New Books Network

In September 2016, Islam Karimov–the first president of a post-Soviet Uzbekistan–died, at age 78. His death ended an oppressive dictatorship that had governed the Central Asian country for decades, which led to corruption, environmental damage, and political repression. Karimov was replaced with Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who instituted a tentative program of reforms.

These years are the subject of Joanna Lillis’s book, Silk Mirage: Through the Looking Glass in Uzbekistan (Bloomsbury, 2025). Lillis tells the stories of both the Karimov and Mirziryoyev regimes, based on many conversations with activists, journalists, and other opposition leaders in the country.

Joanna Lillis is a Kazakhstan-based journalist and author writing about Central Asia who has lived and worked in the region since 2001, in Uzbekistan (2001-2005) and Kazakhstan (since 2005). Her reporting has featured in outlets including The Economist, the Guardian, the Independent, the Eurasianet website and Foreign Policy and POLITICO magazines. Prior to moving to Central Asia, she lived in Russia and worked for BBC Monitoring, the BBC World Service’s global media tracking service. She is also the author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan (Bloomsbury: 2019).

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Silk Mirage. Follow on Twitter at @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.
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Eyeglasses have become so commonplace we hardly think about them—unless we can’t find them. Yet glasses have been controversial throughout history. Roger Bacon pioneered using lenses to see and then spent a decade in a medieval prison for advocating that he could fix" God’s creations by improving our eyesight. Even today, people take off their glasses before having their picture taken, despite how necessary they are.

A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See (Bloomsbury, 2026) is the first book to investigate the experience of wearing glasses and contacts and their role in culture. Dr. David King Dunaway encourages readers to take a look at how they literally see the world through what they wear. He explores everything from the history of deficient eyesight and how glasses are made to portrayals of those who wear glasses in media, the stigma surrounding them, and the future of augmented and virtual reality glasses, highlighting how glasses have shaped, and continue to shape, who we are. Interwoven is Dr. Dunaway’s own experience of spending a week without his glasses, which he has used since childhood, to see the world around him and his newfound appreciation for his visual aids.

This is the story of how we see the world and how our ability to see things has evolved, ultimately asking: How have two cloudy, quarter-sized discs of crystal or glass originally riveted together become so essential to human existence? Shakespeare famously said eyes are windows to the soul, but what about people who see only by covering theirs with glasses? Readers will find out together through this fascinating and insightful cultural history of one of humanity’s greatest inventions.

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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In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that in order for computers to become ubiquitous, people first had to become interested in them, learn about them, and take the machines seriously. A powerful catalyst for this transformation was, ironically, one of the oldest information technologies we have: books. The author uses a carefully chosen selection of books, some iconic and others obscure, to describe this technological revolution as it unfolded in the half-century after 1945. The book begins with a fundamental question: How does a new technology become well known and widespread? Dr. McCray answers this by using books as a window into significant moments in the history of computing, publishing, and American culture.README offers a literary history of computers and, more broadly, information technologies between World War II and the dot-com crash of the early 21st century. From the electronic brains and cybernetics craze of the 1940s to the birth of AI, the rise of the personal computer, and the internet-driven financial frenzy of the 1990s, books have proven a durable and essential way for people to learn how to use and think about computers. By offering a readable half-century of bookish history, README explains how computers became popular and pervasive.

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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In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. The three major sections of this volume address (1) indigenous terminologies for ambiguous or illicit ritual in antiquity; (2) the ancient texts, manuals, and artifacts commonly designated “magical” or used to represent ancient magic; and (3) a series of contexts, from the written word to materiality itself, to which the term “magic” might usefully pertain.The individual essays in this volume cover most of Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, with essays by both established and emergent scholars of ancient religions.In a burgeoning field of “magic studies” trying both to preserve and to justify critically the category itself, this volume brings new clarity and provocative insights. This will be an indispensable resource to all interested in magic in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, ancient Greece and Rome, Early Christianity and Judaism, Egypt through the Christian period, and also comparative and critical theory.Contributors are: Magali Bailliot, Gideon Bohak, Véronique Dasen, Albert de Jong, Jacco Dieleman, Esther Eidinow, David Frankfurter, Fritz Graf, Yuval Harari, Naomi Janowitz, Sarah Iles Johnston, Roy D. Kotansky, Arpad M. Nagy, Daniel Schwemer, Joseph E. Sanzo, Jacques van der Vliet, Andrew Wilburn.

David Frankfurter holds the William Goodwin Aurelio Chair of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University. He joined the faculty of B.U. in the fall of 2010. A scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions with specialties in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, magical texts, popular religion, and Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods, Frankfurter’s particular interests revolve around theoretical issues like the place of magic in religion, the relationship of religion and violence, the nature of Christianization, and the representation of evil in culture. 

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the development and nature of comparative religion in nineteenth-century India. It focuses on the ideas and intellectual currents behind a range of thinkers who explored comparative religion in India, drawing on a variety of inspirations from Indian religions. Rather than emanate out of a European Christian set of politics as in the Western world, comparative religion emerged out of religious reform movements, including the Brāhmo Samaj in Bengal and the Arya Samaj in the Punjab. With chapters on Rammohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Keshab Chandra Sen, and Swami Vivekananda, the book includes a re-evaluation of familiar figures alongside lesser-known thinkers within an intellectual history of modern Indian comparative religion.

Neilesh Bose is Professor of History at the University of Victoria.
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