New Books in History

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Felix Cowan about his new book, The Kopeck Press Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908–1918 (University of Toronto Press, 2025). The Imperial Russian penny press was a vast network of newspapers sold for a single kopeck per issue. Emerging in cities and towns across the empire between the 1905 Revolution and the onset of the First World War, these sensational tabloids quickly became the Russian Empire’s most popular periodical genre. They appealed to a mass audience of poor and less-literate readers with their low prices and accessible language. The Kopeck Press presents a comprehensive study of this phenomenon, examining its role both as a media genre and its significance as a vital forum for lower class political culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Sergey Radchenko provides an unprecedented deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution. This tension drove Soviet policies from Stalin's postwar scramble for territory to Khrushchev's reckless overseas adventurism and nuclear brinksmanship, Brezhnev's jockeying for influence in the third world, and Gorbachev's failed attempts to reinvent Moscow's claims to greatness. Perennial insecurities, delusions of grandeur, and desire for recognition propelled Moscow on a headlong quest for global power, with dire consequences and painful legacies that continue to shape our world. Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a Global Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and as the Zi Jiang Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai). Professor Radchenko’s books include To Run the World: the Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge UP, forthcoming in 2024), Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (Wilson Center Press & Stanford UP, 2009), and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford UP, 2014). Professor Radchenko is a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, was educated in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, where he received his PhD in 2005 (LSE). Before he joined SAIS, Professor Radchenko worked and lived in Mongolia, China, and Wales. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recomendations: The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westan  The World of the Cold War by Vladislav Zubok Zhou Enlai: A Life by Chen Jian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on decisive new significance as the young nation wrestled with its identity. During the colonial period, hair was usually seen as bodily discharge, even “excrement.” But as Dr. Sarah Gold McBride shows in Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America (Harvard University Press, 2025), hair gradually came to be understood as an integral part of the body, capable of exposing truths about the individuals from whom it grew—even truths they wanted to hide. As the United States diversified—intensifying divisions over race, class, citizenship status, and region—Americans sought to understand and classify one another through the revelatory power of hair: its color, texture, length, even the shape of a single strand. While hair styling had long offered clues about one’s social status, the biological properties of hair itself gradually came to be seen as a scientific tell: a reliable indicator of whether a person was a man or a woman; Black, white, Indigenous, or Asian; Christian or heathen; healthy or diseased. Hair was even thought to illuminate aspects of personality—whether one was courageous, ambitious, or perhaps criminally inclined. Yet if hair was a teller of truths, it was also readily turned to purposes of deception in ways that alarmed some and empowered others. Indeed, hair helped many Americans to fashion statements about political belonging, to engage in racial or gender passing, and to reinvent themselves in new cities. A history inscribed in bangs, curls, and chops, Whiskerology illuminates a period in American history when hair indexed belonging in some ways that may seem strange—but in other ways all too familiar—today. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Michael Grunwald is a well renown journalist, who over the last thirty years has focused on public policy and national politics, with the last fifteen years having him zeroing in or climate-related issues. His current book, which he wrote this after six years of research. It was a passionate journey to understand, not to advocate for any position. Because of his reporting for such publications as the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and Politico magazine, Michael won the George Polk Award for national reporting and the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, as well as being honored with many other journalism honors. This is Michael’s third book, and like the previous two, his journalistic research and writing states the major challenges to the feeding the world’s population, but also provides a visionary path forward. This book not only delves into agriculture practices and consumers’ choices about food, but the focus is on the immense climate impact from poor land land-use decisions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The history of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire has largely been narrated as a unique period of equality, reform, and progress, often framing it as the backdrop to modern Turkey. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's exhortation to study the oppressed to understand the rule and the ruler, Talin Suciyan reexamines this era from the perspective of the Armenians. In exploring the temporal and territorial differences between the Ottoman capital and the provinces, Suciyan brings the unheard voices of Armenians into the present. Drawing upon the rich archival materials in both the Archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ottoman Archives, Suciyan uses these to show the integral role Armenians played in all aspects of Ottoman life and argues that accounts of their lives are vital to accurate representation of the Tanzimat era. In shedding much needed light on the lives of those who were vulnerable, disadvantaged, and otherwise oppressed, Suciyan takes a significant step toward a more inclusive Ottoman history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Fire is a means of control and has been deployed or constrained to levy power over individuals, societies, and ecologies. In Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (Oregon State UP, 2024), Pomona College professor Char Miller has edited a collection of documents and essays tracing the history of fire and human interactions in the West and across North America. Indigenous people in California and elsewhere used fire for their own benefit, allowing naturally occurring wildfires to replenish landscapes, and controlling "light burns" to better suit their own hunting, gathering, and agricultural means. It was only with the arrival of first the Spanish and then other European and American settlers that fire took on a decidedly "uncivilized" connotation. As Americans instituted fire regimes across the continent, wildfires grew larger and forests unhealthier. It's only been in recent years that Native people, using traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and settler forest science have begun to combine as a means of restoring fires as a central component of forest health. Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York's Blackwell's Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, "a lounging, listless madhouse." Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Stacy Horn tells a gripping narrative through the voices of the island's inhabitants. We also hear from the era's officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated undercover reporter Nellie Bly. And we follow the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell's residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad and Criminal in 19th Century New York (Algonquin Books, 2019) shows how far we've come in caring for the least fortunate among us--and reminds us how much work still remains. Stacy Horn shows that in setting up institutions for the humane treatment of social outcasts, New York City was so quickly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers confined to the Insane Asylum, Workhouse, Almshouse, Penitentiary and Hospital, that what emerged was a veritable gulag on Blackwell’s (now Roosevelt) Island. Based on a careful reading of both remarkably candid official documents detailing widespread suffering and accounts by the intrepid undercover reporter Nellie Bly and the socially prominent Josephine Shaw Lowell, we come to appreciate the long shadow of history cast over the city’s remaining island of the damned—Rikers. James Wunsch is Emeritus Professor of Historical and Educational Studies at SUNY Empire State. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Between May 21 and June 16, 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a trip together through Upstate New York and parts of New England on horseback. This "northern journey" came at a moment of tension for the new nation, one in whose founding these Virginians and political allies had played key roles. The Constitution was ratified and President Washington was in his first term of office. Whether the country could overcome regional and political differences and remain unified, however, was still very much in question. Hence why some observers at the time wondered whether this excursion into Federalist New England by the two most prominent southern Democratic-Republicans, both future presidents, had an ulterior motive. Madison, maintained that the journey was for "health, recreation, and curiosity." He and Jefferson needed a break from their public responsibilities, so off they set. Along the way, they took notes on the ravages of the Hessian Fly, an insect that had been devastating wheat crops. While in Vermont, they focused on the sugar maple tree, which many hoped might offer a domestic alternative to slave-grown sugar cane imports. An encounter with a free Black farmer at Fort George resulted in a journal entry that illuminates their attitudes toward slavery and race. A meeting with members of the Unkechaug tribe on Long Island led to a vocabulary project that preoccupied Jefferson for decades, and which remains relevant today. The northern journey was also about friendship. Madison later recalled that the trip made Jefferson and him "immediate companions," solidifying a bond with almost no peer in the annals of American history, one that thrived for fifty years. Jefferson declared at the end of his life, that his friendship with Madison had been "a source of constant happiness" to him. A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, and the Forging of a Friendship (Oxford University Press, 2025) reveals the moment when it took hold. Louis P. Masur is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Between May 21 and June 16, 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a trip together through Upstate New York and parts of New England on horseback. This "northern journey" came at a moment of tension for the new nation, one in whose founding these Virginians and political allies had played key roles. The Constitution was ratified and President Washington was in his first term of office. Whether the country could overcome regional and political differences and remain unified, however, was still very much in question. Hence why some observers at the time wondered whether this excursion into Federalist New England by the two most prominent southern Democratic-Republicans, both future presidents, had an ulterior motive. Madison, maintained that the journey was for "health, recreation, and curiosity." He and Jefferson needed a break from their public responsibilities, so off they set. Along the way, they took notes on the ravages of the Hessian Fly, an insect that had been devastating wheat crops. While in Vermont, they focused on the sugar maple tree, which many hoped might offer a domestic alternative to slave-grown sugar cane imports. An encounter with a free Black farmer at Fort George resulted in a journal entry that illuminates their attitudes toward slavery and race. A meeting with members of the Unkechaug tribe on Long Island led to a vocabulary project that preoccupied Jefferson for decades, and which remains relevant today. The northern journey was also about friendship. Madison later recalled that the trip made Jefferson and him "immediate companions," solidifying a bond with almost no peer in the annals of American history, one that thrived for fifty years. Jefferson declared at the end of his life, that his friendship with Madison had been "a source of constant happiness" to him. A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, and the Forging of a Friendship (Oxford University Press, 2025) reveals the moment when it took hold. Louis P. Masur is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Iran presents one of the most significant foreign policy challenges for America and the West, yet very little is known about what the country’s goals really are. Vali Nasr examines Iran’s political history in new ways to explain its actions and ambitions on the world stage, showing how, behind the veneer of theocracy and Islamic ideology, today’s Iran is pursuing a grand strategy aimed at securing the country internally and asserting its place in the region and the world.Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, and original in-depth interviews with Iranian decision makers, Nasr brings to light facts and events in Iran’s political history that have been overlooked until now. He traces the roots of Iran’s strategic outlook to its experiences over the past four decades of war with Iraq in the 1980s and the subsequent American containment of Iran, invasion of Iraq in 2003, and posture toward Iran thereafter. Nasr reveals how these experiences have shaped a geopolitical outlook driven by pervasive fear of America and its plans for the Middle East.Challenging the notion that Iran’s foreign policy simply reflects its revolutionary values or theocratic government, Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton UP, 2025) provides invaluable new insights into what Iran wants and why, explaining the country’s resistance to the United States, its nuclear ambitions, and its pursuit of influence and proxies across the Middle East. Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He served as the eighth Dean of Johns Hopkins SAIS between 2012 and 2019  and served as Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke between 2009 and 2011. He has written a number of books on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He has advised senior American policymakers, world leaders, and businesses, including the President, Secretary of State, senior members of the Congress, and presidential campaigns. He has written for New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among others. Professor Nasr serves as the co-director of the SAIS Rethinking Iran Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, sits on the board of a number of academic institutions, has won a number of prominent grants, and holds a chair named after Henry Kissinger at the library of Congress. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book recommendations: The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra The Great Transformation: China's Road from Revolution to Reform by Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history