New Books Network

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Gennady Estraikh. His book titled, The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) was published as a part of the "Russian Shorts" series. Gennady Estraikh's book explores the birth, growth, demise and afterlife of the Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR). The History of Birobidzhan looks at how the shtetl was widely used in Soviet propaganda as a perfect solution to the 'Jewish question', arguing that in reality, while being demographically and culturally insignificant, the JAR played a key, and essentially detrimental, role in determining Jewish rights and entitlements in the Soviet world. Estraikh brings together a broad range of Russian and Yiddish sources, including archival materials, newspaper articles, travelogues, memoirs, belles-letters, and scholarly publications, as he describes and analyses the project and its realization not in isolation, but rather in the context of developments in both domestic and international life. As well as offering an assessment of the Birobidzhan project in the contexts of Soviet and Jewish history, the book also focuses on the contemporary 'Jewish' role of the region which now has only a few thousand Jewish occupants amongst its residents.

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks wit Griffin Prize winner Kaie Kellough about his new long poem, Interposition (McClelland & Steward, 2026).

Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 Preview
From Kaie Kellough, poet, sound performer, and Griffin prize winner, comes a linguistic incursion into desire, technology, and the absurd.
Kaie Kellough (Magnetic Equator, Griffin Poetry Prize winner, 2020) returns with a long poem that repurposes the language of the present. Interposition borrows its vocabulary from the news, entertainment, war, advertising, technology, and the everyday tragedies of popular culture. It reveals the morbid humour of our inability to distinguish between the urgencies of personal achievement and climate crisis. It compresses sound and rhythm into paradox, and it conflates absurdity and emergency.
Mapping the continued encroachment of capital and virtual culture upon our psychic space, Interposition examines how, with each click, we are reconstituted online and sold back to ourselves, and asks: How do we uncouple our selves from our avatars?

KAIE KELLOUGH is a poet, fiction writer, and sound performer living in Montreal. His previous collection, Magnetic Equator, won the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is a writer and vocalist for the group FYEAR and is pursuing graduate work in English at Queen’s University.

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U2 is a band from the north side of Dublin that became a global phenomenon-and while its four members have traveled the world over for almost fifty years, some of the most critical points on their journey have been in Southern California.

The Joshua Tree is the best-known example of U2's artistic immersion in the Golden State, but the band began drawing inspiration from California's landscape as early as 1981 during their first arrival in the U.S. for the Boy tour.

From deserts to beaches to urban streets, Southern California features dozens of sites that are both sacred and significant to U2 history. For the first time, these sites are documented and categorized in a single resource to inform and support the Southern California pilgrimages of U2 fans. I Go There With You (2026) provides the information U2 fans need before embarking on such a quest, whether individually or in groups. Each site has a story, and this book tells those stories-along with must-have details for trips that require extra planning and foresight.

In addition to essential information on each site's place in U2 history, author Brook W. Flagg aims to inspire U2's most devoted followers with anecdotes and scrapbooked images. Just as Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. traveled through Southern California along the road from innocence to experience, their fans can find catharsis and healing by going into the mystic portals of the past-places where, over the decades, U2 found pieces of what they were looking for.

Brook Flagg on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York.​

Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta), was published to critical acclaim in 2012. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012; named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, 2012; shortlisted for the Author’s Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year in 2013; nominated by The Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. Looking for Transwonderland has been translated into French and Italian, and was awarded the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy in 2016.

Noo's second book, Black Ghosts (Canongate, 2023) explores the African community in China and was named Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year in 2025.

Her latest publication, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria (Columbia Global Reports) examines the social and environmental effects of the insurgency that arose in the oil-rich Niger Delta after the death of her father, the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. In the report, Noo highlights the undervalued role of women and meets individuals who are working towards sustainable development. It will be published in the US on 14th April 2026, and in the UK on 28th May 2026.

Noo has also contributed to the following anthologies: Go Girl 2: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure (2024); An Unreliable Guide to London (Influx Press, 2016); A Place of Refuge (Unbound, 2016), an anthology of writing on asylum seekers; and La Felicità Degli Uomini Semplici, an Italian-language anthology based around football. ​​

Noo is a staff writer for Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and she has contributed book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for various publications including The Guardian newspaper, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, City AM, and Chatham House.

She lives in London and supports Liverpool FC.

Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

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Where are you—spiritually, emotionally, and morally? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Rabbi Josh Franklin to discuss his book Where Are You? Finding Yourself in the Bible, a thoughtful exploration of the Torah as a map of the human soul.

The question God asks Adam—“Where are you?”—echoes throughout the biblical narrative and into our own lives. In Where Are You? Finding Yourself in the Bible, Rabbi Franklin traces the emotional geography of Torah, moving through landscapes of beginnings, wandering, revelation, rupture, exile, and return. These are not only places in Scripture, but experiences that define the human journey.

Weaving together biblical text, midrash, psychology, and personal storytelling, Franklin shows how the places of the Torah reflect the inner terrain of human life—moments of uncertainty, transformation, loss, and renewal. More than a commentary on Scripture, the book offers readers an invitation to locate themselves within the sacred story and to ask what it means to move forward with purpose and awareness.

Together, Franklin and Katz explore how ancient texts speak to modern struggles, how geography becomes metaphor, and why the question “Where are you?” remains one of the most powerful spiritual prompts in Jewish tradition.

About the Guest

Josh Franklin is the Senior Rabbi of Jewish Center of the Hamptons and the author of Where Are You? Finding Yourself in the Bible. A dynamic teacher and preacher, his work blends classical Jewish texts, contemporary psychology, and personal reflection to help readers engage Torah as a guide for navigating life’s emotional and spiritual challenges.

About the Host

Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud including Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Through his teaching, writing, and podcast conversations with scholars and rabbis, Katz brings timeless Jewish texts into conversation with contemporary questions and lived experience.

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Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden from Congress and the public-- Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world.
Following an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked--under little oversight--with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala.
But simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power.
Waller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.

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Librarians continue to work under budget constraints while still needing to increase the user experience and remove barriers to library resources. Learning to evaluate the best options for managing projects to accomplish goals while balancing with the reality of day-to-day work needs is integral to overall success.
In Practical Project Management for Librarians (Bloomsbury, 2025), Kirsten Clark takes readers through the process of learning how to balance the goals of the project with the reality of working in libraries today, what key questions can help move readers effectively through the project process and choose the right tools, best practices to ensure sustainability in project plans as well as outcomes, and how to incorporate diversity, inclusion, and accessibility principles into your project management. This practice guide provides step-by-step instructions to determine what project management tools and techniques match the needs of the particular library project and person/team's skills level, while also providing these in the context of libraries' specific cultures and norms.

Guest: Kirsten Clark is the director of Library Enterprise Systems at the University of Minnesota Libraries, USA, where her department oversees systems for five system campuses as well as ensures consistent and transparent application of access policies for students, faculty, researchers, and community users. In a career that has spanned working for small liberal arts colleges to research universities, she has led projects within a variety of library areas including research and instruction, collection development, access and information services, and information technology and systems.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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A Companion to Latin American Photography (Tamesis Books, 2025) introduces the reader to the role that photography plays in Latin America, offers ways in which it can be studied, and reveals how this medium can promote a deeper awareness of the region. In this companion, author Nathanial Gardner reviews the  history of photography in Latin America; ways in which the technology transmits distinctive information; the influence of specific photographers and their relationships with patrons, mentors, and students; the role of institutions in promoting photography; and the developing Latin American canon. The Companion to Latin American Photography also explores how the medium can shape Latin American narratives and cultural identities; assert or question power; serve as testimony and memory; and represent and empower women, children and youth, as well as marginalized groups such as the disappeared. The study is intended not only to provide an overview of Latin American photography, it also discusses innovative  work taking place there. Above all, this book can be viewed as a guide to the ways in which photography can enhance and expand a viewer's knowledge of Latin America.

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A landmark biography of Charles Sumner, the unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner’s status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
In a comprehensive but fast-paced narrative, Zaakir Tameez presents Sumner as one of America’s forgotten founding fathers, a constitutional visionary who helped to rewrite the post–Civil War Constitution and give birth to modern civil rights law. He argues that Sumner was a gay man who battled with love and heartbreak at a time when homosexuality wasn’t well understood or accepted. And he explores Sumner’s critical partnerships with the nation’s first generation of Black lawyers and civil rights leaders, whose legal contributions to Reconstruction have been overlooked for far too long.
An extraordinary achievement of historical and constitutional scholarship, Charles Sumner brings back to life one of America’s most inspiring statesmen, whose formidable ideas remain relevant to a nation still divided over questions of race, democracy, and constitutional law.

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The unbelievable insider stories of how they “got the shot,” Cinematic Immunity tells the story of New York City's movie industry from the crew members who created the sets, lit the scenes, and shot the film. Focused on the golden age (1950-1990) of New York filmmaking, Cinematic Immunity covers On the Waterfront through The Sopranos.

The East Coast film industry, thousands of miles from the Los Angeles executives, existed by its own rules and with little oversight. It was a close-knit and freewheeling community of movie technicians that took on the most outrageous challenges to get every shot perfect. Behind-the-scenes documentaries and books feature “above the line” talent—actors, producers, directors, and writers. For the first time, readers will hear the unvarnished truth of the New York movie industry—tales about union politics, labor strikes, movie families, dangerous locations, difficult shots, volatile directors, anecdotes about actors, pranks, friendships, rivalries, generational shifts, substance use and abuse, technical feats, and more.

Readers will hear never heard before stories about classic (and not so classic) films and television shows including: Midnight Cowboy, The Warriors, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Godfather, The Wiz, The Taking of Pelham 123, Annie Hall, Cruising, Do The Right Thing, When Harry Met Sally, Home Alone 2, The Sopranos, and Law and Order.

Expect to discover secrets about how your favorite scenes were shot and the outrageous characters with outsized talents whose personalities sometimes dwarfed actors and directors. Tales of their exploits, what they saw (and did) on these sets was previously only passed among themselves as showbiz lore but now, readers learn of Marlon Brando’s pranks on the set of The Godfather, how crews kept William Friedkin from killing them, the actors, and himself, and how consummate New Yorker Sidney Lumet was the angel to Friedkin’s demons.

Michael Lee Nirenberg has worked as a scenic artist in New York since 2006, and in many cases, alongside many of the people featured in the book. This book is a labor of love comprised of over 150 interviews and hundreds of hours of recordings. Cinematic Immunity includes hundreds of behind-the-scenes images from studio archives and from the technicians who were there.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network.

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