New Books Network

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New Books Network episodes

July 12 Democratic Backsliding and Resistance: Poland’s Civil Society, Electoral Strategies, and Institutional Levers
This week on Democracy Dialogues, Frances Cayton speaks with four experts on Polish politics about the success of Poland’s opposition coalition in 2023, and the headwinds that democracy continues to face today.
What challenges do parties and civil society face in building pro-democracy electoral coalitions? If victorious, how do these challenges affect post-election governance and efforts at pursuing democratic renewal? This episode brings together politicians, political scientists, and civil society leaders who each played a critical role in the 2023 elections to examine what made Poland’s pro-democracy mobilization possible, the gains the 2023 coalition has achieved since entering power, and the challenges it continues to face in pursuing democratic renewal.
This episode was originally recorded as a part of the Lessons from Global Democratic Resistance panel series. The series brings together frontline activists, civic leaders, institutional actors, and field‑informed scholars to examine how democratic actors have resisted, responded to, and learned from democratic backsliding across countries. The series aims to identify practical lessons and comparative insights for those defending democracy today and is organized in collaboration with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University; Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania; the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame; the Democratic Futures Project at the University of Virginia; Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Mikołaj Cześnik, Director of the Institute of Social Science at SWPS University, Chairman of the Council of the Stefan Batory Foundation
Michał Wawrykiewicz, Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Co-Founder of the civic initiative Wolne Sady (Free Courts)
Marek Tatała, President and Co-Founder of the Economic Freedom Foundation
Dominika Lasota, Student and Activist in the Youth Climate Strike Poland, Co-Founder of Inicjatywa WSCHÓD
Frances Cayton is a PhD Candidate in Government at Cornell University. Her research focuses on questions surrounding democratic backsliding, civil society, and political communication.
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1 hr 11 min
July 11 Diana Cucuz, "Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz’s book: throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s first peacetime propaganda organization, Amerika was used to influence the Soviet public and convince women in particular that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could better their lives. Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds relies on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American women’s magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal to show how, during the postwar period, USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers.
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36 min
July 11 Rachel Phan, "Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging" (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Rachel Phan about her powerful memoir, ⁠Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family & Belonging⁠ (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025).
A
warm and poignant narrative about finding one’s self amidst the grind
of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a
daughter’s attempts to connect with parents who have always been just
out of reach.
When she was three years old, Rachel Phan met her replacement.
Instead of a new sibling, her mother and father’s time and attention
were suddenly devoted entirely to their new family restaurant. For her
parents—whose own families fled China during Japanese occupation and
then survived bombs and starvation during the war in Vietnam—it was a
dream come true. For Phan, it was something quite different. Overnight,
she became a restaurant kid, living on the periphery of her own family
and trying her best to stay out of the way.
As Phan grew up, the restaurant was the most stalwart and
suffocating member of her family. For decades, it’s been both their
crowning achievement and the origin of so much of their pain and
suffering: screaming matches complete with smashed dishes; bodies worn
down by long hours and repetitive strain; and tenuous relationships
where the family loved one another deeply without ever really knowing
each other.
In Restaurant Kid, Phan seeks to examine the way her life
has been shaped by the rigid boxes placed around her. She had to be a
“good daughter,” never asking questions, always being grateful. She had
to be a “real Canadian,” watching hockey and speaking English so
flawlessly that her tongue has since forgotten how to contort around
Cantonese tones. As the only Chinese girl at school, she had to
alternate between being the sidekick, geek, or Asian fetish, depending
on whose gaze was on her.
Now, three decades after their restaurant first opened, Phan’s
parents are cautiously talking about retirement. As an adult, Phan’s
“good daughter” role demands something new of her—and a chance to get to
know her parents away from the restaurant.
In Restaurant Kid, Phan deftly combines candour, wit and
insight to craft a vibrant and important narrative on the strength and
foibles of family, and how we come to understand ourselves.
Rachel Phan is a Chinese Canadian author. A graduate of Toronto
Metropolitan University’s Master of Journalism program, she and her work
have been featured on CBC, Huffpost, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Toronto Star, the National Post, Chatelaine, and Maclean’s. Her instant national bestselling book, Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging (2025), was named one of CBC Books’ Best Books of 2025 and longlisted for Canada Reads in 2026. She lives in Toronto, ON.
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44 min
July 11 Amélie Junqua and Geoffrey Day, "Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century" (Bodleian Library, 2026)
Paper
was a precious commodity in the eighteenth century: every sheet was
made by hand. There was therefore a significant market in recycling
substandard paper from paper mills and discarded proofs and sheets from
printers and booksellers for secondary use, alongside a black market in
which stealing and receiving stolen paper took place on a vast scale. A
single piece of paper could be termed ‘waste’ and yet sold for cash
three times in succession, on each occasion performing a useful
function. The end user would keep the newly purchased
‘waste’ or paper wrapping in a special drawer from which it would be
taken for a myriad household purposes, including cooking, needlework, decoration
and hygiene. Popular satirical prints depicted explicit paper uses,
while creators of flamboyant papier mâché ceilings concealed the
material by gilding it.
With over 100 illustrations, and
drawing on letters from a range of people from farmers to notable
authors and members of the aristocracy, together with meticulous
archival research, Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century
(Bodleian Library, 2026) by Dr. Amélie Junqua and Dr. Geoffrey Day
traces the extraordinary history of ingenious paper recycling in
eighteenth century England.
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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38 min
July 11 M. Guy Thompson, "Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)
A fascinating introductory volume, Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2025) integrates existential philosophy with psychoanalysis, drawing on key
theorists from both areas and expertly guiding the reader on how to
incorporate these two disciplines, which may appear disparate on the
surface, into their clinical and theoretical work.
This unique
and accessible book sees M. Guy Thompson explore key concepts, such as
experience, authenticity, freedom, psychic change, agency, and the
pervasive role of suffering in our lives. Throughout, he draws on a wide
range of thinkers from both fields, including Sartre, Heidegger,
Nietzsche, Freud, Winnicott, Bion, Laing, and Lacan. Exquisitely lucid
and engaging, Thompson deftly brings the reader into thoughtful and
enlightening territory typically inaccessible to the general reader.
Although existential philosophy and psychoanalysis are often thought of
as incompatible fields, Thompson shows how they share far more in common
than is usually supposed. This volume will help clinicians, scholars,
and students of all persuasions learn how integrating the two
disciplines introduces a more personal and revolutionary understanding
of what psychoanalysis can be in the twenty-first century.
This
compelling assimilation of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis
will be of interest to psychoanalytic practitioners and
psychotherapists, as well as philosophers, social scientists and any
student of the human condition
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53 min
July 11 “American Elegy” with author Ed Simon
I discuss with the author his book American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States of America (Ig Publishing, 2026). Simon is the founding editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books.
The book is a lively and lyrical medley of short “flash” essays, as he
calls them, and our conversation ranges from his notes on “General Tso’s
Chicken” as a sticky American fusion classic to his thoughts on Jane
Jacob’s early 1960’s exploration of what makes for a vibrant urban
milieu. As Simon tells me, there is much in the American experience—in
the American song, it can be said—to celebrate notwithstanding all of
the discordant notes.
Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic.
He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall
Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports) will be published in January.
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47 min
July 11 Cécile Bishop, "Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World" (Duke UP, 2026)
What does Blackness look like? In Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World (Duke University Press, 2026),
Cécile Bishop argues that this seemingly simple question has no
straightforward answer. Instead of treating race as something
immediately visible, she explores how Blackness emerges through the
interplay of perception, language, and history.
A central theme of the book is that visibility is never neutral.
Through examples ranging from photographs of the Liberation of Paris to
works of art such as Portrait of a Black Woman, Bishop shows that
Blackness cannot be reduced to what is seen. Instead, she introduces the
idea of Blackness as form, emphasizing the importance of representation, opacity, and aesthetic experience.
Engaging with thinkers such as Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon,
Bishop invites readers to rethink the assumption that seeing is the same
as knowing. Forms of Blackness offers a thoughtful and original account of how race is shaped not simply by appearance, but by the ways we learn to see.
Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an
Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of
religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African
diasporic communities in the Netherlands.
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55 min
July 11 Mary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border" (UNC Press, 2026)
As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border
between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other
environmental hazards in the process. But the very illegality of that
crossing has an environmental history, writes Penn State University
assistant professor Mary Mendoza in Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border
(University of North Carolina Press, 2026). It was diseases, microbes,
insects, and animals which, in part, hardened the border from a porous
array of landscapes into the militarized zone seen on the news every
night. However, despite the ecological and political difficulties of
doing so, people continue to cross the border between the two countries,
defying environmental odds and risking death along the way. In Deadly Divide,
Mendoza explains why, underscores the risks involved, and shows how we
got to this point, keeping an eye on the border region's stark landscape
with every step of the way.
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54 min
July 11 Diana T. Kudaibergen, "What Does It Mean to Be Kazakhstani?: Power, Identity and Nation-Building" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In early 2022, protests rocked Kazakhstan. Initially peaceful demonstrations turned violent after brutal government crackdowns, leaving at least 238 dead during "Bloody January." Many feared the unrest might fracture the country along ethno-linguistic lines—yet ethnicity played little role. It was deep socio-economic grievances and anti-regime sentiment that brought people onto the streets. In What Does It Mean to Be Kazakhstani?: Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2024), Diana T. Kudaibergen asks why. Building on unpublished archival materials and hundreds of interviews, she examines how Kazakhstan developed a relatively stable inter-ethnic framework where others fractured, how regime elites and ordinary citizens have pulled that identity in different directions, and how Moscow's 2022 invasion of
Ukraine, and the Russian immigration it has prompted, is once again
transforming what it means to call oneself Kazakhstani.
Cholpon Ramizova is a London-based creator and researcher. She holds a Master's in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London. Her thematic interests are in migration, displacement, identity, gender and nationalism—and in the ways these intersect within the Central Asia context.
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59 min
July 11 Peter C. Mancall, "Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In Contested Continent: The Struggle for America, c.1000-1680 (Oxford University Press, 2026), the newest installment of the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Peter C. Mancall
recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions
of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans. This
history spans the continent from the North Atlantic to the West Indies
and includes the entire Atlantic basin, telling a new story about the
origins of major aspects of American culture. He illuminates the rise of
a booming trans-Atlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant
American natural resources; the central role that European migrants and
their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans and the
displacement of Indigenous peoples; and the spread of self-governing
polities where many enjoyed religious freedom. None of these
developments was inevitable. Conflicts broke out frequently as different
peoples battled over precious resources. Europeans' appetites for
material gain and expanding Christendom brought horrific consequences
for those brutalized, enslaved, and vulnerable to infectious
diseases. This is a sweeping history of developments crucial to the
eventual founding of the United States. Contested Continent underscores
the titanic struggles between the peoples who had populated the
Americas for centuries and the migrants from the Old World who initiated
changes that created a New World that offered boundless opportunities
for some and crushed the aspirations of others.
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1 hr 59 min