Podcast Episodes

Daniel Stolz, “The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Both a history of science and a history of Islam, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Daniel Stolz tells the sto…

Published on 7 years, 1 month ago

Chloe Thurston, “At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Earlier this year, we heard from Suzanne Mettler and her book on the politics of policies hidden from view. Mettler explained that most Americans are benefiting from numerous public policies, but oft…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Melissa Terras, “Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

How have academics been represented in children’s books? In Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cultur…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Kiara M. Vigil, “Indigenous Intellectuals: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the American Imagination, 1880-1930” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

In the United States of America today, debates among, between, and within Indian nations continue to focus on how to determine and define the boundaries of Indian ethnic identity and tribal citizensh…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Hugh Cagle, “Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal’s Empire, 1450-1700” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal’s Empire, 1450-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Hugh Cagle is an exciting analysis of the production of the tropics as an idea and a…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Larry E. Jones, “Hitler versus Hindenburg: The 1932 Presidential Elections and the End of the Weimar Republic” (Cambridge UP, 2016)

The failure of democracy during the Weimar Republic is currently at the center of public discussion due to the global populist wave of the last few years. In his new book, Hitler versus Hindenburg: T…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Benjamin R. Siegel, “Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Episode 85

In his first book Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge University Press 2018), historian Benjamin Robert Siegel explores independent India’s attempts to feed itself …

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Christopher Dietrich, “Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization” (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

The 1973 oil crisis was an event of world-historic proportions, but the stories we tell about it often center the Global North. For instance, the first images that probably come to mind are of the lo…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Ulrich Witt and Andreas Chai, “Understanding Economic Change: Advances in Evolutionary Economics” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

We met with Prof. Ulrich Witt to discuss his recent book (co-edited with Andreas Chai), Understanding Economic Change, Advances in Evolutionary Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2018). This coll…

Published on 7 years, 2 months ago

Joan E. Cashin, “War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

The Civil War was even more disastrous than we thought. Joan Cashin, already a distinguished scholar of the period, looks afresh at the war through the lens of environmental history and material cult…

Published on 7 years, 3 months ago