New Books with Miranda Melcher

It is no secret that marriage rates in the United States are at an all-time low. Despite this significant decline, the institution of marriage endures in our society amid historic changes to its meaning and practice. How does the continuing strength of marriage impact the relationships of same-sex couples after the legalization of same-sex marriage?

Drawing on over one hundred interviews with LGBTQ+ people, Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships (University of Chicago Press, 2024) reveals the transformative impact marriage equality has had on same-sex relationships. Sociologist Dr. Abigail Ocobock looks to same-sex couples across a wide age range to illuminate the complex ways institutional mechanisms work in tandem to govern the choices and behaviors of individuals with different marriage experiences. Dr. Ocobock examines both the influence of marriage on the dynamics of same-sex relationships and how LGBTQ+ people challenge heteronormative assumptions about marriage, highlighting the complex interplay between institutional constraint and individual agency.

Marriage Material presents a bold challenge to dominant scholarly and popular ideas about the decline of marriage, making clear that gaining access to legal marriage has transformed same-sex relationships, both for better and for worse.

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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Many people think they know what fairies are, what a fairy looks like, and how a fairy is expected to behave. Dr. Francis Young's Fairies: A History (Polity, 2026) demonstrates that the truth about belief in fairies is far stranger than clichéd images of tiny figures with wings and wands.Before the rise of the 'small winged fairy' in the nineteenth century, the category of fairies included a vast range of supernatural human-like creatures, from the elves of Scandinavia and the aos sí of Ireland to the vilas of the Balkans and the fadas of Iberia. Dr. Young traces the ancient origins of belief in such creatures and how it adapted to the rise of Christianity and then flourished in medieval Europe, before being transformed – but not destroyed – by the upheavals of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and even European colonial expansion, which made fairies a global phenomenon. He concludes this uniquely wide-ranging history by reflecting on the surprising ways in which fairy belief endures in our apparently disenchanted contemporary world.No one who reads this brilliant tour through the enchanted pathways of fairyland will ever look at the winged creatures of contemporary popular culture – or the woods at the bottom of their garden – in the same way again.

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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For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. In Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself.Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable achievements of these years while also showing how respect for science clashed with scorn toward the deep state and left the nation unprepared for the next health crisis.

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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Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by creating the first social democratic state. Based on a combination of parliamentarianism and direct democracy, it was a representative government of the peasants and workers themselves, with ballots in their hands.

The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921 (Harvard University Press, 2026) is the definitive history of a government that should inspire social democrats today. Professor Stephen F. Jones chronicles how the founders of the new state navigated myriad challenges, including territorial threats from abroad, internal ethnic conflicts, and geopolitical rivalries between the imperial Ottomans, the British, and the Germans. In the midst of these existential challenges, Georgia’s social democrats set about writing a constitution to put the country on a distinctive path of genuine self-government—protecting democratic rights, promoting political pluralism, and championing equality. Professor Jones brings to life the passionate debates that shaped Georgia’s democracy during a moment of acute global instability.

The Democratic Republic of Georgia was strangled in its crib. Just four days after the constitution was ratified, the capital fell to the Red Army. Under Soviet rule, the republic was lost to history. Soviet scholars were forbidden to research this Georgian story, and Western scholars had little interest in a small and peripheral state that was independent for only three years. Recovering a forgotten experiment in democratic citizenship and statecraft, Dr. Jones reminds us of those audacious times when Georgians created and defended political freedom against the rise of Soviet communism.

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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From Revlon to Glossier, from Marilyn to Gaga, lipstick is as shape-shifting and unwieldy as femininity itself.Who wears lipstick today – as a matter of routine? And for those who do, is it out of obligation to a strict feminine standard, or some other reason entirely? Lipstick reconsiders the beauty world's most conspicuous – and contentious – tool of artifice. Tossing expired ideas about femininity like so many tubes of melting wax, Lipstick (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Eileen G’Sell, part of the Object Lessons series, explores how self-adornment can be a source of play, pleasure, and transformation, as well as how lipstick can knock gender norms off balance.

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