New Books Network

• Jeremy Bernstein 11–2007

  In this episode from the Institute’s vault, we revisit an October 2007 presentation by theoretical physicist and Institute Fellow Jeremy Bernstein on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb, and the nuclear arms race that followed. As a physicist, Bernstein made contributions to elementary particle physics and cosmology, working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New York University, and Stevens Institute of Technology, where he became Professor Emeritus in 1967. He held visiting positions at CERN, Oxford, and the École Polytechnique, among others, and was the last surviving senior member of Project Orion, which studied the potential of nuclear pulse propulsion for space travel. Bernstein was a staff writer for The New Yorker for over three decades. He wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, and Scientific American, and authored over two dozen books, including Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (2004). He passed away on April 20th, 2025 at the age of 95. Here he is in 2007, discussing the topics on which he made a great contribution and helped illuminate. 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

  --------  

  43:39

  --------

  43:39
• YIVO Archives and Library, "100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research" (YIVO, 2025)

  Delve into Jewish history through 100 unique objects from the YIVO Archives and Library with 100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (2025). This gorgeously-illustrated coffee table book contains images and essays which represent modern Jewish history and culture through YIVO's one hundred years of collecting. The volume highlights a variety of manuscripts, photographs, ritual objects, and other ephemera. ּBook can be purchased 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

  --------  

  31:53

  --------

  31:53
• Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

  Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands of children. These children, mostly born to African women and European men, sparked significant debate in French society about the status of multiracial people, debates historians have termed 'the métis problem.' Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research in Gabon, Republic of Congo, Senegal, and France, in Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship (Cambridge UP, 2023) Dr. Rachel Jean-Baptiste investigates the fluctuating identities of métis. Crucially, she centres claims by métis themselves to access French social and citizenship rights amidst the refusal by fathers to recognize their lineage, and in the context of changing African racial thought and practice. In this original history of race-making, belonging, and rights, Dr. Jean-Baptiste demonstrates the diverse ways in which métis individuals and collectives carved out visions of racial belonging as children and citizens in Africa, Europe, and internationally. 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

  --------  

  56:43

  --------

  56:43
• Renee Lapp Norris, "Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrels (1844–1860)" (A-R Editions, 2025)

  Minstrelsy is often called the first American popular entertainment form. Minstrel shows presented musical, dance, and entertainment styles that continue to resonate in US culture and they also reflected the complex, contradictory, deeply prejudiced attitudes towards race that characterized antebellum America, which are still part of American political and cultural discourses. Despite the voluminous scholarship on minstrel shows, there is relatively little work that deeply investigates the music of minstrelsy. Renee Lapp Norris’s critical edition called Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrelsy (1844–1860) (A-R Editions, 2025) published as part of the Music of the United States of America series (A-R Editions, 2025) aims to help remedy this absence. In this volume, Norris gathers forty opera parody songs originally published as sheet music that illustrate different approaches to opera parodies taken by minstrel performers. She analyzes how minstrels parodied opera, what political and cultural agendas the music supported, and contextualizes the parodies within the history of antebellum minstrel shows. 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

  --------  

  55:13

  --------

  55:13
• Michael D. Dwyer, "Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt" (Oxford UP, 2025)

  Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the story of Hollywood's role in the shaping of the Rust Belt in the United States. During the 1970s and 1980s, filmic representations of shuttered auto plants, furloughed millworkers, and decaying downtowns in the industrial heartland contributed to pervasive narratives of American malaise and decline--informing the wider cultural view of these cities and their people. Author Michael D. Dwyer (Arcadia University) untangles the complicated relationship between Hollywood and the Rust Belt, exploring how the sociocultural image of the region has become a tool to tell stories about America's mythic past, degraded present, and potential futures.Dwyer offers a reading in twofold: through the conventional lens of film and cultural studies, and through an interdisciplinary lens that pulls in elements of cultural geography and urban studies to understand the ways in which Americans learned to interpret the cities and towns of the industrial Midwest. Each chapter spotlights a different Rust Belt city--Johnstown, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit--and considers how films and filmmaking processes helped shape audiences' cultural understanding of those cities. Over the course of the book, Dwyer also examines several films which offer notable representations of the Rust Belt, including Slap Shot, The Blues Brothers, Major League, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and It Follows. Finally, the volume highlights how in more recent years, cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland have all attempted to remake their public image and revitalize their economies through film and media production. 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

  --------  

  1:11:48

  --------

  1:11:48

More Arts podcasts

Trending Arts podcasts

About New Books Network

New Books Network: Podcasts in Family