New Books Network

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author and journalist Ian Brown about his memoir, 70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year (Penguin Random House, 2026). 

Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon and the memoir Sixty, now recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy. Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Brown asks the terrifying questions we all have about growing old, even when he doesn’t want to know the answers. An acclaimed journalist and chronicler of contemporary life, seventy-year-old Ian Brown is not going gently into his eighth decade. The outlook is more perilous than it was at age sixty, but Brown is determined (however hopelessly) not to let time get the better of him. During the course of his seventy-first year, Brown writes incessantly, travelling on assignment for the Globe and Mail across the United States in the months leading to the shocking 2024 election; holidays with family and friends, always aware he might not see them again; skis and rows and exercises like a madman while turning a wary eye on the live-forever movement; takes up pickleball and talks books; and in general tries (and frequently fails) to show some human courage in the face of the march of his dwindling years. Along the way he encounters the lists that have suddenly become essential to daily life (what to take when leaving the house, what to pack for a trip, what to pick up at the drugstore); the indignities of medical tests and the shock of financing a retirement; the terrors and pleasures of growing older with one’s spouse of four decades; the now-suspenseful drama of sex; the thrilling spectacle of watching adult children inhabit new roles of familial responsibility; and the shocking new lessons of life as an older person (accept compliments with grace, remember to smile, stand up straighter). As the percentage of the Canadian population over eighty-five will triple in the next twenty-five years, Brown contemplates his mortality and that of his contemporaries for readers of all ages. Growing old—anything after seventy—is a grave challenge, but also enormously liberating: if there is something you want to say or do, now is your chance to say it or do it. “I have to keep taking chances,” Brown reckons. “I don’t want to give in too soon.”

IAN BROWN is an author and a feature writer for the Globe and Mail whose work has won many National Magazine and National Newspaper Awards. His most recent book, Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-Fiction as well as a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize. He is also the author of The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son, which was a national bestseller and a New York Times and Globe and Mail Best Book, as well as a New York Times top ten book of the year; it also won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and the Trillium Book Award. His previous books include Freewheeling, which won the National Business Book Award, and the provocative examination of modern masculinity, Man Overboard. He lives in Toronto.

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. 

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Brian Zahnd, a Christian leader and pastor of forty years and four-times pilgrim of the Camino de Santiago, completed this remarkable (and quite short) book, Unseen Existences: Of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery in All Things. You can read it in a long afternoon or a few sessions of a couple of hours each, sitting outside – perhaps under an oak or a fig tree – with a cup of tea. It’s conversational in tone; it’s clearly the fruit of decades of writing good sermons. Brian is talking to the skepticism—sometimes cynicism—of our times to show (empirically) that more is going on than we take for granted. He also discusses God’s great project for us here in this world, building on St. Augustine, Dallas Willard, and the Gospels. I really enjoyed this insightful book and our meandering conversation.

More conversations with Pastor Brian Zahnd on Almost Good Catholics:

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Political Scientists William Howell and Terry Moe have a new book out that explores how the United States constitutional system has given way to the establishment of a kind of strongman presidency, disconnected in many ways from the constraints designed to keep the American president from becoming autocratic or dictatorial. Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency (Princeton UP, 2025) traces the expansion of the administrative state in the United States, which transpired during much of the 20th century, particularly earlier in the 20th century with the sizeable increase of the Executive branch and development of a more complex governmental bureaucracy. Howell and Moe were drawn to this project because of what they saw as the crisis of democracy in the United States, with the vast extension of presidential power and the rise of the “strongman” presidency. In noting that those who pursue the presidency are by nature power seekers, the argument in Trajectory of Power is not to deny the president’s power, particularly not the powers sketched out within the constitutional structure, but to focus on the ways in which certain presidents have grabbed at more power, and, in a variety of instances, have also broken laws along with having broken norms and traditions.

Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency traces the ways in which, over the course of the 20th century, there was a certain symmetry in the ways that both Democratic and Republican presidents operated as the head of the administrative state, facing the same constraints and incentives while in office. But this symmetry starts to diverge in the latter half of the 20th century and has substantially diverged in the 21st century. Part of the historical discussion focuses in on the ways in which the Republican Party became more radical, especially in its opposition to the growth and expansion of the administrative state that had come out of the New Deal and had continued to expand in pursuit and implementation of more progressive ends, like civil rights, environmental regulations, disability rights, and the like. As we discuss in the podcast, a variety of legal and structural theories and frameworks are developed by advocates within the conversative movement during this time, in the 1970s, to provide an avenue for shifts in the way that the president operates within the Executive branch, and the ways that conservative justices can approach court decisions. Thus, the Unitary Executive Theory and Originalism are constructed so as to provide both the Executive and the Court with more power. This concept of the Strongman Presidency evolves from this idea of the unitary executive, who need not be constrained by the legislature nor the courts, and can essentially function freely – or fully unconstrained – as the leader of the Executive branch, which is a vast and complex bureaucracy. This is at odds with the structure that the Framers established in 1787, which put limits on the president’s power. Howell and Moe note that the Republicans who were elected to the presidency needed a theory to promote their political objectives, which was to undermine and dismantle the broader administrative state in the United States.

The evolving results of this asymmetrical approach to the powers of the presidency and the Executive branch is that the United States is perilously close to losing its democracy. With ongoing attacks on the rule of law, the undermining of the electoral system, and an unfettered president, the United States is experiencing what is known as democratic backsliding.

Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency is a clearly written and important analysis of American democracy, the evolution of the presidency and the Executive Branch, the growth and development of the administrative state in the U.S., and the ways in which the two parties have approached the presidency over the past century.

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 can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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In February 2022, British explorer Charlie Walker flew to Siberia's Sakha Republic to walk a thousand miles up frozen rivers to the Arctic Ocean, through Earth's coldest inhabited region. Days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Tamping down his concerns, he continued on his journey, meeting indigenous people and ice road truckers along the way. 

Yet his trip ended in fear and confusion, with an arrest and a month in a Yakutsk jail, the story of his new book, On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance and Survival (Duckworth, 2026)

Charlie is an award-winning explorer, author and international keynote speaker. He has travelled over 60,000 miles by foot, horse, raft, bicycle, ski and dugout canoe, in places as varied as the Tibetan plateau, the Mongolian steppe, the Congolese jungle, the Arctic tundra, the highlands of New Guinea and the Sahara desert. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Scientific Exploration Society Explorer Award winner, and the author of Through Sand & Snow (Nielsen UK: 2021) and On Roads That Echo (Nielsen UK: 2021)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of On Thin Ice. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles With God (Restless Books, 2026) collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited change and continue to influence a growing nation. In this anthology, you will find the stories, poems, letters, speeches, sermons, essays, song lyrics, comic strips, newspaper columns, and commentaries that have awoken new generations to free religious thought, from the precolonial to the present day.

A landmark collection of the philosophers and firebrands that sparked a country’s journey through divinity—praising, challenging, and redefining the sacred.

Guest: Ilan Stavans is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. His work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast “In Contrast.”

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler holds a Ph.D. in history, which she uses to explore which stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast and newsletter. She works as a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.

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Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 325+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained by biological relationships. In Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences (Oxford UP, 2026), Robert Wilson proposes an alternative view that does not separate kin relations from biological facts about reproduction that are universally known, such as the fact that human females are pregnant before they give birth. On the Progenerative View, kinship is the cultural elaboration of reproductive relations, which act as constraints on kin relations. Wilson, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Western Australia, also analyzes incest avoidance from this perspective, and draws on clinical findings, primatology, and philosophy of mind and philosophy of biology to develop his biologically-based yet non-reductive and culturally variable view of kinship.

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Uses the everyday histories of Brahmin clans, communities, and families in a prominent small town in the Indian Himalaya to challenge the assumption that only grand metanarratives such as colonialism and nationalism matter. This everyday history of clans, communities, and elite families in Almora, a prominent town in the Indian Himalaya, puts questions of belonging at the heart of an expansive examination of elite Hinduism. Studying a mountainous region sometimes considered marginal within Indian history, Sanjay Joshi explores critically important mainstream concerns via attention to the periphery in Brahmins of the Himalaya: Upper-Caste Ways of Belonging, 1850-1950 (SUNY Press, 2026). Revealing the connections between two meanings of "belonging"--one as a source of identity, the other indicating possession--he addresses large questions: What is the idea of belonging among upper-caste Hindus? How do their ideas of belonging and community change over time? And to what effect? Refusing to conflate the ordinary and everyday with the trivial, Joshi challenges the frequent assumption that only metanarratives such as colonialism and nationalism matter. His exploration of big issues incorporates a plea for attention to the local and the quotidian as equally essential for a proper historical understanding. In addition to state and institutional archives, Joshi draws on unconventional and previously untapped sources: novels, poetry, local-language newspapers, and over six hundred family papers, including rare examples of women's writing within family contexts.

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Kabwe, Zambia: Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty.

But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier--with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc, and her discovery that she's pregnant on the same day of Doc's unexpected death.To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga's proposal, and finds herself suddenly thrust into the shipikisha club: her society's expectations that it is a wife's duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband's infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles, and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind, and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.

The trial is a national scandal. Many are called to testify--the maid, Kasunga's mother, and Ntashé, Sali's fifteen-year-old daughter. Even after Sali's diary is dissected and laid bare for all to see, Sali calls no witnesses to her defense. With Kasunga gone, only Sali will ever know the truth. But is the truth enough?

Told through the rotating perspectives of Sali, Ntashé, and Sali's mother Peggy, The Shipikisha Club (Cassava Republic Press, 2026) is a riveting story of gender politics in Zambia and the world at large--a must-read for fans of Peace Adzo Medie, Abi Daré, and Tayari P. Jones.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and award-winning editor and writer, known for her novel The Mourning Bird and her collection of short stories titled Obligations to the Wounded. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in law, as well as a master's in fine arts. She is currently pursuing a PhD in gender, women and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.

Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in African History. She is the Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network.

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When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara. 

But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.
In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of “strangers in a strange land” to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

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Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North (FSG, 2025), the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures—including Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country’s promise.

My guest today is Michelle Adams. Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.

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