Ethelene Whitmire, "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram" (Viking, 2026)

In Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War (Louisiana State UP, 2025), Foster Chamberlin evaluates the role of militarized police forces in the political violence of interwar Europe by tracing the evolution of one such group, Spain’s Civil Guard, culminating in the country’s turbulent Second Republic period of 1931–1936. As his analysis shows, political violence provided the main justification for the military coup attempt that began the Spanish Civil War, and the Civil Guard was the most violent institution in the country at that time. Discovering how this police force, which was supposed to maintain order, became a principal contributor to the violence of the republic proves key to understanding the origins of the Civil War. By tracing the institution’s founding in the mid-nineteenth century, and moving through case studies of episodes of political violence involving the group, Chamberlin concludes that the Civil Guard had an organizational culture that made it prone to violent actions because of its cult of honor, its distance from the people it policed, and its almost entirely military training. 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

On the Edge: Endbands in the Bookbinding Traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean by Dr Giorgios Boudalis (Legacy Press, 2022). The term endbands designates the two bands worked with thread(s) at the head and tail edges of the spine of a book. The techniques with which they are worked and the ways with which they are connected to a bound codex vary greatly over time and geography. The purpose of this book is to identify, classify and describe several of these different techniques used in manuscript books bound within different cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean from Late Antiquity until the 20th century. The book is richly illustrated with full-colour photographs and technical drawings explaining how these endbands were made and how they can be replicated. The guest on the podcast was Dr Giorgios Boudalis. Dr Boudalis studied conservation of art in Florence and Athens, and Fine Arts in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he lives. In 2005 he completed his Ph.D. at the University of the Arts, London, on the evolution of Byzantine and post-Byzantine bookbinding, and he has since been researching and publishing on the topics of bookbinding history and manuscript conservation. Since 1997 he has been working in book conservation for public and private institutions and collections. His research focuses on the study of the manuscript book in the Eastern Mediterranean using physical, written and iconographical evidence, and he is especially interested in the making of the codex and its relation to other crafts and artefacts. Since 2006 he has been teaching courses on various aspects of Eastern Mediterranean bookbinding structures both on an historical and technical level. He is a co-editor of the Language of Bindings Thesaurus of the Ligatus Research Centre, and he was a visiting scholar and an adjunct professor at Bard Graduate Center in New York where in 2018 he curated the exhibition, The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity, and published a book with the same title. Lauren Fonto is a Master's student in the program Heritage and Cultural Sciences: Heritage Conservation at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her current research focuses on cleaning gilded wooden frames using gels. 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

With fasting at an all-time high in popularity, here is an enlightening exploration into the history, science, and philosophy behind the practice—essential to many religions and wellness routines. Whether for philosophical, political, or health-related reasons, fasting marks a departure from daily routine. Based on extensive historical, scientific, and cultural research and reporting, John Oakes The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and the Promise of Doing Without (Avid Reader Press, 2024) illuminates the numerous facets of this act of self-deprivation. John interviews doctors, spiritual leaders, activists, and others who guide him through this practice—and embarks on fasts of his own—to deliver a book that supplies anyone curious about fasting with profound new understanding, appreciation, and inspiration. In recent years, fasting has become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons—from weight loss to detoxing, to the faithful who fast in prayer, to seekers pursuing mindfulness, to activists using hunger strikes as protest. Notable fasters include Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Cesar Chavez, and a long list of others who have drawn on its power over the ages and across borders and cultures. The Fast looks at the complex science behind the jaw-dropping biological changes that occur inside the body when we fast. Metabolic switching can prompt repair and renewal down to the molecular level, providing benefits for those suffering from obesity and diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and more. Longer fasts can both reinvigorate the immune system and protect it against damage. Beyond the physical experience, fasting can be a great collective unifier, and it has been adopted by religions and political movements all over the world for millennia. Fasting is central to holy seasons and days such as Lent (Christianity), Ramadan (Islam), Yom Kippur (Judaism), Uposatha (Buddhism), and Ekadashi (Hinduism). On an individual level, devout ascetics who master self-deprivation to an extreme are believed to be closer to the divine, ascending to enlightenment or even sainthood. Fasting reminds us of the virtues of holding back, of not consuming all that we can. “Broad in scope and rich in insight” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), this book shows us that fasting is about much more than food: it is about taking control of your life in new and empowering ways and reconsidering your place in the world. John Oakes is the publisher of The Evergreen Review and the editor at large of OR Books. The Fast is his first book. Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in World History from James Madison University, where he currently works as an administrative staff. 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

Flaxman Low, literature’s first professional, full-time “occult detective”—that is, an intrepid investigator who deploys the scientific method when tackling paranormal phenomena—appeared in a dozen stories first published from 1898–1899. Flaxman Low: Occult Detective (MIT Press, 2026), the latest edition to the Radium Age series from MIT Press, is introduced and discussed by Dr. Alexander B. Joy. Flaxman Low’s creators, the mother-and-son team Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard and Hesketh “Hex” Prichard (who published as “E. and H. Heron”), endowed the Oxford-trained psychologist with the bravery and acumen to tackle every sort of adversary from ghosts, mummies, and vampires to a mushroom mannequin. Both less credulous and less cynical than earlier fictional investigators of the spirit world, Low always triumphs in the end . . . but not before scientifically demonstrating that even the most outré incidents and situations can’t hold a candle to the bizarre capacities of the human mind. 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 development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic policy as well as the military's ties to the country's leadership. The military's strategic thought is closely linked to Russia's existence as a state and explains patterns of Russian confrontation. In Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War (Georgetown UP, 2025), the renowned scholar Gudrun Persson offers novel insights into Russian military thought on doctrine and strategy, from the Crimean War to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Persson dismantles the simplistic notion that Russian military thought is "backward," instead presenting a deeper analysis of the drivers that influence the changes in Russian military strategy. Through archival research based on Russian language sources, Persson offers a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on theoretical insights from history and political science that enable her to make a nuanced, qualitative analysis. This book will be essential reading for practitioners, scholars, and students who seek to understand the mind-set of the current Russian leadership and the constraints that shape Russia's future possibilities.Gudrun Persson is an associate professor of Slavic studies at Stockholm University. She is the author of Learning from Foreign Wars: Russian Military Thinking 1859–1873 and a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of War Sciences, Chatham House, and the Swedish Writers' Union.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review. 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 Ghana, much as in other parts of the Global South, postcolonial leaders aimed for industrial growth through the establishment of affordable hydroelectric power. However, in the current rapidly changing climate, many nations face recurring droughts, which hinder electricity production just when demand is on the rise. This situation has led to challenges like load shedding and unplanned power outages, which have strained the bond between citizens and the government. Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026) aims to unravel the puzzling reality that, despite enduring increasing difficulties from these electricity shortages, the Ghanaian citizens who suffer most harshly are also the least likely to demand political accountability from the state. Drawing on archival evidence, focus groups, qualitative interviews, survey data, and contemporary art and music, author Lauren M. MacLean explains how this disparity in experience—fueled by differences in income and geographical location—has led lower- and higher-income Ghanaians to form contrasting perspectives on their social rights regarding public services and to adopt varying approaches to political involvement. Rather than relying on a predetermined social contract, citizens in Ghana develop a more fluid relationship with the state, shaped by their histories, identities, and personal experiences. This reciprocity highlights their awareness of how climate change and the global shift toward green energy can significantly impact their lives while also underscoring the necessity for the government to take the lead and engage with Ghanaians to promote climate justice. Lauren M. MacLean is the Thomas P. O’Neill Chair of Public Life and Department Chair of Political Science at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on the politics of electricity access and the everyday practice of citizenship in Africa. She conducts fieldwork in Ghana and Kenya, collecting survey data from individuals, conducting focus group discussions, doing archival work, and carrying out qualitative interviews with politicians, policymakers, practitioners, and ordinary people. MacLean has published award-winning books and articles, including: Informal Institutions and Citizenship in Rural Africa (Cambridge, 2010), The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare in the Global South (Cornell, 2014), co-edited with Cammett, and Field Research in Political Science (Cambridge, 2015), coauthored with Kapiszewski and Read. Her research has been published in a wide range of journals and supported by grants, including NSF, SSRC, RWJ, Fulbright-Hays, and Carnegie. She was the recipient of the APSA QMMR 2016 David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award. You can learn more about her work here. Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. 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

On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a housecleaner, who had nevertheless been decorated in the halls of Harvard and Columbia, Reed Peggram flirted with Leonard Bernstein, sat for portraits by famous artists, charmed minor royalty and became like a little brother to famed researcher and writer Jan Gay. Finally in Europe and on the same prestigious scholarship as literary luminaries Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes before him, he ignored the increasingly alarmed calls to return home to a repressive, segregated America and a constrained life as a second class citizen. And as tensions grew and gas masks were distributed in the City of Lights, Reed turned instead to the new life he’d made: with Arne, a tall and dashing Danish scholar with whom he had formed a deep bond.Award-winning historian Ethelene Whitmire unearthed a trove of Reed’s letters when she met one of his descendants at a lecture, awed that she’d heard so little of this charismatic man and his fascinating true story of love and war. In The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram (Viking, 2026), she introduces us to an unforgettable character who fled from country to country as fighting advanced, was captured by Nazis and outwitted them in a daring escape, and risked it all in a personal fight for a life of love, freedom, beauty and dignity in a world set against him. Ethelene Whitmire is a respected historian and professor for the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research has won awards and funding from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the American Library Association, and she has been invited to writers residencies including Yaddo, UCross, Hedgebrook, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). She is currently working on the book Diasporic Connections: How Afro-Brazilians Use African American Culture to Challenge Racial Exceptionalism.  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

Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story (Reaktion, 2026) proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Dr. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site of creative potential – exploring hypochondria as a form of communication, a reorientation to time, a convergence of personal and communal identity, a declaration of bodymind needs and an embrace of ageing’s transformations. Far-ranging in its attention to historical periods, national literatures, philosophical thought and medical discourse, the book challenges the containment of suffering within narratives of professional authority. In doing so, it seeks to dispel shame and stigma, opening space for new forms of connection and understanding through a deeper attentiveness to the experience of illness. 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

Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us. We live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate our cultural imagination, shaping values once defined by religion. Historian Alec Ryrie explores why society remains captivated by this struggle, from history and fiction to modern myths such as Star Wars and Harry Potter. He examines the costs of our Nazi obsession and questions what will come as our anti-Nazi moral consensus frays and both the Left and Right begin to move on. With a fresh take on modern history and pop culture, The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It (Reaktion, 2025) offers a thought-provoking look at the culture wars and our shifting political crises, challenging assumptions on both sides and asking what a new moral vision might look like. Alec Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University and a fellow of the British Academy. His previous books include Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt. He lives in rural County Durham. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here 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

What would it mean to disentangle humanities scholarship from combative, extractive, and colonial ways of knowing and writing? This is the question that animates Quiet Methodologies: Humility in the Humanities (U Minnesota Press), the latest book by literary scholar and poet Suzanne Bost. Quiet Methodologies isn’t a traditional work of literary scholarship. Instead, the book reaches toward alternative ways of thinking with and teaching literature, grounded in speculation and conversation. It models a quiet kind of humanities work, committed not to asserting answers but to asking questions, not to claiming mastery but to embracing uncertainty. For all its quietness, then, Quiet Methodologies is a bold and challenging work. Speaking to a moment of crisis within and beyond the academy, its provocations and explorations will be of interest to scholars and students working across humanities disciplines. In conversation with Alix Beeston, Bost shares about the literary archives and scholarly works that helped her to unlearn scholarly conventions. She sets out her vision for reimagining humanities labor in terms of ethical responsibility, receptiveness, care—and even, perhaps, love. 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