New Books in World Affairs
Kanaal Besonderhede
New Books in World Affairs
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000...
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1884 episodes
How Authoritarians Exploit Gender
Gender is becoming a central battleground in contemporary authoritarian politics, but how do autocrats manipulate these debates to their own advantage...
On Trump as a “World Historical Individual” with author John B. Judis
The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel “viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval,” the author John B. Judis wrote in a recent essa...
Nana Osei-Opare, "Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of c...
Stephen G. Brooks, "The Political Economy of Security" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In his new book, The Political Economy of Security (Princeton University Press, 2026), Stephen Brooks provides a systematic empirical and theoretical...
A Year of Autocratization: Steep Declines in Democracy Registered in 2025 V-Dem Report
This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Rachel Beatty Riedl speaks with Kenneth Roberts and Paul Friesen, democracy experts at Cornell University, to u...
Sidra Hamidi, "After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Nuclear status is typically treated as a stable feature of a state's capacity to possess, use, or build nuclear weapons. Challenging this view, After...
Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, "The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late" (Verso Books, 2025)
A scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster, by the bestselling authors of Overshoot
The world is cro...
Our Age of War: A Discussion with Author Robert Pape
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, has been writing about war for decades, including in his book Bombing to Win: Air Pow...
Jeff Knopf et al., "Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its population would cross a red line that would req...
Understanding Iran Under Attack: A Discussion with Author Vali Nasr
Eleven days into the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, starting on Feb. 28, 2026, I speak with Vali Nasr, a renowned analyst of Iran. He...
Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)
In this episode, I am in conversation with Dr Christiane Tristl, an economic geographer interested in heterodox economic geography. Their scholarship...
Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework r...
Nicholas Beuret, "Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition" (Verso, 2025)
The push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Existing policies won’t limit global h...
David L. Eng, "Reparations and the Human" (Duke UP, 2025)
The Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invoked in graphic terms the specter of total human destruction. In response, a new in...
Allison Carnegie and Richard Clark, "Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Populist leaders around the world increasingly reject international organizations, decrying them as constraints on state power and rallying followers...
Christine Loh, "Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2018)
There can be little doubt that Hong Kong has stood out as a particularly intense East Asian news hotspot in recent years. Whether reports have focused...
Aaron Donaghy, "The Second Cold War: Carter, Reagan, and the Politics of Foreign Policy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into...
Jie-Hyun Lim, "Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Nationalism today depends on the perception of victimhood. The historical memory of past suffering endows nationalist movements with political legitim...
Trump, the UN Charter, and the Strange Politics of International Law
International law scholars are often among the sharpest critics of the Trump administration—but what if the usual story misses something essential? In...
Agustín Santella and Adrián Piva, "Marxism, Social Movements and Collective Action" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Marxists have an obvious interest in understanding social movements. Less obvious, even with the voluminous theoretical archives at hand, is how to pu...
Sugata Bose, "Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century" (Harvard UP, 2024)
The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia...
Lys Kulamadayil, "Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law" (Bloomsbury 2025)
In Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law (Bloomsbury 2025), Lys Kulamadayil offers a crucial examination of how international la...
Competing Visions for International Order
Are we living in an era of competing international orders? A new book, entitled Competing Visions for International Order: Challenges for a Shared Dir...
Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium" (MIT Press, 2026)
A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainabi...
Peter S. Goodman, "Davos Man: How the Billionaire Class Devoured Democracy" (Custom House, 2022)
Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-membe...
Florian Wagner, "Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Today I talked to Florian Wagner about his new book Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982 (Cambridge UP, 2022).
...
Jon R. Lindsay "Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025)
At the heart of cybersecurity lies a paradox: Cooperation makes conflict possible. In Age of Deception (Cornell University Press 2025), Jon R. Lindsay...
Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Human geography offers answers to some of the most important challenges of our time. To understand contemporary struggles over global economic inequal...
Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, "China and the Global Economic Order" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
China and the Global Economic Order (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines China's evolving relations with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs),...
Luca Cottini, "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powe...
Bradley R. Simpson, "The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The idea of self-determination is one of the most significant in modern international politics. For more than a century diplomats, lawyers, scholars,...
Joseph Maiolo and Laura Robson, "The League of Nations" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Laura Robson and Joe Maiolo challenge histories of the League of Nations that present it as a meaningful if flawed experiment in global governance in ...
Richard A. Falk and Hans von Sponeck, "Liberating the United Nations: Realism with Hope" (Stanford UP, 2024)
The United Nations (UN) has always loomed large in international conflicts, but today accepted wisdom declares that the organization has lost its way....
Yunus Emre Ozigci, "NATO’s Meaning and Existence: Within the Interstate Intersubjectivity" (Vernon Press, 2026)
NATO’s Meaning and Existence: Within the Interstate Intersubjectivity (Vernon Press, 2026) a forthcoming 2026 book by Yunus Emre Ozigci, offers a deep...
Laurie Parsons, "Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown" (Manchester UP, 2023)
Climate change is devastating the planet, and globalisation is hiding it. Laurie Parsons's book Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate...
Ines Prodöhl, "Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950" (Routledge, 2023)
Ines Prodöhl’s Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900-1950 (Routledge, 2023) is a history of how, why, and where the soybean...
Gonzalo Lizarralde, "Unnatural Disasters: Why Most Responses to Risk and Climate Change Fail But Some Succeed" (Columbia UP, 2021)
Unnatural Disasters: Why Most Responses to Risk and Climate Change Fail But Some Succeed (Columbia UP, 2021) offers a new perspective on our most pres...
Kerry Gottlich, "From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences? From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality ...
Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich, "The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air" (Yale UP, 2025)
The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air (Yale UP, 2025) by Dr. Bruno J. Strasser and Dr. Thomas Schlich presents a history of masks protecting agains...
Harold James, "Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization" (Yale UP, 2023)
In Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization (Yale UP, 2023), distinguished economic historian Harold James offers a fresh perspect...