New Books Network

Los Angeles and smog have been synonymous for decades. From the 1940s
through the 1980s, children breathed air so heavy with lead that their
blood was poisoned with it. In 1970, officials declared smog alerts on
235 days. But the last smog alert happened in 2003, and lead has
virtually disappeared from the air. This is the story of how Los Angeles
cleaned up its air.

In Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air (University of California Press, 2026), environmental law expert and LA native Ann Carlson recounts the dramatic policy fights and the
determined scientists, lawyers, and community members who worked
alongside public officials to face off against major polluters and save
their city. In a time of unprecedented climate change and skepticism
about government and science, this book is an inspiring reminder of
what concerned residents, individual leaders, and all levels of
government can achieve by working together.

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 COVID-19 pandemic delivered its first and most devastating strike in the United States in New York City in the Spring of 2020. Closely connected to the world by air travel, with a virus able to circle the globe in a single flight, and with a population always living life largely in public spaces, sickness swept through the city, with the daily death toll reaching, at its worst point in April 2020, almost 800 persons per day.

In When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers (Cornell UP, 2026) author Robert W. Snyder offers readers the voices of 45 New Yorkers, recorded in real time during the pandemic, people whose names we would likely not know or recognize. Snyder centers the “oral histories” of these 45 -- transit workers, ambulance drivers, grocery store clerks, firefighters, police officers, “deliveristas” of take-out food, nurses, and doctors. These 45 also speak for thousands of others, the people we came to know as “essential workers.” They could not work from home. They showed up to do their jobs every day during the most dangerous weeks of early Spring 2020, and beyond. Their dedication cost some of them their lives, but their courage, perseverance, and endurance ensured that the city and its people would be saved, in the author’s words, “from the bottom up.”

This interview was conducted by James Melchiorre, a journalist, documentary producer, and teacher of English as a Second Language. Melchiorre lives in New York City.
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

Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969 (UCL Press, 2026) is a global history project that examines the diffusion of scientific
and environmental discourses from India to Britain and the US.

Ashok Malhotra examines how imperial agendas and colonial stereotyping shaped
dietary and agricultural research carried out in the 1920s in British
India, from soil protection initiatives to studies of diet and healthy
living. It also discusses how a selective interpretation of this
research, which focused on the supposed vigor of one community, the
Hunzas, influenced the organic and lifestyles movements that later
emerged in Britain and the US from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Ashok Malhotra is a senior lecturer in British imperial history at Queen's University Belfast.

Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast.
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

Walmart: Made in China
(Stanford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Eileen Otis tells the story of
Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a
major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Dr.
Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the
role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging
control over large consumer markets. As Walmart's retail business grew
at unprecedented rates across the globe, so too did this business model.

Walmart: Made in China
documents the business's expansion into China not as a tale of seamless
market entry, but as a case of frictions, improvisations, and labor
struggles that reveal deeper transformations in global economic power.
Drawing on years of fieldwork in Walmart stores across China, Dr. Otis
traces an internal supply chain—from warehouse to checkout—where workers
stock, promote, explain, and process goods under varying regimes of
control. These labor
regimes, structured by gender, migration, surveillance, and corporate
rules and culture, as well as managerial oversight, reveal how
capitalist value is realized, and how it can be contested.

At
the heart of her analysis is the rise of a new system—merchant
capitalism—in which control over consumer markets, rather than
production, drives profit. Thus, Walmart: Made in China offers a compelling account of this shift in global capitalism, as it gets made and remade, on the retail floor.

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

A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference. Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural change without individual people making different—more structure-facing—decisions. In Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change (MIT Press, 2025) Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly show us how we can connect our personal choices to structural change and why individual choices matter, though not in the way people usually think. The authors paint a new picture of how social change happens, arguing that our most powerful personal choices are those that springboard us into working together with others—warehouse worker Chris Smalls’s unionization at Amazon is one powerful example. Taking inspiration from the writer Bill McKibben, they stress how one “important thing an individual can do is be somewhat less of an individual.” Organized into three main parts, the book first diagnoses the problem of “either/or” thinking about social change, which stems from the false choice of making better personal choices or changing the system. Then it offers a different way to think about social change, anchored in a new picture of human nature emerging across the social sciences. Finally, the authors explore ways of putting this picture into practice. Neither a how-to manual nor an activist’s guide, Somebody Should Do Something pairs stories with science (plus some jokes) to help readers recognize their own power, turning resignation about climate change and racial injustice into actions that transform the world.

My guests today are Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva and Daniel Kelly. Michael is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at John Jay College and Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, Cuny. Alex is Professor of Philosophy, Director of the California Center for Ethics and Policy, and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Consortium at Cal Poly Pomona. Daniel is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University.
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