New Books in History

New Books in 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+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Episodes

Edward E. Andrews, "Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America" (Cornell UP, 2025)

August 17, 2026 • 47 mins
Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America (Cornell UP, 2025) explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders.  In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the...
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Jeana Jorgensen, "Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History" (Fox Folk Press, 2023)

August 17, 2026 • 44 mins
Do you look back at your sex ed classes and wonder WTF?! Are you a parent looking at your kid’s curriculum and asking the same question? Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History (Fox Folk Press, 2023) is less of a how-to of sex education and more of a why. Why does abstinence-only sex ed receive so much federal funding? Why do instructors show gross images of STIs to scare students...
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Sarah Ellen Zarrow, "Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941" (Cornell UP, 2025.)

August 14, 2026 • 62 mins
Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941 (Cornell UP, 2025.) illuminates the lives and work of Polish Jewish collectors and museologists, who sought to preserve the treasures of the Jewish past while demonstrating Jewish belonging on Polish soil. As Jews comfortable in the Polish language and within Polish artistic and academic society, they saw themselves as intermediaries between less...
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Thomas F. Rzeznik, "A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City" (NYU Press, 2026)

August 11, 2026 • 33 mins
St. Vincent's Hospital began with a simple, but radical mission: to care for all those in need regardless of race, creed, or financial means. For more than 160 years, the hospital carried out that work, serving notables and the nameless alike, from impoverished immigrants and those stricken by devastating nineteenth-century epidemics to AIDS patients and the victims of the attacks of 9/11. A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’...
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William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood" (Harvard UP, 2026)

August 11, 2026 • 42 mins
We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet when we remember our own college experiences, what springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities: cramped dorm rooms and musty library stacks, gothic towers and freshly mowed quads. The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood (Harvard Univer...
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David N. Gellman, "Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York" (Cornell UP, 2022)

August 10, 2026 • 49 mins
Edward Blum interviews David N. Gellman on his book Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York (Cornell UP, 2022). In Liberty's Chain, David N. Gellman shows how the Jay family, abolitionists and slaveholders alike, embodied the contradictions of the revolutionary age. The Jays of New York were a preeminent founding family. John Jay, diplomat, Supreme Court justice, and coauthor ...
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Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)

August 9, 2026 • 30 mins
A sweeping history of humanity’s most fundamental creation―the home―and its effects on the land, cities, and people themselves. Americans spend, on average, 90 percent of their lives indoors, with two-thirds of that time spent in their homes. Globally, the construction and maintenance of residential buildings account for a staggering portion of carbon emissions. In this timely and fascinating work, architect and urban-p...
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Yana Skorobogatov, "Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

August 8, 2026 • 60 mins
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Yana Skorobogatov about her book, Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union (University of Chicago Press, 2026). From 1954 to 1991 in the Soviet Union, nearly 40,000 citizens were executed after the death penalty was reinstated as a punishment for homicide. Fate in My Hands introduces readers to the many citizens in this period—women and men of all ages and backgro...
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Max Perry Mueller, "Wakara's America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West" (Basic Books, 2025)

August 7, 2026 • 80 mins
In the mid-19th century, anyone who was anyone in the American West had heard of the Ute leader Wakara. Yet, by the early twenty first century, his story has been, if not forgotten, at the very least twisted and distorted into something that would have been unrecognizable to him and his contemporaries. In Wakara's America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West (Basic Books, 2025), University of...
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Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)

August 5, 2026 • 72 mins
We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a master of party politics. Schooled as a Whig in the rough-and-tumble of Illinois electioneering in the 1830s, Lincoln skillfully navigated treacherous partisan crosscurrents and helped build the Republican party into a viable force. H...
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Blair L.M. Kelley, "Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

August 4, 2026
For more than 150 years, Black communities have gathered to honor freedom, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for true liberation. While Juneteenth has recently gained wider recognition, it was one of many Emancipation Day traditions celebrated across the United States. These observances were spaces of joy, remembrance, and resistance—even as the fight for full freedom was unfinished. Black Freedom: A Visual Hist...
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Emily Sneff, "When the Declaration of Independence Was News" (Oxford UP, 2026)

August 3, 2026 • 43 mins
Amy Weitzman interviews Emily Sneff on her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News and the graduate school experience. In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting t...
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Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, "Seeking Freedom in Indian Country: Slavery, Sovereignty, and Resistance Within the Five Tribes, 1790–1861" (LSU Press, 2026)

August 3, 2026 • 45 mins
Dr. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel’s Seeking Freedom in Indian Country: Slavery, Sovereignty, and Resistance within the Five Tribes, 1790–1861 (LSU Press, 2026) is the first comprehensive study of African chattel slavery within the Five Tribes: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations. Dr. Oertel examines how chattel slavery functioned among all Five Tribes before and during the remova...
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Vaneesa Cook, "Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks" (Beacon Press, 2026)

August 1, 2026 • 46 mins
In Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks (Beacon Press, 2026), historian Dr. Vaneesa Cook examines the history of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty in order to consider, more broadly, the United States' relationship with liberty and empire. Empire and liberty have been part of the American story since the founding, but they are often at odds, sometimes irreconcilably so. Cook ...
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Virginia McGee Richards, "The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway" (MIT Press, 2026)

August 1, 2026 • 33 mins
Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along ...
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Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, "Parallel Journeys: Eurasian History Through Travelers’ Eyes (400 BCE–1936 CE)" (Cambria, 2025)

July 31, 2026 • 41 mins
Parallel Journeys: Eurasian History through Travelers’ Eyes (Cambria Press, 2026) is a comparative history of Eurasia told through travel writing and cross-cultural encounters. In this anthology, Anthony Barbieri pairs accounts from twenty-eight travelers across different historical periods, placing side-by-side travelers looking or going East with those looking or going West. Spanning from 400 BCE through to 1...
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Murat C. Yildiz, "The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul" (U Texas Press, 2026)

July 31, 2026 • 65 mins
The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, sports scholars, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire.  In The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul (University of Texas Press, 2026), Murat Cihan Yıldız tells...
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Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)

July 29, 2026
Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book, American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2026). Since the first permanent Protestant settlement in Jamestown in 1607, Protestant Christianity has waxed and waned through ...
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Anna Lively, "Revolutionary Connections: Russia and Ireland, 1905-1923" (Oxford UP, 2026)

July 28, 2026 • 19 mins
Anna Lively is a historian of modern Ireland, Britain, and Russia. Awarded her PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh in 2022, she is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History at the University of Strathclyde. Prior to this she held the Roy Foster Irish Government Research Fellowship in the History and Culture of Ireland at Hertford College, University of Oxford, and was a Teaching Fellow in Modern History at t...
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Linford Fisher, "Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History" (Liveright, 2026)

July 27, 2026 • 44 mins
Although the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619, European slavery in America began more than a century before. In a work distinguished not only by its original research but by its “passionate prose” (James F. Brooks), historian Linford Fisher demonstrates how the enslavement of Indigenous people began in the years just after 1492, ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Ameri...
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