New Books in Intellectual History

Mar 09 2025 1000 ep. 58 mins 2.6k
New Books in Intellectual History Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Intellectual History about their New Books

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  Society & Culture  History
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Emma Borg and Sarah A. Fisher, "Meaning: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Mar 09 2025 66 mins  
Our ability to find meaning in things is one of the most important aspects of human life. But it is also one of the most mysterious. Where does meaning come from? What sorts of things have meaning? And how do we grasp the meaning others want to convey? This Very Short Introduction is shaped by exploring possible answers to these questions. Human societies have one particularly imp

Anthony Grafton, "Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Mar 08 2025 31 mins  
Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Harvard UP, 2023) is a revelatory new account of the magus―the learned magician―and his place in the intellectual, social, and cultural world of Renaissance Europe. In literary legend, Faustus is the quintessential occult personality of early modern Europe. The historical Faustus, however, was something quite different: a magus�

Ethan Kleinberg, "Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought" (Stanford UP, 2021)

Mar 08 2025 81 mins  
In this rich intellectual history of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic lectures in Paris, Ethan Kleinberg addresses Levinas's Jewish life and its relation to his philosophical writings while making an argument for the role and importance of Levinas's Talmudic lessons. Pairing each chapter with a related Talmudic lecture, Kleinberg uses the distinction Levina

Jeffrey A. Lenowitz, "Constitutional Ratification Without Reason" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Mar 04 2025 60 mins  
Constitutional Ratification Without Reason (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on constitutional ratification, the procedure in which a draft constitution is submitted by its creators to the people or their representatives in an up or down vote determining implementation. Ratification is increasingly common and routinely recommended by experts. Nonetheless, it is neither neutral nor inevitab

David N. Livingstone, "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Mar 02 2025 51 mins  
Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2024) traces the

Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Mar 02 2025 58 mins  
How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Successful workers were increasingly expected to show initiative and enthusiasm for change—not just to do their jobs reliably but to create new opportunities for themselves and for others. Our culture of work today is more demanding than e

Ellen Fenzel Arnold, "Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, C. 300-1100" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Mar 01 2025 53 mins  
Jana Byars talks to Ellen Arnold about Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, 300 - 1100 (Cambridge UP, 2024). Fishermen, monks, saints, and dragons met in medieval riverscapes; their interactions reveal a rich and complex world. Using religious narrative sources to evaluate the environmental mentalities of medieval communities, Ellen F. Arnold explores t

Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)

Feb 28 2025 71 mins  
White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao analyses premodern whiteness as operations of fragility, precarity and racialicity across bodily and nonsomatic figurations. The book argues that while whiteness participates in the history of racialisation in the late medieval West, it does not denote skin tone alone. The 'befor

Gregory Castle et al., "The Irish Bildungsroman" (Syracuse UP, 2025)

Feb 26 2025 71 mins  
The classical Bildungsroman charted an idealized path of human development—the harmonization of individual desires with societal norms in the formation of a well-rounded, liberal subject. But what happens when this Enlightenment blueprint for self-cultivation runs up against the particularities of a colonial society riven by nationalism, revolution, and uneven modernization? The

Religious Freedom: A Conversation on the Conservative Tradition with John D. Wilsey

Feb 26 2025 44 mins  
In this conversation, we sit down with John D. Wilsey, Professor of Church History and Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Senior Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, to tackle the urgent and often contentious topic of religious freedom in America. Drawing from his forthcoming book, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (William B. E