Category: 3-BookTalkSometimeCommentary

As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or living space, in Eastern Europe and the United States's westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. The peoples of Eastern Europe were, he said, his "redskins," and for his colonial fantasy of a "German East" he claimed a historical precedent in the United States's displacement and killing of the native population. Edward B. Westermann examines the validity, and value, of this claim in Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).

The book takes an empirical approach that highlights areas of similarity and continuity, but also explores key distinctions and differences between these two national projects. The westward march of American empire and the Nazi conquest of the East offer clear parallels, not least that both cases fused a sense of national purpose with racial stereotypes that aided in the exclusion, expropriation, and killing of peoples. Westermann evaluates the philosophies of Manifest Destiny and Lebensraum that justified both conquests, the national and administrative policies that framed Nazi and U.S. governmental involvement in these efforts, the military strategies that supported each nation's political goals, and the role of massacre and atrocity in both processes. Important differences emerge: a goal of annihilation versus one of assimilation and acculturation; a planned military campaign versus a confused strategy of pacification and punishment; large-scale atrocity as routine versus massacre as exception.

Comparative history at its best, Westermann's assessment of these two national projects provides crucial insights into not only their rhetoric and pronouncements but also the application of policy and ideology "on the ground." His sophisticated and nuanced revelations of the similarities and dissimilarities between these two cases will inform further study of genocide, as well as our understanding of the Nazi conquest of the East and the American conquest of the West.

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On this week’s show, Dan Kois sits in for Dana Stevens. First, the hosts discuss One of Them Days, a new buddy comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA that’s quickly becoming a critical darling — and a box office success. Then, they dive into Asura, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Netflix show that’s about the dynamics between three sisters and is “totally uninterested in the rhythms of a TV show.” Finally, it’s time to explore the “manosphere.” The trio dissected a deftly reported package from Bloomberg, “The Second Trump Presidency, Brought to You by YouTubers.” 

Also, we’re looking for a new Production Assistant! Please send your resume and two ideas for segments to culturegabfestassistant@gmail.com. 

In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel tackles modern TV title sequences and asks the age-old question: do you skip or play? This conversation was inspired by James Poniewozik’s article for The New York Times, “Why Do TV Title Sequences Have So Much… Stuff?” 

Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 

Endorsements:

Dan: Playworld by Adam Ross. 

Julia: A cookbook by Ben Mims, Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World. 

Steve: (1) Bar Merenda, a restaurant located right outside of Melbourne. (2) “For the Love of the World” by Daegan Miller for Poetry Foundation. 

Kat: Calmly Writer Online, a distraction-free text editor. 

Podcast production by Vic Whitley-Berry. Production assistance by Kat Hong.

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World Book Café heads to Oslo to Europe’s largest Literature House to find out if Norway is the best place in the world to be a writer?

Octavia Bright is joined to discuss the highs and lows by the internationally bestselling novelist and climate activist Maja Lunde. Johan Harstad prize winning novelist and the first in-house writer at the National Theatre in Oslo, Gunnhild Oyehaug whose witty and experimental short stories and novels have won her fans around the world and Oliver Lovrenski whose first book was an instant bestseller when it was published in Norway in 2023, when he was just 19.

With generous grants for writers to live and work the Norwegian government also buys 1,000 copies of every book published to give to local libraries across the country. The organisation NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad) is funded by the ministry of culture and, since 2004, it has contributed to the translation of more than 8,000 books into no less than 73 languages. For a country of 5.5 million people Norwegian literature punches above its weight. However with much of the country’s wealth coming from the oil industry do environmental concerns tarnish this utopia for its writers?

Producer: Kirsten Locke

On this week’s show, the hosts dive into A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold’s surprisingly charming Bob Dylan biopic that’s all about fame and what it looks like to be adjacent to it. Then, the three explore Dick Wolf’s latest project: On Call, a half-hour cop procedural set in Long Beach, California that’s streaming on Prime Video. Finally, the trio remembers David Lynch, the iconic, singular filmmaker who passed away last week at the age of 78. 

In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel goes electric themselves and responds to a listener question from Rob: “Would you reminisce about the most electric experience you’ve had consuming a piece of culture with other people?”

Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 

Endorsements:

Dana: The Soul of the Dance, a one-hour documentary about ballerina Ulyana Lopatkina. 

Julia: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. Alos, Julia is looking for nonfiction recommendations about Japan! Email her at culturefest@slate.com. 

Steve: Two Australia-related endorsements: (1) The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. (2) BUSH, a restaurant in Sydney’s Redfern neighborhood. 

Podcast production by Vic Whitley-Berry. Production assistance by Kat Hong.

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After years of research, journalist Kathleen Lippa has written about the shocking crimes of a trusted teacher who wrought lasting damage on Inuit communities: Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North (Dundurn Press, February 2025). In the 1970s, a young schoolteacher from British Columbia was becoming the darling of the Northwest Territories education department with his dynamic teaching style. He was learning to speak the local language, Inuktitut, something few outsiders did. He also claimed to be Indigenous — a claim that would later prove to be false. In truth, Edward Horne was a pedophile who sexually abused his male students. From 1971 to 1985 his predations on Inuit boys would disrupt life in the communities where he worked — towns of close-knit families that would suffer the intergenerational trauma created by his abuse. In this book, Kathleen examines the devastating impact the crimes had on individuals, families, and entire communities. Her compelling work lifts the veil of silence surrounding the Horne story once and for all.

More about Kathleen Lippa:

Kathleen Lippa is a Canadian journalist, born in Toronto and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Kathleen trained as a professional dancer at The Quinte Ballet School and The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre before embarking on a journalism career. At Memorial University, from which she graduated with a BA (English) in 1998, she worked on the student newspaper, the muse. Following graduation, she worked at a number of Canadian newspapers including The Express (St. John’s) where she won a Canadian Community Newspaper Association award for arts reporting, The Hanover Post (Ontario), a number of newspapers under the corporate umbrella of the Northern News Services, 24 Hours (Toronto), and the Calgary Sun. For Northern News Services, after a short stint in Yellowknife, Kathleen served as Bureau Chief in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Her experience includes writing, editing, page layout and design, and photography. Her Northern experience was in a cross-cultural setting primarily reporting news from Inuit communities. After spending many years in Iqaluit, Kathleen now lives with her husband in Ottawa and St. John’s.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Andrew Laird, of Brown University, discusses Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2024). In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and cultural exchanges that would result from that initiative are the subject of this book. Aztec Latin highlights the importance of Renaissance humanist education for early colonial indigenous history, showing how practices central to humanism — the cultivation of eloquence, the training of leaders, scholarly translation, and antiquarian research — were transformed in New Spain to serve Indian elites as well as the Spanish authorities and religious orders.

While Franciscan friars, inspired by Erasmus' ideal of a common tongue, applied principles of Latin grammar to Amerindian languages, native scholars translated the Gospels, a range of devotional literature, and even Aesop's fables into the Mexican language of Nahuatl. They also produced significant new writings in Latin and Nahuatl, adorning accounts of their ancestral past with parallels from Greek and Roman history and importing themes from classical and Christian sources to interpret pre-Hispanic customs and beliefs. Aztec Latin reveals the full extent to which the first Mexican authors mastered and made use of European learning and provides a timely reassessment of what those indigenous authors really achieved.

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Emily Bazelon talks with author Yael van der Wouden about her debut novel, The Safekeep. They discuss why Yael chose a queer love story, how Yael’s own Dutch and Jewish heritage influenced her writing, the history of dispossession after World War II, and more. 

Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.

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Chile is more than just spice, writes Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Cal Poly Ethnic Studies professor Victor Valle in The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands (U New Mexico Press, 2023). By tracing the meaning of chile as a plant and chile eating as an act. Valle shows how Indigenous cultivation and culinary practices troubled colonizers, sustained cultures, and fostered exchange. The Poetics of Fire calls for decolonization of chile cultivation and a renewed embrace of Indigenous ideals toward land and nourishment, arguing that chiles serve as a connection point between pre-colonization Indigenous societies and twentieth century (and beyond) Chicanx and Latinx communities. At once food studies, Indigenous studies, and Latinx studies, The Poetics of Fire dispenses with Scoville units and instead thinks about how chile is a window for understanding a decolonized world.

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In Dr. Susan A. Brewer's fascinating The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory (Cornell University Press, 2024), she recounts the story of the parcel of central New York land on which she grew up. Brewer and her family had worked and lived on this land for generations when the Oneida Indians claimed that it rightfully belonged to them. Why, she wondered, did she not know what had happened to this place her grandfather called the best land. Here, she tells its story, tracing over the past four hundred years the two families—her own European settler family and the Oneida/Mohawk family of Polly Denny—who called the best land home.

Situated on the passageway to the west, the ancestral land of the Oneidas was coveted by European colonizers and the founders of the Empire State. The Brewer and Denny families took part in imperial wars, the American Revolution, broken treaties, the building of the Erie Canal, Native removal, the rise and decline of family farms, bitter land claims controversies, and the revival of the Oneida Indian Nation. As Dr. Brewer makes clear in The Best Land, through centuries of violence, bravery, greed, generosity, racism, and love, the lives of the Brewer and Denny families were profoundly intertwined. The story of this homeland, she discovers, unsettles the history she thought she knew.

With clear determination to tell history as it was, without sugarcoating or ignoring the pain and suffering of both families, Dr. Brewer navigates the interconnected stories with grace, humility, and a deep love for the land. The Best Land is a beautiful homage to the people, the place, and the environment itself.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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.

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Today I talked to Robert Wright about Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Texas Tech UP, 2023).

The Indigenous nations of the valley of the Rio Grande that is now centered upon Ojinaga, Chihuahua, and Presidio, Texas―the La Junta valley in colonial times―had a long and unique history with Hispanics during the colonial period.

Their valley was the initial route to New Mexico and West Texas explored by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. In the mid-1600s, the Juntans began engaging in long-distance migrant labor in Nueva Vizcaya, and in the 1680s they began inviting Franciscan missionaries and serving as important military allies to Hispanic troops.

Yet for seventy-five years only the missionaries, without any Hispanic military or civilians, lived among them, due to both the remoteness of their valley from Hispanic settlements and the Juntans' insistence upon their autonomy. This is unique in Spanish colonial annals on the northern frontier of New Spain.

This detailed research study adds much new information and many corrections to the rare previous studies.

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