Alongside their collective acumen in traditional historical-critical and social-scientific approaches to the New Testament, James Crossley and Robert J. Myles bring a worthwhile dose of historical materialist criticism to historical Jesus scholarship in Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict (Zero Books/John Hunt Publishing, 2023). And while the Jesus they reconstruct from the various sources available for analysis may not evolve him into a Marxist or a modern socialist, Crossley and Myles regard the evidence for deprivation among the Judean/Galilean peasantry too significant to ignore, such that “revolutionary millenarianism” takes hold among these lower classes who yearned for a great reversal of material conditions and fortunes under a soon-to-be-revealed theocratic reign installing the “Jesus party” (that they occasionally, in a nod to the traditions of Marxist scholarship, refer to as a politburo) atop the forthcoming kingdom of God. This pair of scholars joined the New Books Network recently to discuss their “historical materialist Jesus” and their fresh contributions—from Jesus’s “mission to the rich” to his “preferential option for death”—to the ongoing quest to sift reliable historical data about the earliest Jesus movement from the outwardly theological gospels that remain our best sources for his life.James Crossley (Ph.D., University of Nottingham, 2002) is Professor of Religion, Politics and Culture at MF Oslo and the Academic Director of the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM). He has published widely on Christian origins and religion in English political history, including Spectres of John Ball: The Peasants’ Revolt in English Political History, 1381–2020 (Equinox, 2022).Robert J. Myles (Ph.D., University of Auckland, 2013) is Senior Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Divinity in Australia. Originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, he is currently Executive Editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. Among his publications are The Homeless Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014) and the edited volume Class Struggle in the New Testament (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2019).Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, please see his website at https://www.robheaton.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to twenty-first-century readers.We find ourselves in an era when the moment is ripe for a reevaluation of the life and the works of one of the twentieth century's greatest authors. This is the first twenty-first-century biography on George Orwell, with special recognition to D. J. Taylor's stature as an award-winning biographer and Orwellian.Using new sources that are now available for the first time, we are tantalizingly at the end of the lifespan of Orwell's last few contemporaries, whose final reflections are caught in this book. The way we look at a writer and his canon has changed even over the course of the last two decades; there is a post-millennial prism through which we must now look for such a biography to be fresh and relevant. This is what Orwell: The New Life (Pegasus Books, 2023) achieves.Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

As the last few months of landmark Supreme Court decisions have showcased, Clarence Thomas is one of the most important men in America. To wrap up our Summer of Law series, Judge Amul Thapar discusses his recent book, The People's Justice: Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that Define Him (Regnery Publishing, 2023), digging into Justice Thomas's judicial legacy and some of his most interesting, influential, and surprising decisions.Amul Thapar is serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He became the first South Asian Article III judge in American history when President George W. Bush nominate him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, where he then also served as the United States Attorney. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee.If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy his most recent speech at the Madison Program.Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, India, where she had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati Anavil Brahmin family. Her academic brilliance won her a scholarship to Bombay University, where the first heady taste of freedom in the big city led to tragic consequences—seduction by a fellow student whom she was then compelled to marry. In a failed attempt to end this disastrous first marriage, she converted to Christianity.A scholarship to America in 1955 launched her on her long journey to liberation from the burdens and constraints of her life in India. With a growing self-awareness and transformation at many levels, she made a new life for herself, met and married the celebrated economist Jagdish Bhagwati, became a mother, and rose to academic eminence at Harvard and Columbia.How did she navigate the tumultuous road to assimilation in American society and culture? And what did she retain of her Indian upbringing in the process? This brave and moving memoir—Breaking Out--written with a novelist's skill at evoking personalities, places, and atmosphere, and a scholar's insights into culture and society, community, and family—tells a compelling and thought-provoking human story that will resonate with readers everywhere.Padma Desai is Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems and Director, Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the most significant American political thinkers of the twentieth century. This volume collects 24 of his essays and speeches on international themes, spanning the years 1900-1956. These key texts reveal Du Bois's distinctive approach to the problem of empire and demonstrate his continued importance in our current global context. The volume charts the development of Du Bois's anti-imperial thought, drawing attention to his persistent concern with the relationship between democracy and empire and illustrating the divergent inflections of this theme in the context of a shifting geopolitical terrain; unprecedented political crises, especially during the two world wars; and new opportunities for transnational solidarity. With a critical introduction and extensive editorial notes, W.E.B. Du Bois: International Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2022) conveys both the coherence and continuity of Du Bois's international thought across his long life and the tremendous range and variety of his preoccupations, intellectual sources, and interlocutors.Adom Getachew is Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago.Jennifer Pitts is Professor of Political Science and in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In April 2014, David Bromwich spoke at the Institute about his forthcoming book, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence (Harvard UP, 2014). Bromwich is a professor of English at Yale University, and the author of studies of Hazlitt and Wordsworth.While Edmund Burke is commonly seen as the father of modern conservatism, Bromwich argues that he was a more subtle and interesting thinker. Burke defended the rights of disenfranchised minorities, protested against the cruelties of English society, and agitated for peace with America.Since 1977, the New York Institute for the Humanities has brought together distinguished scholars, writers, artists, and publishing professionals to foster crucial discussions around the public humanities. For more information and to support the NYIH, visit nyihumanities.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Joseph F. Smith was born in 1838 to Hyrum Smith and Mary Fielding Smith. Six years later both his father and his uncle, Joseph Smith Jr., the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were murdered in Carthage, Illinois. The trauma of that event remained with Joseph F. for the rest of his life, affecting his personal behavior and public tenure in the highest tiers of the LDS Church, including the post of president from 1901 until his death in 1918. Joseph F. Smith laid the theological groundwork for modern Mormonism, especially the emphasis on temple work. This contribution was capped off by his "revelation on the redemption of the dead," a prophetic glimpse into the afterlife. Taysom's book traces the roots of this vision, which reach far more deeply into Joseph F. Smith's life than other scholars have previously identified.In Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith (U of Utah Press, 2023), Stephen C. Taysom uses previously unavailable primary source materials to craft a deeply detailed, insightful story of a prominent member of a governing and influential Mormon family. Importantly, Taysom situates Smith within the historical currents of American westward expansion, rapid industrialization, settler colonialism, regional and national politics, changing ideas about family and masculinity, and more. Though some writers tend to view the LDS Church and its leaders through a lens of political and religious separatism, Taysom does the opposite, pushing Joseph F. Smith and the LDS Church closer to the centers of power in Washington, DC, and elsewhere.Joseph Stuart is a scholar of African American history, particularly of the relationship between race, freedom rights, and religion in the twentieth century Black Freedom Movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Today’s book is: Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult, published by Algonquin Books, and written by Michelle Dowd. Forager is a memoir which showcases Michelle’s life growing up on an isolated mountain in California as part of an apocalyptic cult, and how she found her way out of poverty and illness by drawing on the gifts of the wilderness.Our guest is: Michelle Dowd, who is a journalism professor and contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The LA Book Review, TIME Magazine, The Alpinist, ORION, LA Parent Mag, Catapult, and other publications. She was 2022 Faculty Lecturer of the Year at Chaffey College, where she founded the award-winning literary journal The Chaffey Review, advises Student Media, and teaches poetry and critical thinking in the California Institutions for Men and Women in Chino. She was a Longreads Top 5 for her article on the relationship between environmentalism and hope in The Alpinist, nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and her Modern Love column in The New York Times inspired a book contract. Michelle was raised on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest where she learned to identify flora and fauna, navigate by the stars, forage for edible plants, and care for the earth. She is the author of Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult. Learn more about her at https://www.michelledowd.org/Our show host and producer is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She has continuously served as the show host and producer of the Academic Life podcast since she launched it in 2020. Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of the New Books Network.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: This Time magazine article on growing up in a cult and survival skills Becoming the Writer You Already Are, by Michelle Boyd The Lost Journals of Sacajawea, by Debra Magpie Earling The Business of Being a Writer, by Jane Friedman We Are Too Many: A Memoir, by Hannah Pittard The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas, by Hanne Strager Writing with Pleasure, by Helen Sword Welcome to Academic Life: The podcast for your academic journey and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it means to live an academic life. If you’d like to further support the show, please consider enjoying your morning coffee in an Academic Life mug. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

After being forgotten for nearly 130 years, the “Mother of Suffrage in Missouri” and her husband are finally taking their rightful place in history.St. Louisans Virginia and Francis Minor forever changed the direction of women’s rights by taking the issue to the Supreme Court for the first and only time in 1875, a feat never eclipsed even by their better-known peers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.Yet despite a myriad of accomplishments and gaining notoriety in their own time, the Minors’ names have largely faded from memory. In 1867, Virginia founded the nation’s first organization solely dedicated to women’s suffrage—two years before Anthony formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). Virginia and Francis were also the brains behind the groundbreaking idea that women were given the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, a philosophy the NWSA adopted for nearly a decade.And their story doesn’t end there. After the court case, Francis went on to become a prolific writer on women’s rights and one of the first and strongest male allies of the suffrage movement. Virginia instigated tax revolts across the country and campaigned side-by-side with Anthony for women’s rights in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.America's Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor (Two Dot Books, 2023) is the first biography of these suffrage celebrities who were unique for their time in being jointly dedicated to the cause of female enfranchisement. This book follows their lives from slave-holding Virginians through their highly-lauded civilian work during the Civil War, and into the height of the early suffrage movement to show how two ordinary people of like mind, dedicated to a cause, can change the course of history.Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College. @JaneScimeca1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Howard Fishman's To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton, 2023) is a fascinating hybrid biography that weaves together Fishman's own odyssey of research with the surprising life story he uncovers. Connie Converse was a gifted songwriter whose music came to public notice more than fifty years after it was recorded. Her album How Sad, How Lovely has taken its place alongside albums by rediscovered artists like Karen Dalton, Kath Bloom, and Sibylle Baier. In Converse's case, though, it was not only her music that disappeared. Following a series of personal and professional crises, Converse drove away from her home in Ann Arbor, never to be heard from again. When Fishman visited Ann Arbor to meet Converse's brother, he was shown an archive of several filing cabinets that revealed Converse as much more than a singer and guitarist. She composed art songs, song cycles, and operas. She was also managing editor at the Journal for Conflict Studies and authored a pioneering analysis of structural racism. To Anyone Who Ever Asks gives us a fuller portrait of Converse than has ever before been available, even as it reveals the many gaps that remain in her story.Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography