Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchDevin J. Vartija, "The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
Episode 128
The Enlightenment is often either praised as the wellspring of modern egalitarianism or condemned as the cradle of scientific racism. How should we m…
4 years, 8 months ago
Andrew Roberts, "The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III" (Viking, 2021)
Episode 1108
Following upon the success of his magisterial account of Winston Churchill, Andrew Roberts returns with an outstanding biography of George III: The …
4 years, 8 months ago
Kevin Bruyneel, "Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States" (UNC Press, 2021)
Episode 107
Kevin Bruyneel confronts the chronic displacement of Indigeneity in the politics and discourse around race in American political theory and culture, …
4 years, 8 months ago
Daniel Lee, "The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Episode 127
Sovereignty is the vital organizing principle of modern international law. Daniel Lee's book The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign St…
4 years, 8 months ago
Melissa Macauley, "Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Episode 58
“The Europeans raise all the cattle, but the Chinese get all the milk.”
This joke, told in colonial Singapore, was indicative of the importance of the…
4 years, 8 months ago
Crawford Gribben, "The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Episode 1103
Today Crawford Gribben joins us to talk about his new book, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland (Oxford UP, 2021). Ireland has long been regarded …
4 years, 8 months ago
Beatrice Gruendler, "The Rise of the Arabic Book" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Episode 154
How did it happen that, in the 13th century, Europe's largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes while Baghdad alone boasted of several libraries…
4 years, 8 months ago
Dennis C. Rasmussen, "Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Episode 558
When Americans conjure the image of the signing of the Constitution of the United States, they often think about the various paintings that depict th…
4 years, 8 months ago
Clara A. B. Joseph, "Christianity in India: The Anti-Colonial Turn" (Routledge, 2020)
Episode 151
By studying the history and sources of the Thomas Christians of India, a community of pre-colonial Christian heritage, this book revisits the assumpt…
4 years, 8 months ago
Eva Del Soldato, "Early Modern Aristotle: On the Making and Unmaking of Authority" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
Episode 16
Today we speak with Eva Del Soldato about her new book on how the authority of Aristotle was reinscribed and challenged during the early modern perio…
4 years, 8 months ago