New Books Network

New Books Network

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New Books Network episodes

August 18 Dan Du, "This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U. S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
Popular
history tells the story of how the tea boycott during the American
Revolution caused a transition in American taste from tea to coffee,
making the young country a coffee-drinking nation. In truth, Americans
did not give up their tea so easily, and the United States grew to be
the second-largest importer of tea from China. Diverging from British
black tea traditions, U.S. consumers preferred green tea, cultivated a
particular taste for Oolong tea, and invented the English Breakfast Tea
brand to market Chinese black tea.
This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U.S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911
(University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Dan Du is the first book to
detail the American tea trade with China after the American Revolution
through the early twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources and
perspectives from both sides of the Pacific, Dr. Du offers new insights
to help understand fundamental developments in U.S.-China relations
within a global context. This World in a Teacup shows that, rather than
depending on hard-money transactions or a barter economy, a
sophisticated credit system buttressed American tea purchases in China:
Credit instruments such as promissory notes, bills of exchange, and
checks financed the transactions between Chinese and U.S. tea merchants,
crystallizing changing power dynamics in the global economy. This World in a Teacup
explains how the circulation of these credit instruments challenged the
conventional understanding of China’s economy as a primitive system and
how the power structure of American, British, and Chinese tea trade in
the credit economy reshaped American consumption patterns.
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.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
1 hr 1 min
August 18 A Very Jewish Christmas: When Jesus Spoke Yiddish
It is a curious fact that among the first Yiddish books ever printed was a translation of the New Testament, which appeared in 1540, only 18 years after Luther's famous translation (which it shamelessly cribbed). In the centuries that followed, another dozen or so missionary translations directed to Yiddish-speaking Jews followed. This talk will explore a dramatic change in the character of these translations in the twentieth century, when new conceptions of the Yiddish language, new cosmopolitanism in Yiddish culture, and new understandings of Jewish-Christian conversion converged to create new translation styles that aimed to express Jesus's Jewishness through a rich and haymish Yiddish.
Join YIVO for a very Jewish Christmas celebration featuring a talk on Yiddish translations of the New Testament by Naomi Seidman.
This lecture originally took place on December 21, 2023.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
1 hr 11 min
August 18 Beronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy" (Henry Holt & Co.)
The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.
In When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy (Henry Holt & Co.), award-winning plant biologist Dr. Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees—as well as the cotton shrub—are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.
Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.
Beronda L. Montgomery, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. Her primary laboratory-based research has been focused on the responses of photosynthetic organisms (i.e., plants and cyanobacteria) to external light cues. Additionally, Beronda pursues this theme in the context of effective mentoring and leadership of individuals, and the role of innovative leaders in supporting success. You can find her at her website.
Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
45 min
August 18 Jacob Hagstrom, "Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
The forces that fight asymmetric wars are so distinct that one side
avoids direct military confrontation in favor of political, social, or
otherwise unorthodox means of resistance. These conflicts have been a
mainstay of modern times, though scholars have often separated them into
various designations by era. Observers have referred, in chronological
order, to Indian warfare, petite guerre (small war), guerrilla warfare,
irregular or revolutionary war, and terrorism. The proliferation of
labels over time has obscured the continuity of asymmetric wars
throughout modernity. Stark distinctions in resources and capabilities
have shaped the reasons why states and societies have decided to fight,
and the manner in which they have fought. Across the modern era,
mismatches arose in the domains of technology, intelligence production,
and law. But in recent decades, so-called weak powers have neutralized
many of the typical advantages of strong military states.
Jacob Hagstrom is an army veteran and historian. He earned a PhD in
history from Indiana University, Bloomington, and taught courses at the
Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina.
Chris Millington is Professor of Modern European History and lead of the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of eight books including Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe ((Manchester University Press, 2025), The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford University press, 2023), and France in the Second World War Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
24 min
August 17 Tár
Tod Field’s Tár (2022) is one of the best ghost stories we’ve discussed on the show. The story of a troiubled genius, the film is also a wonderfully ambiguous portrat of a person persued by her past in the form of an unseen and vengerful force. Lydia Tár is by turns charismatic, repulsive, fascinating, and frightening. She’s a real person and demands a compicated response, just like the film as a whole. Part Amadeus and part Lolita, Tár is a high-water mark for anyone intrested in a portrat of the artist.
Bumper music: Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 - Trauermarsch by Jason Weinberger & WCF Symphony. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
If, like Lydia Tár, you’re fascinated by Mahler, check out Stephen Downes’ 2025 biography.
Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
37 min
August 17 Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with writer and researcher, Jehnie I. Burns about her book, Mixtape Nostalgia: Culture, Memory, and Representation (Lexington, 2023). This conversation builds on earlier ones on music and technology, especially our earlier episode with Anthony Kwame Harrison about the ethnography of hiphop. Vinsel and Burns chat about the rise of mixtape culture, how it played out in different subcultures, and how it was wrapped up in and transformed by technological change. We also announce some big news at the beginning of the episode.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
55 min
August 17 Kiara Wyndham, "Diversityland: Hiding Racial Inequality in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2026)
Fort
Bend County, Texas, looks like the America we claim to want: a suburb
where Black, White, Asian, and Latinx families share cul-de-sacs,
schools, and celebrations. Residents trade dishes, honor
one another's traditions, and take pride in their community's
diversity. Yet beneath this harmony lies what sociologist Dr. Kiara
Wyndham calls "the diversity contract"—an unspoken agreement that racial
diversity may be celebrated, but racial inequality must not be named. 
Drawing on two years of ethnographic research and more than 150 interviews, Diversityland: Hiding Racial Inequality in an American Suburb
(University of California Press, 2026) reveals how the language of
inclusion can obscure enduring racial hierarchy. In Fort Bend and
communities like it, White advantage adapts to diversity rather than
disappearing. Vivid and deeply researched, Diversityland
transforms how we understand suburban life and challenges foundational
narratives of what racial progress will look like in 21st century
America.
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.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
43 min
August 17 Jeana Jorgensen, "Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History" (Fox Folk Press, 2023)
Do
you look back at your sex ed classes and wonder WTF?! Are you a parent
looking at your kid’s curriculum and asking the same question?
Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History (Fox Folk Press, 2023) is
less of a how-to of sex education and more of a why. Why does
abstinence-only sex ed receive so much federal funding? Why do
instructors show gross images of STIs to scare students? The answers, believe it or not, have a lot to do with folklore.
Folklore—informally
transmitted traditional culture—has a lot to say about sex. And it is
often people’s first point of contact with information and messages
about sex. Folklore encompasses urban legends, moral panics, and rumors,
which influenced early U.S. policies around sex, and also
includes jokes, raunchy folk songs, and beliefs and slang about
menstruation or STIs. And thus, folklore shapes sex ed classrooms and
school sex ed policies.
Jeana
Jorgensen earned her PhD in folklore at Indiana University. She is a
lecturer in anthropology at Butler University and part of the editorial
team at Marvel's & Tales. Her books include Folklore 101 (2021), Fairy Tales 101 (2022), and Sex Education 101 (2023), and her work has appeared in the Journal of American Folklore, Fabula, Journal of Folklore Research, and elsewhere.
Rachel Hopkin PhD is a folklorist and audio producer.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
45 min
August 17 Amihai Mazar and Nava Panitz-Cohen, "Tel Rehov: A Bronze and Iron Age City in the Beth-Shean Valle" (The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2020)
This interview with Professor Amihai Mazar was conducted by Željko Stanojević for the New Books Network. The conversation focuses on Tel Reḥov: A Bronze and Iron Age City in the Beth-Shean Valley, especially Volume V, where the report turns from architecture and pottery to smaller objects and scientific evidence that help reconstruct life at the site.
Amihai Mazar is a leading archaeologist of ancient Israel. His research examines the Bronze and Iron Ages, archaeology and biblical history, ancient Near Eastern art and architecture, and historical geography. Tel Reḥov is especially important because it offers a rich archaeological sequence from the Beth-Shean Valley and evidence for the social, economic, and environmental history of northern Israel.
Volume V is particularly revealing because it asks what can be learned from material that might appear secondary beside monumental architecture. Its first part examines clay, bone, stone and gypsum vessels; grinding stones and other stone implements; metal objects and metallurgical evidence; beads; objects connected with textile production; scale weights; and lithics. Together, these finds illuminate household work, craft activity, exchange, measurement, and technology.
The volume also analyzes the spatial distribution of finds in a distinctive group of ninth-century BCE buildings in Area C. Archaeology is also about understanding where objects were found and how groups of finds functioned together. Distribution patterns can help reconstruct activities within buildings and suggest how work, storage, production, and daily routines were organized. It also includes Assyrian-period burials and later Islamic-period material, showing the site's long history.
The second part of Volume V brings natural-science methods directly into the archaeological interpretation. Radiometric dating contributes to chronology. Studies of animal and fish remains, molluscs, and botanical material offer evidence for diet, agriculture, environment, trade, and the use of local and non-local resources. A soil-flotation project recovers small botanical remains that might otherwise disappear from the archaeological record. These studies show how modern archaeology depends on collaboration between excavators and natural-science specialists.
One striking example is the paleomagnetic study of tilted walls in Area C, Stratum V. Instead of treating damaged architecture only as a descriptive feature, the researchers used physical evidence to investigate seismic destruction. This demonstrates a central strength of Volume V: interpretation is built by combining objects, context, chronology, biological remains, geology, and physical-science methods.
Our discussion with Professor Mazar therefore uses Volume V to ask a larger question: how do small finds and scientific analyses change the historical picture created by excavation? The volume shows that understanding an ancient city requires more than identifying buildings or connecting archaeological horizons with historical narratives. It requires reconstructing technologies, food systems, craft production, movement of goods, environmental conditions, patterns of use within buildings, and the events that transformed them.
Željko Stanojević is a host with the New Books Network and President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Belgrade. He is also Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, an international Diamond Open Access journal supporting research in Hebrew, biblical, Jewish, linguistic, historical, and related studies. He also coordinates the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. Authors of recent academic books are welcome to contact him regarding possible New Books Network interviews.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
43 min
August 17 Ting Hui Lau, "Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism" (Stanford UP, 2026)
A series of questions have been sparked by the indigenous urgency of
the moment: What does it mean to live through a world coming undone? How
do people carry on amid rupture, loss, and grief? Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism (Stanford University Press, 2026) explores
these questions through the turbulent lives of Indigenous Lisu
subsistence farmers in China’s Eastern Himalayas, bordering Myanmar and
Tibet.
Like many of China’s Indigenous borderlands, this
mountainous region has long borne the force of encroaching Chinese state
power. Since the 1980s, the Chinese state has been compelling the Lisu
to give up their subsistence lifeways, move into urban settlements, and
send their children to government boarding schools. In exchange for the
so-called gifts of development—healthcare, income, and education—they
suffer environmental and social catastrophes such as mass landslides,
strange new illnesses, and toxic food.
Drawing on over a decade
of engagement with the Lisu, Ting Hui Lau takes readers into the world
of ex-shamans, heart-pained mothers, restless spirits, and demon-mad
migrants as they grapple with the fallout from state development, which
Lau argues is the latest phase in a centuries-long project of settler
colonialism along China's Southwest frontier. At once a portrayal of
loss and an ethnography of hope, Lau chronicles Lisu worldmaking amid
this destruction, centering their quiet resistance through everyday acts
of communal caretaking. In a time of escalating geopolitical and
ecological crisis, this book calls for a new decolonial politics rooted
in the transformative power of endurance.
Ting Hui Lau (email
address: [email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Sociology and
Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. She studies
sociocultural, psychological, and medical anthropology, development and
environmental change, Indigeneity and colonialism, and the borderland
areas of East and Southeast Asia.
Yadong Li is an
anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural
Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship
and research interests can be found here.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
1 hr 4 min

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