New Books Network

Jennifer Vail, a tribologist and author of Friction: A Biography, explores friction from ancient tools to nanoscale science. She traces historical figures like da Vinci, explains mechanisms in solids and fluids, and links friction to biomechanics, protein folding, space dynamics, and climate energy losses. She also covers lubrication history and surprising applications like curling.

Samuel Holley-Kline, an academic who studies the political economy and labor histories of archaeology in Mexico. He traces how El Tajín became an archaeological site through local industries, labor, and land changes. Topics include ties between oil and archaeology, vanilla’s violent labor history, custodios and administrativos, and what modern infrastructure reveals about the past.

Charlene Makeley, an anthropologist of Tibetan politics and state-building; Frank Biet, a cultural anthropologist-geographer of borders and sovereignty; and Lisa Min, an expert on visuality and North Korea. They explore redaction as method and form. They discuss multimodal experiments, workshops that shaped the book, visual design and printing challenges, ethical anonymization, and how censorship reshapes research and everyday life.

Janet Kintner, retired judge and author of a 2025 memoir, recounts breaking into a male‑dominated legal world. She talks about surviving abuse, law school hostility, pro bono work, brutal re‑election fights while pregnant, and life after the bench. Short, candid stories about resilience, courtroom battles, and balancing family with a pioneering career.

Edward G. Amoroso, founder and CEO of TAG Infosphere and former AT&T/Bell Labs technologist, shares lessons from evaluating hundreds of startups. He discusses why purpose beats product, how belief attracts early customers, patterns that predict scale, ethics versus hype, and practical tactics for moving from early adopters to the mass market.

Sunny Dhillon, former Canadian reporter turned memoirist, writes candid letters to his daughter about growing up brown in Canada. He discusses his viral resignation essay, choosing an epistolary form, childhood shame around name and language, and why he refuses to hide his identity anymore. The conversation mixes sharp humor, honest reflection, and the politics of visibility.

David McCrone, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, reflects on five decades of Scotland’s social and political shifts. He discusses changing migration patterns, the loosening of the wartime-welfare bond, evolving class identity after deindustrialization, the referendum decade’s effect on political alignments, and how civil society shapes national belonging.

Anny-Dominique Curtius, Professor of Francophone Studies specializing in Caribbean literatures and memory. Jacqueline Couti, Laurence H. Favrot Professor of French focused on French Caribbean gender and sexuality. They trace transoceanic entanglements across the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific. They discuss ocean as method, archival unsettlement, performance and embodied praxes, and ecological and migration-related harms.

Andrew Monaghan, a St Antony's College academic and Chatham House Russia specialist, explains how modern Russian military thought blends classical theory with geopolitics. He discusses Russia's shift from 'hybrid' tactics to conventional war, its mobilization mindset, debates after the Ukraine invasion, and long‑range geoeconomic strategies toward 2030. The conversation highlights misconceptions and calls for closer strategic study.

Itohan I. Osayimwese, professor of architectural and urban history who studies Sub-Saharan Africa, discusses how colonial collectors dismembered and dispersed African building parts to Western museums. She traces violent removals from Dendera to Great Zimbabwe and Benin. She examines how labeling architectural fragments as ornament erased their function and argues for renaming, restitution, and new museum roles.