New Books Network

Betty Boyd Caroli, historian and author known for biographies and women's history, tells the story of Mary K. Simkhovitch, a pioneering settlement-house leader and public housing advocate. She traces Greenwich House, European influences on housing ideas, Simkhovitch’s role in New Deal public housing, and the lasting relevance of her reform work to today’s housing debates.

Saundra Weddle, professor of architecture who studies women's lives in early modern Italy, explores Venice's sex trade and its place in the city's urban fabric. She maps where sex work happened, traces networks of workers, procuresses, clients and landlords, and shows how everyday streets, bathhouses, gondola landings and taverns shaped mobility and social life.

Olivia Weisser, a history professor who studies medicine and early modern patient experiences, explores the lived world of the dreaded pox in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London. She traces hidden voices through recipe books and trade cards. Topics include stigma and visibility, who sold and used cures, domestic treatments, and how the pox shaped courts and urban life.

David Cleevely, British entrepreneur and chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, explains how to design environments that increase luck. He describes connectors, weak ties, and the rule of three. He contrasts physical hubs with online spaces, argues for kindness and deliberate networking, and explores practical tactics, time budgets, and limits of AI in fostering serendipitous innovation.

LiLi Johnson, Assistant Professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at Dalhousie University and author of Technologies of Kinship, explores how bureaucracy, photography, digital platforms, and genetic testing shape Asian American family-making. She discusses archival discoveries like paper families, transnational matchmaking, referral photos in adoption, online dating/donor markets, and the rise of genetic intimacy.

Brahim El Guabli, Associate Professor of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins, traces Saharanism—the idea that deserts are empty, exploitable, and dangerous. He discusses how that imaginary shapes borders, extraction, migration, and so-called sacrifice zones. He also explores literary and ethical alternatives that reframe deserts as living, cared-for worlds.

Rix Wutstra, architectural researcher studying corporate archives and extraction economies. Ewan Harrison, architectural historian focused on West African built environments. They trace the United Africa Company’s everyday 'grey architecture', archival methods and sampling, coastal trading posts and port infrastructure, timber and commodity flows, advertising architecture, and the company’s role in shaping urban modernity.

Bram de Maeyer, historian of diplomatic architecture, explores Belgium’s purpose-built embassies from 1945–2020. He traces why and how embassies were built, the push-and-pull with host authorities, design shifts toward generic styles, and embassies’ roles as national billboards, income sources, and contested interiors. The conversation surveys case studies and archival challenges.

Duy Lap Nguyen, Associate Professor in World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston, reinterprets Walter Benjamin as a coherent thinker. He traces Benjamin’s historical materialism, contrasts it with Kantian progress, and explores critiques of capitalist timelessness. The conversation touches on phantasmagoria, honoring the anonymous, and the relevance of Benjamin’s ideas for today’s politics and technology.

Misty L. Heggeness, an economist and co-director of the Kansas Population Center, uses pop stars like Taylor Swift to show how women reshape the economy. She discusses women reinventing careers, fans and social media as economic power, hidden unpaid care work, and practical reforms and networks that help women thrive. The conversation blends data, culture, and clear policy ideas.