Podcasts about u california press

An expansive policy blueprint for meaningfully expanding the middle class for the first time in a century The US middle class was a product of state and federal policies enacted in the wake of the Great Depression. But since the 1980s, lawmakers have undermined what they once built, shredding the social safety net and instituting laws that virtually guarantee downward mobility for all but the most privileged. How can we restore what has been lost? Rigorous and highly readable, The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream (U California Press, 2026) breaks down the policies that have decimated working families and proposes reforms to reverse this trend. As Mechele Dickerson shows, part of the problem is that politicians disingenuously conflate the middle class with the "White lower rich." Such propaganda hides how state and federal lawmakers consistently favor education, labor, housing, and consumer-credit laws that erode the bank accounts of lower- and middle-income people--especially those who are not White and don't have college degrees. Weaving together the latest research with the personal stories of Americans struggling to make ends meet, Dickerson provides a clarion call for political leaders to enact a bold agenda like the one that created the middle class almost a century ago. A. Mechele Dickerson is the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy and Practice and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas School of Law. Professor Dickerson is a nationally recognized scholar on financial vulnerability, consumer debt, housing affordability, and racial and economic disparities. She regularly teaches Remedies and Federal Civil Procedure at the School of Law, has taught a class on civil procedural disputes that arose between the two Trump presidencies, and has taught numerous cross-listed interdisciplinary graduate-level courses on the American middle-class and the COVID pandemic. She is also the author of Homeownership and America's Financial Underclass: Flawed Premises, Broken Promises, New Prescriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims (U California Press, 2023), Khaled A. Beydoun details how the American War on Terror has facilitated and intensified the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding across the world. The New Crusades is the first book of its kind, offering a critical and intimate examination of global Islamophobia and its manifestations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and regions beyond and in between. Through trenchant analysis and direct testimony from Muslims on the ground, Beydoun interrogates how Islamophobia acts as a unifying global thread of state and social bigotry, instigating both liberal and right-wing hate-mongering. Whether imposed by way of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the network of concentration camps in China, Islamophobia unravels into distinct systems of demonization and oppression across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Lucid and poignant, The New Crusades reveals that Islamophobia is not only a worldwide phenomenon—it stands as one of the world's last bastions of acceptable hate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims (U California Press, 2023), Khaled A. Beydoun details how the American War on Terror has facilitated and intensified the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding across the world. The New Crusades is the first book of its kind, offering a critical and intimate examination of global Islamophobia and its manifestations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and regions beyond and in between. Through trenchant analysis and direct testimony from Muslims on the ground, Beydoun interrogates how Islamophobia acts as a unifying global thread of state and social bigotry, instigating both liberal and right-wing hate-mongering. Whether imposed by way of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the network of concentration camps in China, Islamophobia unravels into distinct systems of demonization and oppression across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Lucid and poignant, The New Crusades reveals that Islamophobia is not only a worldwide phenomenon—it stands as one of the world's last bastions of acceptable hate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

An expansive policy blueprint for meaningfully expanding the middle class for the first time in a century The US middle class was a product of state and federal policies enacted in the wake of the Great Depression. But since the 1980s, lawmakers have undermined what they once built, shredding the social safety net and instituting laws that virtually guarantee downward mobility for all but the most privileged. How can we restore what has been lost? Rigorous and highly readable, The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream (U California Press, 2026) breaks down the policies that have decimated working families and proposes reforms to reverse this trend. As Mechele Dickerson shows, part of the problem is that politicians disingenuously conflate the middle class with the "White lower rich." Such propaganda hides how state and federal lawmakers consistently favor education, labor, housing, and consumer-credit laws that erode the bank accounts of lower- and middle-income people--especially those who are not White and don't have college degrees. Weaving together the latest research with the personal stories of Americans struggling to make ends meet, Dickerson provides a clarion call for political leaders to enact a bold agenda like the one that created the middle class almost a century ago. A. Mechele Dickerson is the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy and Practice and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas School of Law. Professor Dickerson is a nationally recognized scholar on financial vulnerability, consumer debt, housing affordability, and racial and economic disparities. She regularly teaches Remedies and Federal Civil Procedure at the School of Law, has taught a class on civil procedural disputes that arose between the two Trump presidencies, and has taught numerous cross-listed interdisciplinary graduate-level courses on the American middle-class and the COVID pandemic. She is also the author of Homeownership and America's Financial Underclass: Flawed Premises, Broken Promises, New Prescriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

An expansive policy blueprint for meaningfully expanding the middle class for the first time in a century The US middle class was a product of state and federal policies enacted in the wake of the Great Depression. But since the 1980s, lawmakers have undermined what they once built, shredding the social safety net and instituting laws that virtually guarantee downward mobility for all but the most privileged. How can we restore what has been lost? Rigorous and highly readable, The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream (U California Press, 2026) breaks down the policies that have decimated working families and proposes reforms to reverse this trend. As Mechele Dickerson shows, part of the problem is that politicians disingenuously conflate the middle class with the "White lower rich." Such propaganda hides how state and federal lawmakers consistently favor education, labor, housing, and consumer-credit laws that erode the bank accounts of lower- and middle-income people--especially those who are not White and don't have college degrees. Weaving together the latest research with the personal stories of Americans struggling to make ends meet, Dickerson provides a clarion call for political leaders to enact a bold agenda like the one that created the middle class almost a century ago. A. Mechele Dickerson is the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy and Practice and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas School of Law. Professor Dickerson is a nationally recognized scholar on financial vulnerability, consumer debt, housing affordability, and racial and economic disparities. She regularly teaches Remedies and Federal Civil Procedure at the School of Law, has taught a class on civil procedural disputes that arose between the two Trump presidencies, and has taught numerous cross-listed interdisciplinary graduate-level courses on the American middle-class and the COVID pandemic. She is also the author of Homeownership and America's Financial Underclass: Flawed Premises, Broken Promises, New Prescriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperor's hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divine—gods one could see—so was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects—who authored the texts on which Elm's analysis is based—were as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Their vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Michael Motia teaches classics and religious studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperor's hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divine—gods one could see—so was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects—who authored the texts on which Elm's analysis is based—were as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Their vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Michael Motia teaches classics and religious studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperor's hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divine—gods one could see—so was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects—who authored the texts on which Elm's analysis is based—were as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Their vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Michael Motia teaches classics and religious studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/caribbean-studies

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz (University of California Press, 2025), anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. Karma F. Frierson is Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to hedge funds. Manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? She gives readers an insider perspective on the phenomenon. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers work long hours and build tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Neely shows how the system of elite power and privilege sustains and builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to hedge funds. Manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? She gives readers an insider perspective on the phenomenon. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers work long hours and build tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Neely shows how the system of elite power and privilege sustains and builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to hedge funds. Manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? She gives readers an insider perspective on the phenomenon. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers work long hours and build tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Neely shows how the system of elite power and privilege sustains and builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to hedge funds. Manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? She gives readers an insider perspective on the phenomenon. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers work long hours and build tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Neely shows how the system of elite power and privilege sustains and builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Ministries of Song: Women's Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of women's liturgical singing in late antique Syriac Christianity. Extending women's religious participation beyond the familiar roles of female saints and nobles, Syriac churches cultivated a flourishing but often-overlooked tradition of women's sacred song. Susan Ashbrook Harvey brings this music to life as she uncovers the ways these now-nameless women performed a boldly sung teaching ministry and invited congregations to respond aloud. By exploring their ritual agency, Harvey demonstrates how these choirs helped to shape the formative ethical and moral ideals of their congregations and communities. Women's voices, both real and imagined, enriched the ritual and devotional lives of Syriac Christians daily and weekly, on ecclesial and civic special occasions, in sorrow or joy, with authoritative theological significance and social and political resonance. Arguing for the importance of liturgy as social history, Harvey shows us how and why women's voices mattered for ancient Syriac Christianity and why they matter still. New books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Ministries of Song: Women's Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of women's liturgical singing in late antique Syriac Christianity. Extending women's religious participation beyond the familiar roles of female saints and nobles, Syriac churches cultivated a flourishing but often-overlooked tradition of women's sacred song. Susan Ashbrook Harvey brings this music to life as she uncovers the ways these now-nameless women performed a boldly sung teaching ministry and invited congregations to respond aloud. By exploring their ritual agency, Harvey demonstrates how these choirs helped to shape the formative ethical and moral ideals of their congregations and communities. Women's voices, both real and imagined, enriched the ritual and devotional lives of Syriac Christians daily and weekly, on ecclesial and civic special occasions, in sorrow or joy, with authoritative theological significance and social and political resonance. Arguing for the importance of liturgy as social history, Harvey shows us how and why women's voices mattered for ancient Syriac Christianity and why they matter still. New books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ministries of Song: Women's Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of women's liturgical singing in late antique Syriac Christianity. Extending women's religious participation beyond the familiar roles of female saints and nobles, Syriac churches cultivated a flourishing but often-overlooked tradition of women's sacred song. Susan Ashbrook Harvey brings this music to life as she uncovers the ways these now-nameless women performed a boldly sung teaching ministry and invited congregations to respond aloud. By exploring their ritual agency, Harvey demonstrates how these choirs helped to shape the formative ethical and moral ideals of their congregations and communities. Women's voices, both real and imagined, enriched the ritual and devotional lives of Syriac Christians daily and weekly, on ecclesial and civic special occasions, in sorrow or joy, with authoritative theological significance and social and political resonance. Arguing for the importance of liturgy as social history, Harvey shows us how and why women's voices mattered for ancient Syriac Christianity and why they matter still. New books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Ministries of Song: Women's Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of women's liturgical singing in late antique Syriac Christianity. Extending women's religious participation beyond the familiar roles of female saints and nobles, Syriac churches cultivated a flourishing but often-overlooked tradition of women's sacred song. Susan Ashbrook Harvey brings this music to life as she uncovers the ways these now-nameless women performed a boldly sung teaching ministry and invited congregations to respond aloud. By exploring their ritual agency, Harvey demonstrates how these choirs helped to shape the formative ethical and moral ideals of their congregations and communities. Women's voices, both real and imagined, enriched the ritual and devotional lives of Syriac Christians daily and weekly, on ecclesial and civic special occasions, in sorrow or joy, with authoritative theological significance and social and political resonance. Arguing for the importance of liturgy as social history, Harvey shows us how and why women's voices mattered for ancient Syriac Christianity and why they matter still. New books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

I'm excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin, 2003); and October Cities (University of California Press, 1998). He has written for the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and Harper's. Today, we discuss Carlo's new book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press, 2025). The book does two things. It directly reports what happened in a class Carlo taught in the spring of 2020. Carlo interviews students in the semesters after the class ended, learning what students were going through while they were taking your class, and also what stood out in their memories years later. The second thing the book does is offer hands-on lessons from a life of teaching. Throughout the book, Carlo discusses how to deal with a class that hates the novel that you assigned, how to reach out to a student who falls silent, and how to introduce the multitude of ways of being enthusiastic about literature to skeptical students. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

I'm excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin, 2003); and October Cities (University of California Press, 1998). He has written for the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and Harper's. Today, we discuss Carlo's new book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press, 2025). The book does two things. It directly reports what happened in a class Carlo taught in the spring of 2020. Carlo interviews students in the semesters after the class ended, learning what students were going through while they were taking your class, and also what stood out in their memories years later. The second thing the book does is offer hands-on lessons from a life of teaching. Throughout the book, Carlo discusses how to deal with a class that hates the novel that you assigned, how to reach out to a student who falls silent, and how to introduce the multitude of ways of being enthusiastic about literature to skeptical students. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

I'm excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin, 2003); and October Cities (University of California Press, 1998). He has written for the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and Harper's. Today, we discuss Carlo's new book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press, 2025). The book does two things. It directly reports what happened in a class Carlo taught in the spring of 2020. Carlo interviews students in the semesters after the class ended, learning what students were going through while they were taking your class, and also what stood out in their memories years later. The second thing the book does is offer hands-on lessons from a life of teaching. Throughout the book, Carlo discusses how to deal with a class that hates the novel that you assigned, how to reach out to a student who falls silent, and how to introduce the multitude of ways of being enthusiastic about literature to skeptical students. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

I'm excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin, 2003); and October Cities (University of California Press, 1998). He has written for the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and Harper's. Today, we discuss Carlo's new book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press, 2025). The book does two things. It directly reports what happened in a class Carlo taught in the spring of 2020. Carlo interviews students in the semesters after the class ended, learning what students were going through while they were taking your class, and also what stood out in their memories years later. The second thing the book does is offer hands-on lessons from a life of teaching. Throughout the book, Carlo discusses how to deal with a class that hates the novel that you assigned, how to reach out to a student who falls silent, and how to introduce the multitude of ways of being enthusiastic about literature to skeptical students. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (U California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Dr. Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. 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/new-books-network

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (U California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Dr. Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. 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/middle-eastern-studies

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (U California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Dr. Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. 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/african-studies

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (U California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Dr. Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. 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/food

The field of employment law used to be called "master-servant law." Even if this term has fallen out of favor, a central truth has not changed: modern employment law still draws on centuries-old ideas about the rights and obligations of workers. In The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace (U California Press, 2025), Elizabeth Chika Tippett combines historical context with contemporary case studies and interviews to reveal how modern law and management practices are steeped in three core master-servant principles: the right to control, the right to govern, and the duty of support. With each chapter tackling a different aspect of the workplace—including pay, time management, firing, and benefits—this startling and original story of employment law offers fresh insights for legal scholars, historians, attorneys, advocates, and anyone who's ever worked a terrible job. 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

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (U California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Dr. Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. 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

The field of employment law used to be called "master-servant law." Even if this term has fallen out of favor, a central truth has not changed: modern employment law still draws on centuries-old ideas about the rights and obligations of workers. In The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace (U California Press, 2025), Elizabeth Chika Tippett combines historical context with contemporary case studies and interviews to reveal how modern law and management practices are steeped in three core master-servant principles: the right to control, the right to govern, and the duty of support. With each chapter tackling a different aspect of the workplace—including pay, time management, firing, and benefits—this startling and original story of employment law offers fresh insights for legal scholars, historians, attorneys, advocates, and anyone who's ever worked a terrible job. 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/new-books-network

The field of employment law used to be called "master-servant law." Even if this term has fallen out of favor, a central truth has not changed: modern employment law still draws on centuries-old ideas about the rights and obligations of workers. In The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace (U California Press, 2025), Elizabeth Chika Tippett combines historical context with contemporary case studies and interviews to reveal how modern law and management practices are steeped in three core master-servant principles: the right to control, the right to govern, and the duty of support. With each chapter tackling a different aspect of the workplace—including pay, time management, firing, and benefits—this startling and original story of employment law offers fresh insights for legal scholars, historians, attorneys, advocates, and anyone who's ever worked a terrible job. 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/law

Activists utilize digital technologies to communicate, coordinate, and organize for social change. In Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies (U California Press, 2024) Elisabetta Ferrari examines both the politics of Silicon Valley's technological imaginary and how leftist activists appropriate, negotiate, and challenge Silicon Valley's vision of technology. Researching movements in Italy, Hungary, and the United States, Ferrari shows how activists construct their own activist technological imaginaries that reflect and shape the politics of social movement how activists think about their political possibilities. Ultimately, Ferrari centers the political and imaginative work that activists need to perform in order to navigate the politics of mainstream digital technologies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage. Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent. His research is situated primarily in the fields of cultural history, the history of sexuality, and gender history. Jacob is the author of Drag: A British History (2023). His second monograph will be about the historical reception to, and cultural impact of, musician Little Richard. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage. Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent. His research is situated primarily in the fields of cultural history, the history of sexuality, and gender history. Jacob is the author of Drag: A British History (2023). His second monograph will be about the historical reception to, and cultural impact of, musician Little Richard. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage. Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent. His research is situated primarily in the fields of cultural history, the history of sexuality, and gender history. Jacob is the author of Drag: A British History (2023). His second monograph will be about the historical reception to, and cultural impact of, musician Little Richard. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr provides a lively, nuanced, and timely portrait of aging in the United States. The US population is older than ever before, raising new challenges for families, caregivers, health care systems, and social programs like Social Security and Medicare. Organized in seven chapters, Aging in America (U California Press, 2023) covers these topics: the history of aging and the development of theoretical approaches how cultural changes shape our views on aging the demographic characteristics of older adults today older adults' family lives and social relationships the health of older adults and social disparities in who gets sick how public policies affect the well-being of older adults and their families how baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials will experience old age Drawing on state-of-the-art data, current events, and pop culture, this portrait of an aging population challenges outdated myths and vividly shows how future cohorts of older adults will differ from the generations before them. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr provides a lively, nuanced, and timely portrait of aging in the United States. The US population is older than ever before, raising new challenges for families, caregivers, health care systems, and social programs like Social Security and Medicare. Organized in seven chapters, Aging in America (U California Press, 2023) covers these topics: the history of aging and the development of theoretical approaches how cultural changes shape our views on aging the demographic characteristics of older adults today older adults' family lives and social relationships the health of older adults and social disparities in who gets sick how public policies affect the well-being of older adults and their families how baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials will experience old age Drawing on state-of-the-art data, current events, and pop culture, this portrait of an aging population challenges outdated myths and vividly shows how future cohorts of older adults will differ from the generations before them. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr provides a lively, nuanced, and timely portrait of aging in the United States. The US population is older than ever before, raising new challenges for families, caregivers, health care systems, and social programs like Social Security and Medicare. Organized in seven chapters, Aging in America (U California Press, 2023) covers these topics: the history of aging and the development of theoretical approaches how cultural changes shape our views on aging the demographic characteristics of older adults today older adults' family lives and social relationships the health of older adults and social disparities in who gets sick how public policies affect the well-being of older adults and their families how baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials will experience old age Drawing on state-of-the-art data, current events, and pop culture, this portrait of an aging population challenges outdated myths and vividly shows how future cohorts of older adults will differ from the generations before them. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr provides a lively, nuanced, and timely portrait of aging in the United States. The US population is older than ever before, raising new challenges for families, caregivers, health care systems, and social programs like Social Security and Medicare. Organized in seven chapters, Aging in America (U California Press, 2023) covers these topics: the history of aging and the development of theoretical approaches how cultural changes shape our views on aging the demographic characteristics of older adults today older adults' family lives and social relationships the health of older adults and social disparities in who gets sick how public policies affect the well-being of older adults and their families how baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials will experience old age Drawing on state-of-the-art data, current events, and pop culture, this portrait of an aging population challenges outdated myths and vividly shows how future cohorts of older adults will differ from the generations before them. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, to Western India and, eventually, back to the Gulf. Dhows had sailed this route for centuries—and would continue to sail it for a few more decades still. Fahad Ahmad Bishara talks about this specific 1924 journey in his book Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History (U California Press, 2025). As the Crooked travels the waters of the Indian Ocean, Fahad covers topics like international law, the importance of debt, piracy, how information spread from port to port, and the Arab diaspora (among many other topics) Fahad is Associate Professor of History and Rouhollah Ramazani Professor of Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also the author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Monsoon Voyagers. 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/new-books-network

In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, to Western India and, eventually, back to the Gulf. Dhows had sailed this route for centuries—and would continue to sail it for a few more decades still. Fahad Ahmad Bishara talks about this specific 1924 journey in his book Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History (U California Press, 2025). As the Crooked travels the waters of the Indian Ocean, Fahad covers topics like international law, the importance of debt, piracy, how information spread from port to port, and the Arab diaspora (among many other topics) Fahad is Associate Professor of History and Rouhollah Ramazani Professor of Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also the author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Monsoon Voyagers. 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/middle-eastern-studies

In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, to Western India and, eventually, back to the Gulf. Dhows had sailed this route for centuries—and would continue to sail it for a few more decades still. Fahad Ahmad Bishara talks about this specific 1924 journey in his book Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History (U California Press, 2025). As the Crooked travels the waters of the Indian Ocean, Fahad covers topics like international law, the importance of debt, piracy, how information spread from port to port, and the Arab diaspora (among many other topics) Fahad is Associate Professor of History and Rouhollah Ramazani Professor of Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also the author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Monsoon Voyagers. 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/south-asian-studies

At a time when college students and their parents often question the "return on investment" from humanities courses, accomplished feature writer and English professor Carlo Rotella invites us into the minds of a group of skeptical first-year students who are ultimately transformed by a required literature class. In What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press, 2025) he follows thirty-three students through his class to provide an intimate look at teaching and learning from their perspectives as well as his own. The students' reluctance--"How does this get me a job?"--transforms into insight as they wrestle with challenging books, share ideas, discover how to think critically, and form a community. In all these ways, they learn how to extract meaning from the world around them, an essential life skill. Confronting skeptics of higher education, this compassionate and inspiring book reveals the truth of what students actually experience in college. Carlo Rotella is Professor of English at Boston College. 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/new-books-network

At a time when college students and their parents often question the "return on investment" from humanities courses, accomplished feature writer and English professor Carlo Rotella invites us into the minds of a group of skeptical first-year students who are ultimately transformed by a required literature class. In What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press, 2025) he follows thirty-three students through his class to provide an intimate look at teaching and learning from their perspectives as well as his own. The students' reluctance--"How does this get me a job?"--transforms into insight as they wrestle with challenging books, share ideas, discover how to think critically, and form a community. In all these ways, they learn how to extract meaning from the world around them, an essential life skill. Confronting skeptics of higher education, this compassionate and inspiring book reveals the truth of what students actually experience in college. Carlo Rotella is Professor of English at Boston College. 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/literary-studies

Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, the Vietnam War brought the dangers of US imperialism and the global nature of antiracist struggle into sharp relief. Martha Biondi tells the story of one such group of activists who built an internationalist movement in Chicago committed to liberation everywhere but especially to ending colonialism and apartheid in Africa. Among their leaders was Prexy Nesbitt. Steeped from an early age in stories of Garveyism and labor militancy, Nesbitt was powerfully influenced by his encounters with the exiled African radicals he met in Dar es Salaam, London, and across the United States. Operating domestically and abroad, Nesbitt's cohort worked closely with opponents of Portuguese and white minority rule in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. Rather than promoting a US conception of Black self-determination, they took ideas from African anticolonial leaders and injected them into US foreign policy debates. The biography of a man but even more so of a movement, We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation (U California Press, 2025) reveals the underappreciated influence of a transformative Black solidarity project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies