New Books Network

China and the Global Economic Order (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines China's evolving relations with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs), specifically the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group from the 1980s through 2025. Using a combination of new qualitative findings and quantitative datasets, the authors observe that China has taken an evolving approach to the BWIs in order to achieve its multiple agendas, acting largely as a 'rule-taker' during its first two decades as a member, but, over time, also becoming a 'rule-shaker' inside the BWIs, and ultimately a new 'rule-maker' outside of the BWIs. The analysis highlights China's exercise of 'two-way countervailing power' with one foot inside the BWIs, and another outside, and pushing for changes in both directions. China's interventions have resulted in BWs reforms and the gradual transformation of the global order, while also generating counter-reactions especially from the United States.

Gregory Chin is an Associate Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics, and Faculty of Graduate Studies at York University (Canada), with a focus on the political economy of international money and development finance, China, Asia, the BRICS, and global governance.

Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, great power rivalry and IR theories.

Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699
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In the midst of profound political changes in late seventh-century Egypt, after the end of Roman hegemony and during Islamic rule, a bishop named John from the city of Nikiu sat down to pen a chronicle. It is a puzzling and fascinating work that reimagines the established Roman genre of Christian world history as a dialectic between a Roman state that often failed to maintain Christian orthodoxy and Roman citizens who attempted to nudge the state in the direction of correct theology. In The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Coping with Crisis in Post-Roman Egypt (U California Press, 2025) Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga treats the bishop's text as a historical artifact of Egyptian cultural and intellectual history, one of the last works of an educated elite forced to use the tools of Roman education to tackle the crisis brought on by the end of Roman Egypt. Placing the Chronicle in its broader setting, Yirga positions the text as quintessentially post-Roman, arguing that it was a rearticulation of imperial ideology for and by post-Roman subjects that allowed them to explain and cope with the failure of the Roman state to maintain control of Egypt.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.

Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee Knoxville

Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston.
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Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don't, Ludwig shows gun violence to be more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald's,” Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He is the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago's Crime Lab, codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research's working group on the economics of crime, elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a member of the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Science.

Alfred Marcus is the Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School, University of Minnesota.
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An ethnography of indigenous lives amidst subsistence labor, large-scale logging, and unrealized schemes, We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and Enduring Hopes for Development in Papua New Guinea (U Arizona Press, 2024) traces how hopes for development in New Hanover, Papua New Guinea, are cultivated, frustrated, and yet continually renewed.

On New Hanover Island in Papua New Guinea, Lavongai communities have long pursued transformative development through logging and large-scale agroforestry projects, only to see forests disappear and livelihoods deteriorate. In We Stay the Same, Jason S. Roberts follows the various Lavongai encounters with multinational special agricultural and business leases that promised sustainable growth but instead deepened inequality and risk. Blending ethnographic and ecological research, Roberts traces how Lavongai people navigate subsistence, dispossession, and what he calls a “political ecology of hope,” showing how aspirations for a better life are continually cultivated, disappointed, and yet never fully abandoned.

Jason S. Roberts is a practicing anthropologist who currently works on subsistence policy and natural resource management issues in Alaska. He completed his PhD at the University of Texas at San Antonio and previously served as a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Drew University. His work and research engages interests in development, sustainability, climate change, hope, and environmental justice.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.
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The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powerhouse and fashioned its new value system. Amid waves of emigration and evolving cultural exchanges, Italy’s relationship with America became a complex tapestry of admiration, critique, and adaptation.

This study of Italy’s Americanism explores social debates within Italy regarding emigration, the development of a Columbian narrative, European reactions to the Spanish-American War, the impact of American products on Italian society, and former US president Woodrow Wilson’s military intervention and political propaganda during the First World War. It highlights discussions among Italians about the implications of emigration, contrasting prevailing negative views with a counter-narrative from Italian journalists, scholars, and missionaries who visited the United States. The negotiation of US imports and their incorporation into the Italian national context document the formation of a distinct American subculture and the early phases of the nation’s Americanization.

The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919 (University of Toronto Press, 2025) provides a unique perspective to assess the early stages of America’s “soft” expansion, as the flow of departing and returning emigrants made Italy a favourable terrain for commercial penetration in Europe, transforming an export ideology into a complex network of transatlantic relations.

Luca Cottini, PhD, is an associate professor of Italian in Villanova University. He is also the creator of the popular Youtube channel, Italian Innovators.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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