New Books Network

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson’s view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare’s plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare’s plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work.

David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume’s complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

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

How did an economic system that was the result of largely uncoordinated and unplanned individual decisions come to dominate our modern world? This is the core question that my guest, Berkeley economic historian Trevor Jackson, tries to answer in his new book, The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World (Norton, 2026). Jackson begins with the origins of the global monetary system in the fifteenth century and ends in the early twentieth century, when capitalism faced its most serious challenges from communism and socialism. While wage labor and financial instruments like loans and stocks feel unremarkable today, he reminds us that “it wasn’t always this way.” Capitalism is not natural, timeless, or inevitable.

Trevor Jackson is an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley. He previous book, Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690–1830, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

Steven P. Rodriguez is a scholarly publishing professional and historian.
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 NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning poet Stephanie Bolster about her new book, Long Exposure (Palimpsest Press, 2025).

After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Those questions led to unexpected places; meanwhile, life kept pouring in. The ensuing book, Long Exposure, is Bolster's fifth, a roaming, associative exploration of disasters and their ongoing aftermaths, sufferings large and small, and the vulnerability and value of our own lives. Incremental, unsettling, Long Exposure rushes to and through.

Stephanie Bolster has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, appeared with Brick Books in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Véhicule Press, 1998) won the Governor General's and the Gerald Lampert Awards, and her second, Two Bowls of Milk (McClelland & Stewart, 1999), won the Archibald Lampman Award and was a finalist for the Trillium Award. Her work has been translated into French (Pierre Blanche: poèmes d'Alice, Les Éditions du Noroît, 2007), Spanish, German, and Serbo-Croatian. She edited The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 (Tightrope), the inaugural volume in that ongoing series; and co-edited Penned: Zoo Poems (Signal/Véhicule, 2009). Born in Vancouver, she grew up in Burnaby, BC, now lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec on the Mohawk (Kanien'kehá:ka) territory of Skaniatará:ti, and has taught creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal since 2000.
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

Today I’m speaking with William R. Brody about his book, Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026). Bill is an interventional radiologist who served as the President of Johns Hopkins University, from 1996 to 2009, and President of the Salk Institute from 2009 to 2015. When he became president of Johns Hopkins University, Bill set out to teach a course to juniors and seniors that would serve as a crash course for dealing with the messy realities of life. Through stories and anecdotes, Bill explores a variety of important concepts that regularly manifest in all aspects of life: from survivorship bias to why career-planning doesn’t often go as planned. Uncommon Sense is one of those books that one can only write after a lifetime of learning, teaching, and doing.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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

Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space as a Living Nightmare (Bloomsbury, 2026) is an examination of how the Gothic appears in game space to interrogate an area of substantial importance to contemporary games, with a focus on environments, bodies, and defining the Gothic in games. The Gothic, both as a literary and videogame genre has increased in prominence amongst literature, media, and culture scholars globally, as games studies becomes a more recognized and exciting field of study and as Gothic scholars find new ways to apply their works across emerging mediums. But why have Gothic games risen in popularity since 2010? What do players feel when they play these games? Why are themes surrounding fraught identities, mourning, and monstrosity gaining so much attention? Games That Haunt Us investigates the very nature of the Gothic and how video games provide new ways of connecting with the genre. The scholars in this collection look at why Gothic games are having their moment of popularity, the unsettling themes they evoke in unstable times, why we are fascinated with death and decay, theories surrounding body horror, and how games transform avatars and ourselves. Games That Haunt Us is arranged into three sequential themes: what makes a Gothic game; Gothic environments in game space; and how Gothic bodies are approached and utilized in ludonarratives.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.
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