New Books in Intellectual History

Επεισόδια

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  Christopher B. Patterson, "Domesticating Brown: Movements of Racial Imagination" (Duke UP, 2026) 14.09.2026 1ώ 6λ

  This episode features a conversation with Dr. Christopher B. Patterson, Professor of the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, discussing their recently published book, Domesticating Brown: Movements of Racial Imagination (Duke University Press, 2026). D
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  Mark Peterson, "The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History" (Princeton UP, 2026) 14.09.2026 38λ

  Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson’s riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little.
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  Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026) 09.09.2026 1ώ 2λ

  In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society. In this interview, Morteza Hajizadeh interviews Leonhard Emmerling about his book The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus (Seagull Books, 2026) Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote about him; Dadaists and punks idolized him; artists like Warhol and Beuys made him their icon. From holy fool to punk rebel, the idiot—a figure that traces its roots back to the Greek idiotes, a person who was alienated from public life—has always challenged society’s norms from the margins. Far from a simple madman, the idiot is a powerful subversive, a person who disregards norms and finds profound insight in a state of unmediated inspiration. Using a cross-disciplinary approach bridging literature, religion, art, and philosophy, this volume traces a rich journey up to the present, where the idiot reemerges in a dramatic twist: a public figure who inverts social norms, confounds the boundary between private and public, and declares a new, paradoxical view of the world. Leonhard Emmerling has worked as an art historian in different capacities: as curator and director of art institutions in Germany and New Zealand; as teacher at art academies in Auckland, Düsseldorf, and Munich; and as advisor and director for the Goethe-Institut. His most recent publication is Aesthetics: What For?. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz eds. "Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: the Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver" (Common Notions, 2026) 07.09.2026 1ώ 7λ

  “The general thrust of capitalist policy in this period aims at the intensified imposition of work in response to ongoing struggle against it.” —Harry Cleaver, “Work Is Still the Central Issue: New Words for New Worlds,” in Points of Departure, ed. Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter, p. 35. What changes if we begin the history of capitalism not with what capital does to workers, but with what workers force capital to do? This reversal helps set Harry Cleaver’s approach to Marxism apart from more traditional accounts of capitalism and labor. In Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism, editors Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter bring together Cleaver’s writings from several decades, including hard-to-find and previously untranslated work. The first volume in Common Notions’ new Class Compositions series presents Cleaver’s work not simply as theory, but as a practical way of making sense of everyday struggles from the worker’s standpoint. The refusal of work, unwaged labor, class composition, capitalist crisis, and self-valorization take on renewed significance amid contemporary struggles over work and organization. Greek and Turkish translations are also in the works. Listeners may know Cleaver from his landmark 1979 book Reading Capital Politically. For more than five decades, he has helped develop what became known as autonomist Marxism, an approach that places working-class self-activity at the center of its analysis. In this interview Ovetz and Van Meter discuss the traditions from which his work emerged, and what they hope a new generation of readers might do with it in their search for alternatives. Although more conventional accounts of political economy often begin with companies restructuring workplaces, introducing new technologies, moving investment, or tightening workplace discipline. Cleaver instead, turns the perspective around by asking what forms of worker resistance may have compelled capital to make those changes in the first place. That reversal in turn raises questions the editors grapple with, such as: How do everyday acts of resistance become collective power? How can we demonstrate that corporate restructuring is actually a response to worker resistance, and what might other approaches add to or supplement Cleaver’s inversion of class perspective? And when workers create organizations of their own, how can those institutions preserve autonomy without hardening into less responsive bureaucracies? Drawing on concepts like workers’ inquiry, workplace cooperation, self-valorization, cooperatives, as well as the significance of Zapatistas, we consider what it means to move beyond refusing existing forms of work toward creating new forms of collective life. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Valeria Vázquez Guevara, "Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority" (Cambridge UP, 2026) 04.09.2026 48λ

  Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines how truth commissions construct authoritative accounts of conflict, and how they account for the plurality of accounts across affected communities. Dr. Valeria Vázquez Guevara examines three of the earliest and most influential truth commissions: Argentina (1983–1984), Chile (1990–1991), and El Salvador (1992–1993), and examines how relevant cultural objects support or counter the official account for each. In doing so, she argues that these truth commissions drew on international law to authorise their accounts of violent conflict, and that this had the consequence of privileging an internationally-authorised truth over other truths, whilst simultaneously strengthening the authority of international law over the post-conflict state. By demonstrating how truth commissions turn to international law for authority, the book shows how this produces an official account of past violence and promises of future community, which fundamentally affects how communities live together in the aftermath of violent conflict. 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. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals with Matthew Engelke 28.08.2026 54λ

  A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary London, An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals (Princeton UP, 2026) is an intimate and moving ethnographic account of funerals for people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife. Focusing on secular funeral celebrants of the British Humanist Association (now called Humanists UK), the book examines how their ritual work is geared toward helping realize a secular world. There is a strong ethical commitment behind this effort, which is to face death with honesty based on the belief that this life is all we have. For the humanist celebrants and those they serve, this is what allows for a life with meaning and purpose. Written in a vivid style, the book centers on the lives and the funerals of particular people, from a three-year-old child to a man in his nineties. Anthropologist Matthew Engelke, who trained as a humanist celebrant as part of his research, describes how these officiants try to craft “sincere” funerals, avoiding language and music that might suggest that the person who died had any religious beliefs. The book also captures the highs and lows for humanist celebrants of working in the funeral business—a business that is, for many of them, a kind of vocational calling. Above all, An Honest Death draws out the tensions in secular humanist thought and practice between reason and the body, rationalism and materialism. Nothing matters more to the humanists than “daring to know” in the Enlightenment tradition, but nothing is so certainly known as the fact that we are finite and embodied creatures. Matthew Engelke is professor and chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Divining the Past: How to Do Conjectural History with Anthony Grafton 26.08.2026 1ώ 4λ

  Whether recovering a lost history or charting a new land, scholars and explorers alike often hit at frontiers not only of place, but also knowledge. When the evidence only goes so far, what is the right way to advance? The answer is to make a conjecture: an educated guess that discourses on what is likely the case. Historical examples range from Italian humanists stealing manuscripts from monasteries and reconstructing classical languages, to Jesuit missionaries speculating about land bridges to the Americas, and even Renaissance magicians pioneering in alchemy and astrology. This collective practice is called “conjectural history,” and its roots go far back. But how far back? To answer that question, as we continue Season 6, I have as our guest, Professor Anthony Grafton. A former president of the American Historical Association, and the Emeritus Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, Grafton is a scholar of early modern Europe and written history, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and London Review of Books, and the author of many books such as The Footnote (1997) and Magus (2023). Today, we will discuss his current project on “conjectural history.” We discuss the use of conjectural versus counterfactual history, its founders in Herodotus and Thucydides, and proponents like the explorer Jose de Acosta, S.J. and the scholar Lorenzo Valla. Also discussed are Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, the birth of modern science from renaissance magic, C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image, recent scholarship on premodern eyewitness testimony to the supernatural, the magician Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and the best lost spots of Princeton University. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes. Chapter Headings: 00:00 | Introduction & What is Conjectural History 4:30 | The Scottish Enlightenment vs. the Renaissance Tradition 11:42 | Conjectural History & a Case Study: Jose de Acosta 19:30 | Theology, Science & The Renaissance 26:19 | Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine 38:19 | Conjecture, Divination, and Magic Closing | Reflections: History, Belief, and Closing Thoughts Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  A.J.A. Woods, "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West" (Verso, 2026) 24.08.2026 55λ

  The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books, 2026) is the definitive history of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory. “Cultural Marxism” is one of the far right’s favorite buzzwords. But despite its currency, the meaning and origins of the term are rarely investigated. This book uncovers the bizarre story of the cult leaders, right-wing intellectuals, and White House officials who believe a coterie of left-wing scholars and students is plotting to undermine Western civilization. Drawing on years of archival research and using the tools of critical theory, A.J.A. Woods reveals how a group of German thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was recast as the sinister orchestrators of a global conspiracy. Instead of simply debunking this conspiracy theory, Woods offers a sharp analysis and critique of the political movements that have declared war on all that passes for Cultural Marxism in the US, the UK, and Brazil. Only when we understand the practices and weaknesses of those reactionaries committed to fighting this illusory threat—a conflict causing real-world damage—can we effectively resist. This is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand the ideological currents shaping politics in the twenty-first century. A.J.A. Woods is an intellectual historian who lives in Brighton, England. In 2022, Woods received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, Canada. Their writings on conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice, and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Eran Shalev, "The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation" (U Virginia Press, 2025) 24.08.2026 32λ

  Why does the American flag use stars to represent the states? In The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation (U Virginia Press, 2025), Eran Shalev answers this and many other questions, considering the cosmic imagery—so familiar today but so peculiar on reflection—that suffused the United States’ early political culture. In this comprehensive study, Shalev uncovers how “political astronomy”—the discussion and representation of politics through astronomical models, allusions, and metaphors—reflected and facilitated the emerging worldview that enabled Americans to justify and find meaning in the country’s new democratic modes of governance and its federal system. No other scholar has looked at American political rhetoric through this lens; in so doing, Shalev is able to explain in fascinating detail how Americans turned away from the sun of heliocentric monarchy toward the night sky full of federated constellations, and to discover republicanism imprinted in the firmament. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026) 21.08.2026 1ώ 38λ

  Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear writing, vast erudition, and ability to make his Marxist analysis digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. Yet Hobsbawm was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism, he was embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians, activists, and fellow intellectuals across Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Manmohan Singh, Che Guevara, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fernand Braudel, E. P. Thompson, Arno Mayer, and Salvador Allende. In The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian (Harvard University Press, 2026), Emile Chabal traces the origins of Hobsbawm’s ideas and most famous writings by exploring his scholarly foundations, delving deep into the archives to uncover hidden links and unexpected conversations that shaped his pathbreaking work. Going well beyond the Ages series of modern history books for which Hobsbawm is best known, Chabal offers the first substantial interpretation of Hobsbawm’s entire body of writing. Indeed, The Age of Hobsbawm is also a trove of unique insights into the generations of Marxist writers with whom Hobsbawm was in conversation—authors whose work continues to shape political debates globally. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Roderick Beaton, "Europe: A New History" (Allen Lane, 2026) 19.08.2026 1ώ 8λ

  What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History (Allen Lane, 2026), award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity. Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves. Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years. Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London and Chair of Trustees of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research. He is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, published by Penguin in 2019. He is also the author of The Greeks: A Global History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, and an honorary citizen of Greece. He was knighted in 2025. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.  Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Beronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy" (Henry Holt & Co.) 18.08.2026 44λ

  The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.In When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy (Henry Holt & Co.), award-winning plant biologist Dr. Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees—as well as the cotton shrub—are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer. Beronda L. Montgomery, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. Her primary laboratory-based research has been focused on the responses of photosynthetic organisms (i.e., plants and cyanobacteria) to external light cues. Additionally, Beronda pursues this theme in the context of effective mentoring and leadership of individuals, and the role of innovative leaders in supporting success. You can find her at her website. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  James Loeffler, "Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America" (Metropolitan Books, 2026) 15.08.2026 59λ

  A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long served as a frontline in our wars over freedom of speech and the nature of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtrooms, social media platforms—where we are not polarized over what counts as antisemitism, which speech is protected by the First Amendment, and what the law should do about hatred. At a time of political crisis, antisemitism has become a point of ideological obsession. None of this is new. In a sweeping history of ideas and law, James Loeffler recovers the forgotten roots of our contemporary turmoil. From two antisemitic riots in postwar Chicago to a neo-Nazi march in 1970s Skokie, Illinois, and the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in our own time, Loeffler explores the ways in which America’s courts have grappled with hatred, freedom, and the tensions at the heart of liberal democracy: Are some hatreds more dangerous than others? Is tolerating hate speech the price we must pay for free speech? And can liberalism ever make good on its promise to end hatred through law? Confronting these questions, Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America (Metropolitan Books, 2026) restores a missing history of hate speech, antisemitism, and the law, one that points to how we might protect difference without surrendering our principles of equality and freedom. James Loeffler is an award-winning historian, and Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century. Previously he taught at the University of Virginia and served as Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Currently a Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951): A Discussion with Jay Garfinkel 14.08.2026 29λ

  A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution to our social thought” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., this landmark in the field of social psychology is completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today. It delivers a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. When it was first published in 1951. the New Yorker wrote, “Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, calling The True Believer the famous bestseller with “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement” by the legendary San Francisco longshoreman. This episode was originally published on April 10, 2024. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Why the Roman Empire Fell: On Edward Gibbon with Hugh Liebert 13.08.2026 56λ

  250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Immediately his text caused a storm of controversy. Many readers thought that Gibbon had implied that the rise of Christianity caused the fall of the western empire. But is that the real story? To answer that question, in Episode 1 of Season 6, I have as our guest Hugh Liebert. A Professor of Political Science at West Point, he earned his doctorate through the Committee on Social Thought at UChicago, and has written two books: Plutarch’s Politics (2016), and Gibbon’s Christianity (2022). Drawing on Gibbon’s Christianity, we look at the historian’s paradoxical views on religion, his early conversions to both Catholicism and Protestantism, and how he used those experiences to chronicle the early church as a disciplined new republic that overcame decadent Roman polytheism much as how the Roman Republic conquered aged empires. Along the way, we discuss Gibbon’s ironic and elusive style, his larger essays and memoirs, and the love of literary glory that pervades his fascinating life and complex work. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.” Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Kathleen J. Frydl, "Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation" (Oxford UP, 2025) 13.08.2026 1ώ 1λ

  This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn’t really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress’s role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary’s powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Michael R. Griffiths, "The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) 12.08.2026 52λ

  The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) promises to transform a decades old debate in literary studies about the relation between structure and agency, form and intention by giving a detailed account—previously unstudied—of the way colonized writers have responded to, learned from, and critiqued the death of the author postulate declared by Roland Barthes in 1967. The book is a cultural history of these debates—with a particular focus on two crucial two key case studies, Martinican poet and thinker Édouard Glissant and Palestinian literary and cultural critic Edward Said, this book, then, examines the immediate emergence and intensification of such responses to the postulate of the author’s deathly absence from the text, in order to suggest that metropolitan literary theory drew both critique and engagement from scholars of black, decolonial and Global South background from both before 1967 and Barthes’s declaration and in its wake. This book provides a focused account of the early history of the way global literatures have engaged with, critiqued, and occasionally adopted the lessons and limitations of the poststructuralist critique of that most fetishized and also reviled of figures: the author. Matthis Frickhoeffer is a scholar of critical theory and French thought with a background in literature studies, linguistics and art theory. His work focuses on questions of form, semiotics, and intertextuality. He teaches at the University of Texas at Dallas. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Younus Y. Mirza, "The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries" (Fortress Press, 2025) 12.08.2026 47λ

  Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been historically revered throughout the Islamic tradition. This began already in the Qur'an, where she is called by the name "Maryam." The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries (Fortress Press, 2025) examines the varied appearances of Maryam in different Islamic cultural and theological contexts. The chapters in this history extend from Maryam's scriptural mentions in the Qur'an and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, her appearances in medieval debates regarding prophecy, citations of her virtuous model in Sufi discussions of piety, presentations in art and film, through to her role in modern interfaith relations. Younus Y. Mirza is the Founding Director of the Barzinji Institute for Global Virtual Learning at Shenandoah University. He defended his dissertation in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Georgetown University and has taught at Millsaps and Allegheny Colleges. His research focuses on the relationship between the Bible and the Qur’an and the shared stories between them Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Sima Qian–China’s Grand Historian 12.08.2026 32λ

  John Ross chats with repeat guest Tim McGirk about Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), the Father of Chinese History. He earned this accolade for his monumental work, the Shiji (usually translated as Records of the Grand Historian). It covers more than two thousand years, from the legendary early emperors up to Emperor Wu, under whom Sima Qian lived and fell afoul. Sima Qian would use his history writing to criticize cruel leaders, most notably Qin Shi Huang, the despotic first emperor of China, who burned books and attacked the humanistic legacy of Confucius. The backstory of the Records is one of the great bibliographic tales of all time. And as McGirk explains, the man and his work were inspiration for his historical novel, The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers. Books discussed: Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (English translation by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, 1961, 1993, 1996). The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers by Tim McGirk (Plum Rain Press, 2025) Related episodes: In BOA episode 53, John chatted with Tim about his Plum Rain Press novel The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers. It weaves the story of archeological discoveries in modern-day Mexico with that of Xu Fu, a Taoist alchemist/priest sent to bring back the secret of immortality. And in episode 65, John and Tim talked about Simon Winchester’s biography of Sinologist Joseph Needham, The Man Who Loved China. The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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  Jarvis C. McInnis, "Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South" (Columbia UP, 2025) 12.08.2026 1ώ 10λ

  Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial education as a strategy for Black self-determination. There―and in many other communities in the U.S. South, the Caribbean, and Central America―Black people repurposed and regenerated what had been a place of enslavement into a site for imagining alternative futures. Jarvis C. McInnis charts a new account of Black modernity by centering Tuskegee’svision of agrarian worldmaking. He traces the diasporic ties and networks of exchange that linked Black communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Washington is often regarded as an accommodationist, McInnis shows how artists, intellectuals, and political leaders―including George Washington Carver, Jean Price-Mars, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Marcus Garvey―adapted Tuskegee’s methods into dynamic strategies for liberation in places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Jamaica. Even as the legacy of the plantation continued to circumscribe Black life, these thinkers found resources in its ruins to forge new theories and practices of progress, aesthetic innovation, and freedom that contributed to the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. In contrast to traditional understandings of Black modernity as urban and premised on northward migration, McInnis foregrounds rural settings and practices of place making, rootedness, and liberatory agriculture. Shedding new light on the transnational influence of a historically Black institution in the U.S. South, Afterlives of the Plantation remaps Black cultural, intellectual, and political histories down to the very soil. Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South (Columbia University Press, 2025) is an award-winning monograph earning recognition as a winner of the 2026 S-USIH Annual Book Prize by the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, 2026 Pauli Murray Book Prize in Black Intellectual History by the African American Intellectual History Society, and the 2026 ASALH Book Prize by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history