New Books in Intellectual History

Democracy is a living, breathing thing and Dr. Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about the role ordinary citizens play in keeping it alive: from her childhood in post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to working in post-communist Poland, with its sudden gaps of wealth and security. Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power (Penguin, 2024) draws on her experiences and the deep history of self-ruling peoples – going back to ancient Greece, the French revolution and Renaissance Florence – to rethink some of the toughest questions that we face today.What do democratic ideals of equality mean in a world obsessed with competition, wealth, and greatness? How can we hold the powerful to account? Can we find enough common ground to keep sharing democratic power in the future? Challenging well-worn myths of heroic triumph over tyranny, Dr. Benner reveals the inescapable vulnerabilities of people power, inviting us to consider why democracy is worth fighting for and the role each of us must play.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany by Owen Ware (Routledge, 2024) takes the reader on a tour through the reception of Yoga philosophies in nineteenth-century German and the early twentieth century. European luminaries like Schlegel, Hegel, von Günderrode, Schelling, Humbolt, and Müller all engaged with works like the Bhagavad Gītā and Yogā Sūtras, though in very different ways, some reading yogic thought as entailing a threatening nihilism, others lauding it as superlatively philosophical. Ware shows how their responses to Indian thought illuminates our understanding of post-Kantian philosophy and its anxieties over pantheism indebted to Spinoza. He concludes with two chapters on a range of Indian scholars from Swami Vivekananda to K. C. Bhattacharyya, exploring how their work engages with this history of European readings, grappling with themes of freedom, morality, and devotion in yoga. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In the first few years after the Russian Revolution, an ideological project coalesced to link the development of what Stalin demarcated as the internal "East"—primarily Central Asia and the Caucasus—with nation-building, the overthrow of colonialism, and progress toward socialism in the "foreign East"—the Third World. Support for anti-colonial movements abroad was part of the Communist Party platform and shaped Soviet foreign policy to varying degrees thereafter.The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Masha Kirasirova explores how the concept of "the East" was used by the world's first communist state and its mediators to project, channel, and contest power across Eurasia. Dr. Kirasirova traces how this policy was conceptualised and carried out by students, comrades, and activists—Arab, Jewish, and Central Asian. It drew on their personal motivations and gave them considerable access to state authority and agency to shape Soviet ideology, inform concrete decisions, and allocate resources. Contextualising these Eastern mediators within a global frame, this book historicizes the circulation of peoples and ideas between the socialist and decolonizing world and reinscribes Soviet history into postcolonial studies and global history.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

By the end of the twentieth century, the idea of self-esteem had become enormously influential. A staggering amount of psychological research and self-help literature was being published and, before long, devoured by readers. Self-esteem initiatives permeated American schools. Self-esteem became the way of understanding ourselves, our personalities, our interactions with others. Nowadays, however, few people think much about the concept of self-esteem—but perhaps we should.Self-Esteem: An American History (Polity, 2024) by Dr. Ian Miller is the first historical study to explore the emotional politics of self-esteem in modern America. Written with verve and insight, Dr. Miller’s expert analysis looks at the critiques of self-help that accuse it of propping up conservative agendas by encouraging us to look solely inside ourselves to resolve life’s problems. At the same time, he reveals how African American, LGBTQ+, and feminist activists have endeavoured to build positive collective identities based on self-esteem, pride, and self-respect.This revelatory book will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of mental health and well-being, and in how the politics of self-esteem is played out in today’s US society and culture.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In both modern fiction and the biblical texts of 1 Samuel 13-2 Samuel 1, the character of Jonathan serves as a key literary and theological figure. Throughout In Search of Jonathan: Jonathan Between the Bible and Modern Fiction (Oxford UP, 2023), Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer interprets Jonathan's portrayal in traditional biblical literature and modern fiction. Each chapter provides first an analysis of Jonathan's characterization in 1-2 Samuel, followed by an examination of the depictions of Jonathan in modern fiction. Together, biblical and modern literature demonstrate how fictional retellings deepen and challenge the ways that scholars interpret Jonathan's character.Throughout the volume, Tiemeyer offers an interpretation of Jonathan as a plausible and psychologically consistent character while grappling with questions posed by his actions in the text. Tiemeyer asks, what kind of man is Jonathan who shows initiative and daring leadership ability, but who is also willing to lay down his crown before the usurper David's feet in humble submission? What kind of son is Jonathan who rebels against his father and takes David's part in the conflict between him and Saul, yet remains loyal to Saul until the bitter end on Mount Gilboa?To answer these questions, Tiemeyer considers depictions of Jonathan in modern fiction. Modern approaches, as Tiemeyer discusses, illuminate dormant yet integral aspects of the biblical texts. These modern retellings highlight, transform, and subvert the biblical portrayal of Jonathan. Posing these questions to the reader and other biblical scholars, Tiemeyer challenges the ways that scholars perceive Jonathan and his portrayals across biblical and modern literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Millions of GIs returned from overseas in 1945. A generation of men who had left their families and had learned to kill and to quickly dispatch sexual urges were rapidly reintegrated into civilian life, told to put the war behind them with cheer and confidence. Many veterans struggled, openly or privately, with this transition. Others in society wondered what the war had wrought in them. As Erin Lee Mock shows in this insightful book, the “explosive” potential of men became a central concern of postwar American culture.This wariness of veterans settled into a generalised anxiety over men’s “inherent” violence and hypersexuality, which increasingly came to define masculinity. Changed Men: Veterans in American Popular Culture after World War II (University of Virginia Press, 2024) by Dr. Erin Lee Mock engages with studies of film, media, literature, and gender and sexuality to advance a new perspective on the artistic and cultural output of and about the “Greatest Generation,” arguing that depictions of men’s violent and erotic potential emerged differently in different forms and genres but nonetheless permeated American culture in these years. Viewing this homecoming through the lenses of war and trauma, classical Hollywood, pulp fiction, periodical culture, and early television, Dr. Mock shows this history in a provocative new light.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In this episode, Alisa talks with Lewis H. Siegelbaum, who, along with J. Arch Getty, edited Reflections on Stalinism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2024), a collection of essays by twelve prominent scholars in the field who, after decades of study, reflect on the 'hows' and 'whys' of Stalinism as an authoritarian dictatorship determined to build a version of socialism in the Soviet Union at all costs. The conversation explores the impetus behind the collection and its development, thematic approaches to studying Stalinism, memories of traveling to Soviet archives, and even reflections on mortality.Other NBN episodes mentioned in this podcast include: Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile by Lewis H. Siegelbaum, hosted by Sean Guillory; Stuck on Communism: Memoir of a Russian Historian by Lewis H. Siegelbaum, hosted by Steven Seegel; To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans, hosted by Marshall Poe. Alisa Kuzmina is a PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota, specializing in Cultural Cold War history, with a focus on Soviet and American marriage policies and the social-cultural norms surrounding them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Nicholas Baer reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the "crisis of historicism" widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early twentieth century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema—The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Rhythm 21, The Holy Mountain, and Metropolis—Dr. Baer argues that films of the Weimar Republic lent vivid expression to the crisis of historical thinking. With their experiments in cinematic form and style, these modernist films revealed the capacity of the medium to engage with fundamental questions about the philosophy of history.Reconstructing the debates over historicism that unfolded during the initial decades of moving-image culture, Historical Turns proposes a more reflexive mode of historiography and expands the field of film and media philosophy. The book excavates a rich archive of ideas that illuminate our own moment of rapid media transformation and political, economic, and environmental crises around the globe.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java (Duke UP, 2023), Adam Bobbette tells the story of how modern theories of the earth emerged from the slopes of Indonesia's volcanoes. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, scientists became concerned with protecting the colonial plantation economy from the unpredictable bursts and shudders of volcanoes. Bobbette follows Javanese knowledge traditions, colonial geologists, volcanologists, mystics, Theosophists, orientalists, and revolutionaries to show how the earth sciences originate from a fusion of Western and non-Western cosmology, theology, anthropology, and geology. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and fieldwork at Javanese volcanoes and in scientific observatories, he explores how Indonesian Islam shaped the theory of plate tectonics, how Dutch colonial volcanologists learned to see the earth in new ways from Javanese spiritual traditions, and how new scientific technologies radically recast notions of the human body, distance, and the earth. In this way, Bobbette decenters the significance of Western scientists to expand our understanding of the evolution of planetary thought and rethinks the politics of geological knowledge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana UP, 2024) traces the surprising role of ethnography in French cinema in the 1960s and examines its place in several New Wave fictions and cinéma vérité documentaries during the final years of the French colonial empire. Focusing on prominent French filmmakers Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais, author Laure Astourian elucidates their striking pivot from centering their work on distant lands to scrutinizing their own French urban culture. As awareness of the ramifications of the shrinking empire grew within metropolitan France, these filmmakers turned inward what their similarly white, urban, bourgeois predecessors had long turned outward toward the colonies: the ethnographic gaze. Featuring some of the most canonical and best-loved films of the French tradition, such as Breathless and La Jetée, this is an essential book for readers interested in national identity and cinema.Here's the link to Astourian's essay on Jean Rouch's Moi, Un Noir discussed in the podcast.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history