Recall This Book

“My subject was not my inward self, but…the worlds within me.” Sanjay Krishnan, Boston University English professor and Conrad scholar, has written a marvelous new book about that grumpiest of Nobel laureates, V. S Naipaul’s Journeys. Krishnan sees the “Contrarian and unsentimental” Trinidad-born but globe-trotting novelist and essayist as early and brilliant at noticing the … Continue reading "43 Sanjay Krishnan on V. S. Naipaul: To make the Deformation the Formation (JP)"

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Our Recall This Buck series began by speaking with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School about how key ideas—and the actual currency, physical coins and bills— underlying the modern monetary system get “invisibilized” with that system’s success, so that seeing money clearly is both harder and more vital. Today, illustrious Princeton historian Peter Brown narrates the … Continue reading "42 Recall This Buck 2: Peter Brown on wealth, charity and managerial bishops in early Christianity (JP)"

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In this final episode of Books in Dark Times, John chews the bibliographic fat with Lorraine Daston of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Her list of publications outstrips our capacity to mention here; John particularly admires her analysis of “epistemic virtues” such as truth to nature and objectivity in her … Continue reading "41 RTB Books in Dark Times 13: Lorraine Daston, Historian of Science (JP)"

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The Black Lives Matter movement and the policing-related deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others have struck a nerve worldwide. Our “Global Policing” series aims to capture the protests over systemic racism and policing in their various national forms. In Turkey, for example, a June 19 article in the English edition of DuvaR. … Continue reading "40 Global Policing 1: Hayal Akarsu on Turkish Community Policing (EF, JP)"

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Carlo Rotella of Boston College is author of six books, among them the amazing Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt (University of California Press, 2002) and most recently The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019). … Continue reading "39 RTB Books in Dark Times 12: Carlo Rotella (JP)"

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Beth Blum, Assistant Professor of English at Harvard, is the author of The Self-Help Compulsion (Columbia University Press 2019). Learn how self-help went from its Victorian roots (worship greatness!) to the ingratiating unctuous style prescribed by the other-directed Dale Carnegie (everyone loves the sound of their own name) before arriving at the “neo-stoical” self-help gurus … Continue reading "38 Beth Blum on Self-Help from Carnegie to Today (JP)"

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Elizabeth Bradfied is editor of Broadsided Press, professor of creative writing at Brandeis, naturalist, photographer–and most of all an amazing poet (“Touchy” for example just appeared in The Atlantic). Her books include Interpretive Work, Approaching Ice, Once Removed, and Toward Antarctica. She lives on Cape Cod, travels north every summer to guide people into Arctic … Continue reading "37 RTB Books In Dark Times 11: Elizabeth Bradfield (JP)"

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Black lives matter. Yet for decades or centuries in America that basic truth has been ignored, denied, violently suppressed. Many of the mechanisms that create an oppressed and subordinated American community of color can seem subtle and indirect, despite the insidious ways they pervade housing law (The Color of Law), education (Why Are All the … Continue reading "36 Policing and White Power: (EF, JP) Global Policing Series"

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RTB listeners already know the inimitable Martin Puchner from that fabulous RTB episode about his “deep history” of literature and literacy, The Written World. You may even know he has a family memoir coming out soon, The Language of Thieves. But it took Books in Dark Times to uncover his secret hankering for tales of … Continue reading "35 RTB Books In Dark Times 10: Martin Puchner"

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The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently … Continue reading "34 The Caribbean and Vectors of Warfare: Vincent Brown (EF, JP)"

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