Alfrid Bustanov and Vener Usmanov, "Muslim Subjectivity in Soviet Russia" (Brill, 2022)
The world as seen by a Qur’an specialist in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. Alfrid Bustanov and Vener Usmanov's book Muslim Subjectivity in Soviet Russia (Brill, 2022) tells a dramatic story o...
10 Apr 20231h 5min
The Gospel According to Dorothy (with Kathryn Wehr)
In 1941, Dorothy Sayers, Christian apologist, author of The Mind of the Maker, and even more famous for her Peter Whimsey mystery novels, wrote a cycle of plays on the life, death, and resurrection of...
6 Apr 20231h 2min
Hope Williard, "Friendship in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Venantius Fortunatus and His Contemporaries" (ARC Humanities Press, 2022)
Hope Williard's book Friendship in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Venantius Fortunatus and His Contemporaries (Arc Humanities Press, 2022) explores how one early medieval poet survived and thrived amidst t...
6 Apr 202355min
Laura Arnold Leibman, "Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family" (Oxford UP, 2021)
An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet sh...
5 Apr 202347min
Stuart Elden, "The Archaeology of Foucault" (Polity, 2022)
How did Foucault’s thought develop in the 1960s? In The Archaeology of Foucault (Polity, 2022) Stuart Elden, a professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick, completes the s...
5 Apr 202348min
Eva Hagberg, "When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Aline B. Louchheim (1914-1972) was an art critic on assignment for the New York Times in 1953 when she first met the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. She would become his wife and the driving...
1 Apr 202346min
David Horgan, "Helmi's Shadow: A Journey of Survival from Russia to East Asia to the American West" (U Nevada Press, 2021)
Helmi's Shadow: A Journey of Survival from Russia to East Asia to the American West (U Nevada Press, 2021) tells the sweeping true story of two Russian Jewish refugees, a mother (Rachel Koskin) and he...
1 Apr 20231h 28min
Incognito: The Astounding Life of Alexandra David-Neel
I grew up with Alexandra David-Neel’s books on my mum’s bookshelf. She was part of the myth making process that led to my own fascination with Tibet, as something real, and as fantasy, a description t...
1 Apr 202344min
