New Books in Early Modern History

Apr 11 2025 1302 ep. 57 mins 372
New Books in Early Modern History Podcast artwork

Interviews with scholars of the Early Modern World about the new books

  History
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Katherine Ngo, "Unlocking the Treasury: Elementary Learning for Boys in Qing China" (Lever Press, 2025)

Apr 11 2025 70 mins  
How did young boys in premodern China learn? What educational texts did they use? What values informed their education? Katherine Ngo’s new book Unlocking the Treasury: Elementary Learning for Boys in Qing China (Lever Press, 2025) explores these questions through a focus on a Qing-dynasty textbook: Treasury of Elementary Learning (Youxue qionglin 幼學瓊林). One of the most p

Bin Yang, "Discovered But Forgotten: The Maldives in Chinese History, C. 1100-1620" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Apr 10 2025 41 mins  
Chinese travelers first made their way to the Maldives in the Indian Ocean in the 14th century, looking for goods like coconuts, cowries, and ambergris. That started centuries of travel to the islands, including one trip by famed sailor Zheng He. Then, quickly, the Maldives—and the broader Indian Ocean—vanished as Ming China turned inward. Bin Yang writes about these linkages b

Roland Mayer, "The Ruins of Rome: A Cultural History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Apr 09 2025 76 mins  
The beguiling ruins of Rome have a long history of allure. They first engaged the attention of later mediaeval tourists, just as they do today. The interest of travellers was captured in the Renaissance by artists, architects, topographers, antiquarians, archaeologists and writers. Once the ruins were seen to appeal to visitors, and to matter for their aesthetic quality, their prot

Richard Alfred Muller, "Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024)

Apr 08 2025 31 mins  
In Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024), Dr. Richard A. Muller delves into one of the most controversial doctrines of Reformed Theology: predestination. Muller carefully investigates key incidents that illustrate the doctrine's complexity and development by surveying Reformed thought on predestination in the sixteenth and seventeenth c

Loretta Vandi, "Eufrasia Burlamacchi" (Getty Publications, 2025)

Apr 07 2025 47 mins  
Eufrasia Burlamacchi (Getty Publications, 2025) by Dr. Loretta Vandi is a timely exploration of the skilful illuminated manuscripts of Sister Eufrasia Burlamacchi (1478–1548) demonstrates her artistry within this sometime neglected artistic medium. Within the convent walls of San Domenico in Lucca where she lived and worked, Burlamacchi attained high levels of artistic proficienc

Eli Rubin, "Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Apr 06 2025 76 mins  
In Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (Stanford University Press, 2025), Eli Rubin provides a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of Chabad Hasidism through the Kabbalistic concept of ṣimṣum. The onset of modernity, Eli Rubin argues, was heralded by this startling idea: existence itself is predicated on a self-infli

Patrick Wallis, "The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Apr 05 2025 59 mins  
Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth i

Sinem Arcak Casale, "Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Mar 31 2025 71 mins  
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi’ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in

Yaron Ayalon, "Ottoman Jewry: Leadership, Charity, and Literacy" (Brill, 2024)

Mar 30 2025 43 mins  
Those of us who have some background in Jewish history are taught that the Ottoman Empire encouraged Jews, particularly those of the Spanish and Portuguese Expulsions, to settle in Ottoman Lands. In Ottoman Jewry: Leadership, Charity, and Literacy (Brill, 2024), Professor Ayalon debunks what he calls that myth. The Ottomans, according to Yaron, were interested in stability - econo

Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Mar 29 2025 52 mins  
Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterlife. But, as Dr. Rune Nyord shows in Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife (University of Chicago Press, 2025), even today, our understanding of the Egyptian afterlife has been formulated t