New Books with Miranda Melcher

In
1217, the crusader states were in a highly fragile condition. The
Fourth Crusade had failed, and Jerusalem had not been recovered. The
crusaders now set their sights on Egypt. If the breadbasket of the
Mediterranean could be conquered, long-term Christian control of the
Holy Land could be ensured. Led by the rulers of Hungary and Austria,
and backed by the Knights Templar and Hospitaller, the Fifth Crusade was
launched.

In The Fifth Crusade: A History of the Epic Campaign to Conquer Egypt(Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. Thomas Smith tells the gripping
story of the crusade for Egypt. Looking at a wide range of Christian and
Muslim sources, Dr. Smith sheds new light on the brutal reality of
medieval combat on land and water. We see a dramatic beach landing, the
invention of a unique floating siege engine, and the conquest of the
crucial port city of Damietta—one of the most famous and successful
sieges of the crusades. Dr. Smith provides fresh insights into strategy,
showing how, despite early victories, foolish decision making meant
that the crusaders ultimately snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

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. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For
more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life.
But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them
became pets. In Cats: A History
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Rod Phillips shares a
sweeping cultural and social history of felines, tracing their shifting
place across societies and centuries, from ancient Egypt's revered
hunters to Europe's suspected familiars of witches and from shipboard
rodent controllers to cherished internet icons.

Professor
Phillips illustrates how cats have always occupied spaces both familiar
and mysterious and how their perceived independence and disruptive
nature—and their associations with women, the supernatural, and
outsiders—have shaped humans' attitudes toward these fascinating
creatures. Cats have been lauded as companions and vermin-killers,
reviled as threats to moral and ecological order, and cherished for the
very qualities that make them hard to control. This richly textured
portrait of cats explores their significance in religion, politics,
gender, literature, warfare, and pop culture. It also provides profound
insights into our relationships with other animals, especially dogs and
rodents.

The many roles that cats have played throughout history
illuminate a variety of contradictions in humans' perceptions of them:
as affectionate yet aloof, adorable
and evil, ordinary and exceptional. This book is the definitive story
of the feline presence in human history—an elegant study of how we live
with animals whom we see as living by their own rules.

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. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959
(Edinburgh University Press, 2025) by Dr. Sara Farhan offers a rigorous
social and cultural history of the formation of medical professionals
in modern Iraq and their role in shaping public health institutions.
Tracing developments from late Ottoman medical reforms to the
establishment of the Medical College of Mosul, the book examines the
institutionalization of medical education as a critical element of the
social transformation of Iraq. It reveals how shifting imperial,
colonial and national frameworks sought
to cultivate a cadre of physicians who would serve state and society.
These experts, however, often found themselves navigating competing
ideological imperatives.

This
extensively researched study highlights a wealth of rarely consulted
sources gathered from 14 archives, family collections, medical journals,
student newspapers, film
and oral interviews. Drawing on these materials, it interrogates the
contradictions inherent in state-driven efforts, wherein doctors
functioned as agents of reform and subjects of bureaucratic oversight.
Through this, Dr. Farhan reveals the nexus between medical pedagogy,
professional authority, public health policy and the broader political
transformations that continually redefined medicine in Iraq.

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. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paper
was a precious commodity in the eighteenth century: every sheet was
made by hand. There was therefore a significant market in recycling
substandard paper from paper mills and discarded proofs and sheets from
printers and booksellers for secondary use, alongside a black market in
which stealing and receiving stolen paper took place on a vast scale. A
single piece of paper could be termed ‘waste’ and yet sold for cash
three times in succession, on each occasion performing a useful
function. The end user would keep the newly purchased
‘waste’ or paper wrapping in a special drawer from which it would be
taken for a myriad household purposes, including cooking, needlework, decoration
and hygiene. Popular satirical prints depicted explicit paper uses,
while creators of flamboyant papier mâché ceilings concealed the
material by gilding it.

With over 100 illustrations, and
drawing on letters from a range of people from farmers to notable
authors and members of the aristocracy, together with meticulous
archival research, Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century
(Bodleian Library, 2026) by Dr. Amélie Junqua and Dr. Geoffrey Day
traces the extraordinary history of ingenious paper recycling in
eighteenth century England.

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. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data
(University of Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Ali Fard peers through
this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global
computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological
development of the cloud computing paradigm, Dr. Fard exposes an
ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and
marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.

Demonstrating how technology’s spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes
the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform
capitalism—from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote
regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers
that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with
compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses,
Dr. Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the
growing economies of data extraction.

Breaking
down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes
visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird
today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of
the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban
space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.

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. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices