Princeton UP Ideas Podcast
New Books Network
A series of interviews with authors of new books from Princeton University Press
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 9, 2016 • 33min
Robert Holub, “Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism” (Princeton UP, 2016)
In Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2016), Robert Holub, Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor of German at Ohio State University, evaluates the debate over whether famed German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was an anti-Semite. Holub distinguishes between political anti-Semitism of nineteenth-century Germany, and more general anti-Jewish...
May 1, 2016 • 1h 4min
Duncan Pritchard, “Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing” (Princeton UP, 2016)
Many are introduced to philosophy by way of a confrontation with the kind of radical skepticism associated with Rene Descartes: Might I right now be dreaming? Might everything I think I know be the product of some grand deception perpetrated by a malevolent demon? Today, many philosophers seems simply to...
Apr 29, 2016 • 43min
John M. Efron, “German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic” (Princeton UP, 2016)
In German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton University Press, 2016), John M. Efron, Koret Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Berkeley, examines the special allure Sephardic aesthetics held for German Jewry. Efron provides us with an account of how German Jews saw Sephardim as...
Apr 20, 2016 • 41min
David Grazian, “American Zoo: A Sociological Safari” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociological Safari(Princeton, 2015), ethnographer David Grazian tracks the competing missions of zoos as site of education, entertainment, philanthropy, and work. Grazian coins the term nature...
Apr 18, 2016 • 57min
Jefferson Cowie, “The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics” (Princeton UP, 2016)
Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His book The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 2016) interprets the New Deal as a massive but unstable experiment from the main of American political culture. Against arguments...
Mar 2, 2016 • 1h 16min
Justin E. H. Smith, “Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking...
Feb 24, 2016 • 58min
James D. Stein, “L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and Mathematics in the City of Angels” (Princeton UP, 2016)
Romance. Crime. Mathematics. These things do not go together. Or do they? James D. Stein thinks they do, and he admirably shows us how in his wonderful collection of stories L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and Mathematics in the City of Angels (Princeton University Press, 2016). Jim’s a mathematician, but don’t...
Feb 24, 2016 • 20min
Adam Seth Levine, “American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Adam Seth Levine has written American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction (Princeton University Press, 2015). Levine teaches in the Department of Government at Cornell University. If we have learned anything about American politics over the last several months, it is that there are a lot of...
Jan 19, 2016 • 1h 5min
Ron Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes, as with the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, they are accompanied by a flood of discussion and debate. Other times they are allowed to pass in silence. The hundredth year anniversary of the Genocide of the Armenians has gotten somewhat...
Jan 5, 2016 • 58min
Lynn Gamwell, “Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Today I’m talking with Lynn Gamwell about Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History (Princeton University Press, 2015). This book is a breathtaking combination of scholarship and beauty, tracing the interplay of mathematics and art throughout mankind’s history, East and West. Gamwell is a lecturer in the history of mathematics and...
