New Books in History
Marshall Poe
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.
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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: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Episodes
Mentioned books
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.
Feb 15, 2026 • 59min
Alex Alvarez and Richard R. Fernandez, "Lethal Elites: The Institutions and Professionals That Made the Holocaust Possible" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Alex Alvarez, criminology professor and genocide scholar, discusses Lethal Elites, a study of how professionals and institutions enabled the Holocaust. He explores definitions of lethal elites and how bureaucracies channeled ordinary people into roles of harm. He also covers motivations, the roles of educators, clergy, military elites, and how cultural prestige normalized persecution.
Feb 15, 2026 • 1h 4min
Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)
Himanshu Prabha Ray, a trained archaeologist turned maritime and heritage scholar, discusses rethinking South and Southeast Asian connections. She highlights colonial-era reshaping of regional histories. Conversation centers on maritime networks, Buddhism’s cross-border flows, shipwrecks and relics, and how heritage practice reframes political and cultural ties.
Feb 14, 2026 • 56min
Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
Colleen M. Moore, historian of Russian peasant life, explores how World War I transformed peasant-state relations. She recounts mass mobilization, resistance to vodka bans, conscription crises, land seizures, and wartime provisioning struggles. Short, vivid stories show how wartime service became leverage that reshaped political authority.
Feb 14, 2026 • 1h 51min
Amos Fox and Franz-Stefan Gady, "Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century" (Howgate Publishing, 2026)
Amos Fox, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, explains why modern doctrine like Multi-Domain Operations may be miscast. He traces MDO’s origins, critiques its tech-first tilt, and defends the enduring need for land forces, artillery, and tailored allied approaches. Short, sharp takes on Ukraine, Indo-Pacific challenges, and how doctrine should fit theaters, not hype.
Feb 13, 2026 • 54min
Marc James Carpenter, "The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest" (Yale UP, 2025)
Marc James Carpenter, associate professor and historian of the Pacific Northwest, examines 1850s conflicts as settlers seized Illahee. He explores how violent campaigns against Indigenous nations were reframed into pioneer myths. The conversation covers use of the term genocide, patterns of violence and legal lynchings, and deliberate cover-ups that erased traumatic histories.
Feb 13, 2026 • 43min
Claire Morelon, "Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prague, 1914–1920" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Dr. Claire Morelon, cultural and social historian of East Central Europe, reconstructs Prague’s sensory street life from 1914–1920. She traces wartime posters, uniforms, shortages, refugees, protests, and how everyday urban textures shaped the shift from empire to a new nation-state. Short, vivid scenes reveal the politics of streets, crowd practices, and lingering surprises in public memory.
Feb 12, 2026 • 36min
Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)
Jacob Mchangama, founder of the Danish think tank Justitia and author on free speech history. He traces free-speech debates from ancient Athens to social media. Topics include medieval Muslim skeptics, universities as early havens of academic freedom, the printing press and Reformation, decentralization fostering dissent, and how repression often backfires.
Feb 12, 2026 • 59min
Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Kristin Roebuck, historian of sex, reproduction, race, and empire in modern Japan, discusses her book on how Japan’s attitudes toward mixed‑race people and eugenics shifted from imperial openness to Cold War racial nationalism. She covers research origins, translation challenges for minzoku, eugenic policy as racial engineering, adoption and orphan removal, and Cold War population management.
Feb 11, 2026 • 1h 38min
Joshua D. Zimmerman, "Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Joshua D. Zimmerman, Eli and Diana Borowski Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History at Yeshiva University, offers a concise biography of Józef Piłsudski. He traces Piłsudski’s ideological complexity and multinational roots. Conversations cover Piłsudski’s military strategies, his stance toward Jews and minorities, the 1926 turn to authoritarianism, and lessons for Ukraine and deterrence today.
