Princeton UP Ideas Podcast
New Books Network
A series of interviews with authors of new books from Princeton University Press
Episodes
Mentioned books
Aug 16, 2015 • 1h 7min
Leah Wright Rigueur, “The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Leah Wright Rigueur is an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her book The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton University Press, 2015) examines how the Grand Old Party of Lincoln lost its position as the home...
Aug 10, 2015 • 1h 5min
James Turner, “Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities” (Princeton UP, 2014)
James Turner is Cavanaugh Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at Notre Dame University. His book Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2014) recovers the significance of philology, the study of language, that for centuries was synonymous with humanistic intellectual life. Turner provides a detailed and fascinating...
Jul 24, 2015 • 1h 9min
Derek Sayer, “Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History” (Princeton UP 2013)
Prague, according to Derek Sayer, is the place “in which modernist dreams have time and again unraveled.” In this sweeping history of surrealism centered on Prague as both a physical location and the “magic capital” in the imagination of leading surrealists such as Andre Breton and Paul Aluard, Sayer takes...
Jun 23, 2015 • 42min
Madeline Y. Hsu, “The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority” (Princeton UP, 2015)
With high educational and professional attainment, Asian Americans are often portrayed as the “Model Minority” in popular media. This portrayal, though, is widely panned by academics and activists who claim that it lacks nuance. Madeline Y. Hsu, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin, provides such nuance through here historical...
May 1, 2015 • 1h 3min
Jason Stanley, “How Propaganda Works” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Propaganda names a familiar collection of phenomena, and examples of propaganda are easy to identify, especially when one examines the output of totalitarian states. In those cases, language and imagery are employed for the purpose of shaping mass opinion, forming group allegiances, constructing worldviews, and securing compliance. It is undeniable...
Apr 26, 2015 • 59min
Andrew Needham, “Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest” (Princeton UP, 2014)
Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living...
Apr 24, 2015 • 56min
Michael Gorra, “The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany” (Princeton UP, 2006)
Despite being Germany’s most famous literary lion, in 1786 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had to jump on a mail coach incognito to begin his travels to Italy (of course, he asked permission first from his patron the duke Karl August). InThe Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany (Princeton University...
Apr 6, 2015 • 56min
Lital Levy, “Poetic Trespass: Writing Between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine” (Princeton UP, 2014)
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Jewish settlement in Palestine and the revival of Hebrew as a national language have profoundly impacted the relationship between Arabic and Hebrew. In a highly contentious political environment, the two languages have been identified with opposing national movements – Hebrew associated with Jews...
Mar 18, 2015 • 53min
Michelle Nickerson, “Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right” (Princeton UP, 2012)
Recently, historians have shown that the modern conservative movement is older and more complex than has often been assumed by either liberals or historians. Michelle Nickerson‘s book, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton University Press, 2012) expands that literature even further, demonstrating not only the longer roots of...
Mar 17, 2015 • 28min
Bill T. Jones, “Story/Time: The Life of An Idea” (Princeton UP, 2014)
When does a dance become a book? How does choreography lend itself to the page? What discontents exist in theorizing performance that are best explored through the written word? And how does one distill the hours of embodied practice into 100 or so pages of a tightly packaged and beautifully...
