New Books in History

Marshall Poe

Episodes

Mentioned books

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Mar 8, 2026 • 1h 3min

Danielle Wiggins, "Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Danielle Wiggins, assistant professor of history at Georgetown and author of Black Excellence, explores how Atlanta shaped modern Black liberalism. She traces the rise of disciplinary strategies like community policing, corporate-funded family programs, and public-private development. The conversation focuses on Atlanta’s role, intraracial inequality, and how Black uplift efforts intersected with neoliberal politics.
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Mar 7, 2026 • 1h 16min

Paul Gillingham, "Mexico: A 500-Year History" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025)

Paul Gillingham, Northwestern historian of modern Mexico, guides a sweeping 500-year tour. He traces early contact and conquest, colonial extraction, independence, the 1910 Revolution, Cárdenas’s reforms, PRI-era politics, and the 21st-century drug war. Short, vivid takes explore debt, urban modernity, land dispossession, and what U.S. historians can learn from Mexico.
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Mar 7, 2026 • 1h 10min

Rebecca Sharpless, "People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas" (U Texas Press, 2026)

Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, a historian of Texas food and agricultural life, digs into North Texas’s forgotten wheat belt. She traces why wheat thrived there, the rise of mills and bakers, mechanization from plows to combines, and how storage, milling, and industrial shifts remade towns and kitchens. Short, vivid stories reveal how grain shaped work, communities, and regional culture.
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Mar 6, 2026 • 60min

Lucy Lavers et al.," Adventurous Vents: A Journey through the Ventilation Shafts of Britain" (Penguin, 2025)

Lucy Lavers, researcher of built environments; Susanna Prizeman, architectural writer; Judy Ovens, architecture educator. They tour Britain’s inventive ventilation shafts. Hear about disguised vents as follies and facades. Learn how vents shaped industrial health and landmark design. Discover spotting tips, public visits, underwater and tunnel systems, and future low-energy and reuse ideas.
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Mar 5, 2026 • 50min

Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)

Daniel Brook, journalist and author of The Einstein of Sex, revisits Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a trailblazing sexologist and queer rights advocate. He explores Hirschfeld's theory of sexual relativity, his influential Institute in Weimar Berlin, the Nazi destruction of his work, and Hirschfeld's global travels that reshaped his views on race and gender.
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Mar 5, 2026 • 52min

Rachel Walther, "Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon" (Headpress, 2026)

Rachel Walther, film historian and author of Born to Lose, mines archives to retell Dog Day Afternoon’s making and legacy. She traces the real 1972 Brooklyn robbery and its path to Hollywood. Discussion covers casting choices, Sidney Lumet’s direction, how the film reshaped public memory, and later adaptations centering Liz’s story.
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Mar 4, 2026 • 1h 46min

Richard Vinen, "The Last Titans: How Churchill and De Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Richard Vinen, historian at King’s College London and author of The Last Titans, offers a lively dual portrait of Churchill and de Gaulle. He contrasts their backgrounds, personalities, wartime roles, and postwar careers. The conversation probes clashes with allies, choices in 1940, de Gaulle’s Algeria return, and how each shaped national identity and Cold War strategy.
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Mar 4, 2026 • 47min

Amelia Acker, "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" (MIT Press, 2025)

Amelia Acker, associate professor at Rutgers who studies how data are preserved and represented. She traces computing’s archival history from punch cards and magnetic tape to PDAs and cloud platforms. The conversation covers privacy law, telephone metadata, the rise of managed data silos, and challenges of preserving software and platform‑based records.
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Mar 3, 2026 • 1h

Seth S. Tannenbaum, "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

Seth S. Tannenbaum, assistant professor of sports studies and author exploring ballparks' social history. He traces how stadium design and amenities shaped who felt welcome. Short scenes cover Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, the Astrodome and Camden Yards. He examines suburban moves, gated-tier seating, nostalgia-driven design and the rising role of real estate and exclusivity in modern parks.
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Mar 3, 2026 • 55min

Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Paul Poast, "Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Paul Poast, an international-relations scholar of alliances, and Rosella Cappella Zielinski, a political-economy expert on conflict finance, discuss how World War I allies tackled wheat shortages. They narrate the crisis from stem rust and submarine warfare to the creation and workings of the Wheat Executive. They trace its evolution, US tensions over sovereignty, and its legacy for later Allied planning.

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