New Books Network

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New Books Network episodes

August 04 Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity" (New Press, 2026)
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests
positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her
newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children
they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend
nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager
takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126
years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system
that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but
for who they are.
In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted
women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. In Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
(New Press, 2026), Dr. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence
Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia
Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a
husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into
murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions
disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are
recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched
stereotypes.
Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Dr. Beety
exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and
cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe
v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the
reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal
system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood,
and queer identity itself.
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
26 min
August 04 Nozomi Naoi, "The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life" (MIT Press, 2026)
The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life
(MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese
department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously
illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department
stores modeled
“the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and
design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these
spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject
enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider
sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality.
The
book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department
store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional
magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the
Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early
department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their
walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which
included dining spaces with children’s menus, new technology such as
elevators and escalators, and more.
Although
the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian
experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely
grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media
environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the
everyday.
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
44 min
August 04Discovering the Latin Mass (with Amb. Archd. Eduard Habsburg): A Travel Guide for the Curious
The reason Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and formerly Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican, has written a ‘travel guide’ to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) is that he finds beauty, meaning, and joy in the experience of being a pilgrim in a foreign land. We pass through the doors—the portals—of the Church and the otherness of it pulls at our hearts and lays on us a bit of a yoke that will feel new. Especially for young people who’ve been crushed softly by the constant entertainment and accommodation, this hardness refreshes their souls, in the tradition of St. Augustine: “our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Is it surprising it is to learn how the first few times he attended the Traditional Latin Mass, he found it off-putting—“oh no, not those crazy weirdoes”—but of course that’s all the more reason for a travel guide; because he can be our guide, like Virgil for Dante to show us around this new world—or, rather, very old world—that is our Catholic inheritance.
the book, Discovering the Latin Mass: A Travel Guide for the Curious, from Sophia Press

the secret link at Sophia Press that Eduard Habsburg was told us about to claim five free copies of the book so that you might share the Traditional Latin Mass

Eduard Habsburg on Twitter/X

Latin Missal on Amazon
Here is my earlier conversation for Eduard Habsburg (from 2023):
Amb. Archd. Eduard Habsburg on Almost Good Catholics, episode 59: Long Live the Empire! The Habsburg Tradition in the Twenty-First Century
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47 min
August 04 Tracy Borman, "The House of Boleyn" (Hachette, 2026)
When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten. His daughters Mary and Anne were young then, and though he was ambitious for his family to prosper, he could not imagine what would transpire in the two decades to come.
Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Tracy Borman brings the Boleyn family’s three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life in The House of Boleyn (Hachette, 2026). Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colorful tableau in which familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne’s ever-loyal attendant Esther Frideswide and Thomas Boleyn’s perfidious steward Robert Cranwell are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of the royal court. Henry VIII pursues Anne relentlessly, showering her with gifts as the Boleyns are catapulted to political prominence. But when she can’t give him the son and heir he desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible and bloody fate. With lavish and compelling historical detail, Tracy Borman displays her keen gift for storytelling in this resonant novel of family, fate, and intrigue.
Tracy Borman is chief historian of Historic Royal Palaces, chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust, and chancellor and professor of Tudor History at Lincoln Bishop University.
Dr. Kristen Vitale Engel is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society. She is in the Department of History at Southern New Hampshire University, Global, the Editor-in-Chief of "The Court Observer" for The Society for Court Studies, the Submissions Editor for the Royal Studies Journal and the International Ambassador for HistoryLab+ in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
42 min
August 04Emily McBride, "Queen Mab" (FSG, 2026)
There is a changeling in this story—but who?
Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. Even her mother worries about the timing. But Madeleine’s ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom’s elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world.
Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn’t paying attention? Is the real Maud dancing in the half-light with the fairies and the foxes? Did the gray cat hide her behind the hedge?
Meanwhile, the world around them continues in its humdrum ease. Tom works toward a promotion, urging Madeleine to connect with other moms and keep in touch with her colleagues. Her parents travel from abroad to meet the baby, but Madeleine is unnerved by her father’s new obsession with genealogy and DNA tests. Interrupted by visions, panicked at her lack of maternal feelings, shut out from her old life, she frantically searches for answers. But the old stories end in sorrow and bloodshed. And fairies do more than kidnap babies.
A riveting portrait of madness, motherhood, the myths that haunt us, and the families who keep us tethered, Emily McBride’s Queen Mab (FSG, 2026) asks us to reconsider what is real and how we might see a truer picture of ourselves through the darkness.
Emily McBride is a Canadian-born editor, writer, and translator living in Barcelona. Her work has been published in The Nation, The Rumpus, and The Stinging Fly. Queen Mab is her debut novel.
Recommended Books:
Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star

Helen Garner, The Children’s Bach
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
40 min
August 03 Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds
In light of the dismal Disclosure Day (2026), we return to two films that show Spielberg tackling alien visitation (or invasion) stories while at the height of his powers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The War of the Worlds (2005) are decades apart, yet united by a single image and devotion to their audiences. The first is as Disneylike as Pinocchio; the second conjures memories of 9/11. Both show domesticity under great strain as families and infrastructures break down; one ends with hope while the other simply stops.
Incredible bumper music by John Deley.
The War of the Worlds is based on H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel, which you can purchase here.
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. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.
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31 min
August 03 J.J. Crayhill, "Raleigh and the Pirates" (Raconteur Press, 2026)
J.J. Crayhill's Raleigh and the Pirates (Raconteur Press, 2026) is the launch of The Adventures of Midshipman Raleigh — a science fiction adventure series built on the bones of the great naval tales, transplanted to the lawless frontier of space. Anthony is small, undertrained, and deeply motivated, which turns out to be a dangerous combination — for everyone involved.
Midshipman Anthony Raleigh wasn't supposed to be the hero. He was barely supposed to be on the bridge.
When a pirate warship drops out of hiding to ambush the cargo freighter Pegasus, Captain Smith has one mission for his youngest crew member: take the shuttle, run, and bring help. Simple enough — except the pirates got there first.
With the shuttle sabotaged and the crew captured at gunpoint, Anthony is alone, unarmed, and hunted through corridors, air ducts, and — when things get truly desperate — across the outside of the ship in a malfunctioning spacesuit.
He has three things going for him: an AI named Fuse who enforces regulations with terrifying consistency; a security key the pirates will do anything to obtain; and a grudge against pirates that burns considerably hotter than fear.
That is going to have to be enough.
When he gets his hands on a classified space fighter hidden inside the Pegasus' sealed cargo pod, the pirates are going to find out exactly what a midshipman with something to prove looks like when he decides he has had enough.
And when the pirate captain makes one final play — a shocking claim about Anthony's supposedly dead father — the stakes shift from saving a ship to something far more personal.
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38 min
August 03 Emily Sneff, "When the Declaration of Independence Was News" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Amy Weitzman interviews Emily Sneff on her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News and the graduate school experience.
In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators.
When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution.
Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
44 min
August 03 James W. Cortada, "Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times (Bloomsbury, 2025) describes tacit knowledge, what it is, how it used
and its role in our current data driven world. Author James Cortada
argues that fuzzy, hard-to describe information is greater and more, important than just hard
facts. What is tacit knowledge? It is what we might consider knowledge
that is unable to be fully communicated; knowledge that we understand
implicitly, but it is a bit hard to explain. For example, it is the kind
of knowledge one needs to ride a bicycle, but that cannot be described
precisely on paper in the way one might be able to explain how to cook a
dish. Tacit knowledge is the least understood type of information and
one of the most difficult to communicate. Yet there is more tacit
knowledge in our lives than the specific facts one can find in a book,
on the Internet or in the simple form of a fact. This book is designed
to introduce the reader to the concept of tacit knowledge and how to
recognize and use it. This book offers definitions of tacit knowledge
and compares the topic to explicit knowledge, then describes how the
former is used today. The author argues that both types are used today
and explains how one can use both types of knowledge in their lives.
This book is essential primer to understanding tacit knowledge and learning how to use it to your advantage.
Guest: James
(Jim) Cortada is a senior research fellow at the University of
Minnesota. He is a leading authority on the role of modern information.
He holds a PhD in modern history but worked at IBM Corporation for
nearly 40 years in sales and consulting. He has written
several books on the business history of the computer industry and just
over a dozen on the history and use of information over the past two
centuries. So, he straddles the subject between historical evolution and
its current uses.
Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna
is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator
and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
50 min
August 03 Elizabeth Darling, "Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–32" (Lund Humphries, 2026)
Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–1932
(Lund Humphries, 2026) by Dr. Elizabeth Darling is about the
architecture and design of broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s,
examining the buildings which the BBC occupied in its founding decades,
with a particular focus on Broadcasting House in London. It argues that
these environments were as constitutive of the Corporation’s identity as
the programmes and people that they housed. Borrowing from the
architectural writer Christopher Hussey’s characterisation of
Broadcasting House as a ‘palace of the ether’ Dr. Darling asks how the
immaterial medium of the broadcast was given material and spatial form
by the BBC, and the engineers, architects and designers whom they commissioned.
The
book traces the development of the BBC both technologically and
organisationally, and the changing demands it had of the spaces which
accommodated it. It shows how associational networks and personal
affiliations affected who was commissioned to work on what became
Broadcasting House and offers a detailed account of the work of Val
Myer, who designed the exterior and shell of the new building, and the
team of architects who designed the studio interiors (Serge Chermayeff,
Wells Coates, Edward Maufe, Raymond McGrath and Dorothy Warren). In
documenting the design of Broadcasting House, and the responses to it, Palace of the Ether offers new insights into British architectural culture at a pivotal moment in the profession’s history.
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
58 min