New Books in History

New Books in History


Latest Episodes

Sarah Jaffe, “Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt” (Nation Books, 2016)
December 07, 2016

Sarah Jaffe has written Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (Nation Books, 2016). Jaffe is a Nation Institute fellow and an independent journalist. Over the last few years, several authors on the podcast have discussed the growth of the Tea Party,…

Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China” (U. California Press, 2014 reprint)
December 07, 2016

Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Press, 2014 reprint) has won four major prizes in fields ranging from history of medicine to East Asian h...

Jean-Germain Gros, “Healthcare Policy in Africa” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
December 02, 2016

In Healthcare Policy In Africa: Institutions and Politics from Colonialism to the Present (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Jean-Germain Gros argues that healthcare policy should be the black box rather than the black hole of African Studies. By this he…

Larrie Ferreiro, “Brothers at Arms: Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It” (Knopf, 2016)
December 02, 2016

Was the War for American Independence really about American independence? It depends on who you ask. In his new book, Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It (Knopf, 2016), Larrie Ferreiro draws…

Lena Salaymeh, “Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
December 02, 2016

In her brilliant new book Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Lena Salaymeh, Associate Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University, presents a fascinating account of the historical unfoldi...

Tom Mills, “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service” (Verso, 2016)
December 02, 2016

The BBC is often thought to be a great, impartial, defender of British values and society. In The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), Tom Mills, a lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, re-reads the history…

Anthony M. Petro, “After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion” (Oxford UP, 2015)
December 02, 2016

Emerging in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic was not just a public health crisis. It was a moral crisis too, argues Anthony M. Petro in his new book, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford University…

William H. Shaw, “Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War” (Routledge, 2016)
December 01, 2016

On any mature view, war is horrific. Naturally, there is a broad range of fundamental ethical questions regarding war. According to most moral theories, war is nonetheless sometimes permitted, and perhaps even obligatory.

Margaret Bashaar “Some Other Stupid Fruit: A Problematic Feminist Narrative” (Agape Editions, 2016)
November 30, 2016

What is the best way to be a feminist? What is the best way to be a poet, a musician, or a painter? As a woman, what is the best way to be a friend to other women? The very…

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Enduring Truths: Sojourner’s Shadows and Substance” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
November 29, 2016

Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite, similar…