How did it happen that, in the 13th century, Europe's largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes while Baghdad alone boasted of several libraries holding from 200,000 to 1,000,000 books each? In The Rise of the Arabic Book (Harvard UP, 2020), Beatrice Gruendler traces the story of the beginning of the revolution in book culture that happened in the first ... Show More
Nov 22
Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025)
Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began ... Show More
1h 4m
Nov 21
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule?
Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterre ... Show More
1h 5m
Nov 14
Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025)
Basit Kareem Iqbal's new book The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham UP, 2025) uses ethnographic scenes from Jordan and Canada to contextualize the role of Muslim charities and community organizations that support displaced refugees from t ... Show More
1h 16m
Jul 2021
Supriya Gandhi, "The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India" (Harvard UP, 2020)
In her magnificent and lyrical new book, The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India (Harvard UP, 2020), Supriya Gandhi reorients and adds unprecedented depth to our understanding of the much memorialized but less understood Mughal prince and thinker Dara Shukoh (d. 16 ... Show More
1 h
Jul 2021
Ryan J. Lynch, "Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh Al-Buldan of Al-Baladhuri" (I. B. Tauris, 2021)
Of the available sources for Islamic history published before the 9th century of the Christian Era, few are of greater importance than Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands), by al-Baladhuri, a ninth-century administrator at the Abbasid court. The text has been ... Show More
1h 13m
Mar 2023
Jessica Brantley, "Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
Today’s guest is Jessica Brantley, Professor of English at Yale University. Professor Rosenberg is the author of the previous monograph, Reading in the Wilderness, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2007. Her articles have appeared in PMLA, Exemplaria, and the Journa ... Show More
49m 52s
Aug 2023
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst, "I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America" (UNC Press, 2023)
Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascinating and rivetting book that offers the most authoritative account to date of the life and Arabic writings of Omar Ibn Said, a scholar ... Show More
48m 38s
Feb 2024
Michael Johnston, "The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Michael Johnston's The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500 (Oxford UP, 2023) addresses a series of questions about the copying and circulation of literature in late medieval England: How do we make sense of the variety of manuscripts surviving from this period? Wh ... Show More
43m 19s
Jan 2015
Paola Iovene, “Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China” (Stanford UP, 2014)
Paola Iovene‘s new book is a beautiful exploration of visions of the future as they have shaped a range of texts, genres, and editorial practices in Chinese literature from the middle of the twentieth century through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Tales of Futures Pas ... Show More
1h 5m