New Books Network

Jonathan Cohen, poet, translator, and scholar of inter‑American literature who edited William Carlos Williams’s translations, introduces Williams’s unpublished English rendering of Luis Rechani Agrait’s political satire. The conversation traces the 1941 meeting in Puerto Rico, the archival discovery of Williams’s typescript, the missing third act mystery, and how translation shaped Williams’s bilingual poetics and cultural identity.

Alexandra Prokopenko, Carnegie fellow and former Kremlin adviser, offers perspective on Russia’s elite and institutions. Vladislav Gorin, Meduza journalist, brings on-the-ground reporting and analysis. They discuss how power was centralized under Putin. They explain mechanisms that silenced dissent and why elites stayed loyal. They consider mobilization, economic effects of the war, and possible post-Putin scenarios.

Mark Gallagher, screen scholar and author of Cosmosexuals, maps how male sex appeal is staged and circulated globally. He discusses historical stars, modern examples like Idris Elba and Pedro Pascal, and how race, accent, and performance shape international stardom. Short, sharp takes on spreadable charisma, exoticism, and the labor behind male screen sex appeal.

Thomas Aiello, a history and Africana studies professor who studies sports, race, and civil rights, tells how Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback unfolded in Atlanta. He explores Atlanta’s rising Black political power, Leroy Johnson’s deal-making role, and the spectacle and stakes of Ali vs. Jerry Quarry. The story links a short, dramatic fight to Ali’s rebirth and Atlanta’s ascent.

Max Telford, an evolutionary biologist at UCL and author of The Tree of Life, guides listeners through four billion years of life's branching history. He explains how modern genetics and old fossils map relationships, reveals surprising kinships like insects as crustaceans, and explores big questions from the origin of backbones to why humans lost tails.

Robert Yee, lecturer at Yale in ethics, politics, and economics and author of The City's Defense, studies the Bank of England's transformation after WWI. He traces its turn toward hiring economists, shaping gold‑standard debates, exporting central banking, and extending influence into industrial policy and exchange controls. The conversation follows how these moves bolstered sterling and London’s financial standing.

Tom Menger, a historian of imperial and trans-imperial history at the Munich Center for Global History, explores how British, German and Dutch colonial wars shared a common 'Colonial Way of War'. He traces trans-imperial transfers via soldiers, manuals and memoirs. The conversation covers racialization, punitive tactics like scorched earth and mass killing, mobility of military actors, and comparative cases including Herero and Aceh.

A cross-national look at how different kinds of experts shaped debates over same-sex marriage and parenting in the United States and France. Short scenes on battles over empirical research versus theoretical argument. Discussions of who gains credibility, including race, class, institutions, and the strategic use of personal testimony and religious translation.

Margaret Litvin, professor of Arabic literature and co-translator of Najati Sidqi’s memoir, discusses the book, its collaborative translation, and related research. She traces Sidqi’s hidden life as a Palestinian communist across Moscow, Paris, Spain, and North Africa. The conversation covers translational choices, archival mysteries, classroom origins of the project, and why the translation matters today.

Cush Rodríguez Moz, a Madrid-based journalist, writer, and photographer who covers environment, agriculture, and urbanism. He recounts visiting Villa Epecuén and how a travelogue became a personal essay. He explores ruins, preserved decay, the allure of disaster tourism, photographic process, and links between environmental and political decline.