New Books in History

Marshall Poe
  • 4.0 (214)
  • 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/history

  1. 3h 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.

  2. 1d ago

    The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915

    When American fascists suddenly goose-stepped down Main Street in the 1930s, fascism was seen by the rest of the country as a terrifying and radical new European import. It was not. It didn’t come from abroad. Nor was it new or radical. The seed of American fascism was planted by elite southern planters who insisted that slavery need not be addressed in the Constitution because it would soon die out on its own. In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915 (Bloomsbury, 2026), Joseph Kelly chronicles fascism’s deep roots in the antebellum South; its codification under Jim Crow; and, then, after the Spanish American War, its ascendency in the form of Anglo-Saxon nationalism, proposing that the nation belongs to a master-race-the original lie of American fascism. Dr. Kelly’s gripping book reminds us that the monied elite have always exceled at deploying disinformation to bias and inflame the masses, and that there have always been courageous patriots helping us to fight our way out of darkness toward the light. Guest: Dr. Kelly is a professor of literature and history at the college of Charleston. He is the author of Marooned, The Biggest Lie, and America’s Longest Siege. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast and newsletter. She works as a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. Listeners may also be interested in: Paper HeroinesNo Common GroundThy Will Be DonePreparing for WarUnderstanding DisinformationCampus MonumentsWhat Might BeThe Social Constructions of RaceTeaching About Race and Racism in the College ClassroomBelongingWelcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 325+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 1d ago

    The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri with John Craig Hammond (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

    The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) examines how French and American colonizers used the powers of various imperial regimes to create slave societies in present-day Missouri and Illinois from the 1720s through the 1820s. The first book-length study of slavery and empire in both Illinois and Missouri, it begins with the origins of Native American and African American enslavement in the region. It then traces how successive French, Spanish, British, and American regimes shaped the development of slavery over the course of a century, examines the significance of the Northwest Ordinance’s ban on slavery in Illinois, and then analyzes the diverging histories of slavery in Illinois and Missouri in the early 1800s. The book concludes with an analysis of the Missouri Crisis and the compromise of 1820, along with the Middle Mississippi Valley’s significance in the road towards disunion and civil war in the late 1850s.More broadly, The Centrality of Slavery argues that the Middle Mississippi Valley sat astride the crossroads of imperial North America. The practices of empire and enslavement forged and fought over there exerted an outsized influence on the history of slavery in North America and the United States. Rather than treating the region’s eighteenth-century past as a prologue to the rise of the United States, John Craig Hammond analyzes the colonial history of the region on its own terms, through the European colonizers, American settlers, and enslaved people of Indigenous and African descent who shaped the development of slavery in the Middle Mississippi Valley. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. 3d ago

    Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire with Gunja SenGupta (U California Press, 2023)

    In the nineteenth century, global systems of capitalism and empire knit the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds into international networks in contest over the meanings of slavery and freedom. Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire (U California Press, 2023) mines multinational archives; profiles transnational human rights campaigns; shows how the discourses of poverty, kinship, and care could be adapted to defend servitude in different parts of the world; and reveals the tenuous boundaries that such discourses shared with Whiggish contractual notions of freedom. An intercontinental cast of empire builders and émigrés, slavers and reformers, a "cotton queen" and courtesans, and fugitive "slaves" and concubines populate the pages, fleshing out on a granular level the interface between the personal, domestic, and international politics of "slavery in the East," and in the age of empire. By extending the transnational framework of U.S. slavery and abolition histories beyond the Atlantic, Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa recover vivid stories and prompt reflections on the comparative workings of subaltern agency.  Gunja SenGupta: Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and currently visiting at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Her work places nineteenth-century United States history in global contexts of slavery, abolition, empire, race, gender, and poverty. She is also the author of From Slavery to Poverty and For God and Mammon Awam Amkpa: Vice Provost for the Arts and Dean of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a professor of drama and social and cultural analysis at New York University. A theater scholar, filmmaker, and curator, he is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires. Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi: Assistant Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). A historian, academic, and translator, he focuses on the history of science, empire, law, and everyday life in the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Indian Ocean world. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. 3d ago

    Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)

    Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male stardom in Egyptian cinema produced during the early years following the Free Officers' revolution of 1952, through the lives and careers of three key stars: Omar al-Sharif, Ismail Yassin, and Farid Shawqi. In attempting to find a balance between the traditional and the modern, the Nasser era placed an emphasis on education, work, and gender equality. Yet, faithfulness to Egyptian traditions and values remained a key part of the state’s vision of collective identity. Samar illuminates how these stars promoted a civic identity that aligned with the regime’s ambitions, and how each of them—through melodrama, comedy, and action—negotiated a different facet of masculine identity that spoke to the ambivalent constructions of hegemonic masculinity during this critical post-colonial period. Samar Abdel-Rahman holds a PhD in film studies from King's College London and  is currently a lecturer of World Cinema at the University of Liverpool. Her research, which focuses on stardom and performance in Middle Eastern and North African Cinemas, has been published in edited volumes including The Routledge Companion to European Cinema. Saman Nasser holds an MA in world history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. 3d ago

    Women in Comics: Iconic Characters and Influential Creators 1923-Today with Susan E. Kirtley and Nhora Lucía Serrano (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

    Susan E. Kirtley and Nhora Lucía Serrano's Women in Comics (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) is a richly illustrated, essential guide to the importance of women in the comics space from across time and around the globe. Comics in the form of editorial cartoons, comic strips, digital comics, comic books, and graphic novels have combined words and images to tell stories of hundreds of years. Though often overlooked, women have played a vital role in shaping this genre, both as creators and characters within the stories themselves. Through six archetypes frequently found in comics—the patriot, the working woman, the socialite, the fashionista, the reporter, and the spy—Kirtley and Serrano trace some of comics’ most influential women. This insightful exploration of international characters celebrates the feminist role model Wonder Woman, the warrior-maiden Oscar François de Jarjayes in the gender-defying manga tale Berusiyu no Bara (The Rose of Versailles), the real-life groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly, and many others. Profiles throughout the book highlight the important work of female creators, heralding the bravery of political cartoonists such as Corinne “Coco” Rey and Rayma Suprani, the power of biography as reportage with Marjane Satrapi and Sophia Glock, and the value of visibility with Alison Bechdel and Mariko Tamaki.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. 3d ago

    The Institutional Foundations of Ukrainian Democracy with Nataliya Kibita (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Ukraine and Russia are today at opposite points of the political spectrum: Despite 300 years of contact with Russian authoritarian politics, Ukraine's post-independence period has been characterised by pluralism. To explain why and how Ukraine's and Russia's paths diverged, this monograph investigates the century-long and Soviet origins of regionalism in Ukraine, which the author argues are at the foundation of the modern Ukrainian institutional system. Drawing on unused archival material, the book re-examines the relationship between Moscow, Kyiv, and the Ukrainian regions in the period from spring 1917 to summer 1994 to demonstrate how interlinked political and economic incentives and constraints determined the opportunities and institutional interests of both the Ukrainian leadership and those of the Ukrainian regions, and how this institutional framework affected in turn the dynamic of the relationship between the central leadership in Moscow, the Ukrainian leadership, and the regions. The result - weak central authority and pronounced regionalism - was Ukraine's Soviet legacy, and the established power of regional clans made (post-Soviet) Ukrainian politics resistant to Russian-style authoritarianism, even when the Soviet centralised party-state system collapsed.Nataliya Kibita is a visiting academic at the University of Oxford in Russian and East European Studies. She is the author of Soviet Economic Management under Khrushchev: The Sovnarkhoz Reform (Routledge, 2013) and The Institutional Foundations of Ukrainian Democracy: Power Sharing, Regionalism, and Authoritarianism (Oxford University Press, 2024). Megan Buskey is an independent writer and scholar focused on Ukrainian history, culture, and politics. She is the author of Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. 3d ago

    The Afterlife of a Fascist Murder: Giacomo Matteotti in Myth and Memory, 1924-2024 with Amy King (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    In this episode, I speak with Dr Amy King of Bristol University about her book, The Afterlife of a Fascist Murder: Giacomo Matteotti in Myth and Memory, 1924–2024, published by Cambridge University Press in 2026. The year 2024 marked a century since socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti's assassination. Widely commemorated in Italy, he's often remembered within a national narrative of antifascist resistance. But how was this narrative built and how has the far right responded? This Element traces the construction and mobilisation of Matteotti's memory over the last century, analysing the role of grief in the early antifascist movement, and identifying the role memory played in bringing together Allies, partisans and political parties during the construction of the democratic Republic. Based on primary sources from international archives, it also adds a transnational lens to the study of a figure so often thought of in national terms. The Element closes by examining how far-right parties whose lineage traces back to Mussolini's regime have engaged with the afterlife of a man whose murder is an evergreen reminder of the centrality of violence to Fascism in its earliest days. Dr. Amy King is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Bristol, UK. She is the author of The Politics of Sacrifice: Remembering Italy’s Rogo di Primavalle, which examines the memory of a 1973 arson attack on a far-right family in Rome during the Years of Lead.  The book won the First Book Prize from the American Association for Italian Studies in 2024 and was published in Italian by Donzelli last year. Chris Millington is Professor of Modern European History and lead of the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of eight books including Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe ((Manchester University Press, 2025), The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford University press, 2023), and France in the Second World War Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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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/history

Information

  • Creator
    Marshall Poe
  • Years Active
    2008 - 2026
  • Episodes
    638
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in History

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