Category: 3-BookTalkSometimeCommentary

Discover the sweeping story of how Indigenous, European, and African traditions intertwined to form an entirely new cuisine, with over 90 recipes for the modern home cook—from the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Famer and star of the Netflix docuseries High on the Hog. One of our preeminent culinary historians, Dr. Jessica B. Harris has conducted decades of research throughout the Americas, the Caribbean, and Africa. In this telling of the origins of American food, though, she gets more personal. As heritage is history, she intertwines the larger sweeping past with stories and recipes from friends she’s made over the years—people whose family dishes go back to the crucial era when Native peoples encountered Europeans and the enslaved Africans they brought with them. Through this mix, we learn that Clear Broth Clam Chowder has both Indigenous and European roots; the same, too, with Enchiladas Suizas, tomatillo-smothered tortillas made “Swiss” with cheese and dairy; and that the hallmarks of African American food through the centuries have been evolution based on region, migration, and innovation, resulting in classics like Red Beans and Rice and Peach Bread Pudding Cupcakes with Bourbon Glaze. With recipes ranging from everyday meals to festive spreads, Braided Heritage: Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine (Clarkson Potter, 2025) offers a new, in-depth, delicious look at American culinary history.

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When Megan Greenwell was 34 she landed a coveted job in journalism as the editor-in-chief of the sports and culture blog, Deadspin. Just over a year later a post about why she was resigning went viral – a private equity firm had bought Deadspin’s parent company, and was seeking "a quick cash-out rather than the growth that comes from a well-run business."

Her experience led her to spend six years investigating the industry for her book Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream which follows four Americans whose lives were upended by private equity takeovers in retail, healthcare, housing, and media.

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And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is deathsexmoney@slate.com.

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The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Martin Austin Nesvig tells the stories of women from Spain, North Africa, Senegambia, and Canaries accused of sorcery in sixteenth-century Mexico for adapting native magic and healing practices. These non-native women – the mulata of Seville who cured the evil eye; the Canarian daughter of a Count who ate peyote and mixed her bath water into a man's mustard supply; the wife of a Spanish conquistador who let her hair loose and chanted to a Mesoamerican god while sweeping at midnight; the wealthy Basque woman with a tattoo of a red devil; and many others – routinely adapted Native ritual into hybrid magic and cosmology. Through a radical rethinking of colonial knowledge, Dr. Nesvig uncovers a world previously left in the shadows of historical writing, revealing a fascinating and vibrant multi-ethnic community of witches, midwives, and healers.

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.

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Sari Pietikainen about her new book Cold Rush (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

This book is an original study of “Cold Rush,” an accelerated race for the extraction and protection of Arctic natural resources. The Northernmost reach of the planet is caught up in the double developments of two unfinished forces – rapidly progressing climate change and global economic investment - working simultaneously in tension and synergy. Neither process is linear or complete, but both are contradictory and open-ended.

This book traces the multiplicity of Cold Rush in the Finnish Arctic, a high-stakes ecological, economic, and political hotspot. It is a heterogeneous space, understood as indigenous land within local indigenous Sámi people politics, the last frontier from a colonial perspective, and a periphery under the modernist nation-state regime. It is now transforming into an economic hub under global capitalism, intensifying climate change and unforeseen geo-political changes.

Based on six years of ethnography, the book shows how people struggle, strategize, and profit from this ongoing, complex, and multidirectional change.

The author offers a new theoretical approach called critical assemblage analysis, which provides an alternative way of exploring the dynamics between language and society by examining the interaction between material, discursive, and affective dimensions of Cold Rush. The approach builds on previous work at the intersection of critical discourse analysis, critical sociolinguistics, nexus analysis and ethnography, but expands toward works by philosophers Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari.

This book will be of interest to researchers on language, discourse, and sociolinguistics interested in engaging with social critique embedded in global capitalism and accelerating climate change; as well as researchers in the social and human sciences and natural sciences, who are increasingly aware of the fact that the theoretical and analytical move beyond the traditional dichotomies like language/society, nature/human and micro/macro is central to understanding today´s complex, intertwined social, political, economic and ecological processes.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Though a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development. The continent was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. However, this history is not just one of imposition. Aboriginal communities, bearing the brunt of these processes, have persistently resisted, reclaiming their rights to Country and demanding reparations.
As Dr. Jessica Urwin shows in Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia (U of Washington Press, 2025 & Melbourne University Press, 2026), extraction, weapons testing, and nuclear waste disposal have caused incalculable physical, spiritual, and cultural harm to Aboriginal communities and lands. Yet Indigenous peoples all over the world have not only survived nuclear colonialism but challenged it time and time again. Tracking the colonial mechanisms Australia used to pursue a nuclear industry, Dr. Urwin simultaneously highlights how Aboriginal peoples refused and reshaped those same mechanisms over time. A groundbreaking book, Contaminated Country reveals how Australia’s deep nuclear past has been entangled with colonialism locally, nationally, and internationally.

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.

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Join us for a special episode of World Book Club as we journey into the fog-shrouded moors of Devon to explore The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle—arguably the most iconic and enduring novel in the Sherlock Holmes canon. First published in 1902, this gothic masterpiece has captivated readers for over a century and remains a cornerstone of detective fiction.

Harriett Gilbert is joined by internationally bestselling crime writer Denise Mina whose books include Three Fires, and The Good Liar and Dr Mark Jones, co-presenter of The Doings of Doyle podcast and editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal. Together, they’ll be answering your questions about The Hound of the Baskervilles and discussing Sherlock Holmes’s lasting influence on crime and detective fiction.

Recorded in front of a live audience at Topping & Company Booksellers in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival, this episode is a treat for mystery lovers everywhere. Expect lively debate as the panel considers whether all great fictional detectives need to be a little insufferable, whether the novel’s gothic atmosphere has had more impact on the genre than Holmes’s famed deductive reasoning—and why the spectral hound continues to haunt readers’ imaginations more than a century after it first appeared.

When comedy writer Tamara Yajia talks about her childhood, she’s sometimes unsure what tone to strike. Her new memoir Cry for Me Argentina: My Life as a Failed Child Star depicts a very fun nuclear family with parents and grandparents who are loud, crass, and sex-positive. There are hilarious moments and situations that seem wildly inappropriate.

In this week’s episode, Tamara tells Anna about the ups and downs of her childhood, which was spent in both Argentina and the U.S., and what she wishes her parents had done differently.  

This episode was produced by Cameron Drews.

To check out the episodes about Hurricane Katrina that Anna mentioned, click here:

https://www.wnyc.org/story/in-new-orleans/ 

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If you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is deathsexmoney@slate.com.

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The game of basketball is perceived by most today as an “urban” game with a locale such as Rucker Park in Harlem as the game’s epicenter (as well as a pipeline to the NBA). While that is certainly a true statement, basketball is not limited to places such as New York City.

In recent years scholars have written about the meaning of the game (and triumphs on the hardwood) to other groups, such as Asian Americans (Kathleen Yep and Joel Franks) and Mexican Americans (Ignacio Garcia). To this important literature one can now add an examination of the sport in the lives of Native Americans, through Wade Davies' Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895-1970 (University Press of Kansas, 2020).

The game, as Davies notes, was not just something imposed upon Natives in locales such as the Indian Industrial Training School in Kansas (and elsewhere). The game provided linkages to the Native past, and was embraced as a way to “prove their worth” within a hostile environment designed to strip students of all vestiges of their cultural inheritance. The sport provided both young men and women with an opportunity to compete against members of other institutions (both Native and white) and to challenge notions of inferiority and inherent weaknesses.

Davies’ work does an excellent job of detailing the role of the sport in the lives of individuals, schools, and eventually, Native communities. Additionally, it examines how these players competed against sometimes seven opponents (the five players on the court and the two officials) to claim their rightful place on the court. They also often had to deal with the taunts and racism of crowds at opposing gyms. Still, most of these schools managed to field competitive teams that created their own “Indian” style of basketball that proved quite difficult to defeat.

Wade Davies is professor of Native American studies at the University of Montana, Missoula.

Jorge Iber is a professor of history at Texas Tech University.

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On today’s episode, host Candice Lim tells Kate Lindsay about two recent BookTok conventions that went off the rails. While the first convention become known as the “Fyre Fest” of BookTok, the other faced troubling allegations of sexual assault against an employee. Is BookTok or social media to blame for how often attempts to bring a fandom together end up shattering the community apart? 

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This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Vic Whitley-Berry, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.

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Native American History of Washington, DC (History Press, 2023) by Dr. Armand Lione is a comprehensive recounting at the overlooked history of the Indigenous people who lived in the area for many years before the arrival of colonists. The book, dedicated to increasing public awareness of this history, aims to fill the historical gap that has long been ignored in the nation's capital. Lione, a toxicologist and historian, began his research after being inspired by the public acknowledgment of Indigenous people in Melbourne, Australia.

The book's central argument is that the history of Native Americans in Washington, DC, has been essentially "overlooked" or "erased from public view". Lione's research debunks the common "myth of a swamp," which suggests the land was empty before the capital was founded. Instead, he presents extensive evidence of a rich Native presence, focusing on the Anacostan people of the Piscataway tribe.

The author meticulously documents numerous archaeological sites and artifacts found throughout the city. These findings prove that the land was inhabited for centuries. Highlights include:

• The Native Village Near the Capitol: The book details the findings of archaeologist Samuel Vincent Proudfit, who in the 1880s identified a Native village site just five blocks from the U.S. Capitol, on land that became Garfield Park and the Daniel Carroll estate.
• The White House Grounds: In the 1970s, construction for a new swimming pool on the White House grounds uncovered seventeen Native American artifacts, including quartzite points and pottery fragments.
• A High-Status Burial in Foggy Bottom: Archaeological digs for a new highway ramp in 1997 revealed three significant Native sites, including a burial pit with the cremated remains and grave goods of a high-status woman from about 1,200 years ago. This is described as "The most significant prehistoric discovery in the city of Washington".
• Anacostia-Bolling Military Base: Lione pinpoints the Anacostan chief's village and a Native burial ground to the area that is now the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. In 1936, two ossuaries (common burial sites) containing the remains of about 130 individuals were found during airfield expansion.
• Native Quarries in Northwest DC: The book details two major Native quarries in northwest DC: the Piney Branch Quartzite Quarry and the Rose Hill Soapstone Quarry, where Native Americans worked stone for tools and pots for thousands of years.

Lione also explores the historical record of the Anacostans, explaining how their name was derived from a linguistic mistake by English settlers and how the tribe was a hub of traders. The book introduces Henry Fleete, a young English settler who lived with the Anacostans for five years in the 1620s and returned with fluency in their language, later becoming a successful trader.

In the epilogue, Lione asks why this rich history has been overlooked. He suggests that a mix of indifference, an underlying shame about colonial history, and a lack of public markers are to blame. The author advocates for actionable steps, such as using Native land acknowledgments, teaching this history in schools, and supporting local Piscataway tribes through donations and land trusts. He created the DC Native History Project to bring this history to public attention and has seen small victories, such as a land acknowledgment at the DC Public Library and the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling updating its history to include the Anacostan presence. Lione concludes with a call to action for readers to help ensure this history is no longer forgotten.

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