Steve Platt’s recent book is a beautifully written and intricately textured account of the Taiping Civil War, the bloodiest civil war of all time. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom situates the story of modern China within a broader, global history of civil war in the US and beyond, and you can listen to our conversation about it here. Continue reading Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: An Interview
Lisa Gitelman’s new book introduces readers to a way of thinking about documents as tools for creating bodily experience, and as material objects situated within hierarchies and relationships of labor. Working beautifully at the intersection of media studies and history, it curates a thoughtful and inspiring collection of moments from the expansion of a modern “scriptural economy.” You can listen to us talk about hit here. Continue reading Paper Knowledge: An Interview
In Omar Nasim’s new book, a series of fascinating characters sketch, paint, and etch their way toward a mapping of the cosmos and the human mind. His book examines the history of observation of celestial nebulae in the nineteenth century, exploring the relationships among the acts of seeing, drawing, and knowing in producing visual knowledge about the heavens and its bodies. We had a chance to talk about … Continue reading Observing by Hand: An Interview
A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In his recent book, Ian Miller explores this transformation and its reverberations in a fascinating study of the emergence of an “ecological modernity” at the Ueno Zoo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We spoke about the book earlier this year, and you … Continue reading The Nature of the Beasts: An Interview
Wensheng Wang’s new book takes us into a key turning point in the history of the Qing empire, the Qianlong-Jiaqing reign periods. Wang’s book aims to transform how we understand this crucial period in light of the eruption of major social and political crises and the consequences of imperial response to those crises for Qing and world history, and you can listen to our conversation about it here. Continue reading White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: An Interview
Jane Maienschein’s great new book traces the history of transformations in the observation and observability of the earliest stages of developing life. Embryos Under the Microscope is equally suited to both academic historians and a broader interested public, carefully curating the elements of the narrative such that they collectively inform broader debates over embryo-related policy in the contemporary United States. You can find our conversation about it here. Continue reading Embryos Under the Microscope: An Interview
Marwa Elshakry’s new book offers a fascinating account of how the work of Darwin and others was read and rendered in modern Arabic-language contexts. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the entanglements of science, translation, and empire in the modern world, and you can find our conversation about it here. Continue reading Reading Darwin in Arabic: An Interview
Gabriel Finkelstein’s new book explores the life and work of Emil du Bois-Reymond, “the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century.” The beautifully written book introduces readers to diary pages and love letters, laboratory equipment and frog pistols. Whether he’s busy conducting electrical experiments or avoiding his underwear-proffering mother-in-law, du Bois-Reymond is a pleasure to read about. You can find our conversation about Finkelstein’s book here. Continue reading Emil du Bois-Reymond: An Interview
There are so many reasons why I enjoyed talking with Michael Wert about his new book on the construction of memory around the “losers” of the Meiji Restoration, individuals and groups whose reputations suffered most in the late nineteenth-century transition from Tokugawa to imperial rule. Here are two of those reasons: (1) the book involves buried treasure, and (2) it consequently gave me an excuse to talk … Continue reading Meiji Restoration Losers: An Interview
Tobie Meyer-Fong generously made time to talk with me at the recent Association for Asian Studies annual conference about her fantastic new book. The book is a gorgeously written and masterfully argued exploration of the remains (in many senses and registers, both literal and figurative) of the Taiping Civil War in nineteenth-century China. You can listen to our conversation about it here. Continue reading What Remains: An Interview
Carla Nappi 