New Books in British Studies

By: Marshall Poe
  • Summary

  • Interviews with Scholars of Britain about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
    New Books Network
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Episodes
  • Daniel Todman, "Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947" (Oxford UP, 2020)
    Aug 31 2024
    The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 (Oxford UP, 2020), begins with the event Winston Churchill called the "worst disaster" in British military history: the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 to the Japanese. As in the first volume of Todman's epic account of British involvement in World War II ("Total history at its best," according to Jay Winter), he highlights the inter-connectedness of the British experience in this moment and others, focusing on its inhabitants, its defenders, and its wartime leadership. Todman explores the plight of families doomed to spend the war struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of their loved ones and the uncertainty of their return. It also documents the full impact of the entrance into the war by the United States, and its ascendant stewardship of the war. Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 is a triumph of narrative and research. Todman explains complex issues of strategy and economics clearly while never losing sight of the human consequences--at home and abroad--of the way that Britain fought its war. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped Great Britain and the world. Bob Wintermute is professor of history at Queens College, CUNY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
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    55 mins
  • Lise Butler, "Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970" (Oxford UP, 2020)
    Aug 30 2024
    Lise Butler’s Michael Young, Social Science and the British Left, 1945-70 (Oxford UP, 2020) invites us to revisit a figure who, in Butler’s words, is both a ‘relatively obscure’ yet also ‘curiously ubiquitous’ in the political and cultural history of twentieth-century Britain. The book uses Young, a policy maker and sociology to explore the role of social science in social democratic politics in the postwar period. Butler explores Young’s role in activities such as his role developing the Labour Party’s 1945 manifesto ‘Let us Face the Future’, his work as a sociologist, most notably in his monograph Family and Kinship in East London (co-authored with Peter Wilmott), and his role as a social innovator helping to establish Institute of Community Studies, the Consumers' Association, Which? magazine, the Social Science Research Council and the Open University. In doing so she offers a thought provoking story which encourages rethinking some of the common assumptions made about the role of sociology, and social science more broadly, in British politics. In this podcast we explore the themes of the book, which includes not only discussing the above but also themes such as the role of women and the family in Young’s thought, why he favoured the basic income, the social scientific turn in the history of modern Britain and why, exactly, buying a fridge is a political act. Matt Dawson is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow with research interests in social theory and the history of sociology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov, "Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism" (Stanford UP, 2019)
    Aug 29 2024
    The practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded as a successful political "solution" to ethnic conflict. In their edited volume Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism (Stanford University Press, 2019), Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov uncover the collective history of the concept of partition and locate its genealogy in the politics of twentieth-century empire and decolonization. Moving beyond the nationalist frameworks that served in the first instance to promote partition as a natural phenomenon, the volume discusses creation of new political entities in the world of the British empire, from the Irish Free State, to the Dominions (later Republics) of India and Pakistan, and Palestine. Yorgos Giannakopoulos is a currently a Junior Research Fellow in Durham University, UK. He is a historian of Modern Britain and Europe. His published research recovers the regional impact of British Intellectuals in Eastern Europe in the age of nationalism and internationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
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    52 mins

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