Mark Dooley, "Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Roger Scruton was one of the outstanding British philosophers of the post-war years. Why then was he at best ignored and at worst reviled? In Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach (Bloomsbury,...
9 Maj 202427min
Hemjyoti Medhi, "Gendered Publics: Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Gendered Publics: Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam (Oxford UP, 2024) is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive appraisal of the relatively unexplored but highly impactful women...
8 Maj 20241h 4min
Sydney Stern, "The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics" (U Mississippi Press, 2019)
Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s onl...
5 Maj 20241h 11min
Sara B. Franklin, "The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America" (Atria, 2024)
The woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century—including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath—finally gets her due in this colorful biography of ...
3 Maj 202426min
Michael Gilson, "Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
Britain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is little understood how millions across the nation devel...
3 Maj 202453min
Nancy M. Martin, "Mirabai: The Making of a Saint" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Mirabai, an iconic sixteenth-century Indian poet-saint, is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge to f...
2 Maj 202443min
Katie Gee Salisbury, "Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong" (Dutton, 2024)
In 2022, the U.S. Mint released the first batch of its American Women Quarters series, celebrating the achievements of U.S. women throughout its history. The first set of five included Maya Angelou, S...
2 Maj 202442min
Andrés Reséndez, "Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery" (Mariner Books, 2022)
The Pacific Ocean is twice the size of the Atlantic, and while humans have been traversing its current-driven maritime highways for thousands of years, its sheer scale proved an obstacle to early Euro...
27 Apr 20241h 5min
