New Books in Intellectual History
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New Books in Intellectual History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000...
Episodis Recents
1200 episodis
Melissa Butcher, "The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future" (Manchester UP, 2026)
As Melissa Butcher puts it in her book The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future (Manchester UP, 2026) when asked to rank the importan...
Amir Saemi, "Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Amir Saemi’s exciting book Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil (Oxford UP, 2024) is a fascinating and deeply...
Peter E. Gordon, "Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver" (Yale UP, 2026)
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen...
Shredding Capitalism with Sven Beckert (Paul Kramer, JP)
John is joined by the brilliant and affable Paul Kramer of Vanderbilt (The Blood of Government) to discuss Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin, 2025...
Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and B...
Mark Pennington, "Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom by Mark Pennington
This highly original and innovative book is the...
Emmanuel Ofuasia, "Ìwà: the Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics" (Springer, 2024)
Correction: In the interview, the host mistakenly mentioned that Prof. Ofuasia is teaching the University of Pretoria. In reality, Prof Ofuasia is cur...
Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the fo...
The Philosophy of Hope: On Immanence and Transcendence with R.J. Snell
In this third episode of Season 5, I interview Dr. R.J. Snell, a visiting instructor at Princeton University, the director of academic programs at the...
On Trump as a “World Historical Individual” with author John B. Judis
The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel “viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval,” the author John B. Judis wrote in a recent essa...
Susanne Vees-Gulani, 'Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token (University of Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Susanne Vees-Gulani explores how memory and po...
David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods
An engaging biography of one of the mo...
The Vilna Gaon and the Making of Modern Judaism
The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius...
Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha mal...
Sunmin Kim, "The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
What happens when theories of racial hierarchies interact with reality? How are they contested, refuted and changed in light of that encounter? What r...
H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect" (Princeton UP, 2025)
James Bryce (1838–1922) was a leading figure in Britain’s Liberal Party and a distinguished historian, a versatile scholar-politician who moved seamle...
Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)
Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us.
W...
William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Good: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Symposium to Republic" (Lexington, 2018)
At the crisis of his Republic, Plato asks us to imagine what could possibly motivate a philosopher to return to the Cave voluntarily for the benefit o...
Tristan J. Rogers, "Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)
In Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2025), Tristan J. Rogers argues that philosophical conservatism is a co...
Wendy Brown, "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A sympathetic critique that attempts to free Left politics from its own snares, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton Unive...
Jacob Stegenga, "Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2026), philosopher Jacob Stegenga breaks with the most dominant...
Moulie Vidas, "The Rise of Talmud" (Princeton UP, 2025)
The rabbinic sages of antiquity are known for their sophisticated and creative reading of Scripture. But beginning in the third century CE, these sage...
Martin Heidegger, "Being and Time: An Annotated Translation" (Yale UP, 2026)
A full century ago, a young and relatively unknown philosophy instructor in a small town in Germany would publish a book that would be swiftly picked...
Mark Thomas Edwards, "Walter Lippmann: American Skeptic, American Pastor" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Walter Lippmann was arguably the most recognized and respected political journalist of the twentieth century. His "Today and Tomorrow" columns attract...
Neilesh Bose, "Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the development and natu...
W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)
In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that in...
Shelley Puhak, "The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady-a countess, from one of Europe's o...
Vanessa Rampton, "Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Answers to the question 'what is medical progress?' have always been contested, and any one response is always bound up with contextual ideas of perso...
Laura K. Field, "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Political Theorist Laura Field has written an insightful and detailed exploration of the people and the ideas that have shaped the second Trump Admini...
Hang Tu, "Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past" (Harvard UP, 2025)
How does emotion shape the landscape of public intellectual debate? In Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past (Harvard UP,...
Daniel R. Langton, "Darwin in the Jewish Imagination: Jews' Engagement with Evolutionary Theory" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Professor Daniel Langton, author of Darwin in the Jewish Imagination: Jews' Engagement with Evolutiona...
Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
In her book Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia UP, 2025), historian Kristin Roebuck grapples with the question: Why di...
Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)
If you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this tr...
Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)
Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lone...
Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
In Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (U Chicago Press, 2023), Kevin Hart develops a new hermeneutics of contemplation through a medita...
Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomenon...
Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Human geography offers answers to some of the most important challenges of our time. To understand contemporary struggles over global economic inequal...
164 Maurice Samuels: Jewish Assimilation, Integration and the Dreyfus Affair (JP)
When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet...
Andrew Billing, "Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing" (Routledge, 2023)
Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing: Political Zoologies of the French Enlightenment (Routledge, 2024)...
Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts...