New Books Network

Temptations in Ruin: Sovereign Accumulation and the Making of Post-Genocide Turkey (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) examines the political-economic afterlife of the Armenian genocide in present-day Turkey, focusing on the region of Muş (Moush). Anthropologist Alice von Bieberstein explores how the 1915 genocide and dispossession of Armenians shaped property regimes, citizenship, and economic logics that continue to reverberate today.
By combining ethnography with historical context and diverse perspectives, Temptations in Ruin generates new insights into how past violence shapes contemporary economic practices and social relations. To tell this history, von Bieberstein introduces the concept of “sovereign accumulation” to describe the ways in which the state and other actors mobilize histories of sovereign violence for present-day economic benefit. This framework illuminates the legacy of violence and resource extraction present in such practices as urban renewal projects, treasure hunting for “Armenian gold,” and heritage tourism and identifies these practices’ very existence as manifestations of the economic aftermath of the genocide.
Temptations in Ruin uncovers the ways in which the genocide gave rise to a racialized property regime and a recursive movement of sovereign accumulation that builds on and re-animates the Armenian genocide as generative of wealth in the present. And it demonstrates the complex interplay between genocide denial, destruction, and valorization in post-genocide contexts. Highlighting the enduring resonance of genocide, von Bieberstein enhances our understanding of political violence’s long-term impacts on society and on the economy.

Alice von Bieberstein is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Humboldt University, Berlin.

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Mischa Oak about his book, Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ Life Lessons for Everyone (Page Two Book Inc. 2026)

Joyful life lessons from the LGBTQ+ community to help you move through the world with more harmony, authenticity, and possibility.

Rainbow Wisdom is a companion for anyone who wants to live more fully. The LGBTQ+ experience can inspire us all. Regardless of sexuality or gender, every person is unique and unusual in some way. Drawing on firsthand research, global thought leaders, and personal reflections, renowned educator Mischa Oak presents 18 uplifting lessons from the LGBTQ+ community that will make anyone feel good. You will learn how to:

- Live authentically by asking Why Fit in a Box When You Can Break It Down?
- Raise the Bar by leaving behind exhausting debates and embracing conversations rooted in values and hope.
- Challenge Queer Fear by confronting misinformation and dismantling “flawgic” (aka flawed logic) with clarity.
- Celebrate your own difference with Congratulations! You’re You!, a lesson that helps you embrace and affirm your identity—whatever it may be—and walk proudly in your truth.

These and other lessons show you how to approach the world with more passion, flair, innovation, and liberty to be yourself, while you shift humanity forward. Whether you’re seeking deeper understanding, stronger allyship, or ways to live more freely, Oak invites you into a space of connection, where everyone can draw on LGBTQ+ experiences to live with more joy and make the world a better place.

With a rich glossary of LGBTQ+ terms and practical tools for building more welcoming conversations, spaces, and communities, this book will lift you up, push you forward, and remind you that different is powerful. Rainbow Wisdom is also your allyship guide—helping you grow into a more confident and informed ally, and supporting Queer people and their loved ones to feel valued.

This is what LGBTQ+ life lessons are all about: seeing yourself and the world in new ways, to be the best version of yourself possible.

About the author:

Mischa Oak founded LGBTQ Inclusion Training to improve the lives of 2SLGBTQ+ people and support meaningful diversity and inclusion within organizations. With over twenty years of experience as an educator and 2SLGBTQ+ advocate, Oak holds a Master of Education in Social Justice Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning. He gained international recognition as part of the first wave of legal same-sex marriages in the world, featured on the reality TV series My Fabulous Gay Wedding. His involvement in the Queer Liberation movement propelled his lifelong advocacy, including expanding transgender and Queer inclusion in Canadian schools during his seventeen-year teaching career. Today, Oak delivers transformative talks worldwide, guiding teams, communities, educators, care and service providers, and governments toward meaningful 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion. Oak is a Loran Scholar and an alumnus of Queen’s University, the University of Toronto, and Memorial University. He lives in Vancouver Island, Canada.

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Most of us today would assume that morality and ethics, being value propositions, are questions for inspired leaders, religious creeds, poets—in other words, for the humanities. But what if I told you that we can construct a system of ethics and morality by studying math—more specifically: the laws of thermodynamics? That’s what Professor Drew M Dalton argues in his latest book. Dalton traces a line of metaphysical inquiry from Kant through Spinoza, Nietzsche, and others up to today to show how we get from E=mc2 to a full-throated call to resist evil and alleviate suffering to our very last breath.

By overturning our assumptions about the nature and value of reality, The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern UP, 2024) presents a provocative new model of ethical responsibility that is both logically justifiable and scientifically sound. Dalton argues for “ethical pessimism,” a position previously marginalized in the West, as a means to cultivate an account of ethical responsibility and political activism that takes seriously the unbecoming of being and the moral horror of existence.

Drew M. Dalton is a professor of English at Indiana University, having received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Leuven in Belgium. His research focuses on the normative implications of different metaphysical systems and, specifically, he’s interested in how questions of right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and pleasure are framed within aesthetics, literary theory, ethics, and political philosophy. He is the author of Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire (Duquesne University Press, 2009), The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern University Press, 2023).

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The Tenement Museum preserves and interprets the personal stories of residents of two buildings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ninety-seven Orchard Street opened in 1863 and housed a succession of European immigrants until the double blow of the Great Depression and the impact of the 1924 Johnson Reed Act forced the landlord to evict the tenants. Down the block, 103 Orchard, built in 1888, kept its doors open throughout the twentieth century, hosting Jewish and Italian immigrants in its early years, and Holocaust refugees, Puerto Rican migrants and Chinese immigrants in its later years. This program traces how immigration law impacted the residents of these buildings, and how they carved out new lives once they arrived. Census records, newspaper articles and oral histories—with a focus on YIVO primary sources—will be used to bring the families’ situations to life and situate them in their contexts.

This lecture originally took place on June 24, 2021.

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Information and communication technologies have fundamentally altered the markets for capital, labor, supplies, and distribution in ways that undermine the basic categories we use to understand the economy. Nationality, industry, firm, size, employee, and other fundamental terms are increasingly detached from the operations of the economy. If we want to understand and tame the new sources of economic power, we need a new diagnosis and a new set of tools. The broad consensus across the political spectrum in the US that monopolistic corporations – particularly Big Tech companies -- have grown too powerful, and that we need to revive antitrust to take on the 'curse of bigness' is mistaken. But both the diagnosis and the cure are rooted in an outdated understanding of how the American economy is organized. Listen to this interview about Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century (Cambridge UP, 2022)

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Still Here is a powerful and unflinching novel about chronic suicidal ideation—not as a moment of crisis, but as a daily presence.

Daniel is a husband, a father, and a respected professional. He shows up. He functions. He is, by every external measure, fine.

But every morning begins the same way.

A thought.
A negotiation.
A choice.

Told with striking emotional precision, Still Here takes readers inside an experience that is often hidden, misunderstood, or reduced to moments of emergency. This is not that story.

This is the story of what it means to live with it over years, across a lifetime, while continuing to build a life, a family, and a sense of purpose.

Interwoven throughout the novel are clinical sidebars that offer insight into the psychology of suicidal thinking, making this book not only deeply human but also deeply informative for:

This is not a rescue manual.
It is something rarer.

A book that stays.

If you are in immediate distress, please seek support. Crisis resources are included at the end of the book.

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⁠How Low Interest Rates Change the World: Global Trends Caused by Low Rates and Emerging Factors Shaping the Future of Rates⁠ (Oxford UP, 2025) explores the societal impact of changing interest rates. Taking its starting point in the remarkable four-decade decline in global interest rates from 1980 to 2020, the book examines five global trends it caused, the underlying factors that drove interest rates lower, and emerging trends likely to shape the future path of interest rates.

The book contends that the steady decline in interest rates around the world from 1980 to 2020 played a pivotal role in shaping five significant global trends during the same period: soaring debt levels, escalating housing prices, surging stock markets, widening economic inequality, and increased financial risk-taking.

The book also explores emerging factors likely to shape the future trajectory of interest rates. While demographic trends may keep rates low, other forces, such as rising public debt, can push them higher. The book offers its perspective on the interaction of these opposing trends, and presents its view on the future evolution of interest rates.

How Low Interest Rates Change the World is a no-nonsense fact-based book written in plain language. A key feature of the book is its empirical approach and reliance on data. Figures and tables richly illustrate and support the arguments presented, thereby inviting a broad audience to follow its fascinating journey into the evolution of interest rates and their impact.

Transcript ⁠here⁠

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In this major new interpretation of Sino-North Korean relations, Dr. Gregg A. Brazinsky argues that neither the PRC nor the DPRK would have survived as socialist states without the ideal of Sino-North Korean friendship. Chinese and North Korean leaders encouraged mutual empathy and sentimental attachments between their citizens and then used these emotions to strengthen popular commitment to socialist state building. Drawing on an array of previously unexamined Chinese and North Korean sources, in Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance (Cambridge UP, 2026), Dr. Brazinsky shows how mutual empathy helped to shape political, military, and cultural interactions between the two socialist allies. He explains why the unique relationship that Beijing and Pyongyang forged during the Korean War remained important throughout the Cold War and how it continues to influence the international relations of East Asia today.

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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Psychoanalysis is rising in popularity, but it’s not helping patients navigate the pressures and harms of modern capitalism. Instead, it continues to enforce oppressive structures, state power, and reactionary politics. In From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026) Dr. Lara Sheehi reimagines what psychoanalysis could be. She shows how it can help us understand the ways our emotions, relationships, and sense of self are shaped by capitalism, state power, and ongoing injustice, even genocide. Arguing for a new, liberatory psychoanalysis, she calls for us to harness its revolutionary power, from the clinic to the streets.

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In the well-trod history of the Roman Empire, a pivotal moment has long gone unnoticed: It was in ancient Rome that medical men first set their sights on childbirth, the traditional domain of female midwives.
Taking us to the dawn of Western obstetrics, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Tara Mulder offers a feminist account of how, against a long tradition of midwifery, male doctors began claiming authority in reproductive matters, with an emphasis on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. Their intrusion paved the way for the later criminalization of midwives and the cloaking of childbirth in secrecy and shame.
Yet communities of Roman women continued to help each other through the journey from preconception to postpartum, guided by their own experience and the expertise of midwives. Tara Mulder recovers stories of ancient women living and resisting as they sought autonomy over their bodies and their health. Recounting their experiences in vivid, intimate detail, she reveals how old our modern conflicts about birth truly are.

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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