New Books in Science, Technology, and Society New Books Network

In Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography (Duke UP, 2024) Siobhan Angus tells the history of photography through the minerals upon which the medium depends. Challenging the emphasis on immateriality in discourses on photography, Angus focuses on the inextricable links between image-making and resource extraction, revealing how the mining of bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements is a precondition of photography. Through a materials-driven analysis of visual culture, she illustrates histories of colonization, labor, and environmental degradation to expose the ways in which photography is enmeshed within and enables global extractive capitalism. 
This conversation discusses the meta-narrative and performative aspects of some of the photographs shown in the text, dives into some of the stories and examples from Ann Atkin's cyanotypes of the 1800s to Warren Cariou's contemporary bitumin prints, and asks what ethical photography looks like given the resource extraction required. 
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In Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II (Cornell UP, 2023), M. Girard Dorsey uncovers just how close Britain, the United States, and Canada came to crossing the red line that restrained poison gas during World War II.
Unlike in World War I, belligerents did not release poison gas regularly during the Second World War. Yet, the looming threat of chemical warfare significantly affected the actions and attitudes of these three nations as they prepared their populations for war, mediated their diplomatic and military alliances, and attempted to defend their national identities and sovereignty.
The story of chemical weapons and World War II begins in the interwar period as politicians and citizens alike advocated to ban, to resist, and eventually to prepare for gas use in the next war. Molly Dorsey reveals, through extensive research in multinational archives and historical literature, that although poison gas was rarely released on the battlefield in World War II, experts as well as lay people dedicated significant time and energy to the weapon's potential use; they did not view chemical warfare as obsolete or taboo.
Poison gas was an influential weapon in World War II, even if not deployed in a traditional way, and arms control, for various reasons, worked. Thus, what did not happen is just as important as what did. Holding Their Breath provides insight into these potentialities by untangling World War II diplomacy and chemical weapons use in a new way.
Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on a book about the reversal in US foreign policy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at andrew.pace@usm.edu or via andrewopace.com. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components. 
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How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie in the crucial connection between maps and maths.
In Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers (Pan Macmillan, 2024), Dr Paulina Rowinska embarks on a fascinating journey to discover the mathematical foundations of cartography and cartographical influences on mathematics.
From a sixteenth-century map that remains an indispensable navigation tool despite emphasising the North–South divide to public transport maps that both guide and mislead passengers, she reveals how maps and maths shape not only our sense of space and time but also our worldview.
Through entertaining stories, surprising real-world examples and a cast of unforgettable characters, Mapmatics helps us to appreciate the mathematical methods and ideas behind maps. And, by illuminating how our world works, leaves us better equipped to understand and look after it.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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.
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Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with danah boyd, Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of the Data & Society Research Institute, and a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University, about her career and work. The pair discuss boyd's the genesis and intellectual background of boyd's now classic text, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Teens (Yale UP, 2014) as well as her more recent work on digital infrastructure and the US Census Bureau.
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Women working in the sciences face obstacles at virtually every step along their career paths. From subtle slights to blatant biases, deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science and technology entirely.
Women in Science Now: Stories and Strategies for Achieving Equity (Columbia UP, 2023) examines solutions to this persistent gender gap, offering new perspectives on how to make science more equitable and inclusive for all. This book shares stories and insights of women from a range of backgrounds working in various disciplines, illustrating the journeys that brought them to the sciences, the challenges they faced along the way, and the important contributions they have made to their fields. Lisa M. P. Munoz combines these narratives with a wealth of data to illuminate the size and scope of the challenges women scientists face, while highlighting research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles. She presents groundbreaking studies in social psychology and organizational behavior that are informing novel approaches for combating historic and ongoing inequities.
Through a combined focus on personal experiences and social-science research, this timely book provides both a path toward greater gender equity and an inspiring vision of science and scientists.
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In the early modern era, seemingly impossible stories of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft were common and believable. The important question of the time was not if these things happened, but why. This was particularly true as the rise of Protestantism began to challenge Catholic beliefs in miracles and continued to be the case even after scientific research began to supplant religious belief in these phenomena. 
In They Flew: A History of the Impossible (Yale UP, 2023), Carlos Eire shows how these events were an accepted component of early modern life. Based on firsthand accounts, Eire explores the stories of St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Ágreda, and others, to describe a world animated by a different understanding of the natural and supernatural. Eire examines why and how cultural, historical, religious, and scientific contexts plays a role in defining both the possible and the impossible.
Recommended reading: 
Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred & 
How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else 
both by Jeffrey J. Kripal.
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