New Books Network

Lesley Chamberlain, novelist and historian who has long studied Russia, discusses her new novel The Mozhaisk Road. She traces 1978 Moscow through dissidents, invented apparatchiks, and Western reporters. Short scenes explore rumors of collapse, private political talk, and symbolic acts like a bulldozed outdoor art show. The conversation evokes nostalgia for Moscow’s cultural contradictions.

Professor Simon Devereaux, historian of capital punishment, explores how England transformed brutal public executions between 1660 and 1900. He traces urbanization, changing elite sensibilities, the Murder Act, anatomy laws, and the move of executions from public squares into prisons. Short, vivid scenes of ritual, crowd dynamics, and legal change bring the story to life.

Jenny Banh, Professor of Asian American Studies and Anthropology at CSU Fresno and author of Fantasies of Hong Kong Disneyland, explores the clash of Disney, China, and Hong Kong. She recounts long-term fieldwork on labor and space. Discussion covers localization attempts like feng shui and menu changes, tensions in park crowding and queuing, unequal development deals, and why Ocean Park resonates more locally.

Kimberley Johnson, a political scientist who studies urban politics, discusses Black Power Urbanism and its local roots. She traces its rise in Newark, East Palo Alto, Oakland, and East Orange. The conversation focuses on housing, education, and policing. Johnson highlights how community control and local strategies reshaped urban governance and left lasting legacies.

Edward Dimendberg, Professor of the Humanities at UC Irvine and editor of the new book on Richard Neutra, discusses the making of the Lovell Health House. He covers Neutra’s technical innovations like the steel frame and glass walls. He explores the house’s health-driven design, its role in Los Angeles modernism, and its later restoration and private ownership.

Kong Pheng Pha, interdisciplinary scholar and UW–Madison professor studying Hmong and Southeast Asian gender and sexuality. He dismantles the myth of Hmong hyperheterosexuality. He links legal cases, marriage bills, and media to racialized sexual narratives. He explores queer Hmong spiritualities, youth interviews, vernacular activism, and arts-based freedom dreaming.

Matteo Gatti, a Harvard Law professor and scholar of corporate governance, explores how firms act like governments. He breaks corporate governing into socioeconomic advocacy and government substitution. He covers investor and ESG pressures, workplace-driven change, conservative backlash, and risks to democracy when corporations replace public institutions.

Erika Quinn, historian and author of This Horrible Uncertainty, draws on Vera Conrad’s wartime diaries to explore grief, ambiguous loss, and emotional life in wartime Germany. She discusses how diary-keeping created multiple selves, the pressures of Nazi emotional norms, rural visibility, and issues of complicity and memory. The conversation weaves archival discovery with history of emotions and psychological frameworks.

Bradley R. Simpson, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies who wrote The First Right, traces a century of competing meanings of self-determination. He explores decolonization, indigenous and regional movements, UN debates, and economic sovereignty. The conversation highlights how grassroots claims and great-power politics shaped global order in surprising, contested ways.

Nena Vandeweerdt, historian of late medieval and early modern cities, explores women’s economic roles in Brabant and Biscay. She probes craft guilds, household economies, taxation records, and municipal regulation. Comparative cases like a Bilbao grain broker reveal how institutions made some women's work visible while others stayed hidden.