
New Books in History
Interviews with Historians about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Show episodes

Felix Cowan, "The Kopeck Press: Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908-1918" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Felix Cowan about his new book, The Kopeck Press Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908–1918 (University of Toronto Press, 2025). The Imperial Russian penny press was a vast network of newspapers sold for a single kopeck per issue. Emerging in cities and towns across the

Sarah Gold McBride "Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on decisive new significance as the young nation wrestled with its identity. During the colonial period, hair was usually seen as bodily discharge, even “excrement.” But as Dr. Sarah Gold McBride shows in Whiskerolog

Sergey Radchenko, "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Sergey Radchenko provides an unprecedented deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle w

Talin Suciyan, "Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces" (Syracuse UP, 2023)
The history of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire has largely been narrated as a unique period of equality, reform, and progress, often framing it as the backdrop to modern Turkey. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's exhortation to study the oppressed to understand the rule and the ruler, Talin Suciyan reexamines this era from t

Michael Grunwald, "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
Michael Grunwald is a well renown journalist, who over the last thirty years has focused on public policy and national politics, with the last fifteen years having him zeroing in or climate-related issues. His current book, which he wrote this after six years of research. It was a passionate journey to understand, not

Char Miller, "Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning" (Oregon State UP, 2024)
Fire is a means of control and has been deployed or constrained to levy power over individuals, societies, and ecologies. In Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (Oregon State UP, 2024), Pomona College professor Char Miller has edited a colle