research on their reception beyond such exclusive circles. Some have even argued that ordinary believers had no interest in the demanding world of elite scholarship. According to current narratives, the Protestant laity were preoccupied by practical piety, scripture-reading, and devotional exercises, all of which were far removed from the dazzling polyglot erudition of the scholar.  Lay Learning and the Bible in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Oxford University Press, 2024) offers an alternative account of popular religion in early modernity by reconstructing a striking and unstudied community of seventeenth-century puritan immigrants to North America. Composed of tradespeople without a university education, this community offers unparalleled evidence for lay engagement with even the most abstruse and challenging concerns of contemporaneous biblical scholarship. Drawing on whatever resources they could find, this group taught themselves the languages of biblical criticism; immersed themselves in the most specialized questions of controversial theology; and then promulgated, through their hard-earned learning, an unprecedentedly inclusive vision of education, society, and the church. By recovering their lives and interests, this book presents a new vision of lay puritanism in the Atlantic world, one marked by far greater ambition, critical thought, and intellectual boldness than ever before suspected. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

You're human, but are you also a Buddha? If so, which one comes first? What does it mean to be human? What is a Buddha exactly? Is our humanity lost or superseded if we become a Buddha? Such questions might interest our more philosophical listeners. Being Human and a Buddha Too (Wisdom Publications, 2023) by today's guest Anne Klein explores the 7-point mind training of Longchenpa, a 14th century Tibetan Scholar and Yogi from the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Anne is professor of religion at Rice University, a co-founder of the Dawn Mountain centre for Tibetan Buddhism in Housten, Texas, and a lama in the Nyingma tradition herself. Her key research areas are Tibet and Indian epistemology, Tibetan texts and language. We touch on the following themes and questions; How do you manage the dual roles of university academic and Nyingma Lama? Buddhism in the West has gone through a lot and very quickly since its more prominent emergence in the 1960s. Do you have any thoughts on Buddhism's future in the west and whether it will maintain any significant presence once its key teachers from the boomer generation begin to pass away? Whether its problematic teachers, or, and perhaps more importantly, the insistence on a model that it antithetical to western modes of teacher student interaction, the Tibetan Lama, guru and core figure cannot escape a compatibility issue with Western norms. Worse for some still, there is also an increasing lack of teacher availability for those willing to embrace this model. Thoughts? What are we to do with language and the hermeneutic challenges its presents for translators of old Tibetan texts? Why this book? Why now? You have a series of events coming up, including retreats with translators in Germany, Switzerland and in Italy. Can you tell us about that and how listeners can get involved if they wish to? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), where he reveals hope to be an indispensable aspect of much continental and American political thought, especially in the works of Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, and others. Our conversation on Goldman's study of hope ends with three concrete lessons to counter hopelessness, cynicism, and despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-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/intellectual-history