New Books Network

Episódios

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  Sarah Trad, "A House in the Lebanese Mountains: Recipes & Stories from Beit Trad" (Thames & Hudson, 2026) 18.09.2026 37min

  High in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut sits Beit Trad, an eighteenth-century family home that Sarah Trad transformed into a guesthouse devoted to Levantine hospitality. The house brings together family history, Lebanese design, food, and the belief that welcoming someone into your home is an essential part of life. In A House in the Lebanese Mountains: Recipes & Stories from Beit Trad (Thames & Hudson, 2026), Trad tells the story of Beit Trad and the family who shaped it, alongside recipes for the generous Lebanese food served around its tables. Part memoir, part cookbook, and part portrait of a remarkable house, the book captures interiors that mix Eastern and Western influences and reflect the layered identity of the Levant. The recipes range from Beit Trad’s elaborate breakfasts to vegetable dishes, stews, meats, fish, and sweets. Throughout, Trad explores hosting as both an art and a practice: making guests feel completely at home while recognizing the work and dedicated team required to make that sense of ease seem effortless. Sarah Trad joins New Books Network to discuss Levantine hospitality, her family’s house and its transformation into a guesthouse, and her mother’s influence on her understanding of hosting. She also talks about what it takes to run Beit Trad, the relationship between beauty and appetite, and recipes including Pasta B Laban – a decidedly non-Italian spaghetti dish with garlic and yogurt that is pure Lebanese comfort food – and a strawberry and orange salad that showcases the magic of orange blossom water. Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at VittlesVamp.com.
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  Museums in Digital Age 18.09.2026 33min

  How are museums adapting to the digital age, and what transformations are taking place in institutions we often consider to be highly conservative? In this episode, researcher Aya Kimura shares her fascination with museums in both Japan and Lithuania, as well as insights from her research and analysis over the past several years. For those who read Japanese, more details can be found in Aya Kimura’s book Museums of the Digital Age (デジタル時代の博物館), published by Kadensha. Aya Kimura is Associate Professor, Department of Human Sciences, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine The episode is hosted by Linas Didvalis, an Associate Professor at Centre for Asian Studies at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Host: Linas Didvalis  Find the book here
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  Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, "Pierogi: An American Story of Polish Food" (Columbia UP, 2026) 18.09.2026 48min

  Today, pierogi are the most recognizable Polish food in the United States and a symbol of Polish American identity. How did this humble dish attain such lofty status? In Pierogi: An American Story of Polish Food (Columbia UP, 2026), Professor Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann explores the surprising history of pierogi, tracing how Polish cuisine evolved in the multiethnic landscape of the United States. When Polish immigrants crossed the ocean, they brought with them their traditional cuisine, which came to signify enduring attachment to homeland, family, religion, and culture. In time, they as well as new generations and new immigrant waves gradually transformed Polish American culinary culture, reflecting food trends and changes in the United States, Poland, and the world. Pierogi takes readers into the kitchens where Polish American families, friends, and community organizations carry on the custom of cooking and eating together. Dr. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann highlights small- and large-scale pierogi producers who adapted traditional dishes for the US market and food celebrities who mainstreamed them, and she traces the symbolic representation of pierogi in popular culture. She also shares personal stories, from her family’s resourcefulness in communist-era Poland facing near-constant food shortages to her experiences as an immigrant to the United States in the 1980s. Drawing on sources from historical and recent cookbooks to interviews with Polish American entrepreneurs and community members, this book offers new insights for anyone interested in East Central European and American foodways. 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.
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  Revisiting The Leftovers 18.09.2026 25min

  The Pop Culture Professors revisit the pilot of The Leftovers, which ran on HBO from 2014-2017. How does this grief-drenched story about a world in ontological crisis play today, in 2026?
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  Class Struggle and the New York Mets: A Conversation with AM Gittlitz 18.09.2026 55min

  With his riveting chronicle of the New York Mets baseball team, AM Gittlitz is emerging as a rising star in the field of popular social history.
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  Carl Dennis, "Earthly Virtues" (Penguin, 2026) 18.09.2026 39min

  In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Dennis about his collection, Earthly Virtues (Penguin Random House, 2026). Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis explores the expansiveness and complexity of universal virtues within the realm of the everyday in this thought-provoking new collection Though most of the virtues that interest Carl Dennis in Earthly Virtues have traditional names, they are provided with contexts that give them fresh implications, moving us in two directions at once, toward a recognition of limits and a recognition of possibilities. On one hand, they confront what it means to lack the knowledge and power we need to make our lives as consequential as we may want them to be. On the other, they reach out to widen the circle of our concern, suggesting a kinship of the local with the distant, enlarging the passing moment with history and prophecy. Wherever the poems turn, they prove spacious enough to take us with them, and they leave us grateful for the journey. Carl Dennis is the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Earthborn (2022). A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize, he taught for many years in the English Department of the State University of New York, and in the Warren Wilson Writing Program in North Carolina. He lives in Buffalo, New York.
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  Jerome Sauvage, "Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 18.09.2026 38min

  Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013. In this capacity, he was the most senior UN official in North Korea during one of the most eventful political periods on the Korean peninsula in recent memory. Amidst the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and death of Kim Jong-il, Sauvage had to resurrect and strengthen UNDP’s—and the UN overall’s—presence in North Korea by delicately navigating the politics of not only Pyongyang, but also the overall international development ecosystem. In this NBN episode, we talk with Sauvage about those experiences, which he recounts in his memoir Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK (Bloomsbury, 2026).
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  Jim Gaona Ellis, "Educators As Designers: The Hidden Architecture of Learning" (Harvard Education Press, 2026) 18.09.2026 50min

  This timely and original book challenges readers to see themselves not just as implementers, but as architects capable of reshaping learning cultures and opportunities for all students.
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  Bryant Simon, "For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality" (U Chicago Press, 2026) 17.09.2026 38min

  Americans have nowhere to go. Nationwide, countless public spaces lack one crucial thing: bathrooms, never mind ones that are safe and functional. Yet in the past, political leaders celebrated the opening of public bathrooms with boisterous press conferences and showy ribbon-cutting ceremonies. For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality (University of Chicago Press, 2026) is the first book to tell the larger history of public bathrooms in the United States, a fascinating story characterized by persistent discrimination, squeamishness about unknown bodies, and disinvestment in public amenities. Acclaimed writer and historian Dr. Bryant Simon argues that restrooms aren’t only an architectural feature, but an emblem of control and inequality. In the late nineteenth century, cities vied for the newest and biggest comfort stations to meet the demands of their bustling economies and accommodate a broad and growing public. They built restrooms with gold-domed entrances and ornamented stall doors to inspire cleanliness and order.
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  Sandra Rozental, "The Absent Stone: Mexican Patrimony and the Aftershocks of State Theft" (Duke UP, 2026) 17.09.2026 41min

  Where and to whom do ancient things belong? What happens when they are stolen—not by a colonial power, but by a national museum claiming them as state patrimony? What kinds of healing and restitution can follow? In The Absent Stone: Mexican Patrimony and the Aftershocks of State Theft (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Sandra Rozental tells the story of the Piedra de los Tecomates, the largest stone monument in the Americas, popularly identified as the pre-Hispanic rain deity Tlaloc. In 1964, the Mexican state called in the military to forcefully relocate this 167-ton carving from the town of Coatlinchan to Mexico City’s National Anthropology Museum. Using in-depth historical and ethnographic research, Rozental traces how the stone’s absence continues to affect and unsettle Coatlinchan and its residents decades later, revealing the tensions between patrimony, nationalism, territory, memory, and materiality in Mexico. 
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  Andrew Seth Meyer, "To Rule All Under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor" (Oxford UP, 2026) 17.09.2026 52min

  The Warring States Period is one of the most important times in China’s history. It marked the end of one dynasty–the Zhou–and the beginning of a new imperial era, under the Qin. It’s an era that historian Andrew Seth Meyer describes as one of the most important revolutions in world history: The fall of the old aristocratic order, the birth of Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism, and the creation of the imperial system that would shape China for over two thousand years. Andrew has put together one of the first English comprehensive histories of the Warring States period in his new book To Rule All Under Heaven: A History of Classical China from Confucius to the First Emperor (Oxford UP, 2026)
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  Laura Portwood-Stacer, "The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors" (Princeton UP, 2021) 17.09.2026 55min

  Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us your suggestion on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: what a book proposal is and isn’t, why you have to write one, the importance of seeking the right “fit” for your manuscript, how to pitch a quirky book, the difference between a book’s topic and its argument, how to summarize your project in just one sentence, and a discussion of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors (Princeton UP, 2021)
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  John Gilbert McCurdy, "Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh" (JHU Press, 2024) 17.09.2026 28min

  The fascinating story of a British army chaplain's buggery trial in 1774 reveals surprising truths about early America. On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army considered the case of a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having sex with a man. Newburgh's enemies cited his flamboyant appearance, defiance of military authority, and seduction of soldiers as proof of his low character. Consumed by fears that the British Empire would soon be torn asunder, his opponents claimed that these supposed crimes against nature translated to crimes against the king. In Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh (JHU Press, 2024) historian John McCurdy tells this compelling story of male intimacy and provides an unparalleled glimpse inside eighteenth-century perceptions of queerness. By demanding to have his case heard, Newburgh invoked Enlightenment ideals of equality, arguing passionately that his style of dress and manner should not affect his place in the army or society. His accusers equated queer behavior with rebellion, and his defenders would go on to join the American cause. Newburgh's trial offers some clues to understanding a peculiarity of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: while gay acts were prohibited by law in much of the British empire, the newly formed United States was comparatively uninterested in legislating against same-sex intimacy.
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  James D. Ryan, "The Upanisads as They Are: Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Aitareya, Taittiriya, Kausitaki" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 17.09.2026 43min

  These Upanisads (c. 800-300 BCE) are almost always read from the point of view of the later Vedantins, but they do not share in the neatly tailored characteristics of the mature Vedantic philosophies, representing, instead, divergent, variegated and even conflicting narratives. In The Upanisads as They Are (Bloomsbury, 2026) the author focuses on the earliest of these Upanisads: Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Aitareya, Taittiriya, Kausitaki. These Upanisads are read “as they are,” emphasizing aspects of these texts that are often completely overlooked, among them: their Vedic approach to contradiction, their frequent acceptance of means other than gnostic knowledge of or veneration of atman/brahman as a means for liberation, their positing of entities/realities other than atman or brahman as totalistic, and their frequent depiction of the human body or embodied human as a microcosm of or in identity with the universe. In course, the interpretations of the Upani?adic view, the Vedantic view, for each of these Upani?ads, of Sa?karacarya (c. 800 CE) and Ramanujacarya (c. 1100 CE), as primary examples in the range of Upani?adic interpreters, will be examined and often refuted.
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  Sarah Meehan O'Callaghan, "Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body" (Routledge, 2026) 17.09.2026 46min

  Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body (Routledge, 2026) provides an epistemology of the body as it relates to subjectivity through an analysis of selected works of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Presented in three parts, the book explores a fundamental premise: that there is a traumatic and alienating dimension to embodiment that resists expression within representational systems and is core to the being of any subject. In Part One, The Epistemology of the Body, Meehan O'Callaghan approaches a theory of the body as traumatic by framing it as a question, a gap in knowledge through the lens of psychoanalysis and theatre studies. Part Two, The Body of Drama, is devoted to a study of the body in the works of Beckett and Artaud from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Part Three, The Body Between Being and Non-Being, provides a deeper exploration of how the interrogation of the body opens onto a question of being and uses the insights gained from the dialectical encounter of psychoanalysis with the specific works of Beckett and Artaud to apply them to contemporary and scholarly issues of the body. Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives through Beckett and Artaud will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for academics and scholars of Lacanian studies, psychoanalytic studies, the body, disability studies, and literary and theatre studies.
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  What does the Pope have to teach us about AI? (JP, from Public Books) 17.09.2026 29min

  When I heard that Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” was about “Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” my first reaction was dread. Turns out I was wrong; always something new out of Chicago..... This is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side and to JP's earlier Hannah Arendt articles) in soliloquy. You can consult footnotes and read a transcript by heading back to the article in its original form here.
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  Lily Geismer on the Democratic Party in the 1990s 16.09.2026 1h 23min

  In this episode, hosts Lee Vinsel and Ben Waterhouse, along with producer Joe Forte, chat with historian Lily Geismer. Their conversation covers the evolution of the Democratic party, what it means to study political science as history, and a bit about how a scholar’s work can emerge from their personal experience and identity. Lily is Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (2015) and Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality (2022). She teaches contemporary history and is a key participant in a group of scholars working to rethink and revitalize our approach to political history of the United States. One product of those collaborations has been her edited volume, with Brent Cebul, Mastery and Drift: Professional Class Liberals since the 1960s (2025). This conversation was recorded in July of 2026.
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  Christina E. Firpo, "Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam" (Columbia UP, 2025) 16.09.2026 53min

  In Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam (Columbia UP, 2025), Christina E. Firpo explores the development of beauty culture in this period, showing how women’s faces and bodies became contested sites for envisioning what it meant to be Vietnamese in the modern world. She considers dress patterns, lip-lining tutorials, hairstyles, physiques, and beauty pageants alongside new technologies of media, transportation, and leisure and the anxieties they provoked. The everyday decisions women made about their appearance, Firpo argues, were ways to stake a claim to the roles they wanted to play in the new society taking shape around them. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam (Columbia University Press, 2026) offers fresh insight into the tumultuous political, economic, social, and cultural changes that swept across Vietnam during this crucial period.
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  Giuseppe Motta, "Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State" (Routledge, 2026) 16.09.2026 32min
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  William R. Handley, "Horizons of Catastrophe in the American West" (U Nebraska Press, 2026) 16.09.2026 44min

  Horizons of Catastrophe in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. William R. Handley contributes to discussions in the environmental humanities and western U.S. studies about how we read past cultural history in the light of our determined yet unknown future under climate catastrophe.