The 2 Best New Books in History Podcast Episodes
1) Steven Seegel, "Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Steven Seegel’s Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is an insightful contribution to the history of map maki...Show More
AUDIO REMOVED: The podcast creator has removed the audio for this episode.2) Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement” (NYU Press, 2013)
The historiography of the southern Civil Rights Movement has long focused on the tactic of non-violence. With only a few notable exceptions, most scholarship locates the use of armed self-defense and ...Show More
AUDIO REMOVED: The podcast creator has removed the audio for this episode.3) Angelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018)
The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian(Harvard University Press, 2018), Angel...Show More
4) Becky M. Nicolaides, "The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The adoption of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965, triggered a wave of immigration to the U.S. not seen since before the First World War. But these newcomers were now far less likely to have come from Europ...Show More
5) Martyn Whittock, "Vikings in the East: From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – The Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine" (Biteback, 2025)
In Western Europe, we typically associate Vikings with the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, the deep Scandinavian fjords and the attacks on the monasteries and settlements ...Show More
6) Peter D. Blackmer, "Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers" (UVA Press, 2025)
Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers (UVA Press, 2025) explores the local dynamics, national connections, and global context of the Black fre...Show More
7) The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit
As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from th...Show More
8) Lorenzo Castellani, "Alberto Beneduce, Mussolini's Technocrat: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions in Fascist Italy" (Routledge, 2025)
Should "good" people work for authoritarians? Does their implicit endorsement do more harm than their replacement by someone potentially worse? This was a common debate during Donald Trump's first ter...Show More
9) David Stasavage, "The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today" (Princeton UP, 2020)
Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today (Princeton University ...Show More
10) Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton UP, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable...Show More