Rod Carley, "The Great Catsby by Hilton" (Smart House Books, 2026)

Although historians have given considerable attention to the American Revolution, the agricultural history of the American War for Independence exists only in pieces found in scattered articles and passing references in various books dealing with the war. Nonagricultural historians have ignored it or treated it almost as an aside and unworthy of analysis, even when it is related to other war topics. Yet, the revolution had profound effects on American agriculture during the war and after.The Country People: An Agricultural History of the American Revolution (U Georgia Press, 2026) by Dr. R. Douglas Hurt brings the many pieces of this story together in a synthesis that provides an overview of agriculture during the American Revolution—from 1774 until signing of the Peace of Paris on September 3, 1783. In so doing, Dr. Hurt asks (and answers) three essential questions: What did farmers do in their daily lives during the revolutionary years from 1774 to 1783? How did the war affect farmers and planters, and how did they influence the war? And what were the consequences of the war on American agriculture?  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author Rod Carley about The Great Catsby by Hilton, published by Canadian publisher Smart House (September 1, 2026). The Great Catsby by Hilton is the unforgettable and wildly entertaining new YA book by Rod Carley and his cat, Hilton. Yes, you read that right! The Great Catsby by Hilton adds some much-needed whimsy to the world. In these uncertain times, we could all use a few more cats and a little more catnip in our nine lives. The copyright on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby expired on the first stroke of 2021 and the literary classic entered the public domain. Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby as an indictment of the reckless wealth of post-World War I America. The selfish and careless “fat cats” of The Great Catsby by Hilton similarly ring true. Part of the charm of the novella is that Hilton, a seven-year-old rescue tabby adopted by Rod, “writes” it. He is the first-person voice of Nick Cattaway who serves as narrator. Reimagining the story through the eyes of a domestic housecat has allowed Hilton to breathe mew life into the story. Hilton also writes the Preface.  The Great Catsby by Hilton also features twenty full-page colour illustrations in addition to an assortment of black and white drawings by Quebec-based writer-illustrator Juliette Miron (who loves both cats and dogs). Hilton was abandoned as a kitten. All-Heart Pet Rescue in Powassan, ON, found him in a ditch and nursed him back to health. At the age of six months, he was adopted into a loving home filled with books, pillows and cat-sized windowsills. In addition to writing, Hilton enjoys chicken paté, bird watching, and long afternoon naps. The Great Catsby is his first Catification.  Rod Carley is the award-winning author of RUFF (2024 national bestseller), GRIN REAPING (2022), KINMOUNT (2020), and A Matter of Will (2017). He’s been long listed for the Leacock Medal for Humour three times and has twice received the Silver Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards in addition to the Bronze Medal for Humour from Foreword Review INDIES. He was a Finalist for 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Humor, the 2021 Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Prize, the 2023 ReLit Award for Best Short Fiction, and the Northern Lit Award for Fiction.  His short stories and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous Canadian literary magazines. He was the Toronto Reference Library’s Spring 2025 Writer in Residence and is a co-founder and curator for the St. Lawrence Writers Festival. He learned to speak Tabby while minoring in Creative Writing at York University. Rod is a proud alumnus of the Humber School for Writers. www.rodcarley.ca  Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.   Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

During the eventful summer of 2019 in Hong Kong, the Be Water Revolution formed to resist the proposed extradition of fugitives to mainland China’s courts. With its name derived from martial arts master Bruce Lee’s adage “formless and shapeless like water,” the incident turned out to be the city’s largest episode of contentious politics and was unique for using impromptu communication among participants and the absence of central leadership.  In Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Protests (Temple University Press, 2025), Dr. Ming-sho Ho examines the dynamics of the city-wide uprising from the perspective of agency power. He seeks to understand how numerous and anonymous Hongkongers contributed to this epoch-making campaign as well as how they responded to the full-scale state repression that enveloped them. Dr. Ho praises and questions the durability of the inventive Be Water Revolution and how the activists encouraged protests spontaneously, through interpersonal networks and by voluntarily collaborating with strangers at great personal risk.  Dr. Ho posits a new concept of “collective improvisation” to make sense of such a decentralized yet creative way of protesting. Be Water seeks to understand the rise and long afterlife of this movement and illustrate its efficacy. As Dr. Ho shows, these dynamics of collective improvisation have implications for contemporary protest movements around the world.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Focusing on U.S. academic libraries, The Reinvention of the U.S. Academic Library: 1990 – 2025 (2025, Bloomsbury) provides a concise history of the traditional role and function of academic libraries from their earliest times up to the dawn of the Digital Age and the spread of digital technology into all aspects of academic research and scholarly communication. This book analyzes how digital technology has transformed, over the course of a few swift decades, not only the role and function of academic libraries, but also the nature of scholarly communication itself. Specifically, The Reinvention of the U.S. Academic Library: 1990 - 2025 discusses how digital technology has changed the way academic libraries acquire and exercise bibliographic control over collections, provides equitable access to information, and instructs and guide students, faculty, and others. Guest: Donald A. Barclay worked as an academic librarian from 1990 until his retirement in 2022, holding during his library career positions at New Mexico State University, the University of Houston, the Texas Medical Center, and the University of California, Merced. During his career, he devoted much of his time and interest to teaching students how to think critically about the information they encountered in their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. Working in academic libraries during a time when digital technology was expanding into every aspect of human life allowed him to both closely observe and actively participate in the biggest technological changes to humanity’s relationship with information since the advent of printing from moveable type.  Barclay has authored numerous articles and books over the course of his career on topics ranging from the literature of the American West to children’s literature to library and information science.  Barclay earned his bachelor’s degree from Boise State University and holds masters’ degrees in both English and Library and Information Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Implementing the Right to Decide Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Supporting the Legal Capacity of All Persons with Disabilities (Hart, 2025) addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary human rights law: how can persons with severe cognitive disabilities make their own decisions?Historically, vulnerable persons have been considered incapable, and guardians were appointed to represent their interests, which has led to serious abuses. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted in 2006, requires that they receive support to make their own decisions. However, governments claim it is impossible to fully implement this international requirement.In this book, Dr Janos Fiala-Butora tackles the issue of decision-making from both a legal and theoretical perspective. He explores how supported decision-making could incorporate safeguards to protect the vital interests of vulnerable persons in order to present a viable legal alternative to guardianship. The book accepts that some persons' abilities are very limited, but contends that guardianship is not the appropriate response, even in such cases. Instead, the book presents a unique Modified Support Framework, which can incorporate all persons with disabilities, fulfilling the goals of the CRPD. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night TV monologues. Podcasts. The way news is delivered has changed dramatically and so has the way we consume it. Now, we no longer look to the news just to learn and be informed; we expect enjoyment as well. In Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It) (MIT Press, 2026), Jennifer Hoewe (Purdue University) explains how and why this shift toward news enjoyment occurred and what we can do to address the information crisis we now face. Evidence shows that enjoyment-driven decisions are leaving us less informed—despite what we might expect—because they lead us to ignore other news that matters. This book explains why we don’t always select the best sources of news, how we respond to the news sources we do select, and how that information impacts our political knowledge and decisions.  Hoewe also offers solutions for how to improve news creation and news use moving forward. Specifically, she shows how news consumers can escape their “self-righteous” consumption cycles; how news and social media companies can play a role in curbing our automatic amplification of enjoyable news; and how we can all do better when it comes to the information we seek and share. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Ciara Breathnach is Professor of Irish Gender History at University College Cork. She has published widely on Irish socio-economic, gender, cultural and health history. Her last monograph Ordinary lives, death and social class: Dublin City Coroner’s Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the American Conference of Irish Studies, James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences in 2023.   In this interview she discusses her new book Absence in the Archives (Cambridge UP, 2026).  Absence in official records can have profound implications for social memory, civil rights, restorative and transitional justice, citizenship, social welfare, and redress for historical abuse. Scholars of archivistics and early modern New World imperial contexts have uncovered the epistemological problems that archival silences pose for historical research, and the author contends that absence deserves separate conceptual treatment. Archival absences, both permanent and temporary, have particular resonances for postcolonial countries, and are an ongoing threat under totalitarian regimes. Using Britain and Ireland as primary examples, this Element traces how absence took root in the domestic and subsequently the colonial archive, and how through legal mechanisms it became an accepted part of archival praxis. The aim of this Element is to raise awareness of archival absence in order to prevent more losses, particularly in the abundance of the digital age. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.  Absence in the Archives was recently published with Cambridge University Press, as part of their Elements short book series.  Aidan Beatty teaches in the history department at Carnegie Mellon University. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor, and politics continues to be conditioned by their relationship to domestic and care work.  Dr. Pérez argues that women’s relationship to these spheres of life is indicative of a nation’s development and democracy. She provides a comparative focus on the socio-cultural valuation of this labor and the experiences of women in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, among other countries. Pérez asserts that it is only by changing sociocultural views on this “women’s work” that nations can create political change, foster equitable legislation, and ensure implementation of effective policies that benefit women.  Searching for Democracy shows why real and lasting equality cannot be achieved without fully enfranchising women in the lowest tiers of employment and closing the equality gap among women. Dr. Pérez’s models for gender equality are relevant for women around the world.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2026), Ulices Piña shows that democracy in Mexico has never been the exclusive domain of elites, nor confined to the ballot box. Focusing on the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20, Piña explores how citizens forged a substantive democratic culture in the crucible of three successive social upheavals that shook the established social order in the central western state of Jalisco during the 1920s and 1930s—a formative period in the nation’s political history. Piña examines how ordinary Mexicans actively shaped the political process, made their own history, and fought for equality in the country’s long fight for democracy. The long-term effects of the recurring uprisings in Jalisco were central to the new political system produced by the postrevolutionary state: After each rebellion, authorities consolidated institutional power, elected officials debated the strictures of government, and ordinary people grappled with the promise and limits of political emancipation. Because of the contradictions that arose from the creation of this modern political system, especially those that emerged at the nexus of democratic inclusion and authoritarian rule, seemingly powerless populations claimed equality, exercised participation rights, and demanded respect, even amid the violence and surveillance the state deployed against marginal groups to achieve its goals. Rebellious Citizens brings into focus the struggles of ordinary people to experiment with new ways of doing politics to remake the nation. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s edges, it tells a new story about those on the move, the technologies unleashed on them at borders, the racialized and colonial histories that inform these technologies, and the artistry with which migrants and allies bear witness to displacement. The book reorients us toward the creativity and movement of migrants themselves– their “arts of the border”—as well as toward the political force of the arts that represent them, whether in literature, documentary film, or art installations. Sanyal proposes kino-aesthetics as a framework for capture and fugitivity at borders. From kino—to set in motion—and aesthetics— relating to sensory perception—kino-aesthetics conveys the force of bodies in motion and the image in its circulation. The book examines the simultaneity of capture and escape at thresholds of illegalization, from airport detention zones to Calais’s “jungle” and the Euro-African border at Ceuta and Melilla. What emerges throughout these case studies is a portrayal of border violence in its racial and colonial forms as well as an archive of refusal, fugitivity, and un-bordered imagining. Guest Debarati Sanyal is Professor of French, Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry, and currently holds the Zaffaroni Family Chair of Undergraduate Education. Affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Institute of European Studies, her teaching and research interests span 19th -21st-century French and Francophone literature, memory studies, aesthetics and bio/necropolitics, critical human rights and refugee studies. She is a recipient of the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award (2012) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021-2022). She is currently co-PI on the Mellon-funded A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times (2024-2027). Besides Arts of the Border, Dr. Sanyal has authored Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance (Fordham, 2015), translated into French as Mémoire et Complicité: Au Prisme de la Shoah (PUV, 2019); and The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony and the Politics of Form (Johns Hopkins, 2006).  She has guest-edited “Time and Politics in Contemporary Critique: Entanglements and Aftermaths” (Critical Times, 2018), ha also co-edited, with Éric Fassin, Demos Anxiety: Genealogies, Rhetorics, and Politics of Great Replacement (forthcoming in Patterns of Prejudice); with Damon Young and Mario Telò, Proximities: Reading with Judith Butler (Representations 2022), and, with Michael Rothberg and Max Silverman, Noeuds de mémoire: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture (Yale French Studies 118-119). Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network