In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

In Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir (Oxford University Press, 2019), Hamsa Stainton explores the relationship between 'poetry’ and ‘prayer’ in South Asia through close examination of the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir from the eighth century onwards. Beyond charting the history and features of the stotra genre, Hamsa Stainton presents the first sustained study of the Stutikusumāñjali, an important work dedicated to the god Śiva, one bearing witness to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. Poetry as Prayer illumines how these Śaiva poets integrate poetics, theology and devotion in the production of usage of Sanskrit hymns, and more broadly expands our understanding Hindu bhakti itself. Hamsa Stainton is an Assistant Professor in the School of Religious Studies at McGill University. For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.

James A. Diamond discusses his new book, Jewish Theology Unbound (Oxford University Press, 2018), with Rachel Adelman. This book challenges the widespread caricature of Judaism as a religion of law as opposed to theology. Broad swaths of rabbinic literature involve not just law but what could be best described as philosophical theology as well. Judaism has never been a dogmatic religion, insisting on a monolithic theology rooted in a uniform metaphysics that would exclude all others. The book engages in close readings of the Bible, classical rabbinic texts, Jewish philosophers, and mystics from the ancient, to the medieval, to the modern period, which communicate a profound Jewish philosophical theology on human nature, God, and the relationship between the two. It begins with an examination of questioning in the Hebrew Bible, demonstrating that what the Bible encourages is independent philosophical inquiry into how to situate oneself in the world ethically, spiritually, and teleologically. It then explores such themes as the nature of God through the various names by which God is known in the Jewish intellectual tradition, love of others and of God, death, martyrdom, freedom, angels, the philosophical quest, the Holocaust, and the State of Israel, all in light of the Hebrew Bible and the way it is filtered through the rabbinic, philosophical, and mystical traditions. For all intents and purposes the Torah no longer originates in heaven, but flows upstream, so to speak, from the earth, propelled by the interpretive genius of human beings. Professor James Diamond James A. Diamond holds the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He completed his doctorate in Medieval Jewish Thought ay the University of Toronto and became the international director of the Friedberg Genizah Project He has written extensively on Maimonides (the Rambam). Rachel Adelman is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College in Boston.

As a matter of basic metaphysics, we classify individuals in terms of their relations to other things – for example, a parent is a parent of someone, a larger object is larger than a smaller object. The nature of relativity – the question of how things relate to other things – is a topic that winds its way through the history of philosophy to the present day. In Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics and Skeptics (Oxford University Press, 2020), Matthew Duncombe considers ancient views of relativity from Plato, Aristotle, the Skeptics (particularly Simplicius), and the Stoics (particularly Sextus Empiricus). Duncombe, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham, defends the view that these thinkers shared a common basic position that he calls “constitutive relativity” – the idea that relativity is a matter of the relative being a certain way, rather than having a certain predicate true of it or having a certain feature. He argues that this reading is in the background in a number of arguments in these thinkers, including Parmenides’ main objection to Plato’s Theory of the Forms, and that it comes into its own as a key element of the Skeptics’ opposition to dogmatic belief.

This book is a translation and study of The Subhedar's Son (Oxford University Press, 2019), an award-winning Marathi biographical novel written in 1895 by Rev. Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, who writes about his own father, Rev.Shankar Nana (1819-1884). Nana, a Brahmin, was among the early Christian converts of the Church Missionary Society in Western India. The Subhedar's Son provides a fascinating insight into Brahmanical-Christian conversions of the era, along with attitudes surrounding such conversions. In this podcast, we interview Deepra Dandekar – author of this book, and Sawarkar’s own great-grand-daughter–about this text and its important context. For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.

John Stratton Hawley's new book Krishna's Playground: Vrindavan in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2020) is about a deeply beloved place-many call it the spiritual capital of India. Located at a dramatic bend in the River Yamuna, a hundred miles from the center of Delhi, Vrindavan is the spot where the god Krishna is believed to have spent his childhood and youth. For Hindus it has always stood for youth writ large-a realm of love and beauty that enables one to retreat from the weight and harshness of world. Now, though, the world is gobbling up Vrindavan. Delhi's megalopolitan sprawl inches closer day by day-half the town is a vast real-estate development-and the waters of the Yamuna are too polluted to drink or even bathe in. Temples now style themselves as theme parks, and the world's tallest religious building is under construction in Krishna's pastoral paradise. What happens when the Anthropocene Age makes everything virtual? What happens when heaven gets plowed under? Like our age as a whole, Vrindavan throbs with feisty energy, but is it the religious canary in our collective coal mine? For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.

When we think of democracy, we typically think of voting; and when we think of voting, we ordinarily have elections and campaigns in minds. In this intuitive sense, voting is a matter of casting a ballot. After Election Day, votes are counted, and, typically, the majority rules. But things really aren’t so simple. For one thing, citizens bring differing levels of information and ignorance into the voting booth. What’s more, famous mathematical analyses cast doubt on the very idea of a majority will. Given this, what are we to make of democracy? In Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2020), Ilya Somin defends the idea that foot voting is an essential element of political freedom and democratic governance. Foot voting is the capacity of individuals to move to the jurisdiction or nation whose government most suits their preferences, or to select their favoured providers of various services.

Kevin Duong, a political theorist in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia, has written a fascinating analysis of the way that violence has been used, in a sense, to create or promote solidarity during the course of the “long nineteenth century” in France. Duong explores four separate periods and experiences in France, starting with the French Revolution and the trial of Louis XVI, moving to the long military engagement in Algeria, then to the Paris Commune in later half of the century, and finally to the preparations and the run up to World War I. And while The Virtues of Violence: Democracy Against Disintegration in Modern France (Oxford University Press, 2020) is about the French engagement with violence, it is a much broader analysis of the role that violence plays, particularly the concept of redemptive violence, in constructing democracy and establishing a cohesive social body among the citizenry. Duong makes a complex and important argument that the establishment of democracy is built on an often-violent overthrow of an old order, and instead of the move from the state of nature that social contract theorists like Hobbes and Locke argue for in their texts, the democratic state comes into existence not in the welcome transition from the cruelty of the state of nature, but in the violent convulsions of bloody revolution more like the French experience. In order to create a democratic people, violence is often implemented as the means to pulling people together, and it is a kind of collective violence. Duong’s analysis posits that modern society is held together by social cohesion, which comes out of unifying violent experiences that bring people together. While mass violence is often associated with anarchy and disorder, The Virtue of Violence makes a different case, compelling us to consider how violence solves a kind of social solidarity problem, and is a means of knitting together potentially disparate members of society. While this is a book that explores the French experience, France provides the case studies to consider how violence works constructively within democratic thought, and, how redemptive violence has a kind of revitalizing power in these political contexts. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

The history of antisemitism in Europe stretches back as far as Ancient Rome, but persecutions of Jews became widespread during the Crusades, beginning in the early 11th century when the wholesale massacre of entire communities became commonplace. From the 12th century, the justification for this state-sanctioned violence became the blood libel accusation: the idea that Jews ritually murdered Christian children and used their blood in the celebration of Passover. Nowhere in Europe was the blood libel more tenacious, credible, and long lived than in the Russian Empire, particularly during the late Imperial period, which saw large scale pogroms and harsh restrictions visited upon the empire's Jewish population. The Russian Revolution of 1917 attracted many Jews to its cause, thanks in large measure to Bolshevik condemnations of antisemitism and persecution of the Jewish minority. These numbers grew in the wake of the brutal Civil War that followed from 1918 - 1922 when the White Army revived the pogrom with particular vigor. What happened after the Bolshevik victory is the subject of Elissa Bemporad's new book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford UP, 2019), which won the National Jewish Book Award (Modern Jewish Thought and Experience). Bemporad probes the underbelly of the "Soviet myth"— that the USSR had eradicated the pogroms, banished the notion of a blood libel to the scrapheap of other opiates for the people, and vanquished antisemitism as part of the regime's broad anti-religious campaign — and discovers that both pogroms and the blood libel had a robust afterlife in the USSR. As she traces changing attitudes towards Jews in the USSR, Bemporad also examines the uneasy and often ambivalent but mutually dependent, and ever-shifting relationship between the regime and the Jewish population as the Soviet century unfolds. Legacy of Blood looks at the re-emergence of overt antisemitism in the occupied territories of the USSR during World War II and the troubled return of the Jews to mainstream society after the war. The result is a meticulously researched, thought-provoking, and eminently readable book that adds much to both Jewish and Russian historical scholarship. Elissa Bemporad is an Associate Professor of History at CUNY Graduate Center and the Jerry and William Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History, Queens College of CUNY. She is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Indiana University Press, 2013) and the forthcoming A Comprehensive History of the Jews in the Soviet Union, vol I (NYU Press). Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who writes about travel, culture, cuisine and culinary history, Russian history, and Royal History, with bylines in Reuters, Fodor's, USTOA, LitHub, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. She is the award-winning author of Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow and Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: A Pocket Guide to Russian History.

What demobilizes a once mobilized society? How does international involvement amplify or suppress these dynamics? In Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine (Oxford University Press, 2020), Dana El Kurd’s new book uses a case study to interrogate how the Palestinian Authority – as an indigenous institution – more successfully demobilized Palestinian society than Israeli occupiers. Despite Israel’s greater resources and international backing, the Palestinian Authority, paradoxically, was able to accomplish what the Israelis could not: the polarization and demobilization of the Palestinian population. The Palestinian Authority (PA) -- insulated from domestic constituents and consumed with addressing international pressures rather than negotiating with Palestinian society – strengthened authoritarian practices. The use of authoritarianism polarized the public over both international involvement and the practice of authoritarianism. El Kurd’s rich case study illustrates how certain authoritarian strategies used by the PA increased societal polarizing – and that polarization negatively affected mobilization and the capacity for collective action. El Kurd uses a mix of survey data, interviews, and field research to demonstrate how international involvement results in insulation that may increase authoritarianism. She not only provides a nuanced look at the Palestinian Authority but applies her findings to Iraqi Kurdistan and Bahrain in one of the concluding chapters. The podcast concludes with incisive comments about how the Trump administration’s disengagement may ironically open opportunities for rebuilding the capacity for Palestinian collective action. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013).

Did Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency in 2016 because he was a master of character work – able to sum up opponents in pithy epithets that encourage the public to see them as weak or immoral? What is character work and how do characters with roots in ancient crease help us understand 21st-century politics? While many scholars of politics focus on plots, James M. Jasper, Michael P. Young and Elke Zuern encourage us to look at the characters – particularly the simplified packaging of the intentions, capacities, and actions of public figures. In Public Characters: The Politics of Reputation and Blame (Oxford University Press, 2020), Jasper and his colleagues show how political figures often allocate praise and blame, identify social problems, cement identities and allegiances, develop policies, and articulate our moral intuitions. Democracies need to understand where characters -- heroes, villains, victims, and minions – come from in order to keep their influence within proper bounds. Although part of a Western rhetorical tradition, character work is often done through dress, posters, facial expressions, statues, paintings, photos, and music. In the podcast, Jasper discusses Trump’s conveying of ancient rhetorical symbols through Twitter, the gendered nature of “strength” or “heroism,” and the uncomfortable use of stereotypes that shape group “characters.” Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013).

How can we make sense of the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump? What forces moved American politics from the first African-American president and an all-Democratic Congress (2008) to ethno-nationalist rhetoric and GOP control of Congress (2016)? What do the reactions to these political events – the rise of the Tea Party and the Anti-Trump resistance – tell us about these, and future, presidential elections? In there new book Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance (Oxford University Press, 2019), Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo focus on changing organizational configurations – such as voluntary local citizens’ groups, elite advocacy organizations, consortia of wealthy donors (e.g., Koch’s Americans For Prosperity), and candidate-led political campaigns – to explain these radical shifts. The book has a unique methodology: a rich mix of quantitative and qualitative data analyzed by a collaborative team of authors from political science, sociology, and history. The range is extraordinary, combining what is best about both field work and big data in the social sciences. The authors document the changing organizational configurations – at both the national and state levels – with an emphasis on the states that were pivotal in the 2016 election: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania. The book offer insights about national trends while capturing the importance of federalism – and attending to unique factors in swing states. The authors excavate how top-down efforts (ultra-free market fundamentalism funded by groups like Americans For Prosperity) combined with bottom-up organizations (popular, local, and diverse groups who often channeled ethno-nationalist resentment) to push Republican politics to the right. Their analysis of progressive groups reacting to the Trump presidency reveals grassroots organizing that is both similar and different to the Tea Party movement. Rather than pushing the Democratic party to the left, the resisters work within the Democratic party (often energizing moribund organizations). Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013).

Today’s right wing media has a long history that is largely unknown to its current listeners. In The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement (Oxford University Press, 2020), Paul Matzko details its emergence in the 1950s and the response to its rise by some of the leading political and religious institutions of the era. As Matzko explains, the origins of postwar conservative media lay in the broader changes taking place in broadcasting in 1950s. As the major networks shifted their focus from radio to television, local radio stations were eager to find programmers willing to pay to put programs on the air. This gave conservative religious broadcasters such as Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis an opportunity to spread their message to a nationwide audience. Fearing the growing influence of commentators organizing against their policies, the Kennedy administration sought to use such means as the previously underdeveloped Fairness Doctrine to constrain it. Working in conjunction with the National Council of Churches, they placed growing pressure on the broadcasters – particularly the acerbic McIntire – in an ultimately successful effort to undermine their nationwide stature. Yet while McIntire’s radio ministry was gone by the early 1970s, his example was followed a decade later by others who took advantage of broadcast deregulation in the late 1970s and 1980s to launch the modern era of conservative broadcasting.

China is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council yet Chinese officials have been skeptical of using the powers of the UN to pressure nations accused of human rights violations. The PRC has emphasized the norm of sovereignty and rejected external interference in its own internal affairs. Yet they have supported UN intervention when states have been accused of mass human rights abuses. Why has China acquiesced and supported intervention? Neither realism or liberalism offer complete explanations for China’s seeming inconsistency. Courtney Fung finds that social constructions by way of public discourse of regime change matter when embedded in wider material conditions. She argues that anxieties about loss of status help explain China’s choices. In her new book China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status (Oxford University Press, 2019), Fung explores three cases involving mass atrocities: Darfur (2004-2008), Libya (2011-2012), and Syria (2011-2015). China’s focus on status requires thinking about China’s twin statuses as both a great power and a developing state. China focuses on recognition from its intervention peer group: the Western, permanent members of the UN Security Council, US, UK, and France (P3). But China is also concerned with the Global South, which includes geographic-specific regional organizations and often the host state. Fung urges political scientists (and foreign policy experts implementing policy) to take “status triggers” in both peer groups seriously. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013).

On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Stacy Wolf of Princeton University about her book Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America (Oxford University Press, 2019), an exploration of the complexities of amateur and local theatre across the United States. From backstage moms to tiny divas to dinner theatres, Wolf demonstrates that this charming pastime of American culture that is anything but past. On the contrary, musical theatre continues to be an important culture touchstone for many and a pipeline to national phenomenon such as the High School Music franchise. Told in a stunning voice with a wealth of attention to its case studies and examples, Beyond Broadway feels like backstage pass combined with a cross-country road trip in early Fall. A must read for anyone interested in the untold story of musical theater, American culture, and truly embedded ethnography with a ground-up point of view. I hope you enjoy listening as I much as I enjoyed chatting with Stacy about this fascinating book. I’d love to hear from you at [email protected] or connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @rhetoriclee and @rhetoricleespeaking. Share your thoughts about the interview with the hashtag #newbooksnerd. ~lee

In his book Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India (Oxford University Press, 2020), Caleb Simmons examines the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782-1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1799-1868) in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore to demonstrate the extent to which both rulers--one Muslim and one Hindu--turned to religion to fortify the royal identity of kings during precarious political times. Both courts revived pre-modern notions of Indian kingship in reaction to the British, drawing on devotion to Hindu gods, goddesses, and gurus to conceptualize and fortify their reigns. We made mention of images in the interview, and they can be found here. For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.

For much of the last century, ballet class has been a rite of passage for millions of little girls in the United States. Some of these students have gone on to professional careers as dancers, but many more take class for a few years—or many years—before moving on to other pursuits. But the sheer prevalence of the experience has created an educated and appreciative audience that supports dance companies and dance training. It has also created a whole subset of “girl culture”: ballet books and films, pink tutus and sparkly tiaras, an inundation of princesses and swans. In Ballet Class: An American History (Oxford University Press, 2020), Melissa R. Klapper explores how this phenomenon developed. From the misperception that boys never take ballet class to the racist assumption that members of a corps de ballet need to resemble one another physically, ballet has mirrored the larger society in negative respects as well as positive ones, and it has evolved together with the culture as a whole. For this and many other reasons that Klapper lays out through rich and complex analysis delivered in lively, compelling prose, the history of ballet class really does open a window onto the development of American culture between World War I and the present. C. P. Lesley, a historian and amateur dancer, hosts New Books in Historical Fiction. Under this pen name, she also writes historical novels. Her latest book, Song of the Shaman, appeared in 2020. Find out more about her at http://www.cplesley.com.

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consenting adults. However, support for transgender individuals lags far behind; a significant majority of Americans do not support the right of transgender people to be free from discrimination in housing, employment, public spaces, health care, legal documents, and other areas. Much of this is due to deeply entrenched ideas about the definition of gender, perceptions that transgender people are not "real" or are suffering from mental illness, and fears that extending rights to transgender people will come at the expense of the rights of others. So how do you get people to rethink their prejudices? In their book Transforming Prejudice: Identity, Fear, and Transgender Rights (Oxford University Press, 2020), Melissa R. Michelson and Brian F. Harrison examine what tactics are effective in changing public opinion regarding transgender people. The result is a new approach that they call Identity Reassurance Theory. The idea is that individuals need to feel confident in their own identity before they can embrace a stigmatized group like transgender people, and that support of members of an outgroup can be encouraged by affirming the self-esteem of those targeted for attitude change. Michelson and Harrison, through their experiments, show that the most effective messaging on transgender issues meets people where they are, acknowledges their discomfort without judgment or criticism, and helps them to think about transgender people and rights in a way that aligns with their view of themselves as moral human beings. In this interview, Dr. Michelson, Dr. Harrison, and I discuss common issues faced by transgender people, and the ideologies that contribute to anti-transgender discrimination. We then discuss three of the nine experiments conducted by Michelson and Harrison that provide empirical evidence to support the claims in their book. Lastly, we discuss potential ways to change discriminatory beliefs towards transgender people. I recommend this book for people interested in public opinion, social psychology, and LGBTQ issues. Dr. Melissa R. Michelson (@profmichelson) is Professor of Political Science at Menlo College. Dr. Brian F. Harrison is a Lecturer at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Founder and President of Voters for Equality. Krystina Millar is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research interests include gender, sociology of the body, and sexuality. You can find her on Twitter at @KrystinaMillar.

“Never again!” This was the rallying cry, seemingly universal and unanimous, among liberal nation-states as they formed the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and later signed the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Emerging from the ashes of a global war that took some 60 million lives, and after witnessing the atrocities of Nazi Germany, a worldwide community appeared resolute in its commitment to not only condemn, but to also strive to prevent future “crimes against humanity.” In The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America (Oxford University Press, 2017), María Cristina García evaluates how the end of the Cold War brought new and unanticipated challenges to upholding this commitment from 1989 to the present. Through nine case studies that examine the central actors, debates, policies, and conflicts that have shaped the U.S. response to humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era, Dr. García explains the tensions that exist between different branches of government, the increasing importance of advocacy work by the humanitarian community, and the emergence of a deeply complicated asylum bureaucracy. Weighing the competing forces of fear and advocacy, García skillfully demonstrates the obsoleteness of the current definition of “refugee” in US statute. In its place, she argues for historically informed policies that address the realities of displacement in today’s world. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD.

Beginning with Etan Patz's disappearance in Manhattan in 1979, a spate of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children stoked anxieties about the threats of child kidnapping and exploitation. Publicized through an emerging twenty-four-hour news cycle, these cases supplied evidence of what some commentators dubbed "a national epidemic" of child abductions committed by "strangers." In Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020), Paul M. Renfro narrates how the bereaved parents of missing and slain children turned their grief into a mass movement and, alongside journalists and policymakers from both major political parties, propelled a moral panic. Leveraging larger cultural fears concerning familial and national decline, these child safety crusaders warned Americans of a supposedly widespread and worsening child kidnapping threat, erroneously claiming that as many as fifty thousand American children fell victim to stranger abductions annually. The actual figure was (and remains) between one hundred and three hundred, and kidnappings perpetrated by family members and acquaintances occur far more frequently. Yet such exaggerated statistics-and the emotionally resonant images and narratives deployed behind them-led to the creation of new legal and cultural instruments designed to keep children safe and to punish the "strangers" who ostensibly wished them harm. Ranging from extensive child fingerprinting drives to the milk carton campaign, from the AMBER Alerts that periodically rattle Americans' smart phones to the nation's sprawling system of sex offender registration, these instruments have widened the reach of the carceral state and intensified surveillance practices focused on children. Stranger Danger reveals the transformative power of this moral panic on American politics and culture, showing how ideas and images of endangered childhood helped build a more punitive American state. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017).

In Classical Indian Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2020), Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri survey both the breadth and depth of Indian philosophical traditions. Their odyssey touches on the earliest extant Vedic literature, the Mahābhārata, the Bhagavad-Gīta, the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, the sūtra traditions encompassing logic, epistemology, the monism of Advaita Vedānta, and the spiritual discipline of Yoga. They even include textual traditions typically excluded from overviews of Indian philosophy, e.g., the Cārvāka school, Tantra, and Indian aesthetic theory. They address various significant themes such as non-violence, political authority, and the status of women, and the debate on the influence of Indian thought on Greek philosophy. Interestingly, this publication stems from a podcast series, which we also discuss in this podcast. Peter Adamson received his BA from Williams College and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He worked at King's College London from 2000 until 2012. He subsequently moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, where he is Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy. He has published widely in ancient and medieval philosophy, and is the host of The History of Philosophy without Any Gaps podcast. Jonardon Ganeri is a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of Attention, Not Self (2017), The Self (2012), The Lost Age of Reason (2011), and The Concealed Art of the Soul (2007). Ganeri's work draws on a variety of philosophical traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and epistemology. He became the first philosopher to win the Infosys Prize in the Humanities in 2015. For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com.

The resurgence of the radical Right in America and Europe has drawn attention to the existence of political philosophers and writers whose names are only sometimes familiar and whose thought is generally unknown. It even comes as a surprise to some that the radical Right actually has a political philosophy, other than that of Nazism or of Mussolini’s Fascism, both of which in fact remain discredited and marginal. Instead, the resurgent Right draws on well-known thinkers like Nietzsche and Hegel, on less-known thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola, and on the relatively obscure writings of living political philosophers such as Alain de Benoist in France and Alexander Dugin in Russia. And then there is a whole range of emergent thinkers, often American, some unknown, and some famous only for their media stunts. In his new book Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2019), Mark Sedgwick looks at the classic canon, at the most influential modern thinkers, and at a selection of emergent thinkers. Sixteen expert scholars explain sixteen thinkers, providing an introduction to their life and work, a guide to their thought, and an explanation of their work’s reception. The book thus provides an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the thought behind the stunts and the resurgence, the thought of the radical Right. Mark Sedgwick was born in England and studied history of Oxford University before emigrating to Egypt. He received his PhD at the University of Bergen in Norway, taught history at the American University in Cairo, and then moved to Denmark to teach in the Department of the Study of Religion at Aarhus University. He was secretary of the European Society of the Study of Western Esotericism; he first became aware of the connections between esotericism and radical politics while working on his PhD. Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com.

In her latest book, In Search of Criminal Responsibility: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions (Oxford University Press, 2016), Nicola Lacey brings together philosophical, historical and socio-legal methods to give an account of the ever changing notion of responsibility in criminal law. She distinguishes between ideas of responsibility, which she argues are founded in notions of character, psychological capacity, the causation of harmful outcomes and the presentation of risk. The book draws links between these ideas of responsibility; of the institutions that produce them, and the interests that have shaped both doctrines and institutions. In her analysis of responsibility over time, Nicola demonstrates the functions that criminal law and punishment have been required to perform at different periods in history. Criminal law has moved from notions of character and outcome responsibility in the eighteenth century, through a period dominated by capacity responsibility, which has become established as central in criminal law. More recently, character responsibility is remerging, in combination with a new discourse that is founded in risk. In this discussion, as in her book, Nicola Lacey builds on her previous analysis in Women, Crime and Character (2008) and traces how the criminal law and the notion of responsibility has been gendered throughout history. Responsibility is contextualized in its role as to how it provides legitimation of state power, and also in its role for coordination of social behavior. Responsibility, and the criminal law more broadly, is historically, socially and politically contextualized in terms of practices of criminalization and the social functions that law plays. Jane Richards is a doctoral candidate in Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include disability, equality and criminal law. You can find her on twitter @JaneRichardsHK where she avidly follows the Hong Kong protests.

Gregory A. Scott's Building the Buddhist Revival: Reconstructing Monasteries in Modern China (Oxford University Press, 2020) is the first major work in any language to address the topic of Buddhist monastery reconstructions. This book focuses on reconstructions of Buddhist monasteries in modern China that took place in the period from 1866 to 1966, beginning with the Taiping War in the late Qing and ending with the first seventeen years of the People’s Republic of China. Making extensive use of Chinese Buddhist periodical sources and incorporating Digital Humanities techniques to collect and analyze data, this monograph argues that the building of Buddhist revival in modern China was done in part through the reconstruction of Buddhist monasteries. Building on and engaging with Holmes Welch’s The Buddhist Revival in China (1968), Dr. Scott provides a new framework for understanding the revival of Buddhism in modern China, that “while Buddhist monastery reconstruction in China operates under the guise of a return to the past, it is in fact a confident, energetic step into the future.” Daigengna Duoer is a PhD student at the Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation researches on transnational/transregional networks of Buddhism centered in twentieth-century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria that were connected to Republican China, Tibet, and imperial Japan.

Do nonhuman animals have phenomenally conscious mental states? For example, do they have the types of conscious experiences we have when, in our case, we experience the smell of cinnamon or the redness of a ripe tomato? In Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest (Oxford University Press, 2019), Peter Carruthers argues that there is no fact of the matter as to whether they do or not. On Carruthers’ view, nonhuman animals have those types of consciousness identified as being awake and being aware. Moreover, he agrees the mental lives of humans and nonhumans share quite a lot based in recent empirical research, and he adopts a reductive theory of phenomenal consciousness that identifies it with globally broadcast nonconceptual content. What is indeterminate is whether nonhumans have the all-or-nothing what-it’s-like quality that our first-personal concept of phenomenal consciousness appears to pick out. Nevertheless, Carruthers – who is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland College Park – argues that this indeterminacy really doesn’t matter much – in particular, it does not follow that we should not be concerned about animal welfare.

Shadaab Rahemtullah's book Qur'an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a compelling comparative analysis of the works of four Muslim scholars of Islam – Asghar Ali Engineer, Farid Esack, Amina Wadud, and Asma Barlas. The book serves as an excellent introduction to the works of these scholars and is complete with a clear, thorough, and rich analysis of the ways that they approach Islam's most important scripture as a liberating text to respond to various issues, such as poverty, patriarchy, racism, and inter-religious conflict. Qur'an of the Oppressed relies both on these scholars' written works and on Rahemtullah's in-depth interviews with them. Each chapter is dedicated to an individual scholar and begins with an introduction to their backgrounds with a discussion of the political, social, and other contexts that shape their respective scholarship; while deeply appreciative of their works, Rahemtullah also carefully addresses the drawbacks of their arguments and methodologies and offers correctives when useful. Qur'an of the Oppressed is an accessible text that can be assigned in undergraduate and graduate courses as well as read by non-specialists, including anyone with an interest in religion, gender, liberation theology, and especially in Islam; it will also be of interest to anyone looking to better understand the ways that modern religious communities interpret their scriptures as a source of liberation and justice. Shehnaz Haqqani is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Mercer University. Her primary research areas include Islam, gender, and questions of change and tradition in Islam. She can be reached at [email protected].

What is the relationship between inequality and classical music? In Class, Control, and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anna Bull, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth and co-director of the 1752 Group, explores the intersections of class, race, and gender to explain the exclusive, and excluding, nature of classical music in contemporary society. The book is based on a detailed study of young people’s engagement with classical music, along with a broader understanding of music education and the sociology of culture. The book is also deeply engaged with the question of what, if anything, classical can do to transform, rather than reproduce, social inequalities. It is essential reading across both music and sociology, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary culture and social inequality.

The attacks on the luxurious Taj Hotel in Mumbai in 2008 put Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a jihadist terrorist group, in the international / Western spotlight for the first time, though they had been deadly active in India and Afghanistan for decades. In her book In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Oxford University Press, 2018), Christine Fair reveals a little-known aspect of how LeT functions in Pakistan and beyond, by translating and commenting upon a range of publications produced and disseminated by Dar-ul-Andlus, the publishing wing of LeT. Only a fraction of LeT's cadres ever see battle: most of them are despatched on nation-wide "prozelytising" (dawa) missions to convert Pakistanis to their particular interpretation of Islam, in support of which LeT has developed a sophisticated propagandist literature. This canon of Islamist texts is the most popular and potent weapon in LeT's arsenal, and its scrutiny affords insights into how and who the group recruits; LeT's justification for jihad; its vision of itself in global and regional politics; the enemies LeT identifies and the allies it cultivates; and how and where it conducts its operations. Particular attention is paid to the role that LeT assigns to women by examining those writings which heap extravagant praise upon the mothers of aspirant jihadis, who bless their operations and martyrdom. It is only by understanding LeT's domestic functions as set out in these texts that one can begin to appreciate why Pakistan so fiercely supports it, despite mounting international pressure to disband the group. India and the United States are placed in extremely difficult positions with regard to Pakistan because of this. Christine Fair is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program within Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com.

Arthur Asseraf’s Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the workings of the “news ecosystem” in Algeria from the 1880s to the beginning of the Second World War. The study of a society divided between a dominant (European) settler minority and an Algerian Muslim majority, the book tracks the development and impact of new information technologies—the printing press, telegraph, cinema, radio (and later television)—in Algeria from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. Throughout its chapters, readers are reminded to resist Eurocentric and teleological frameworks of “modernization” that do not apply to societies like Algeria’s where such technologies coexisted with other forms of news circulation including manuscripts, song, and rumor/word of mouth. The book is grounded in an impressive range of sources in multiple languages. It challenges ideas about the relationship between print capitalism and nationalism over the course of this pivotal period in both Algerian and French history. Interrogating the history of colonial hegemony in and through the analysis of how Algerians accessed and interpreted the news in myriad ways often not anticipated by settler and state authorities, the book also has far-reaching implications for how we think about knowledge and power in imperial contexts more broadly. Its pages are rich with exciting and fascinating moments and stories—of surveillance, violence, and injustice, but also of the counterforces of the Algerian subversion of and resistance to colonial oppression. *Special note in March 2020: I hope you are all keeping safe and healthy and that this conversation with Arthur might be helpful in some small way right now—with work, teaching and/or as a distraction in this period of global pandemic. Thanks so much to Arthur, who was SO much fun to speak with & to all the NBFS listeners out there! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars(2009). Her current research focuses on the history of French nuclear weapons and testing since 1945. Her most recent article, '"No Hiroshima in Africa": The Algerian War and the Question of French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara' appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of History of the Present. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada and hopes all listeners are keeping healthy and safe at this difficult time in our world. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email ([email protected]).

Today’s right wing media has a long history that is largely unknown to its current listeners. In The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement (Oxford University Press, 2020), Paul Matzko details its emergence in the 1950s and the response to its rise by some of the leading political and religious institutions of the era. As Matzko explains, the origins of postwar conservative media lay in the broader changes taking place in broadcasting in 1950s. As the major networks shifted their focus from radio to television, local radio stations were eager to find programmers willing to pay to put programs on the air. This gave conservative religious broadcasters such as Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis an opportunity to spread their message to a nationwide audience. Fearing the growing influence of commentators organizing against their policies, the Kennedy administration sought to use such means as the previously underdeveloped Fairness Doctrine to constrain it. Working in conjunction with the National Council of Churches, they placed growing pressure on the broadcasters – particularly the acerbic McIntire – in an ultimately successful effort to undermine their nationwide stature. Yet while McIntire’s radio ministry was gone by the early 1970s, his example was followed a decade later by others who took advantage of broadcast deregulation in the late 1970s and 1980s to launch the modern era of conservative broadcasting.

Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the battles most closely associated with the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous warfare affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread from France as a result, overshadow the profound repercussions that the Napoleonic Wars had throughout the world. In his new book The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History (Oxford University Press, 2020), Professor Alexander Mikaberidze of the department of History at Louisiana State University, argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood with an international context in mind. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Professor Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the complete global history of the period, one that expands our contemporary view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs.

In his new book On Trial for Reason: Science, Religion, and Culture in the Galileo Affair (Oxford University Press, 2019), Maurice Finocchiaro shows that there were (and are) really two Galileo “affairs.” Galileo’s original trial and condemnation forms the first affair, the cultural history of controversies about the meaning of the original trial, forms the second. With scrupulous attention to evidence and the argumentation employed by various participants, Dr. Finocchiaro’s book is at once an accessible primer on a key event in the 16th- and 17th-century Scientific Revolution, and a thought provoking look at how the subsequent controversies resonate down to the present day. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.

The 9/11 attacks fundamentally transformed how the US approached terrorism, and led to the unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism strategies, policies, and practices. While the analysis of these developments is rich and vast, there remains a significant void. The diverse actors contributing to counterterrorism increasingly consider, engage and impact women as agents, partners, and targets of their work. Yet, flawed assumptions and stereotypes remain prevalent, and it remains undocumented and unclear how and why counterterrorism efforts have evolved as they did, including in relation to women. Drawing on extensive primary source documents, A Woman's Place: US Counterterrorism Since 9/11 (Oxford University Press, 2020) traces the evolution of women in US counterterrorism efforts through the administrations of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, examining key agencies like the US Department of Defense, the Department of State, and USAID. Joana Cook investigates how and why women have developed the roles they have, and interrogates US counterterrorism practices in key countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Analysing conceptions of and responses to terrorists, she also considers how the roles of women in Al- Qaeda and Daesh have evolved and impacted on US counterterrorism considerations. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch.

Americans since the beginning of their history, have constantly made moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through and assessed. An American President is either praised for the moral clarity of his statements or judged solely on the results of their actions. In Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Oxford UP, 2020), Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, as well as someone who has served in prominent positions in both the Carter and the Clinton Administrations provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in American foreign policy during the post 1945 era. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not. Regardless of a president's policy preference, Nye shows that each one was not fully constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. He further notes the important ethical consequences of non-actions, such as Truman's willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use nuclear weapons. Since we so often apply moral reasoning to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Most importantly, presidents need to factor in both the political context and the availability of resources when deciding how to implement an ethical policy-especially in a future international system that presents not only great power competition from China and Russia, but a host of novel transnational threats: the illegal drug trade, infectious diseases, terrorism, cybercrime, and climate change. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs.

Joshua Foa Dienstag, Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA, considers, in his new book, the interaction between our experiences in watching films and our positions as citizens in a representative democracy. In both situations, as an audience member watching a movie and as a citizen in a representative republic, we need to understand the interactions we have with others, and consider how we experience representation, in politics and in film. These are not necessarily spaces and concepts that are usually woven together, but Dienstag makes the case that they should be considered in regard to each other because they both are forms of representation, and important emotional dimensions are threaded through each form. Cinema Pessimism: A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity (Oxford University Press, 2019) begins by diving into the idea of representative government, especially in contrast to idealized notions of direct democracy. Dienstag examines some of the history of political thought about representative democracy and focuses on the contemporary dialogue among political theorists about reciprocity as both necessary and difficult in the representation relationship. If we could have more fully reciprocal relationships with our elected officials, inequality and corruption might not be problematic issues. Given that our democracy has grown substantially since the early days of the republic, we, as citizens, are far less connected to our elected officials. Cinema Pessimism holds up a mirror to this question of the estrangement of political representation and examines our experiences in context of filmic representations, which are structured to engage us emotionally and through images that “look like us.” Thus, Dienstag weaves together our experiences as audience members, where we see narrative constructions of these issues of representation and reciprocity, and our political experiences of the same. In both cases, Dienstag warns that we are becoming disconnected—disconnected from individuals in our lives, from our roles as citizens, and from actual emotional engagement with others—and this disconnection is particularly problematic when the idea of representation and reciprocity is predicated on connections. Cinema Pessimism toggles between thinking about the political experiences of citizens and the emotional and visual experiences of audience members, tracing out the overlapping components of these often-separated roles. Dienstag’s analysis combines visual cultural artifacts and political theory, focusing our thinking on the danger that representative politics may pose for freedom and equality. Cinema Pessimism examines a number of cinematic artifacts, some more overtly political than others, in the course of discussing what we see, feel, and experience as viewers and audience members. This novel and rigorous analysis will be of interest to many readers, bringing together a variety of fields and disciplines, including political theory, philosophy, media studies, cultural studies, and film studies. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

Is a rising power – like China – a threat to the world order? The conventional wisdom in international relations says that power transitions – particularly increases in military power – are intrinsically destabilizing to the international order. In her new book The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism, and Rising Powers (Oxford UP, 2020), Michelle Murray counters that political actors and scholars of politics should focus on how the actions of rising powers are interpreted or perceived by other nations. Murray encourages us to see power transitions as struggles for recognition: social constructs aimed at forming identities. Social uncertainty shapes the struggle for recognition – especially misrecognition by other nations. Murray contrasts two case studies – Germany’s naval build-up before WWI and the United States’s expansion of power after the Spanish-American War of 1898 – to argue that military capabilities do not adequately account for why Germany was viewed as a threat by European powers but the United States was welcomed by Great Britain as a friendly power. Murray looks at the ways in which establishing and maintaining identity is uncertain because these identities are unpredictably perceived (or mis-perceived) by other powers. Her research explores the many ways in which states navigate identity formation under conditions of anarchy. The podcast includes interesting reflections on how China’s identity – as an ally or threat – might be shaped in the future. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013).

Since 2008, the Tea Party and the Resistance have caused some major shake-ups for the Republican and Democratic parties. The changes fall outside the scope of traditional party politics, and outside the realm of traditional social science research. To better understand what’s going on Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Strategy at Harvard and Director of the Scholars Strategy Network, convened a group of researchers to study the people and organizations and at the heart of these grassroots movements. Skocpol joins us this week to discuss their findings and the new book (co-edited with Caroline Tervo) Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance (Oxford University Press, 2020). Her work in particular focuses on the Tea Party and includes interviews with Tea Party members across the country. We also discuss the Resistance and whether these oppositional forces to the party in power are likely to continue after November’s election. Jenna Spinelle is a journalism instructor at Penn State, host of the Democracy Works podcast, produced by Penn State’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy.

Megan Tobias Neely and Ken Hou-Lin's new book Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance (Oxford University Press, 2020) explores the rise of finance in American life over the last forty years and its implications for American workers, families, and economies. The authors argue that finance has transformed from a servant to the economy to its master - from a means of creating a prosperous society to an end in itself. The consequences of this shift are profound: the authors identify the many ways finance is implicated in the yawning growth in inequality in the US and how a financialized society redistributes resources from working people to owners, executives, and financial professionals. Using historical analysis, quantitative and qualitative data, the book offers a clear, comprehensive, and compelling account of one of the most important economic developments of our time. Patrick Sheenan is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin.

In Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health (Oxford University Press, 2019), physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health. Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up. The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine — the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, and the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. While all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale. Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character — and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics. Dr. Sandro Galea, MD is the Robert A. Knox professor and dean at the Boston University School of Public Health. He is the former Chair of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to his academic career in public health, Dr. Galea practiced emergency medicine in Canada and served in Somalia with Doctors Without Borders. He was named one of TIME magazine's epidemiology innovators in 2006 and Thomson Reuters listed him as one of the “World's Most Influential Scientific Minds” for the social sciences in 2015. Manuel Arredondo, LCSW, MPH is a clinical social worker and public health advocate in Oakland, CA.

In his brilliant, category-smashing book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016), Jeffrey James Byrne places Algeria at the center of many of the twentieth-century’s international dynamics: decolonization, the Cold War, détente, Third Worldism, the Non-Aligned Movement, and postcolonial state-making. The book is a challenge to the very geography of international history. Byrne, an associate professor at UBC and one of my MA advisors, packs a lot into this book. Tracing the history of the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 and the creation of an independent Algerian state in the 1960s and 1970s, Byrne shows how anticolonial revolutionaries and postcolonial statesmen harnessed the interstate system to advance their cause. The book should be read by anyone interested in the Cold War, South-South diplomacy, and how decolonization both remade and strengthened the interstate system. Dexter Fergie is a PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @DexterFergie.

While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause. Galvanized by the events of war into acquiring and preserving the written word, as well as providing critical information for intelligence purposes, these American civilians set off on missions to gather foreign publications and information across Europe. They journeyed to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was to document, exploit, preserve, and restitute these works, and even, in the case of Nazi literature, to destroy them. In The Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe (Oxford University Press, 2019), cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front. These collecting missions also boosted the postwar ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for them to become great international repositories of scientific reports, literature, and historical sources. Not only did their wartime work have lasting implications for academic institutions, foreign-policy making, and national security, it also led to the development of today's essential information science tools.

Olivier Roy, who is professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, is one of the most influential analysts of religion and secularisation in late modernity. Today he joins us to talk about his new book, Is Europe Christian?, which was published by Hurst in 2019 and Oxford University Press in 2020. Roy wrote the book to intervene in contemporary debates among European populists who lay claim to the Christian heritage of Europe without often embracing its values. This important new book is some ways a meditation on the success of the countercultural values of the 1960s, which have become so embedded in the legal and political cultures of late modernity as to be virtually unassailable, even by conservative forces that campaign against them. What does the success of 1960s values mean for the reiteration of religious identities? And how have the European churches responded to the appropriation of their heritage by political forces who may not adopt or even approve of the moral values they espouse? Professor Roy’s new book is an important contribution to a very difficult discussion. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Since World War II, the fate of the Marshal Islands has been tied to the United States. The Marshalls were a site of military testing, host a US military base, and many Marshallese migrate to the US to pursue education and economic opportunity. Yet there are few books about Marshallese culture which are short and readable. In Talking Like Children: Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands (Oxford University Press, 2019), Elise Berman shows us the complexities of Marshallese life and reveals the way that age, a central part of Marshallese culture, is not biologically given but culturally constructed. It's an accessible, short book that will appeal to both academic and nonacademic audiences with an interest in Marshalls or Micronesian culture more generally. In this podcast host Alex Golub talks with Berman about being an American doing fieldwork in the Marshalls, what age is and how it is achieved through interaction, the differences between American (and broadly Western) approaches to language and power and Marshallese approaches, and how Elise turned her dissertation into a short and accessible book. Elise Berman is a linguistic, cultural, and psychological anthropologist engaged with the interdisciplinary fields of education and communication. She has worked with the Chabad-Lubavitch, the K’iche’ Maya in Guatemala, and the Marshallese in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is the editor of a special number of Anthropological Forum on "The Politics of Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea".

Processes of globalization—the liberalization of national markets, the rapid movement of goods, services, and labor across national borders—have had profound impacts on local contexts, perhaps especially so in the Global South. While some people in the worlds of business, media, and even academia praise such policies for benefitting the poor in these countries, others, particular actors on the left, are highly critical of them for leaving impoverished populations and places behind. Entering this conversation with a fresh take and a novel case is sociologist Patrick Inglis, whose new book Narrow Fairways: Getting By and Falling Behind in the New India (Oxford University Press, 2019) uses the interactions between elite members of golf clubs in city of Bangalore and the caddies who carry their bags to examine how globalization is both upending and reproducing a status quo of extreme inequality. Based on more than ten years of ethnographic fieldwork, Inglis takes readers inside these clubs to show how the concentrated wealth and the increased privatization of institutions and social services in India—e.g. education, healthcare—have made the low-income, highly precarious caddies highly dependent on the members they serve. Through “upward servility,” a set of strategies of servility and deference, the caddies attempt to show members their worthiness for support and guidance and overcome a caste status they claim doesn’t influence their chances at upward mobility. By showcasing the lives and voices of the caddies, Inglis shows how globalization may not be creating polarized societies of haves and have-nots, but situations in which the rich and poor find themselves closely intertwined and in dubiously sustainable relationships. Richard E. Ocejo is associate professor of sociology at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press, 2017) and of Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City (Princeton University Press, 2014).

The history of women's political involvement has focused heavily on electoral politics, but throughout the twentieth century women engaged in grassroots activism when they found it increasingly challenging to feed their families and balance their household ledgers. Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2017) examines how working- and middle-class American housewives used their identity as housewives to protest the high cost of food. In doing so, housewives' relationships with the state evolved over the course of the century. Shifting the focus away from the workplace as a site of protest, Emily E. LB. Twarog looks to the homefront as a starting point for protest in the public sphere. With a focus on food consumption rather than production, Twarog looks closely at the ways food--specifically meat--was used by women as a political tool. Engaging in domestic politics, housewives both challenged and embraced the social and economic order as they sought to craft a unique political voice and build a consumer movement focused on the home. The book examines key moments when women used consumer actions to embrace their socially ascribed roles as housewives to demand economic stability for their families and communities. These include the Depression-era meat boycott of 1935, the consumer coalitions of the New Deal, and the wave of consumer protests between 1966 and 1973. Twarog introduces numerous labor and consumer activists and their organizations in both urban and suburban areas--Detroit, greater Chicago, Long Island, and Los Angeles. Emily E. LB. Twarog is an Associate Professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations, and Affiliate Faculty in the Gender in Global Perspectives Program and European Union Center at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Beth A. English is director of the Liechtenstein Institute’s Project on Gender in the Global Community at Princeton University. She also is a past president of the Southern Labor History Association.

Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances (Oxford University Press, 2019) tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious narratives they tell as they create and maintain their extended family and community across national borders. Based on ethnographic research, the book demonstrates the ways that transnational communities are involved in shaping their experiences through narrative performances. Jennifer B. Saunders demonstrates that narrative performances shape participants' social realities in multiple ways: they define identities, they create connections between community members living on opposite sides of national borders, and they help create new homes amidst increasing mobility. The narratives are religious and include epic narratives such as excerpts from the Ramayana as well as personal narratives with dharmic implications. Saunders' analysis combines scholarly understandings of the ways in which performances shape the contexts in which they are told, indigenous comprehension of the power that reciting certain narratives can have on those who hear them, and the theory that social imaginaries define new social realities through expressing the aspirations of communities. Imagining Religious Communities argues that this Hindu community's religious narrative performances significantly contribute to shaping their transnational lives. For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.

Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term itself and the way that it has been considered and analyzed in western and Islamic political thought. War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2018) traces the concept of peace, and the way it is often insinuated with other words and concepts, over more than 2000 years of political thought. Idris begins with Plato’s Laws as one of the early sources to consider the tension that seems to be constant in terms of the pursuit of violence in order to attain peace. War for Peace provides some important framing in thinking about peace, in large measure because the research indicates how rare it is for peace itself to be solitary, it is almost always lassoed to other words and concepts, and functions either as a binary opposition (e.g.: war and peace) or as part of a dyad combination (e.g.: peace and justice). We are urged to think about peace and the valence that is given to the word and the ideal—since the moral and the political understandings of peace are often entangled and part of what Idris is doing in his careful and thoughtful research is to tease out the political concept, apart from the often religious and moral ideal. This rich and complex analysis integrates a broad group of theorists—Plato, al-Farabi, Aquinas, Erasmus, Gentili, Grotius, Ibn Khaldun, Hobbes, Kant, and Sayyid Qutb)—all of whom were examining the role of peace within politics and political thought. And Idris structures these thinkers into chronological and theoretical groupings, to explore the ways in which they were responding to each other, across time, but also to understand how different thinkers were connecting peace to other concepts. War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought may leave the reader anxious but also enlightened in considering this idea and its perplexing place within the history of political thought. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

There are quite a few authors writing about the problems facing American democracy and how best to solve those problems. Many of the problematic issues devolve to the question of representation – and how to shift or change the American political system so that it better represents the voters themselves and the plurality of perspectives and opinions across the country. Lee Drutman’s new book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (Oxford UP, 2020) dives into both the problems with the current political dynamic and the possible solutions. As the title indicates, Drutman’s analysis investigates the current binary “doom loop” of two internally consistent parties, and the elected officials who rarely have to compromise within the Madisonian system set up to compel compromise. Drutman’s examination takes the reader through the historical shifts in terms of the parties themselves and American political development, and how Americans have come to find themselves in this “doom loop.” Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop also explores contemporary “toxic politics” and the existential threat that every election seems to pose for parties, partisans, those in elected office, and ultimately for the country itself and public policies. Ultimately, Drutman proposes a number of reforms that, without amending the Constitution, could, as he says, break this doom loop and open up opportunities for more actual representation. Following the examples of a number of cities in the U.S. and the state of Maine, Drutman posits that electoral reform, especially options like ranked choice voting, would shift the dynamic during campaigns, and would lead to coalition building and compromise by lawmakers and elected officials in office. The final section of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America makes the case for how a multiparty system in the United States would work without amending the political institutions established by the Constitution. This is, ultimately, an optimistic book with a variety of proposals designed to untangle some of the persistent knots within the American political system. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012).

In the United States, the number of megachurches increased from 350 in 1990 to over 1,600 in 2011 with that number continuing to grow exponentially in subsequent years. By 2015, a Hartford Institute for Religion Research study showed that over five million people were attending services at a megachurch weekly which accounts for 50 percent of all American churchgoers. High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America (Oxford University Press, 2020) by James K. Wellman Jr., Katie E. Corcoran, and Kate J. Stockly, is the first book to delve into why these churches have conquered the churchgoing market of America. Based on nearly 300 transcripts of focus groups and interviews, High on God highlights a commonality in the way attendees liken their religious experiences to that of a drug addiction. Using French sociologist Emile Durkheim's concept of homo duplex, the authors plot the structures that megachurches employ to satisfy the core human craving for personal meaning and social integration, as well as personal identity and communal solidarity. High on God is an honest account of the positive role megachurches play on bonding people together to lead lives of integrity, community, and responsibility. This book challenges the megachurch skeptics and shares insight into the experiences attendees have had and tells the history of this church model through present-day. Jim Wellman highlights these elements in this interview. Dr. Wellman is Professor and Chair of the Comparative Religion Program in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Wellman's publications include an award-winning book, The Gold Coast Church and the Ghetto: Christ and Culture in Mainline Protestantism and Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest; edited volumes: Belief and Bloodshed: Religion and Violence Across Time and Tradition, and Religion and Human Security: A Global Perspective. Will Sipling is currently an independent scholar, with published research on religion and psychology, liturgical studies, and Frankfurt School social theory. He was previously a fellow of the Department of Catholic Studies and the Thomas J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) while earning a master’s degree. Will previously studied at Dallas Theological Seminary, writing a thesis on sacramental and liturgical theology. You can follow his work at williamsipling.com or at @WSipling.

In his book My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Oxford UP, 2017), Dr. Howard Jones describes how on March 16th, 1968, several units of American soldiers descended upon a collection of small villages in Central Vietnam, now collectively known as My Lai. In the space of a few short hours, they committed one of America’s most infamous war crimes. While failing to find the enemy troops that their intelligence insisted were there, the Americans forced dozens of unarmed elderly men, women, children, and babies out of their homes at gun point. An unknown number of women were raped as other soldiers set fire to their homes. In an act of barbarism that can correctly be compared to Nazi violence, several hundred Vietnamese civilians were forced into ditches and machine gunned. Only three brave Americans in a helicopter tried to stop the slaughter. Almost immediately, the Army covered up the massacre. Officers, including a young Colin Powell, swept the incident under the rug and fabricated an alternative narrative of the events. Thanks to a lone whistle blower and the tireless efforts of investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh the story was eventually uncovered. Howard Jones is University research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

The 21st century offers a dizzying array of new technological developments: robots smart enough to take white collar jobs, social media tools that manage our most important relationships, ordinary objects that track, record, analyze and share every detail of our daily lives, and biomedical techniques with the potential to transform and enhance human minds and bodies to an unprecedented degree. Emerging technologies are reshaping our habits, practices, institutions, cultures and environments in increasingly rapid, complex and unpredictable ways that create profound risks and opportunities for human flourishing on a global scale. How can our future be protected in such challenging and uncertain conditions? How can we possibly improve the chances that the human family will not only live, but live well, into the 21st century and beyond? Shannon Vallor's Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016) locates a key to that future in the distant past: specifically, in the philosophical traditions of virtue ethics developed by classical thinkers from Aristotle and Confucius to the Buddha. Each developed a way of seeking the good life that equips human beings with the moral and intellectual character to flourish even in the most unpredictable, complex and unstable situations--precisely where we find ourselves today. Through an examination of the many risks and opportunities presented by rapidly changing technosocial conditions, Vallor makes the case that if we are to have any real hope of securing a future worth wanting, then we will need more than just better technologies. We will also need better humans. Technology and the Virtues develops a practical framework for seeking that goal by means of the deliberate cultivation of technomoral virtues: specific skills and strengths of character, adapted to the unique challenges of 21st century life, that offer the human family our best chance of learning to live wisely and well with emerging technologies. John Danaher is a lecturer the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is also the host of the wonderful podcast Philosophical Disquisitions. You can find it here on Apple Podcasts.