Yehudah Mirsky, "Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution" (Yale UP, 2014)
A powerfully original thinker, Rav Kook combined strict traditionalism and an embrace of modernity, Orthodoxy and tolerance, piety and audacity, scholasticism and ecstasy, and passionate nationalism w...
4 Jul 202252min
Simon Atkinson, "Krishnamacharya on Kundalini: The Origins and Coherence of His Position" (Equinox Publishing, 2022)
Krishnamacharya on Kundalini: The Origins and Coherence of His Position (Equinox Publishing, 2022) explores a distinctive teaching of 'the father of modern yoga', T. Krishnamacharya. Whereas most yoga...
29 Jun 20221h 2min
Bradford P. Wilson and Carson Holloway, eds., "The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
How much does the average person know about Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757 – 1804)? Would we have guessed that this hero of many fiscal conservatives wrote, “A national debt, if it is not excessive ...
28 Jun 20221h 18min
D. G. Hart, "Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Benjamin Franklin grew up in a devout Protestant family with limited prospects for wealth and fame. By hard work, limitless curiosity, native intelligence, and luck (what he called "providence"), Fran...
28 Jun 202245min
Marc David Baer, "German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus" (Columbia UP, 2020)
Hugo Marcus (1880–1966) was a man of many names and many identities. Born a German Jew, he converted to Islam and took the name Hamid, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany prior to Wo...
24 Jun 202247min
Srilata Raman, "The Transformation of Tamil Religion: Ramalinga Swamigal and Modern Dravidian Sainthood" (Routledge, 2022)
Srilata Raman's book The Transformation of Tamil Religion: Ramalinga Swamigal and Modern Dravidian Sainthood (Routledge, 2022) analyses the religious ideology of a Tamil reformer and saint, Ramalinga ...
23 Jun 202236min
Howard Gardner, "A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory" (MIT Press, 2022)
Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind was that rare publishing phenomenon--a mind-changer. Widely read by the general public as well as by educators, this influential book laid out Gardner's theory of multi...
23 Jun 20221h 6min
Joshua D. Zimmerman, "Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland" (Harvard UP, 2022)
In the 1920s, Józef Piłsudski was a household name not just in Poland, but across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean as well. Yet this complex and contradictory figure – a socialist and a nationalis...
23 Jun 20221h 37min
