Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill, "Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story" (Da Capo, 2026)

With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the ineffable low profile cool of a cult hero as he glided through six decades of musical trends with nary a lapse in taste. Not to say he ever played it safe. What other guitarist can lay claim to performing with opera star Luciano Pavarotti, mainstream television personality Kelly Clarkson, and professional degenerates like Guns N’ Roses with equal grace and wit? Or as Beck himself once quipped, “I’m an awkward son of a bitch when it comes to doing the expected.” In Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780306836589] (Da Capo, 2026) , Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill return to chart the unexplored life of rock’s greatest and perhaps most enigmatic instrumentalist. Culled from approximately 30 hours of interviews with the late guitarist himself, numerous conversations with those closest to him, and extensive research, the book sheds new light on the genius that Jimmy Page once said, “shifted the whole sound and face of electric guitar music.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

On “Turtling” Versus Being Primed for Possibilities

Tissa Richards is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, and the award-winning author of No Permission Needed and Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage. Her mission is to help bold, high-capacity leaders become unshakable. A repeat tech founder and CEO who has raised millions in funding, Tissa advises a wide array of companies on innovation and performance. In an era when trust is eroding, holding back and failing to communicate is a greater failing than ever. Rather than act like a turtle withdrawing into your shell, be bold: that’s the message here. The better route is to be in learning more, applying lessons learned from “failures” so that you can seize on the opportunities ahead. Most of all, remember that resiliency is a team sport; the lone hero won’t cut it in a world where exponential growth happens through the chemistry of a community that provides synergy. Case in point: Tissa mentions her interview with a former CEO of Campbell’s, whose Prickly Pear Council proved to be so successful in airing and resolving conflicts that eventually it no longer needed to exist. Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Andrew Martin, "Down Time" (FSG, 2026)

Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, a New York Times Notable book of 2018, and the story collection Cool for America, longlisted for the 2020 Story Prize. His essays and stories have appeared frequently in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's, as well as in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Times Book Review and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his family. Recommended Books: William Demby, Love Story Black [https://odysseybookstore.com/book/9798217007356] Morgan Meis, The Drunken Silenus [https://odysseybookstore.com/book/9781639820542] Chris Holmes [https://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/cholmes] is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature [https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/kazuo-ishiguro-against-world-literature-9781501388422/], is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival [https://www.ithaca.edu/academics/school-humanities-and-sciences/writing/new-voices-festival], a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Most people only know one of the Ryukyu Islands: the island of Okinawa, home to sandy beaches and one of the U.S.’s most important bases in Asia. There are lots of myths about this island chain, which stretch from southern Japan down to the island of Taiwan: That it owed loyalty to China, given its place in the imperial tribute trade; that it was a pacifist kingdom; that it was quasi-sovereign even within Japan. Gregory Smits tackles a lot of these myths in his expansive history of the islands, titled The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present (University of Chicago Press: 2025). His book, and today’s conversation, dives into all the ways that the Ryukyu Islands will frustrate anyone trying to fit this place into an easy historical or political narrative.  Gregory Smits is professor of history and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of several books, including Early Ryukyuan History: A New Mode (University of Hawaii Press: 2024), Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650 (University of Hawaii Press: 2019) and Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (University of Hawaii Press: 1999) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books [https://asianreviewofbooks.com/], including its review of The Ryukyu Islands [https://asianreviewofbooks.com/the-ryukyu-islands-by-gregory-smits-the-legacy-of-the-ryukyu-kingdom-by-takara-kurayoshi/]. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia [https://twitter.com/BookReviewsAsia]. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon [https://twitter.com/nickrigordon?lang=en]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Doubled Up: Shared Households and the Precarious Lives of Families

More than eleven million children in the US live in doubled-up households, sharing space with extended family or friends. These households are even more common among low-income families, families of color, and single-parent families, functioning as a private safety net for many in a country with extremely limited public support for families. Despite their prevalence, we know little about how shared households form and how they shape family life. Doubled Up is an in-depth look at the experiences of families with children living in doubled-up households. Drawing on extensive interviews with sixty parents living in doubled-up households, Dr. Hope Harvey examines what circumstances and motivations lead families to form doubled-up households, how living in shared households affects daily routines, and how families fare after these arrangements dissolve. Dr. Harvey shows that although families rely on doubling up to get by in the face of rapidly rising housing costs, precarious labor markets, and unaffordable childcare, these private arrangements are rarely sufficient to overcome such structural barriers. And doubling up incurs its own costs for both host and guest families. For doubled-up families, negotiating household relationships and navigating shared space reshapes family life. Understanding the dynamics of doubled-up households extends scholarship on family life beyond the nuclear family and points the way toward better policies that will serve all families. Guest: Dr. Hope Harvey is an assistant professor at the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky and a research affiliate at the Center for Poverty Research. She is the author of the award-winning book Doubled Up. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler [https://christinagessler.com/] is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: What's On Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life [https://newbooksnetwork.com/whats-on-her-mind-the-mental-workload-of-family-life#entry:446465@1:url] The Fight To Save The Town [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-fight-to-save-the-town#entry:167629@1:url] You're Doing It Wrong [https://newbooksnetwork.com/about-maternal-health-studies-a-conversation-with-bethany-johnson#entry:108161@1:url] Raising Them [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-self-care-stuff-parenting-and-personal-life-in-academia#entry:50416@1:url] What Do You Want Out Of Life [https://newbooksnetwork.com/what-do-you-want-out-of-life-2#entry:413700@1:url] How Girls Achieve [https://newbooksnetwork.com/sally-nuamah-how-girls-achieve-harvard-up-2019-2#entry:31033@1:url] What Might Be [https://newbooksnetwork.com/what-might-be#entry:387428@1:url] Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/academic-life] And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]