Veronica Litt, "Ugh! As If!: Clueless" (ECW Press, 2025)

In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s leader. The country is now under the control of a military junta, with army chief Jorge Rafael Videla at the helm. With quiet support from the United States and tacit approval from much of Argentina’s people, who are tired of constant bombings and gunfights, the junta swiftly launches the National Reorganization Process or El Proceso—a bland name masking their ruthless campaign to crush the political left and instill the country with “Western, Christian” values. The junta holds power until 1983 and decimates a generation. One of the military’s most diabolical acts is kidnapping hundreds of pregnant women. After giving birth in captivity, the women are “disappeared,” and their babies secretly given to other families—many of them headed by police or military officers. For mothers of pregnant daughters and daughters-in-law, the source of their grief is twofold—the disappearances of their children, and the theft of their grandchildren. A group of fierce grandmothers forms the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to finding the stolen infants and seeking justice from a nation that betrayed them. At a time when speaking out could mean death, the Abuelas confront military officers and launch protests to reach international diplomats and journalists. They become detectives, adopting disguises to observe suspected grandchildren, and even work alongside a renowned American scientist to pioneer groundbreaking genetic tests. A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children (Simon & Schuster, 2025) by Haley Cohen Gilliland is the rarest of nonfiction that reads like a novel and puts your heart in your throat. It is the product of years of extensive archival research and meticulous, original reporting. It marks the arrival of a blazing new talent in narrative journalism. In these pages, a regime tries to terrorize a country, but love prevails. The grandmothers’ stunning stories reveal new truths about memory, identity, and family. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created by Hormel Foods in 1937 to utilize surplus pork shoulder during the Great Depression, SPAM became an essential resource during the Second World War, and helped shape perceptions of American culture. SPAM: A Global History (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Kelly Spring explores SPAM’s complex history, from its inception to its resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its enduring legacy in places like Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa and South Korea. It demonstrates how SPAM, a long-lasting and valuable protein, played a crucial role during wartime and continues to influence dietary practices worldwide. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Karen Redrobe's latest book Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (Univ of California Press, 2025) is a fascinating account of the role of animation in the visual cultures of war. It analyzes works by artists including Yael Bartana, Nancy Davenport, Kelly Dolak and Wazhmah Osman, Gesiye, David Hartt, Helen Hill, Onyeka Igwe, Ibrahim Nasrallah, Mary Reid Kelley, and Patrick Kelley, in which relational and intermedial practices of “(inter)(in)animation” generate aesthetic tactics for reframing war. Like all of Karen's work, Undead is theoretically rich, thoroughly interdisciplinary, and written with clarity as well as urgency. Its mixture of clear-sighted criticality and dogged hopefulness is especially powerful in the times of conflict, cruelty, and destructiveness through which we’re living. In this wide-ranging conversation, Karen speaks with refreshing honesty and vulnerability about how to reimagine scholarly research and writing in line with anti-war feminist politics, what it means to confront the complicity of the university—and of university workers—in cultures of war, and why scholars should embrace being wrong and taking risks. Undead was published in April 2025 by the University of California Press. A free ebook version is available through Luminos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Papusza / Bronisława Wajs. Tears of Blood: A Poet’s Witness Account of the Nazi Genocide of Roma (Brill, 2024) is nothing less of an academic, literary, and historical miracle. It is dedicated to a key figure of Romani literature, Bronisława Wajs, also known as Papusza. This book offers—for the very first time in history—the full version of Papusza’s key work, Tears of Blood, which was considered lost for seventy years and circulated only in a highly reduced copy. This poem is a unique account by a woman about the Roma Holocaust in Eastern Europe during WWII. Beyond this important historical and literary document, the book also provides literary translations of this manuscript into several languages, including English, and has chapters written by leading researchers of Romani Studies who comment on the history of this text and the challenges behind making it available to the broader public. It took the team over three decades to locate the manuscript, transcribe it, translate it, and fill in the gaps in its history. Volha Bartash is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Münster in Germany and a co-convenor of the network “Margins of Memory: Cultures and Politics of Non-Hegemonic Remembrance.”  Tomasz Kamusella is Reader in Modern Central and Eastern European History at the University of St Andrews, whose work focuses on language politics and nationalism. Host: Tatiana Klepikova is a Freigeist Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation and leads a research group on queer literatures and cultures under socialism at the University of Regensburg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Veronica Litt's Ugh As If!: Clueless (ECW Press, 2025) uncovers the complex layers beneath the glossy surface of the 1995 classic film "Clueless." Litt investigates not just the Austen satire but the film’s deeper ethical questions about femininity, innocence, bias, and inequity. A sweet and sly exploration of the Jane Austen–inspired teen movie and its evergreen imperative to be kind, do better, and find the activist within We are totally butt-crazy in love with "Clueless." Since the movie’s premiere in 1995, pop culture has mined Amy Heckerling’s high school comedy for inspiration, from Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy” music video to Cher’s iconic yellow plaid suit appearing at every Halloween party. In Ugh As If!, Veronica Litt argues that this seemingly fluffy teen romp is the quintessential thinking woman’s movie, one in which the audience is asked to seriously consider the beauty and power of naïveté. Cher Horowitz’s gradual pivot from oblivious it girl to burgeoning activist is a powerful reminder that even the most unlikely people can change for the better and contribute to their communities. In this bright, shiny film, pursuing a more just society isn’t just possible — it’s enjoyable. This fun, feminine, feel-good movie is a counter-narrative to nihilism, a refusal to give into cynicism, hopelessness, and passivity. Almost without viewers noticing, "Clueless" teaches Cher, and us, how to become better. Like the film it examines, Ugh As If! nudges even the most jaded viewer into feeling hopeful about the future. About the Pop Classics Series Short books that pack a big punch, Pop Classics offer intelligent, fun, and accessible arguments about why a particular pop phenomenon matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad (Stanford UP, 2025) offers a history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war, from the oil boom of the 1950s through the withdrawal of US troops in 2011. Interactions between citizens and their rulers shaped the social fabric and political realities of the city. Notably, low-ranking Ba'th party officials functioned as crucial intermediaries, deciding how regime policies would be applied. Charting the social, economic, and political transformations of Iraq's capital city, Alissa Walter examines how national policies translated into action at the local, everyday level. With this book, Walter reveals how authoritarian governance worked in practice. She follows shifts in mid-century housing and urban development, the impact of the Iran–Iraq and Gulf Wars on city life, and the manipulation of food rations and growth of black markets. Reading citizen petitions to the government, Walter illuminates citizens' self-advocacy and the important role of low-ranking party officials and state bureaucrats embedded within neighborhoods. The US occupation and ensuing sectarian fighting upended Baghdad's neighborhoods through violent displacement and the collapse of basic state services. This power vacuum paved the way for new power brokers, including militias and neighborhood councils, to compete for influence on the local level. Alissa Walter is Associate Professor of History at Seattle Pacific University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“To live, a people must always be able to know its past, to judge it, to accept it.”— Simone Veil, French politician and Shoah survivor When I sat down with historian Anastasios Karababas to discuss his new book, In the Footsteps of the Jews of Greece: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Paperback, published January 30, 2024), I was struck by the depth and complexity of the story he tells—a story that spans over 2,500 years and is still unfolding today. Karababas in the book and the conversation guided me through the origins and evolution of Jewish life in Greece from ancient times to today. We discussed the four major Jewish groups whose histories are intertwined with the Greek landscape: Romaniots, the ancient Greek Jews whose presence predates the Romans. Ashkenazi Jews, who arrived between the 11th and 13th centuries, bringing their Central European traditions. Sephardic Jews, who found refuge in Greece after their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century, especially revitalizing the community in Thessaloniki. Italian Jews, who settled in the 16th century, further enriching the community’s diversity. Thessaloniki, once known as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," stood out in our conversation as a beacon of Jewish life, with Jews making up 30–40% of the city’s population at its height. Karababas’s account of the 20th century was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Before World War II, there were about 75,000 Jews in Greece. He shared the stories of Jews who served in the Greek army against Mussolini, a testament to their deep sense of belonging. But the Holocaust cast a long shadow, with 85% of the community deported and wiping out around 90% of the community leaving a profound void. Today, as Karababas explained, the Jewish population in Greece numbers only about 5,000, spread across nine communities—a stark contrast to the more than thirty that once existed. Only Athens, Thessaloniki, and Larissa still have resident rabbis. These communities survive through private funding and the interest of Jewish heritage tourism, striving to keep their unique traditions alive. Our discussion also touched on the complexities of Judeophobia in Greece. Karababas described Judeophobia as a blend of anti-semitism, anti-zionism, and anti-Judaism, with roots in the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church. He characterized current anti-semitism as “superficial,” with few violent incidents. Despite the rise in anti-zionist sentiment, he pointed out that Greece maintains strong governmental ties with Israel, reflecting the nuanced relationship between Greek society, its Jewish citizens, and the broader region. Reading In the Footsteps of the Jews of Greece: From Ancient Times to the Present Day and speaking with Karababas reminded me how vital it is to know, judge, and accept our past as a means of ensuring a safer future. The story of Greek Jewry is one of migration, tragedy, and renewal—a testament to resilience and the enduring spirit of a people determined to remember and to live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey talks with Vali Nasr, Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies and former dean at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, about Iran’s dangerous crossroads after its latest clash with Israel and the United States. Nasr argues that Western narratives about Iran as a reckless theocracy miss the calculated grand strategy behind its actions — a strategy rooted in centuries of imperial ambition, deep-seated insecurity, and anti-American resentment. He explains why the Islamic Republic has survived despite public disillusionment and why hopes of regime change are naïve. Nasr warns that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are now more entrenched than ever, as ordinary Iranians begin to see the bomb as their only shield against annihilation. With the U.S. unwilling to invade but also disinclined to negotiate in good faith, Nasr lays out the stark choice Washington faces: a nuclear Iran or another disastrous Middle East war. Nasr recently published Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton University Press), and is also the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (Penguin 2014), and The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton, 2016 [2006]). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Body Count: The War on Terror and Civilian Deaths in Iraq (Bristol University Press, 2021), Lily Hamourtziadou’s investigation into civilian victims during the conflicts that followed the US-led coalition’s 2003 invasion of Iraq provides important new perspectives on the human cost of the War on Terror. From early fighting to the withdrawal and return of coalition troops, the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, the book explores the scale and causes of deaths and places them in the contexts of power struggles, US foreign policy and radicalisation. Casting fresh light on not just the conflict but international geopolitics and the history of Iraq, it constructs a unique and insightful human security approach to war. Lily Hamourtziadou is Senior Lecturer in Criminology with Security Studies and Deputy Course Director at Birmingham City University, and Principal Researcher of Iraq Body Count, which maintains the largest public database of violent civilian deaths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover that gym treadmills were pioneered on plantations or that denim jeans were once clothing for enslaved people, you can't help but ask where else the legacy of slavery hides in plain sight. Through the stories of thirty-nine everyday places and objects, in Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain – in 39 Institutions, People, Places and Things (Profile, 2025) Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba unpick the threads of the history that we never learned in school, revealing the truth of how Britain's present is bound to a darker past. Taking us from art galleries to football stands, banks to hospitals, from grand country houses to the backs of our kitchen cupboards, Human Resources is an eye-opening inquiry that gives a voice to the enslaved people who built modern Britain. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network