New Books in Intellectual History

New Books Network
  • 4.0 (69)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Daily

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/intellectual-history

  1. 8h ago

    The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World with Barry R Davis (JHU Press, 2026)

    What drives someone to challenge the status quo to prevent disaster? In The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World with Barry R Davis  (JHU Press, 2026), Barry R. Davis chronicles the work of bold individuals who recognized the warning signs of catastrophe and intervened before tragedy could strike. With stories that include fire, disease, climate change, and public health, Davis illuminates the efforts of those who confronted indifference, ignorance, and inertia to shift society's focus from reaction to prevention. Through real-world case studies and historical research, The Preventioneers introduces readers to a diverse cast of problem-solvers who identified threats, persuaded skeptics, and devised practical solutions. In colonial Boston, a young Benjamin Franklin witnessed one of the city's most devastating fires. Haunted by that memory, Franklin grew into a lifelong advocate for fire prevention. Ignaz Semmelweis and Sara Josephine Baker fought to raise awareness of and prevent child and maternal mortality. Richard Doll's work to establish the link between smoking and lung cancer revealed the danger of what many viewed as a harmless activity. These inspiring stories exemplify the central message of the book: Prevention is a powerful form of civic action. Their work underscores how principles of prevention transcend fields, whether addressing maternal mortality, auto safety, cancer, or climate change. Davis underscores that successful prevention requires more than knowledge; it also demands courage, strategy, and relentless advocacy. In doing so, The Preventioneers introduces a framework for thinking about how societies can act early, save lives, and build a healthier, more resilient future. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 1d ago

    Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform with Charles West (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Eleventh-century Europe was diverse and fast-changing. Historians have often debated this change through two sets of competing arguments, one about the shifting role of the Church and the Papacy, and the other about the rise of castellan lords and a proliferation in violence. Yet these arguments about 'Church Reform' and 'Feudal Revolution' only really apply to one part of Europe, the Latin West.   Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Professor Charles West takes its cue from contemporary perceptions of Europe, and includes Byzantium (or East Rome) and Muslim al-Andalus in scope. In doing so, it presents a new perspective on Europe in the period. Its chapters assess different scales of action and interaction within this wide space. They take from the reader from the peasants living in small village settlements, via the great city of Constantinople, the taifa emirates, kingdoms from Ireland to Hungary, and the two universal empires, up to contemporary ideas, cosmologies, and representations of the wider world.   Viewed in this broad setting, the Latin West's remarkable expansion during this period, dramatically illustrated by the First Crusade at the century's end, can best be understood as the poorly controlled overspilling of internal dynamics, as the established public order was disrupted. Elsewhere in Europe, existing structures proved more resilient and better able to accommodate internal economic and social development, though remaining vulnerable to aggression from outside.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 2d ago

    The Technocratic International: Experts and the Making of a World from Nowhere with Jan Eijking (Oxford UP, 2026)

    Most international organisations today-from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the World Health Organisation-present themselves as technical institutions separate from political concerns. And yet they are frequently accused, whether by the public or by governments, of hiding behind this technocratic veil only to privilege a few rich and powerful nations. Experts appear as guardians of stability and protectors of an unequal status quo. Scholars of International Relations (IR) and international law have illuminated the production and contestation of expertise. But its historical emergence and distinctiveness remain under-explored. The Technocratic International: Experts and the Making of a World from Nowhere (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Jan Eijking is the first book to historically examine and comprehensively theorise the role of experts in the institutionalisation of modern international order.How exactly did technical expertise come to be a central tenet to the work of international organisations? Based on archival material from Paris, London, and Geneva, The Technocratic International reconstructs the neglected history of expert mobilisation at early moments of institutionalised international cooperation in the nineteenth century. To understand how expertise works at the international level, examining how expert status and knowledge are produced is not enough. Instead, we must bring into view how expertise relates to claims about the very domain in which it operates. Historically, experts were not merely-as institutionalist and functionalist accounts assume - mobilised to epistemically optimise international policymaking. Instead, technocratic elites constructed “the international” through Eurocentric performances of expert approval.   This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. 2d ago

    Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing with Katherine L. Alexander (U Michigan Press, 2025)

    Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing (U Michigan Press, 2025) by Katherine L. Alexander explores how one late Qing Confucian reformer sought to rebuild society in the aftermath of the Taiping Civil War. Focusing on the prolific writer and teacher Yu Zhi (1809–1874), the book examines how he used writing, printing, education, and performance to promote a vision of moral renewal from the ground up, arguing that ordinary people could become agents of social transformation through literature and teaching. Drawing on Yu Zhi’s extensive body of writings, the book shows how literature functioned not simply as a vehicle for moral instruction but as a practical tool for social reform. Through detailed and careful readings of Yu’s efforts to reach schoolchildren, women, and popular audiences through textbooks, morality plays, precious scrolls, and other forms of vernacular literature, the book reveals how conservative Confucian ideals were advanced through innovative and accessible media. More broadly, it offers a compelling portrait of how late imperial intellectuals responded to crisis and how they framed texts, performance, and education as a means to restore a fractured society. Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing should appeal to readers interested in late Qing history, popular literature, religion, education, and anyone interested in how print and performance can be used to shape ideas about moral reform and social change. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. 4d ago

    Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions with Elizabeth de Freitas, Matthew X. Curinga, and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

    What does it mean to learn when algorithms increasingly shape how knowledge is produced, organized, and interpreted? Editors Elizabeth de Freitas, Matthew X. Curinga, and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román join Shreya Urvashi to talk about their book Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions (U Minnesota Press, 2026), a collection that examines how artificial intelligence and computational systems are changing education, cognition, and ideas of human intelligence. The editors discuss the complexities of algorithm, training data as curriculum, AI bias, and the concept of more-than-human learning. They also explore the relationship between contemporary technologies and colonial forms of reason, the limits of treating bias as a purely technical problem, and what happens to human agency as learning becomes increasingly entangled with algorithmic systems. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. 4d ago

    Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination with Paul Kléber Monod (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    What is the basis of English national identity? How has this changed over time, and what is its future? Tracing the history of English identity over more than 2,000 years, Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2026)  explores how being English has been understood as belonging to a nation, a people, or a race. Paul Kléber Monod examines the ancient and medieval inventions of a British and ethnic Anglo-Saxon identity, before documenting the violent creation of an English ethnic state within Britain, and the later extension of that imperial power into the wider world. Monod analyses the persistence of a specifically English language of cultural identity after 1707 and the revival of English racial identity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, highlighting the crucial role of imperial expansion and the recurring myth of “little England” pitted against larger enemies. Turning to the revival of English identity in the twenty-first century, this study raises probing questions about the resurgence and future of a divisive concept. Paul Kléber Monod is a Canadian-born academic historian specializing in Jacobitism and British history in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since 1984 he has taught at Middlebury College, Vermont, where he is now A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History, and he is the author of a number of books and articles dealing with his period. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. 5d ago

    Conspiracy: The History of a Political Obsession with Nicolas Guilhot (Harvard UP, 2026)

    Pundits, scholars, and the general public alike have argued that conspiratorial thinking is the greatest threat to liberal democracy. In Conspiracy: The History of a Political Obsession (Harvard UP, 2026), Dr. Nicolas Guilhot, however, challenges us to see conspiracy theories as a sign of the public’s desperation in light of liberal democracy’s failures. Conspiracism is widespread across the political spectrum, as citizens struggle with their disenfranchisement. How are we to imagine the future at the purported “end of history”? And how might this impasse make us susceptible to hallucinations and paranoia? Conspiracy shows that narratives of conspiracy historically gain popularity when politics ceases to offer hope and apocalyptic thinking becomes a last refuge. Taking the reader from Karl Popper’s coining of the term “conspiracy theory” in 1948 through the essential commentary of Hannah Arendt, Alexandre Koyré, Richard Hofstadter, and others, Dr. Guilhot reveals how the fear of conspiracies has always operated against a backdrop of antagonism between the powerful and the many, the rich and the poor, the oligarchy and the masses. Today’s fear of a grand plot is no exception. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Dr. Guilhot shows that society’s focus on truth and falsehood masks how conspiracy theories feed on the dysfunctions of liberal democracies that no longer offer credible pathways toward a better future. Conspiracy theories offer a ready-made explanation for the feeling that one lacks agency and freedom. Rather than the cause of the current crisis, they are one of its consequences. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. 5d ago

    The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries with Andrew Hui (Princeton UP, 2026)

    With the advent of print in the fifteenth century, Europe’s cultural elite assembled personal libraries as refuges from persecutions and pandemics. Andrew Hui tells the remarkable story of the Renaissance studiolo—a “little studio”—and reveals how these spaces dedicated to self-cultivation became both a remedy and a poison for the soul.Blending fresh, insightful readings of literary and visual works with engaging accounts of his life as an insatiable bookworm, Hui traces how humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne created their own intimate studies. He looks at imaginary libraries in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, and discusses how Renaissance painters depicted the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome as saintly bibliophiles. Yet writers of the period also saw a dark side to solitary reading. It drove Don Quixote to madness, Prospero to exile, and Faustus to perdition. Hui draws parallels with our own age of information surplus and charts the studiolo’s influence on bibliographic fabulists like Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.Beautifully illustrated, The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (Princeton UP, 2026) is at once a celebration of bibliophilia and a critique of bibliomania. Incorporating perspectives on Islamic, Mughal, and Chinese book cultures, it offers a timely and eloquent meditation on the ways we read and misread today. Andrew Hui is associate professor of humanities at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter (Princeton) and The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.  YouTube Channel: here  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

See All (600)

4
out of 5
69 Ratings

About

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/intellectual-history

Information

More From New Books Network

You Might Also Like