Recall This Book

166 Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP)

The notion of abolishing prisons strikes some as an impossible dream: could we could reasonably conceive of a society that responded to harm without the possibility of long-term confinement in purpose...

2026-03-12

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165* Helen Garner Hacking Away at the Adverbs: A Novel Dialogue Crossover Conversation

In this RTB and Novel Dialogue episode from 2021, Helen Garner sits down with John and Elizabeth McMahon, a distinguished scholar of Australian literature. Helen’s novels range from the anti-patriarch...

2026-02-19

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164 Maurice Samuels: Jewish Assimilation, Integration and the Dreyfus Affair (JP)

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in W...

2026-02-05

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163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)

As Oscar Season rolls around, Recall This Book looks back to John's 2019 discussion with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus about The Drama of Celebrity, her tour-de-force account of how star...

2026-01-29

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162 Carlo Rotella's Books in Dark Times (JP)

For our Pandemic-era Books in Dark Times series, RTB spoke in 2020 with Carlo Rotella of Boston College. Rotella is the author of such gems as Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Charac...

2025-12-18

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161 One Battle After Another: A West Newton Cinema Discussion with Peter Coviello and Ethan Warren (JP)

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied ...

2025-12-04

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160* Hannah Arendt's Refugee Politics (JP)

John's “Arendt's Refugee Politics” came out in Public Books in early November. He made the case that his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt is an opponent both of identity politics and also...

2025-11-20

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159 Glenn Patterson: You Can Choose Who You Are (JP, DC)

In Belfast, good fences can make for bad neighbors. David Cunningham ( Wash U. sociologist, author of There’s Something Happening Here and Klansville, U.S.A and frequent RTB visitor) joins John to spe...

2025-10-30

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158 RTB Ben Fountain in Dark Times (JP)

Ben Fountain is far more than just the author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which won RTB hearts and minds (and the National Book Award) long before it became a weird Ang Lee movie. Back in 202...

2025-10-16

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157 Mangrum's Comical Computation (JP)

When does comedy become more than a laugh? Ben Mangrum of MIT joins RtB to discuss The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence, which in some ways is organized ...

2025-10-02

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156 Recall This B-Side #1: Merve Emre on Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Dry Heart”

RtB loves the present-day shadows cast by neglected books, which can suddenly loom up out of the backlit past. So, you won’t be shocked to know that John has also been editing a Public Books column ca...

2025-09-18

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155 Lyndsey Stonebridge on Hannah Arendt's Lessons on Love and Disobedience (JP)

An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedienc...

2025-09-04

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154 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson

With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, Kim Stanley Robinson has established a conceptual space as dedicated to susta...

2025-08-07

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153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)

John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt’s Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against anticipatory despair in the face of the Trump administration's ...

2025-07-03

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152 Why I Paneled: A Backwards Glance by Kristin Mahoney and Nasser Mufti (JP)

In RTB 151, you heard the Kristin, Nasser and John discussing what might happen before their Northeastern Victorian Studies Association conference actually took place. This episode, recorded a few wee...

2025-06-07

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151 Why I Panel, Part One: Kristin Mahoney, Nasser Mufti (JP)

Most scholars are both haunted, even undone, by the task of writing papers for peers and traveling to strange campuses to deliver them. Yet we keep it up--we inflict it on our peers, we inflict it on ...

2025-06-05

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150* Steve McCauley on Barbara Pym: The Comic Novel Explored and Adored (JP)

Back in 2019, John spoke with the celebrated comic novelist Stephen McCauley. Nobody knows more about the comic novel than Steve--his latest is You Only Call When You're in Trouble, but John still hol...

2025-05-15

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149 "I have not Finished...": Rokhaya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokhaya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo with...

2025-05-02

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148* Albion Lawrence: Scientists Cooperate while Humanists Ruminate (EF, JP)

Back in 2021, John and Elizabeth sat down with Brandeis string theorist Albion Lawrence to discuss cooperation versus solitary study across disciplines. They sink their teeth into the question, “Why d...

2025-04-17

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147 Ieva Jusionyte on American Guns in Mexico: Exit Wounds (EF, JP)

John and Elizabeth had the chance to talk with Ieva Jusionyte, anthropologist, journalist, emergency medical technician. Her award-winning books include Exit Wounds, which uses anthropological and jou...

2025-04-03

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Recall This Book

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