New Books Network

What happens when theories of racial hierarchies interact with reality? How are they contested, refuted and changed in light of that encounter? What role do experts, most notably social scientists, play here? And, what can these historical encounters tell us about how we should think of race and migration today? These are the questions which animate Sunmin Kim’s The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate (U Chicago Press, 2026). Taking as his focus the Dillingham Commission, a US government investigation into migrant groups established in 1907, Kim shows how theories of racial essentialism, which increasing were moving across the, at the time blurry, boundary between biology and society were used and contested in a moment when prominent political figures were eager to separate out the valued, long-established migrants from Western and Central Europe from those coming from Eastern and Southern Europe who all, on the face of it, were ‘white’. In doing so ideas such as ethnicity and the possibility of assimilation come to be mobilised. In turn Japanese migrants on the Pacific coast were placed beyond the pale of this possibility of assimilation and continued to be excluded. As Kim shows, not only did the commission report introduce some new vocabulary for thinking of race, but also played a key role in the development of US immigration quotas and a form of racial liberalism. This perspective, while accepting the possibility of a diverse body politic, rested on an assumption of a ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ element, including the possibility that some of the latter simply could never be ‘American’.

In our discussion we discuss the formation and activity of the Dillingham Commission. This includes discussing a number of key figures, such as Franz Boas who measures skulls for the commission and in so doing uses the same tools of the eugenicists and positivists to undercut their racist claims and Yamato Ichihashi who, while vociferously making the case that Japanese migrants such as himself are the ideal ‘Americans’ ends up being an example of the ‘insurmountable difference’ placed in front of such groups. We end by discussing how Zora Neale Hurston, once Boas’s student, provides a different way of conceiving of race and its place in immigration debates.

Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of The Anthem Companion to Henri Lefebvre (2026, Anthem Press) along with other texts.
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A powerful blend of deeply human stories and rigorous research, The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health (Beacon Press, 2026) reveals how social and structural factors like income, occupation, race and ethnicity, neighborhood conditions, and social connections, profoundly shape our well-being. Dr. Monica Wang, an award-winning public health researcher, educator, and working mother who came of age as an Asian American bussing student, brings a personal lens to these complex issues and shares a hopeful, action-oriented vision for building healthier communities from the ground up.Through her own personal and professional journey and the lives of 3 extraordinary women across the US, readers are invited to see how health is shaped in everyday spaces: Marielis, a first-generation Latina student navigating financial insecurity in the Bronx; Dorothy, a semi-retired Black community organizer in rural Alabama; and Rosa, an Indigenous clinical social worker preserving ancestral traditions in Texas.

With clarity, urgency, and optimism, The Collective Cure bridges powerful storytelling with evidence-based solutions. More than a diagnosis, this book is a call to reimagine what’s possible when we invest in people and places.

Our guest is: Dr. Monica L. Wang, who is an award-winning public health researcher and educator. She is an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, an adjunct associate professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and executive editor at Public Health Post.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and developmental editor. She produces and hosts the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Womanist Bioethics

The Well-Gardened Mind

Community-Building

Breaking free from overworking and underliving

The Burnout Workbook

Reproductive Justice

A Meaningful Life

Being Well in Academia

The Good- Enough Life

Gender Bias in the E.R.

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
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Place-Based Solutions (JHU Press, 2026) offers a bold and practical response, charting a path toward what Charles G. Curtin calls "prosilience"—the capacity not just to endure crises, but to leap forward through them. With over thirty years of collaborative, on-the-ground experience in conservation and climate adaptation. This book emphasizes the power of small and mid-sized organizations to catalyze meaningful change, using real-world examples to illustrate how lasting impact depends on aligning ethics, equity, institutional design, and the ability to learn over time. Curtin encourages readers to shift their focus from the pre-crisis status quo to preparing for—and thriving in—novel futures.

This is the third of a series of books that Charles has authored to explore and test frameworks for addressing social and ecological change. His previous two books, The Science of Open Spaces and Complex Ecology: Foundational perspectives on Dynamic Approaches to Ecology and Conservation.

Charles has a Master's in Land Management and a doctorate in Zoology. And he completed a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in Climate Change Adaptation.

His current work develops carbon-negative, place-based conservation strategies addressing fire and drought in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains, with companion projects focused on sustaining intact Panamanian cloud forests.

He now lives near Taos, New Mexico.
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On Sep. 6, 2018, India’s Supreme Court ruled that Section 377, a law that criminalized consensual homosexual activity, was unconstitutional, reversing an earlier decision from 2013. Both news headlines and LGBT activists hailed the decision as a major step forward for same-sex rights in India.

But in Mahesh Rao’s new novel Half Light (Penguin Random House India, 2025), the court’s deliberations sit in the background behind the budding relationship between Pavan, a hotel worker in Darjeeling, and Neville, a young, confident student. They meet first in Pavan’s hotel in Darjeeling in 2014; after a tragic incident, they meet again four years later, in Mumbai in 2018.

We’re joined again by Prarthana Prakash as a guest host.

Mahesh Rao grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked as a lawyer, academic researcher and bookseller in the UK. His debut novel The Smoke is Rising won the Tata First Book Award for fiction. His short fiction has been shortlisted for numerous awards. One Point Two Billion, his collection of short stories set across 13 Indian states, and Polite Society, a Delhi-set reimagining of Jane Austen's Emma, have both been published to critical acclaim. Mahesh has written for the New York Times, The Baffler, Prospect and Elle.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Half Light. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.
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Hindu sacred geographies are shaped by interwoven webs of myth, ritual, and pilgrimage. Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India (HASP, 2025) brings together essays that offer in-depth explorations of Hindu sacred spaces, focusing on the relationships between sites as a crucial dimension of their theological and social significance. Drawing on textual analysis, visual studies, and ethnographic insights, the contributors to this volume illuminate the patterns and mechanisms that link sacred sites into dynamic networks, demonstrating how sacrality is continually negotiated through evolving cultural, political, and theological landscapes.
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