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

Holly N. S. White, "Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States" (U Virginia Press, 2026)

September 3, 2026 • 37 mins
Edward Blum interviews Holly White on her new book Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States. As of 2025, in the United States an eleven-year-old child can be charged with a federal crime while in many states it’s illegal to leave a twelve-year-old home alone. Twenty-six states allow children younger than sixteen to marry while the legal drinking age remain...
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Marnie Hughes-Warrington, "Artificial Historians" (Routledge, 2025)

September 3, 2026 • 62 mins
I spoke with Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington about her 2026 book Artificial Historians, co-authored with Anne Martin and Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien. A distinguished historian, philosopher, academic leader, and Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) based at the University of Adelaide, my guest explores how the logic of history, defined around trivalent logic (the “maybes,” the “ifs,” the ontologi...
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Xiaochang Li, "Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

September 2, 2026 • 40 mins
Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Xiaochang Li shows readers how that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today’s generative AI.  With original research and clear explanations, Dr. Li elucida...
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Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

September 2, 2026 • 59 mins
The first large number of Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1840s, and Chinese opera troupes were not far behind. In Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond (U Illinois Press, 2025), Nancy Yunhwa Rao writes the story of the flourishing and resiliency of Chinese opera in America. Chinese opera troupes brought with them an important cultural remi...
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Edward Cutler, "This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation" (Chelsea Green, 2026)

September 1, 2026 • 55 mins
In This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation (Chelsea Green, 2026), discover Italy’s unique ecological past and how it has shaped its present—and its future, with this riveting look at the incredibly diverse natural history and our need to preserve it. Italy is renowned for its antiquity, classical literature, philosophy, and modern-day culture, cuisine and fashion, but wh...
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Eran A. Zelnik, "American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850" (JHU Press, 2025)

September 1, 2026 • 59 mins
A joke is never just a joke—not even in the eighteenth century. In American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850 (JHU Press, 2025) Eran A. Zelnik offers a cultural history of early America that shows how humor among white men served to define and construct not only whiteness and masculinity but also American political culture and democracy more generally. Ze...
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Karin Barber, "Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos, 1910–1930" (Ohio UP, 2026)

August 31, 2026 • 43 mins
Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos,1910-1930 (Ohio UP, 2026) is a survey of the history and development of Yoruba print culture in Lagos, Nigeria, from the 19th to the early 20th century. The book details the emergence of the Yoruba language press, its themes, and its distinction from the English-language press. The influence of both missionary and secular presses on religion and morality as...
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Raf de Bont et al eds., "Globalizing Wildlife" (UNC Press, 2026)

August 31, 2026 • 48 mins
Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the latest in a long line of forces affecting human-animal relations. Grey parrots travelled the world as pets; rats used global shipping infrastructure to spread to far-off islands and became the object of cross-border extermination campaigns; and California sea otters were rel...
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Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Michael Quinlan, "Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788–1860" (Springer Nature, 2022)

August 30, 2026 • 52 mins
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Michael Quinlan’s Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788–1860 (draws on considerable Australian legal, archival and statistical sources to ensure that we not only see the management of unfree labour regimes deployed in settler colonies, but also to identify all the strategies that victims of the early imperial prison-industrial complex used to resis...
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John Davie, "Greek To Us: The Fascinating Ancient Greek That Shapes Our World" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

August 27, 2026 • 69 mins
Ancient Greek lives on in our culture in surprising ways. Sometimes funny - the word for an actor, hupokrites, gives us 'hypocrite'; sometimes beautiful - an astronaut is literally a sailor of the skies. And that's before we get to the myths which gave us our Achilles heel or our Midas Touch. And what about crocodile tears, which comes from the Greek's belief that crocodiles cried while eating their victims! Greek To Us: The Fas...
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Divining the Past: How to Do Conjectural History with Anthony Grafton

August 26, 2026 • 64 mins
Whether recovering a lost history or charting a new land, scholars and explorers alike often hit at frontiers not only of place, but also knowledge. When the evidence only goes so far, what is the right way to advance? The answer is to make a conjecture: an educated guess that discourses on what is likely the case. Historical examples range from Italian humanists stealing manuscripts from monasteries and reconstructing classical l...
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Malcolm Murfett, "Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38" (Tithebarn Press, 2026)

August 26, 2026 • 37 mins
As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1937, Eden didn't believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including the launching of an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed to the US for help. He believed sending an Anglo-American naval force to the ...
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Jane Draycott, "Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome" (Yale UP, 2025)

August 22, 2026 • 63 mins
Fulvia was born into wealth, privilege, and prestige around the year 80 BCE, yet there was nothing inherently special about her—she was not a saint, an empress, or a queen. But during the years leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic, Fulvia was moving in the most powerful social circles, and by her death in 40 BCE she had amassed a degree of political and military power unprecedented for a woman. Fulvia’s success...
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Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)

August 21, 2026 • 93 mins
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear writing, vast erudition, and ability to make his Marxist analysis digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. Yet Hobsbawm was no academic he...
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Beronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy" (Henry Holt & Co.)

August 18, 2026 • 44 mins
The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but a...
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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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