New Books in Intellectual History

New Books Network

Episodes

Mentioned books

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Feb 10, 2026 • 54min

Daniel R. Langton, "Darwin in the Jewish Imagination: Jews' Engagement with Evolutionary Theory" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Daniel R. Langton, Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, explores how Jewish thinkers wrestled with evolutionary theory. He traces diverse responses across theology, mysticism, and modernity. Short takes examine panentheism, debates over creation and morality, and the shifting landscape from liberal adaptation to postwar retrenchment.
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Feb 10, 2026 • 59min

Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Kristin Roebuck, historian of race, eugenics, and gender in modern Japan. She traces contested ideas of mixed blood, reproductive control, and adoption from empire to Cold War. Short, vivid stories cover prostitution research, shifting eugenic rhetoric, Sawada Miki’s role in collecting mixed‑race children, and US Cold War adoption policies.
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Feb 8, 2026 • 56min

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Alex Prichard, Associate Professor of International Political History and author of Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction, discusses anarchism as lived practices and a critique of final authority. He traces its ties to colonialism, labor movements, and mutual aid. He also explores anarchism’s cultural imprint in film, music, and science fiction, and practical alternatives for public goods.
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Feb 8, 2026 • 36min

Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)

Jacob Mchangama, founder of the think tank Justitia and author of a history of free speech, offers a sweeping tour from ancient Athens to social media. He traces Athenian isegoria and parrhesia, medieval Islamic skeptics, printing and the Reformation, decentralization's role in tolerance, and the paradoxical effects of censorship. Short, lively, and wide-ranging.
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Feb 7, 2026 • 51min

Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)

Ann Komaromi, a University of Toronto scholar of alternative publishing and nonconformist Soviet literature, explores samizdat as extra‑Gutenberg underground publishing. She discusses its role after Khrushchev, regional networks like Crimean Tatar and Baptist presses, poetic and conceptual art communities, archive hunts for fragile texts, and samizdat’s complex echoes in the digital age.
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Feb 7, 2026 • 1h 18min

Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Kevin Hart, Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School and poet-scholar of theology, phenomenology, and literature, discusses contemplation and poetic attention. He links Augustine, Husserl, Coleridge, and modern poets to a hermeneutic of slow, contemplative reading. Conversations range from phenomenology as prayerful reduction to poems as tiny temples that keep thinking alive.
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Feb 5, 2026 • 1h 7min

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Ian Klinke, Oxford political geographer studying geopolitical thought and landscapes of deterrence. Patricia Daley, Oxford scholar of African human geography focused on refugees, political violence, and decolonizing curricula. They map human geography through sites like pipelines, borders, high rises, workplaces, conservation areas, and outer space. The conversation traces the discipline’s imperial roots and future directions in energy, cities, migration, and AI.
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Feb 5, 2026 • 1h

164 Maurice Samuels: Jewish Assimilation, Integration and the Dreyfus Affair (JP)

Maurice Samuels, historian and director of Yale’s antisemitism program, discusses French Jewish life and his new biography of Alfred Dreyfus. He traces Dreyfus’s trial and exile, the role of Zola and public intellectuals, and distinctions between assimilation and integration in France. The conversation also covers laïcité, Léon Blum’s rise, and how debates over French identity echo into modern politics.
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Feb 4, 2026 • 56min

Andrew Billing, "Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing" (Routledge, 2023)

Andrew Billing, Professor of French and Francophone Studies and author of Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing, explores political zoologies in the French Enlightenment. He traces animal references in Rousseau, Diderot, La Mettrie, Quesnay, and Rétif. Short, sharp discussions cover Buffon’s influence, biological metaphors in political theory, and surprising links between animals, economy, and liberal thought.
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Feb 3, 2026 • 1h 20min

Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Dr. Itohan Osayimwese, professor of architectural and urban history at Brown University, explores how colonial agents tore African buildings apart and scattered their parts to Western museums. She traces patterns of violent removal, shows how fragments were miscast as mere ornament, and discusses restitution efforts and museum responses. The conversation ranges across Africa and several vivid case studies.

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