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Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

New Books Network

A series of interviews with authors of new books from Princeton University Press

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49 episodes
a few times a week
Avg 54 min
English

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#1530
Sunday · 54 min
The Capitalist Era with Jeremy Adelman (Princeton UP, 2026)
Jeremy Adelman’s The Capitalist Era: The Making—and Unmaking—of the Global Mind (Princeton University Press, 2026) puts the world’s current unwinding in much-needed historical perspective. Combining political, economic, intellectual, and environmental history, the book tells the epic story of the forces that, since the late eighteenth century, have transformed the world into a single but fractured survival unit that is integrated by exchange and flow, yet divided by suspicion and fear. It is a
#1529
November 5 · 49 min
The Last Human Job
Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton UP, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, which explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other is valuable and worth preserving. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Dr. Pugh develops the concept of “connective labo
#1528
November 2 · 52 min
Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe with John Callanan (Princeton UP, 2025)
In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full of greedy and licentious bees trade their vices for virtues and immediately fall into economic and societal collapse. Outrage among the reading public followed; philosophers took up their pens to refute what they saw as the fable’s central assertion. How could it be that an immoral community thrived but the introduction of morality caused it to crash and bur
#1527
October 30 · 1 hr 1 min
Research: A Manifesto by Peter N. Miller (Princeton UP, 2026)
Globally, we spend around $3 trillion dollars a year on research, roughly 2% of global GDP. This activity is the source of many breakthroughs and innovations, not only in the sciences but in all domains of life. Without research, we wouldn’t have as detailed an understanding of past events or cures to once-deadly diseases. Research, however, is also a source of skepticism and suspicion. The activity conjures fears of viral lab leaks, misaligned artificial intelligence, deadly weapons of war, and
#75
October 26 · 53 min
AI, Automation, and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex with Anthony King (Princeton UP, 2025)
Will artificial intelligence soon be fighting our wars for us? Could a machine ever command an army? Anthony King is skeptical. In AI, Automation, and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex (Princeton University Press, 2025), he argues that AI is changing war less by replacing soldiers than by bringing civilian tech experts into the headquarters where wars are run. The conversation begins with how the September 11 attacks turned King toward war, and with his quarter-century of tracing changes
#74
October 26 · 38 min
In Praise of Addiction: Or How We Can Learn to Love Dependency in a Damaged World with Elizabeth F. S. Roberts (Princeton UP, 2026)
Elizabeth Roberts has experienced the suffering wrought by addiction: her sister’s destructive alcoholism and dependency on prescription drugs, her mother’s hoarding, and her own struggles with binge eating. As for so many of us, addiction brought about self-loathing, reflecting her individual failure to exercise self-control, to keep it together. But during her fieldwork studying chemical exposure in Mexico City, her sense of addiction got turned upside down. She witnessed her neighbors, both y
#73
October 22 · 40 min
Sea of Treasures: A Cultural History of Ancient Indian Ocean Trade
After Caesar's assassination, the triumvirs drew up a kill list; one such target, a man named Lucius Plotius Plancus, fled to a villa near Naples and tried hiding behind a curtain. The soldiers found him anyway–thanks to his heavy perfume. Pliny the Elder, writing a century later, used the perfume to suggest the killing was justified. Historians have often taken that at face value, as proof that Rome despised Eastern luxuries. Jeremy Simmons reads it as a joke—Pliny was calling the man a walkin
#72
October 18 · 49 min
Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work with Annie McClanahan (Princeton UP, 2026)
Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work (Princeton UP, 2026) retheorizes capitalism from the perspective of the service economy, challenging conventional assumptions about how work is waged, regulated, managed, and automated Today, 80 percent of U.S. workers do service work, from delivering takeout to mopping floors to teaching. Each time we are handed a bag of groceries or a cup of coffee, call for a cab or have our homework graded, we confront both the enormity and t
#71
October 17 · 1 hr 1 min
Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women with Eleanor Johnson (Princeton UP, 2026)
For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by women. In this book, Eleanor Johnson provides an engaging cultural history of a figure she calls the “monstrous bitch,” the notorious female who has haunted the patriarchal imagination for centuries, feared for her sexual promiscuity, her exercise of reproductive agency and control, and her outspoken way of contesting patriarchal power. In a narrative brimming with insight, Johnson traces the origins
#70
October 11 · 1 hr
Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America with Marie Gottschalk (Princeton UP, 2026)
The United States is an exceptionally violent country, increasingly unable or unwilling to stem violence in its many forms. A growing corporate crime wave has gone unprosecuted and unpunished, with those in the C-suites largely escaping accountability. Meanwhile, the country has doubled down on pursuing people accused of street and drug crimes and immigration offenses. Corporate impunity, the financialization of the economy, militarized policing, the burgeoning carceral state, and the forever wa
#69
October 6 · 1 hr 3 min
The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries with Andrew Hui (Princeton UP, 2026)
With the advent of print in the fifteenth century, Europe’s cultural elite assembled personal libraries as refuges from persecutions and pandemics. Andrew Hui tells the remarkable story of the Renaissance studiolo—a “little studio”—and reveals how these spaces dedicated to self-cultivation became both a remedy and a poison for the soul. Blending fresh, insightful readings of literary and visual works with engaging accounts of his life as an insatiable bookworm, Hui traces how humanists from P
#68
September 29 · 55 min
Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger with A. Wess Mitchell (Princeton UP, 2025)
Great Power Diplomacy. The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger (Princeton UP, 2025) is a captivating history of diplomacy—and an urgent reminder of why we need to revive its lost arts to survive in a dangerous era of great power competition. From the beginning of time, human societies have found themselves confronted by enemies too numerous or ferocious to defeat solely by force of arms. In these dramatic moments, wise leaders have turned to diplomacy to rearrange the gameboard
#67
September 25 · 56 min
Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics with Roxanne L. Euben (Princeton UP, 2025)
Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Driven to Their Knees, Roxanne Euben takes readers from conflicts in the Arabic-speaking world to America’s divided public square, advancing a theory of humiliation rooted in the ways people articulate and enact it. Euben a
#66
September 22 · 56 min
Arthur der Weduwen, "The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In popular accounts of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the autocratic Catholic King James II was ousted by his subjects and replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary Stuart, wife of James’s nephew, the Dutch William III of Orange. Devoted to her husband, Mary would not accept the crown alone, and so William and Mary were crowned together, securing a smooth dynastic succession. The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada (Princeton UP, 2026) recounts the forgotten campaign that carrie
#62
September 21 · 1 hr 1 min
Joshua Specht, "Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner" (Princeton UP, 2026)
As affordability crises once limited to coastal cities have spread across the broader United States, the history of home and land ownership has never been more relevant. In Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner (Princeton University Press, September 2026), Dr. Joshua Specht traces how ownership has challenged the nation’s politics and promise from the founding to the present day.
#61
September 17 · 55 min
Laura Portwood-Stacer, "The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us your suggestion on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: what a book proposal is and isn’t, why you have to write one, the importance of seeking the r
#64
September 14 · 58 min
James C. Nieh, "The Language of Bees" (Princeton UP, 2026)
With senses that often seem alien to us, bees navigate complex decisions about where to find food, when to fight or flee, and how to work together. The Language of Bees (Princeton University Press, 2026) invites readers into the hidden world of bee communication, a realm where creatures less than an inch long use scent, vibration, movement, and sound to cooperate, share information, and survive.
#63
September 14 · 38 min
Mark Peterson, "The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peopl
#879
September 10 · 49 min
William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, "Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Political Scientists William Howell and Terry Moe have a new book out that explores how the United States constitutional system has given way to the establishment of a kind of strongman presidency, disconnected in many ways from the constraints designed to keep the American president from becoming autocratic or dictatorial. Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency (Princeton UP, 2025) traces the expansion of the administrative state in the United States, which transpired during
#877
September 7 · 1 hr 9 min
Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about content and production. In Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming (Princeton UP, 2026), Violaine Roussel examines the emergence of this new category of professionals at the heart of the Hollywood dream factory. Roussel shows how the rise of data and algorithm specialists has transformed organiz

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