New Books Network

Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, a New York Times Notable book of 2018, and the story collection Cool for America, longlisted for the 2020 Story Prize. His essays and stories have appeared frequently in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's, as well as in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Times Book Review and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his family.

Recommended Books:

William Demby, Love Story Black

Morgan Meis, The Drunken Silenus

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.
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The first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted
unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been
possible. They were alchemists in Roman Egypt, who designed apparatus
still in use today. They were Stone Age leatherworkers, Tang Dynasty
herbalists and Mayan stoneworkers. 

The Enlightenment is usually
credited with the origins of chemistry, but in truth, the science
blossomed gradually. As early innovators distilled, smelted, forged and
fermented their way through the centuries, they blurred science and
mysticism in search of answers to life's greatest mysteries.

In reading The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry (Profile Books, 2026), join
Kit Chapman on a global quest to achieve immortality, cure all disease
and transmute lead into gold as he reveals the illuminating stories of
how the alchemists first broke new ground and shaped the scientific
method.
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What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it
is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature
peeling paint, weeds, and broken railings. Public services are no longer
fit for purpose. A malaise seems to infect every aspect of British
life: its economy, polity, social order, sense of well-being, domestic
regional relationships, and place in the world. In The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot (Princeton
University Press, 2026), the distinguished historian A. G. Hopkins
offers an explanation, tracing Britain’s current problems to decisions
made in the 1980s that abandoned its postwar experiment in social
democracy and mimicked policies of deregulation and privatisation
promoted by the United States.

In 1945, the new Labour
government’s development programme aimed at creating a social democracy
that would benefit all members of society. The counterrevolution
launched by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979, which remains in
force today, promoted individualism and deregulation. The transition
from one programme to another was a response to the growth of finance
and services centred on the City of London, and to decolonisation, which
redirected trade to Europe. The expansion of credit led to the
financial crisis of 2008 and the years of austerity that followed, and
fuelled the populist movement that culminated in Brexit. Hopkins argues
that, instead of following the free-market policies of its mentor, the
United States, Britain should draw on its own history of social
democracy and borrow from its neighbours in Europe, where communitarian
principles continue to be upheld.
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Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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Most people only know one of the Ryukyu Islands: the island of Okinawa, home to sandy beaches and one of the U.S.’s most important bases in Asia. There are lots of myths about this island chain, which stretch from southern Japan down to the island of Taiwan: That it owed loyalty to China, given its place in the imperial tribute trade; that it was a pacifist kingdom; that it was quasi-sovereign even within Japan.

Gregory Smits tackles a lot of these myths in his expansive history of the islands, titled The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present (University of Chicago Press: 2025). His book, and today’s conversation, dives into all the ways that the Ryukyu Islands will frustrate anyone trying to fit this place into an easy historical or political narrative.

Gregory Smits is professor of history and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of several books, including Early Ryukyuan History: A New Mode (University of Hawaii Press: 2024), Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650 (University of Hawaii Press: 2019) and Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (University of Hawaii Press: 1999)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Ryukyu Islands. 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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