The Harvard Brief

Jan 08 2025 495 ep. 60 mins 31

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Interviews with authors of Harvard UP books.

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S4E20 Cosmic Connections: A Conversation with Charles Taylor

Jan 08 2025 49 mins

This week on Madison’s Notes, we sit down with philosopher and author Charles Taylor to discuss his latest work, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment (Belknap Press, 2024) . Taylor dives into the profound role of poetry in reconnecting us to a sense of wonder and meaning in a world often characterized by disillusionment. Drawing on his vast expertise in phil

Nara Milanich, "Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father" (Harvard UP, 2019)

Jan 04 2025 69 mins

Nara Milanich’s Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father (Harvard University Press, 2019) explains how fatherhood, long believed to be impossible to know with certainty, became a biological “fact” that could be ascertained with scientific testing. Though the advent of DNA testing might seem to make paternity less elusive, Milanich’s book invites readers to think about pa

Mou Banerjee, "The Disinherited: The Politics of Christian Conversion in Colonial India" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Dec 11 2024 80 mins

An illuminating history of religious and political controversy in nineteenth-century Bengal, where Protestant missionary activity spurred a Christian conversion “panic” that indelibly shaped the trajectory of Hindu and Muslim politics. In 1813, the British Crown adopted a policy officially permitting Protestant missionaries to evangelize among the empire’s Indian subjects. Th

Osamah F. Khalil, "A World of Enemies: America's Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Nov 26 2024 77 mins

A sobering account of how the United States trapped itself in endless wars—abroad and at home—and what it might do to break free. Over the past half-century, Americans have watched their country extend its military power to what seemed the very ends of the earth. America’s might is felt on nearly every continent—and even on its own streets. Decades ago, the Wars on Drugs an

Harvey Whitehouse, "Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Nov 10 2024 42 mins

Each of us is endowed with an inheritance--a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights: driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it's failing us. We find ourselves hurtling

Alexis Peri, "Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence Between American and Soviet Women" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Oct 24 2024 73 mins

In the tense years of the early Cold War, American and Soviet women conducted a remarkable pen-pal correspondence that enabled them to see each other as friends rather than enemies. In a compelling new perspective on the early Cold War, prizewinning historian Alexis Peri explores correspondence between American and Soviet women begun in the last years of World War II and continuing

Andrew G. Walder, “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed” (Harvard UP, 2015)

Oct 18 2024 80 mins

"With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that 1949 was actually the beginning, not the end, of the Chinese revolution." Building from this premise, Andrew G. Walder's new book looks at the ways that China was transformed in the 1950s in order to understand why and how Mao's decisions and initiatives - among those of other leaders - had the effects that they did. Written for a br

Faisal Devji, "Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea" (Harvard UP, 2013)

Oct 04 2024 97 mins

Pakistan, founded less than a decade after a homeland for India's Muslims was proposed, is both the embodiment of national ambitions fulfilled and, in the eyes of many observers, a failed state. Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Harvard UP, 2013) cuts to the core of the geopolitical paradoxes entangling Pakistan to argue that India's rival has never been a nation-state in

Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, "Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Sep 25 2024 44 mins

Who runs Britain? In Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard UP, 2024), Aaron Reeves, and Sam Friedman, both Professors of Sociology at the London School of Economics, tell the story of the UK’s ruling class. The book blends a huge range of qualitative and quantitative data, and uses innovative sociological methods, to offer a historically informed und

Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Sep 21 2024 45 mins

In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation’s racial regime and learned to disregard them. The true significance of this hidden history has gone unseen—until now. The surprising catalyst occurred in the nineteenth cent