New Books Network

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in Western Europe and North America generally and France especially, the infamous fin de siècle Dreyfus affair brought to the surface some of the worst kinds of bigotry and animus--like contemporaneous Russian pogroms a premonition of the deadly looming revival of ethnic or religious divisions that had seemed a thing of the past.

Our guest today, historian Maurice Samuels, author of many fine books on French history (Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (2010), and The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016))and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism has written a crackerjack new book. Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, (Yale 2024) has written a wonderful account of Dreyfus himself and how should we understand what that turmoil has ot tell us how Jews then (and perhaps today) coexisted with a mainstream secular Christian society either by way of assimilation or (not quite the same thing) by peaceful integration that preserved cultural distinctions.

The discussion ranges widely, setting the scene in the prior centuries when Jews settled all over France, and then were accorded unusual rights by the universalist vision of the French Revolution. Maurie also explains why succeeding generations in France included the ascension not only of Leon Blum the Jewish socialist (and inventor of the weekend!) who improbably led anti-fascist France during in the 1930's--but also the other Jews who followed him as political leaders in France, right up to the present-day.

From Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) forward, Maurie shows, intellectuals have missed the significance of the way Dreyfus and his family integrated without assimilating. The conversation culminating in Maurie introducing John to the fascinating "Franco-French War" about what that coexistence should look like: assimilation which presumes the disappearance of a distinctive Jewish cultural identity, or integration which posits the peaceful coexistence of French citizens of various religions and cultures.

Mentioned in the episode

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In this book, What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 2024), Professor J. L. Schellenberg links facts about human intellectual and moral development to what any God who existed at the time of Jesus would have known, and on the basis of that connection, it crafts twenty new arguments for the conclusion that classical Christian doctrine is false. These arguments represent what Schellenberg calls “the problem of contrary development.” Human origins in deep time, human religion, the formation of the New Testament, human psychology, violence, sex, and gender—advances in our understanding on all these fronts are brought into interaction with the doctrines of sin, spiritual helplessness, salvation, the divinity of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and revelation, with the result that the latter are shown to be vulnerable to refutation in new ways. The book concludes by developing, in connection with its results, two Christian versions of the problem of divine hiddenness and an argument against the existence of God from the historical success (but salvific failure) of Christianity. By taking account of all these things, philosophers can bring a better balance to work on Christianity in philosophy, negotiating a shift from Christian philosophy to the philosophy of Christianity.

JL Schellenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University and adjunct professor in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, both in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He did his doctorate in philosophy at Oxford, resulting in the book, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Cornell, 1993), which introduced a new argument against the existence of a personal God known as the hiddenness argument.

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Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD candidate at Université Laval in Quebec City. [email protected] @carrielynnland.bsky.social

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Rural students are unlikely to pursue degrees from private, selective schools. Why? And what happens to the handful of rural students who do attend elite colleges, colleges that may feel worlds away from home?

Educated Out shows how geography shapes rural, first-generation students’ access to college, their college experiences, and their postgraduation plans and opportunities. These students discover that home and college are very different worlds—and, over time, they start to question both. As they near graduation and navigate a job market in which the highest-paying and most prestigious opportunities are located in urban centers, they begin to feel the complicated burden of their schooling: they’ve been “educated out.” 

In addition to advocating for a higher education landscape that truly includes rural students, Dr. Tieken critiques a system that requires people to leave their rural homes in search of opportunities. Without meaningful change, some students will have to make the impossible decision to leave home—and far more will remain there, undereducated and overlooked. Both engaging and accessible, Educated Out presents important and timely questions about rurality, identity, education, and inequality.

Our guest is: Dr. Mara Casey Tieken, who is associate professor of education at Bates College. She is the author of Educated Out; and Why Rural Schools Matter.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education (Routledge, 2025) provides insight into the antagonism and disputative dialogue present in contemporary discourse.

Taking a broad, pluralistic psychoanalytic perspective, the authors shed light on how and why ideology and conflict have infiltrated education, environmentalism, and psychoanalysis. This book unpacks forms of indoctrination and rejection of new ideas in environmentalism, considers the desubjectification of the human in mental health "services," and assesses how the educational world needs leaders who can articulate unspoken educational aims that perpetuate inequalities, hidden oppression, and their pathogenic effects on disenfranchised groups. This book takes account of the competing schools of psychoanalysis, their members' dismissiveness and enmity toward each other, and their rationalized resistances to discussion across the aisles. From that viewscape, a challenging path forward is proposed.

Critical Consciousness is of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and to readers interested in the psychological aspects of dehumanization, competition, and opposing group identity.

Ben Greenberg, PsyD is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and founding director of the Center for Dynamic Practice in Santa Fe, NM. After a wonderful recent conversation with Tracy Morgan about Psychoanalysis, she suggested I become a host to do interviews about a few books I mentioned I'm excited about. I love to hear interviews about new books. I have published several scientific papers among other written media, and am working on a few book manuscripts as well.

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Hillary Langberg discusses Wisdom of the Goddess, an online exhibition she curated for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art featuring nine goddesses across Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Langberg traces her path from fieldwork at western Deccan cave temples to public humanities, and addresses the curatorial choices, pedagogical design, and theological framing involved in presenting devī traditions to diverse audiences. The conversation explores the Hindu-Buddhist interface in goddess worship, visual texts as evidence, and transmission beyond academic containers.

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In the early years of the twentieth century, in what was then British India, culture thrived in the city of Allahabad. In this vibrant hub of musicians, poets, scholars and freedom fighters, Janki Bai Ilahabadi was a musical star, counting among her fans maharajas, poets, judges, nawabs, government officials and multitudes of ordinary people. Popularly known as Chhappan Chhuri, Janki Bai’s career, originating in a nautch house and vexed by many trials and torments, soared to stellar heights lifting her from penury to palaces and even the Delhi Durbar of 1911.
Based on the real-life story of Hindustani singer Janki Bai Ilahabadi (1880–1934), Requiem in Raga Janki (Penguin Viking, 2018) by Neelum Saran Gour is the beautifully rendered tale of one of India’s unknown gems. Moving from Hindustani classical music’s earliest times to the age of the gramophone, from Baiju’s mysticism and Tansen’s magic to Hassu Khan’s stringent opposition to recordings, this is a novel that brings to life a tapestry of music lore through the eyes of a gifted performer.

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San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. Spanning 30 city blocks and home to tens of thousands of monolingual Chinese residents, its endurance is remarkable—especially given how close it came to erasure.

In Chinatown: San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake and the Paradox of American Immigration Policy (JHU Press, 2026), Dr. Dafeng Xu uncovers the contested history of this vibrant community, focusing on the transformative period surrounding the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed 80 percent of the city, including Chinatown. White San Franciscans saw the disaster as an opportunity to permanently displace the neighborhood. Instead, Chinatown was rebuilt—but not without conflict or consequence. Using detailed census data and other historical documents, Dr. Xu examines how this rebuilt Chinatown differed socially and physically from its earlier form—and the many ways it stayed the same. He explores whether the earthquake shifted patterns of segregation, if and how Chinese immigrants navigated pressure to assimilate—including adopting English, changing their names, and leaving ethnic neighborhoods—and whether they gained economic ground in the city's new landscape.

Dr. Xu's study reveals a striking contradiction: while Chinese Americans were often criticized for not assimilating, systemic barriers made that very process nearly impossible. The post-disaster Chinatown became a symbol of cultural resilience, shaped by both community agency and persistent exclusion. Rich in insight and original research, Chinatown offers a powerful look at how disaster, racism, and resistance shaped one of America's most storied immigrant neighborhoods.

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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The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind (Henry Holt and Co., 2026) is an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human minds
Everyone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works. We learn about physics and chemistry in school, letting us explain the world around us in terms of concepts like force, acceleration, and gravity—the Laws of Nature. But we don’t have the same fluency with concepts needed to understand the world inside us—the Laws of Thought. While the story of how mathematics has been used to reveal the mysteries of the universe is familiar, the story of how it has been used to study the mind is not.
There is no one better to tell that story than Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a renowned expert in the field of cognitive science. In this groundbreaking book, he explains the three major approaches to formalizing thought—rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability and statistics—introducing each idea through the stories of the people behind it. As informed conversations about thought, language, and learning become ever more pressing in the age of AI, The Laws of Thought is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of technology.

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Why Muslims in South India observe hierarchical intra-communal relationships despite the egalitarianism of their religion
In Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025), P. C. Saidalavi provides an ethnographic study of a Muslim barber community in South India, unraveling how these barbers negotiated concepts of hierarchy through Islamic values of piety, genealogy, morality, and wealth. Through this close-drawn study, Saidalavi argues that Muslim hierarchy exists and it works on its own terms. It both draws upon Islamic jurisprudential and moral discourses and is shaped by the larger economic, cultural, and political environment, including that of Hinduism. Yet ultimately, Muslim hierarchy is neither a replica nor a watered-down version of caste in Hinduism.
Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy contends that the Islamization process in South Asia cannot be reduced to conceptual schemas or patterns dictating religious practice. Instead, this process works within a “lived tradition,” in which Muslims attempt to infuse and rationalize their practices using their interpretations of Islamic values, meanings, and purpose. In this case, barbers challenged other Muslims’ perception of them as hierarchically inferior by emphasizing their religious piety. Yet those same Muslims also drew on Islam to provide a rationale for categorizing barbers’ work as morally obligatory but undignified, thus rendering the barbers “lower.”
P. C. Saidalavi is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR.

Khadeeja Amenda is a doctoral candidate at the National University of Singapore. 

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In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century (and the initial decades of the twenty-first century) by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas involving Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, race relations, paranoia, UFOs, xenophobia, political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, virtual reality, and alternate dimensions have been reflected in films — both American and foreign — throughout the past one hundred years.

Popular films and TV shows that fall under cutting-edge scrutiny include Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, Larry Wade Carell’s Girl Next, Matt Shakman’s WandaVision, Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Infinity War, Scott Derrickson’s Dr. Strange, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, Oliver Stone’s JFK, Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, John Carpenter’s They Live, Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, Jack Arnold’s It Came from Outer Space, Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X, Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., and Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage.

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