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Interviews with Authors about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

  1. 1h ago

    Alena Ledeneva, "Russian Pendulum: Paradoxes, Practices and Patterns" (UCL Press, 2026)

    Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the University College London and a founder of the Global Informality Project. Her research focuses on informal practices, and she has written several Russia-focused books, including Russia’s Economy of Favours, How Russia Really Works and Can Russia Modernise. The Global Informality has also published 3 volumes of its Global Encyclopaedia of Informality. Alena is here today to talk about her new book Russian Pendulum: Paradoxes, Practices and Patterns (UCL Press, 2026), which has been shortlisted for the 2026 Pushkin House Book Prize. Adam Quinn is a Glasgow-based researcher whose work focuses on activism, social movements and state-society relations in the Post-Soviet space.  Alena’s new book: art, music, text in a new UCL Press book in open access: Russian Pendulum: here The accompanying music: Delphian Records classical album The System Made Me Do It composed by Benjamin Woodgates: here And a brilliant review of the music: here Plus, a nice mention in the BBC sounds for dark: here Enjoy the podcast! 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

    1h 18m

  2. 1h ago

    Alex Boodrookas, "Comrades Estranged: Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf" (Stanford UP, 2026)

    In 1975, Kuwaiti workers orchestrated arguably the most powerful citizen-led movement for noncitizen rights in the history of the Persian Gulf. Their efforts built on decades of wide-ranging struggle over the meanings and outlines of citizenship. During the twentieth century, anticolonial nationalists, pro-democracy reformers, feminists, and labor organizers joined forces to fight for a more equitable citizenship regime. In so doing, they won a remarkable series of victories: political independence, constitutional rights, and oil nationalization, reshaping not just Kuwait, but the global petroleum order. This book reframes the history of labor activism, citizenship, and decolonization in Persian Gulf by centering the history of social movements—especially organized labor. In Comrades Estranged: Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf (Stanford University Press, 2026), Alex Boodrookas traces how workers and their allies shaped the world-historic transformations witnessed across the region: the consolidation of British sovereignty, formation of autocratic states, inrush of hydrocarbon wealth, onset of decolonization, and rise of both mass migration and mass politics. But unions failed to incorporate noncitizens into their movement, and as Boodrookas argues, this fatally undermined the movements' strength. The contradictions of nationalist and internationalist visions proved insurmountable. Comrades Estranged thus sheds light on both the power, and the limits, of citizenship and the nation-state as the framework for political action. Dr. Alex Boodrookas is Assistant Professor of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Dr. Ahmed AlMaazmi is Assistant Professor of History at the United Arab Emirates University. 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

    54 min

  3. 1h ago

    Amy J. Heineke and Kristin J. Davin, "Pathways to the Seal of Biliteracy: Promoting Multilingualism in Elementary and Middle Schools" (Georgetown UP, 2026)

    A roadmap for enhancing students' equitable access to biliteracy development Monolingual ideologies have driven US educational policy for centuries. Despite the benefits of multilingualism, policies have often prioritized English and reduced children's access to their home languages. The "Seal of Biliteracy" is a language education policy that recognizes students' proficiency in two languages as a mechanism for nurturing students' bilingualism and growing the United States' multilingual capacity. Since its inception, the Seal of Biliteracy has become a national program that has been extended into elementary and middle schools as pathway awards—benchmarks signaling that younger students are on the pathway to receiving the Seal of Biliteracy. Pathways to the Seal of Biliteracy provides foundational understandings, practical examples, and key levers necessary to help parents, educators, and policymakers understand and implement pathways to biliteracy in schools. In Pathways to the Seal of Biliteracy: Promoting Multilingualism in Elementary and Middle Schools (Georgetown UP, 2026), ituating the program within broader bilingual, heritage, and world language education systems, Amy J. Heineke and Kristin J. Davin explain the history of bilingualism and language policy in US education, and they outline an accessible and equitable approach to developing successful pathway programs. Pathways to the Seal of Biliteracy will be an invaluable tool for educators, stakeholders, and policymakers looking to nurture multilingualism, advance language programming, and help students achieve the Seal of Biliteracy. 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

    31 min

  4. 1h ago

    Don Baker, "Korean New Religions" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    Korean New Religions (Cambridge University Press, 2025) is an excellent primer for anyone interested in modern Korea’s religious landscape. The Korean peninsula has dramatically transformed over the past century, and various new religions have emerged. Dr. Donald Baker outlines these new religions, explores their basic beliefs and shared features, and compares them with the peninsula’s three spiritual traditions (Confucianism, Buddhism, and folk religion). In addition to the interview, Dr. Baker also speaks about his experience witnessing the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, a democracy movement that was violently suppressed by the authoritarian government. Donald Baker is a recently retired Korean historian whose relationship with Korea spans decades. He was most recently Professor in Korean History and Civilization at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Other recent publications of his include A Korean Confucian’s Advice on How to Be Moral: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Reading of the Zhongyong (University of Hawaii Press, 2023), and Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Chosŏn Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) with Franklin Rausch. Buy Korean New Religions here About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu 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

    48 min

  5. 1h ago

    Donna Vorreyer, "Unrivered" (Sundress Publications, 2025)

    In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Donna Vorreyer about her poetry collection, Unrivered (Sundress Publications, 2025). Donna Vorreyer strikes gold with Unrivered, a stunning collection of poems that meditate on grief, regret, longing, self-love, and acceptance. Reeling from the loss of her parents, Vorreyer’s speaker is forced to grapple with her own mortality, and with the complicated feelings that come with aging. At times whispering softly in our ears, at times spitting venom with every word, Vorreyer charts the ways loss impacts the body and our perceptions of self, and how we are to keep on living. With a heroic sonnet crown woven through the book like the loose stitches in her grandmother's quilt, Vorreyer offers hope, courage, and gratitude in the face of our deepest fears. The result is a masterful and gripping story of loss and acceptance. Offering up rending, apocalyptic elegy, ironic detachment, or passionate, joyful celebration of life, Unrivered is bound to both take your breath away and give it a new form. Donna Vorreyer is the author of four full-length poetry collections: To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), and Unrivered (2025), all from Sundress Publications. Recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Harpur Palate, Baltimore Review, and Booth. Her visual art has been featured in North American Review, Waxwing, About Place, Penn Review, Ilanot Review, Double Back Review, Pithead Chapel, and other journals. Donna currently lives and creates in the western suburbs of Chicago and runs the online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey. 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

    49 min

  6. 1h ago

    Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age

    In her recent publication, Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age, scholar Ayala Fader tells the fascinating, often heart-wrenching stories of married ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and women in twenty-first-century New York who lead “double lives” in order to protect those they love. Drawing on five years of fieldwork with those living double lives and the rabbis, life coaches, and religious therapists who minister to, advise, and sometimes excommunicate them, Fader investigates religious doubt and social change in the digital age. In following those living double lives, who range from the religiously observant but open-minded on one end to atheists on the other, Fader delves into universal quandaries of faith and skepticism, the ways digital media can change us, and family frictions that arise when a person radically transforms who they are and what they believe. Join YIVO for a discussion of this recent publication featuring Fader in conversation with Josh Lambert, professor and director of the Jewish Studies Program at Wellesley College. Buy the book: here This book talk originally took place on September 22, 2022. 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

  7. 1h ago

    Jessica Dibb, "Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation" (W. W. Norton, 2025)

    A journey into the power of conscious breathing for therapy and everyday life. Breathing is at the center of our lives, yet we are only beginning to tap into its full potential as a tool for healing. Conscious breathing is a powerful mechanism for transforming our physiological, emotional, and brain states, and is the fastest way to cultivate integrated presence. However, its full capacity for facilitating healing, personal development, stronger relationships, self-actualization, and personal and collective love is vastly unrecognized and underutilized. In Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation (W. W. Norton, 2025), breathwork expert Jessica Dibb offers compelling reasons to integrate the power of breathwork with psychotherapy and other healing and wellness practices. Here readers will find inspiration for daily breathwork practice as well as the methods, case examples, and actionable advice needed to incorporate breathwork into therapeutic sessions. Seamlessly marrying ancient wisdom with contemporary science, this insightful guide is for clinicians, breathwork practitioners, and anyone interested in exploring the transformative power of breath. For 20% off the purchase price of the book: Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation by Jessica Dibb, for a 20% discount, in the U.S. click here, in the UK, Ireland, Europe, the Middle East, India, Pakistan and South Africa: Click here and use promo code: WN286 To learn more about the Universal Breathing Declaration — the project Jessica Dibb mentioned in our interview — please visit the Universal Breathing Declaration website. It was launched in March 2026 by Jessica Dibb, Dan Siegel, and Jack Kornfield.   Be part of co-creating a world where all can breathe safely, freely, joyously! Jessica Dibb Through life-long exploring of pathways for physical and psychological health and development, awakened consciousness, and living from love, Jessica Dibb’s work centers conscious breathing—synthesizing depth psychology, consciousness studies, science, individualized spirituality, and somatic, emotional, and cognitive energy and wholeness. Extensively trained in ballet and yoga, during biology and pre-med studies at UC Irvine, she had an epiphany: Breathing is a universal and unifying medicine in every situation, for everyone. Jessica advocates rigorous training and ethical standards that support powerful, safe, multi-dimensional, nuanced Breathwork to access our deepest potential. She founded a 1200+ hour Breathwork and Psychospiritual Facilitation Program at Inspiration Consciousness School; is the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance founding co-director and ethics chair; and created the "Breath Immersion—From Science to Samadhi" conferences. Jessica develops innovative processes for embodying psycho-spiritual wholeness using Breathwork with established and emergent wisdom teachings to cultivate presence, wisdom, and love throughout our lifespan—in relationship with all life and this breathing planet. For more information about Jessica and her work, please visit her website here 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

    50 min

  8. 1h ago

    Peter Paul Dobek, "The Public House in Central Europe: Inns, Tavern, and Alehouses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian Dynasty" (Lexington Books, 2024)

    In his new book The Public House in Central Europe: Inns, Tavern, and Alehouses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian Dynasty (Lexington Books, 2024), Peter Dobek takes us into the daily life of the medieval tavern in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cracow. This is the ‘Golden Age’ of Poland Lithuania and the crepuscule between the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. The taverns were the public space where different categories of people mixed: travelers, merchants, diplomats, clerics, prostitutes, gamblers, and rogues. This book a time machine: Dobek writes social history as attentive and detailed narrative. We learn about the economy of the petty entrepreneur, the special roles of Jews in medieval Poland, the gray areas where prostitution and gambling thrived. Dobek’s prose is lively, his research impressive, and his conclusions important. Peter Dobek is a scholar of medieval Europe particularly medieval Poland with a focus on public houses (inns, taverns, and ale houses). He received his PhD from Western Michigan University in 2019. In addition to other publications, his book is the Public House in Central Europe. 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

    57 min
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Interviews with Authors about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

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  • Creator
    New Books
  • Years Active
    2011 - 2026
  • Episodes
    749
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books Network

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