New Books in History

Marshall Poe

Episodes

Mentioned books

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Feb 20, 2026 • 1h 4min

Ray Yep, "Man in a Hurry: Murray MacLehose and Colonial Autonomy in Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)

Ray Yep, research director at the Hong Kong History Centre and author of a new study on Murray MacLehose, examines Hong Kong’s 1970s politics and colonial bargaining. He unpacks MacLehose’s reforms, anti-corruption drive, the Vietnamese refugee diplomacy, and covert negotiations with London. The conversation highlights informal leverage, media image, and archival revelations about contested autonomy.
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Feb 19, 2026 • 39min

David King Dunaway, "A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

David King Dunaway, historian and cultural biographer, explores the history and social life of eyeglasses. He recounts a week without his own lenses. Topics include medieval church opposition, the spread of spectacles with print culture, stigma and gendered prejudices, the myopia rise and prevention, fashion and nonprescription frames, and the privacy risks of future smart glasses.
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Feb 19, 2026 • 40min

David Frankfurter ed., "Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic" (Brill, 2019)

David Frankfurter, a Boston University scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions and magical texts, guides a tour of how scholars define and study ancient magic. He outlines the book's three-part structure and key sources. Short, lively takes cover language, material amulets, protective figurines, and why simplistic magic-to-modernity stories mislead.
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Feb 18, 2026 • 1h 3min

David M. Henkin, "Out of the Ballpark: How to Think about Baseball" (Oxford UP, 2026)

David M. Henkin, a UC Berkeley historian, reframes baseball as a cultural and historical phenomenon. He explores rituals, fandom as quasi-religion, baseball’s urban and global roots, Jackie Robinson’s wider significance, labor struggles and sabermetrics, and how media and international stars reshape the game. Short, wide-ranging conversations connect baseball to race, labor, technology, and modern life.
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Feb 18, 2026 • 1h

Emily Dufton, "Addiction, Inc: Medication-assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Emily Dufton, historian and author of Addiction, Inc., unpacks how medication-assisted treatment went from a bold public-health experiment to a privatized, profit-driven system. She explores methadone and buprenorphine history, Nixon-era national clinics, Reagan-era defunding and privatization, comparisons with Switzerland, and pathways to restore dignified care.
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Feb 18, 2026 • 27min

Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Mélanie Lamotte, Assistant Professor of History at Duke University who studies French colonialism and the Black diaspora. She traces how interracial sex, sexual violence, and labor shaped the early French Empire. She maps transoceanic connections across Atlantic and Indian Ocean colonies. She explains intermarriage, bans, and how people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent shaped imperial law and society.
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Feb 17, 2026 • 1h 1min

The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past

Owen Rees, interdisciplinary ancient historian and author of The Far Edges of the Known World, explores life on the margins of empires. He surveys 6,000 years across three continents. Short chapters probe borderland trade, nomadic monument-building, hybrid identities, and how archaeology upends Greek and Roman-centered stories.
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Feb 17, 2026 • 60min

Brian Hallstoos, "Sol Butler: An Olympian's Odyssey through Jim Crow America" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

Brian Hallstoos, historian and University of Dubuque professor, tells the life of Sol Butler, a superstar athlete turned entrepreneur. He traces Butler’s rise from record-setting sprinter and 1920 Olympian to savvy sports promoter and journalist. The conversation highlights Butler’s strategies for navigating Jim Crow, family mobility, and the ways fame fueled his business and community influence.
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Feb 16, 2026 • 49min

Bin Chen, "Hui Muslims in the Shaping of Modern China: Education, Frontier Politics, and Nation-State" (Routledge, 2025)

Bin Chen, assistant professor of modern Chinese history who studies China’s modern transition and Islam in China. He discusses Muslim teachers' schools, why the Nationalist state tolerated and used them in the northwest, shifting frontier politics and wartime relocations. He also explores Hui identity’s flexibility, the 1933 regulation puzzle, and long-term legacies like Arabic training and diplomacy.
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Feb 16, 2026 • 58min

Cindy Schweich Handler, "A German Jew's Triumph: Fritz Oppenheimer and the Denazification of Germany" (McFarland, 2025)

Cindy Schweich Handler, a biographer and former USA Today Network editor, and Harry Handler, grandson who unearthed family archives, tell Fritz Oppenheimer’s story. They explore discovering hidden papers, balancing family intimacy with rigorous research, Fritz’s role in denazification and legal work, choices around identity and trust, and the tangled moral and practical challenges of rebuilding postwar Germany.

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