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New Books in Intellectual History

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Interviews with Scholars of Intellectual History about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Episodes

Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration. Why did these erstwhile foes end their schism and begin to make peace? In this riveting study, Udi Greenberg shows that ecumenism grew out of a shared desire to protect against perceived threats to Christian life. The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s (Harvard UP, 2025) overturns conventional wisdom about this revolutionary chan...

Apr 26, 20251 hr 14 minEp. 235

Christopher Harding, "The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East" (Allen Lane, 2024)

Christopher Harding’s The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) is a fascinating survey of two millennia of Western encounters with Eastern culture, thought and religions. From Herodotus to Alan Watts, Harding profiles a range of engaging figures who have had a sometimes-overlooked impact on the way we in the West engage with and understand Asia. From the myths of antiquity through to the impact of the hippie movement, the book asks; ‘What is real? Who ...

Apr 25, 20251 hr 10 minEp. 241

Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books (Yale UP, 2022) explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an...

Apr 24, 20251 hr 21 minEp. 222

Fernanda Gallo, "Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Political Theorist Fernanda Gallo (Homerton College, University of Cambridge) has a fascinating new book, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900 (Cambridge UP, 2024), about how Georg Hegel’s philosophical thought made its way to Italy and how it was integrated into the various schools of thought within Italy. This is a fascinating exploration of the history of ideas, especially more recent thinking, tracing not only the ideas themselves, but the ways in which they ...

Apr 23, 202548 minEp. 765

Shushma Malik, "The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

In The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm (Cambridge UP, 2020), Shushma Malik reconstructs the means by which the emperor Nero came to be identified with the New Testament's antichrist. Malik surveys the first four Christian centuries to show how Nero mythology developed, often in ways that were much more positive than we might expect, and how early Christians appropriated this tradition as an apologetic weapon, to demonstrate that their scriptures had in fact predicted the char...

Apr 22, 202544 minEp. 171

Margherita Zanasi, "Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

In Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Margherita Zanasi argues that basic notions of a free market economy emerged in China a century and half earlier than in Europe. In response to the commercial revolutions of the late 1500s, Chinese intellectuals and officials called for the end of state intervention in the market, recognizing its power to self-regulate. They also noted the elasticity of domestic demand and production, arg...

Apr 21, 20251 hr 29 minEp. 17

Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression? How are the relatively recent concepts of person, self, and subject implicated in these forms of oppression? And what theorizations are already available within trans communities for thinking through this all? In Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Talia Mae Bettcher develops a new th...

Apr 20, 202553 minEp. 369

Samuel Ross, "Qur’an Commentary and the Biblical Turn: A History of Muslim Exegetical Engagement with the Biblical Text" (de Gruyter, 2024)

Quran Commentary and the Biblical Turn (de Gruyter, 2024) examines the exegetical relationship between the Quran and the Bible in Islamic intellectual history. As the two have been called "intertwined scriptures" due to the Quran’s frequent invocation of biblical narratives and figures, a question is raised: what is the history of Muslims’ exegetical engagement with the biblical text? Through a survey of 179 Quran commentaries, the book establishes itself with foundations in the longitudinal his...

Apr 19, 20251 hr 27 minEp. 355

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity: A Study in Resilience" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

The city was one of the central and defining features of the world of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. Challenging the idea that the ancient city 'declined and fell', Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues that memories of the past enabled cities to adapt and remain relevant in the changing post-Roman world. In the new kingdoms in Italy, France and Spain cities remained a key part of the structure of control, while to contemporary authors, such as Cassiodorus in Ostrogothic Italy, Gregory of Tours in M...

Apr 16, 20251 hr 15 minEp. 47

Henry Jenkins, "Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America" (NYU Press, 2025)

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil rights. At the same time, a new paradigm for parenting was unfolding that put emphasis on permissiveness, defined by what it permitted – the free and unfettered impulses of children. Others worried that the wildness of children, personified by the characters in Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, was d...

Apr 14, 202558 minEp. 149

David Wiles, "Democracy, Theatre and Performance: From the Greeks to Gandhi" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Democracy, argues David Wiles, is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments of ancient and modern democracy, demonstrating how their performative skills were used to try to create a better world. People often complain about demagogues, or wish that politicians might be more sincere. But to do good, politicians (paradoxically) must be hypocrites - or actors. Moving from Athens to Indian independence via three great revolutio...

Apr 13, 20251 hr 11 min

Stephen J. Campbell, "Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, in Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life (Princeton University Press, 2025) Dr. Stephen J. Campbell shows ...

Apr 12, 202547 minEp. 277

Richard Alfred Muller, "Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024)

In Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024), Dr. Richard A. Muller delves into one of the most controversial doctrines of Reformed Theology: predestination. Muller carefully investigates key incidents that illustrate the doctrine's complexity and development by surveying Reformed thought on predestination in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Along the way, Muller challenges distorted ideas about the placement of predestination in theological syst...

Apr 11, 202531 minEp. 297

Matthew D'Auria et al., "The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

The origins and nature of nationhood and nationalism continue to be topics of heated scholarly debate. This major new reference work with contributions from an international team of scholars provides a comprehensive account of ideas and practices of nationhood and nationalism from antiquity to the present. It considers both continuities and discontinuities, engaging critically and analytically with the scholarly literature in the field. The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism (Cambri...

Apr 10, 20252 hr 41 min

Benjamin M. Studebaker, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are today experiencing a profound crisis of legitimacy. In Britain, a landslide general election result was quickly followed by a catastrophic tumble in approval ratings. In the US presidential campaign, meanwhile, voters were told that democracy itself was on the ballot, with both candidates suggesting the election might well be the last one ever. The conse...

Apr 09, 20251 hr 4 minEp. 206

Bruno Leipold, "Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2024)

In Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought (Princeton UP, 2024), Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism. Marx’s relation to republicanism changed over the course of his life, but its complex influence on his thought cannot be reduced to wholesale adoption or rejection. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politic...

Apr 08, 202555 minEp. 520

Eli Rubin, "Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2025)

In Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (Stanford University Press, 2025), Eli Rubin provides a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of Chabad Hasidism through the Kabbalistic concept of ṣimṣum. The onset of modernity, Eli Rubin argues, was heralded by this startling idea: existence itself is predicated on a self-inflicted "rupture" in the infinite assertion of divinity. Centuries of theoretical disputations concerning ṣimṣum ultimately...

Apr 07, 20251 hr 17 minEp. 629

Katherine Hallemeier, "African Literature and US Empire: Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

African Literature and US Empire Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing (Edinburgh UP, 2024) demonstrates how African literature grapples with the enforced optimism of US empire that circulates in postcolonial nations: Unsettles chronologies that chart a growing disillusionment with the postcolonial nation and national development across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Brings together African literary studies, affect studies, and U.S. empire studies Diagnoses and cr...

Apr 06, 202542 minEp. 342

Benjamin P. Davis, "Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Benjamin P. Davis’s Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2025) provides one of the first readings, in English or French, of Édouard Glissant as an ethical theorist. What do we in the West owe those who grow our food, sew our clothes and produce our electronics? And what have we always owed one another, but forgotten, avoided, or simply disregarded? Looking back on nearly a century of colonial war and genocide, in 1990 the poet and ...

Apr 05, 202557 min

Julia Jarcho, "Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

In Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Julia Jarcho proposes that the desire to write is inextricably bound up with masochistic desires. In a series of readings that engage American and European works of fiction, drama, and theory from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, Jarcho tests the limits of masochism as a pleasure-making economy. Reading Henry James, Henrik Ibsen, Mary Gaitskill, and Adrienne Kennedy alongside Sigmund Fr...

Apr 04, 202554 minEp. 539

Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (University of Arizona Press, 2025) by Dr. Andrew Canessa & Dr. Manuela Lavinas Picq takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced. Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, this open-access bo...

Apr 03, 20251 hr 1 minEp. 128

Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the central but underappreciated importance of global decolonization to the divergence between mainstream liberalism and the Black freedom movement in postwar America. Dr. Klug reconsiders what has long been seen as a matter of primarily domestic policy in light of a series of debates concerning self-determination, postcolonial economic development, and the me...

Apr 02, 20251 hr 12 min

Letizia Osti, "History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2024)

Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry and chancery, which would have a long-lasting influence on Arabic literature. His decades of service at the court of at least three caliphs give him a unique perspective as an historian of his own time, although he is often valued as an observer rather than an interpreter of events for posterity. In History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writin...

Apr 01, 202552 minEp. 354

Sarah Bassett, "Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

How do we best see and understand the art of late antiquity? One of the perceived challenges of so doing is that this is a period whose visual production has been defined as stylistically abstract and emotionally spiritual, and therefore elusive. But this is a perception which – in her path-breaking new book – Sarah Bassett boldly challenges, offering two novel lines of interpretative inquiry. She first argues, by focusing on the art of late antiquity in late nineteenth-century Viennese intellec...

Mar 31, 20251 hr 20 minEp. 40

Hannan Hever, "Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism: Chapters in Literary Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) reveals how political and literary dialogues and conflicts between the Hebrew literature of the Hasidism, the Jewish Enlightenment, and Zionism interacted with each other in the nineteenth century. Hannan Hever uses postcolonial theories and theories of nationality to analyze how Jews used literature to make sense of hostility directed toward Jews from their European “host” countries and to set forth their own ideas and preferences regardi...

Mar 30, 202556 min

Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterlife. But, as Dr. Rune Nyord shows in Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife (University of Chicago Press, 2025), even today, our understanding of the Egyptian afterlife has been formulated to a striking extent in Christian terms. Dr. Nyord argues that this is no accident, but rather the result of a long his...

Mar 29, 202553 minEp. 243

William Max Nelson, "Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals. In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenme...

Mar 28, 20251 hr 13 minEp. 519

William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Beautiful: Plato the Teacher and the Pre-Republic Dialogues from Protagoras to Symposium" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)

With Ascent to the Beautiful, William H. F. Altman completes his five-volume reconstruction of the Reading Order of the Platonic dialogues. This book covers Plato’s elementary dialogues, grappling from the start with F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who created an enduring prejudice against the works Plato wrote for beginners. Recognized in antiquity as the place to begin, Alcibiades Major was banished from the canon but it was not alone: with the exception of Protagoras and Symposium, Schleiermacher re...

Mar 26, 20252 hr 22 minEp. 241

Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Dr. Joshua Ehrlich discusses his book on the East India Company, exploring how company officials used ideas about knowledge to strengthen their authority during the shift from corporate to state sovereignty. He introduces the concept of "history of ideas of knowledge" and analyzes figures like Warren Hastings and Lord Wellesley. The conversation covers topics such as conciliation, corruption, the role of knowledge in shaping public opinion, and the company's evolving relationship with education.

Mar 24, 202551 minEp. 245

Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025)

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous Hist...

Mar 23, 20251 hr 9 minEp. 1550