New Books Network

Real Estate: Histories of Architecture and Capital (gta Verlag, 2026)challenges
the conventional assumption that architects and planners are the
principal authors of urban form. It instead foregrounds the developers,
builders, financiers, and media strategists whose pursuit of profit has
shaped cities, particularly under global capitalism. Bringing together
studies spanning the eighteenth century to the present, the
editors, Gregorio Astengo and Davide Spina, and
the contributors establish real estate development as a significant
field of inquiry within architectural history. It also proposes new
methods and sources for understanding how speculation and market
mechanisms have produced the built environment.

This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in
Architectural History at the University of Manchester. He researches
nineteenth-century European architecture, focusing on artistic
techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (gta Verlag, 2023).
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Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China (Berghahn,
2026) by Dr. Máximo Badaró explores how China is reshaping global
hierarchies of worth. Through ethnographic research among marketers,
consultants, and brokers who promote foreign goods in Shanghai, Beijing,
and beyond, this book investigates how value is taught, contested, and
transformed in everyday encounters. From luxury brands and consumer
ethnography to real estate, wine, and organic food, the book reveals how
foreign intermediaries attempt
to ‘educate’ Chinese consumers, only to confront shifting power
dynamics that challenge Western authority. Blending vivid narratives
with sharp analysis, this study argues that China has become a central
arena for reimagining the very meaning of value. 

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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Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom (University
of California Press, 2026) by Mithi Mukherjee identifies the rise of
Asianism in the early twentieth century as the origin and primary
driving force of resistance movements that brought down the British
Empire. Mithi Mukherjee ties together into a single sweeping narrative
two contrasting, conflicting forms of anticolonialism: the emergence of
the nonviolent resistance movement under Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa
and the militant movement culminating in the war on British India by the
Indian National Army under Subhas Chandra Bose in alliance with the
Japanese army. Asia emerges in this breakthrough retelling not as an
inert geographical category, but instead as a singular agent of change
in modern world history.

Mithi Mukherjee is a Professor of
History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She specializes in the
legal, political, and cultural history of modern India.

Shatrunjay
Mall is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. His work in modern Japanese history, South Asian
history, and transnational Asian history explores ideas of Pan-Asianism
and its legacies, as well as intellectual, political, and cultural
intersections and affinities between colonial India and imperial Japan
in the twentieth century.
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How do you build bridges after living through one of history's greatest ruptures? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Shimon Redlich to discuss his memoir Bridge Builder: My Life Since the Holocaust (Academic Studies Press, 2026), the concluding volume of his remarkable four-part autobiographical journey.

Picking up in the late 1950s, Bridge Builder follows Redlich from his years as a student in Jerusalem and the United States to his distinguished career as a professor at Ben-Gurion University. Along the way, he reflects on friendships that crossed religious and national boundaries, his encounters with Jews and non-Jews across Eastern Europe, and his willingness to engage difficult historical and political questions with honesty and empathy.

More than a memoir, the book is a meditation on memory, reconciliation, and intellectual curiosity. Drawing on both personal recollection and meticulous historical research, Redlich explores what it means to carry the legacy of the Holocaust while refusing to let it become the only lens through which to view the world. His story is one of survival, but also of dialogue, scholarship, and the lifelong work of building understanding across divides.

Together, Redlich and Katz discuss the relationship between memory and history, the challenges of confronting painful pasts, and why bridge-building remains one of the most important—and difficult—tasks of our time.

About our contributors:

Shimon Redlich, a child survivor of the Holocaust, was born in Lwow in 1935 and lived in nearby Brzezany until 1945, when he was repatriated to Lodz. He left Poland for Israel in 1950. He studied at the Hebrew University, Harvard, and New York University. He taught history at Ben-Gurion University for almost forty years. Redlich has written numerous books and articles on the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe and his memoirs, of which this book is the fourth and final volume.

Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid and the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS).
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The Spectre of Pep: How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football Tactics (Seven Dials, 2026) by Jon Mackenzie

A spectre is haunting European football. Watch almost any game, no
matter the level, and you will notice it. From inverted full backs to
extreme high lines, the tactical threads of the match will eventually
converge onto a singular point: Pep Guardiola.

For some though,
his near total dominance has come at the cost of the game itself, with
modern football's protagonists caught between acknowledging Guardiola's
greatness and wanting to evolve the sport beyond him. In The Spectre of Pep, acclaimed tactics writer Jon Mackenzie explores this contradiction.

But this is much more than the story of just one man. After tracing
Guardiola's ascendancy, displacing giants like Jose Mourinho and Antonio
Conte, it examines how other elite coaches have fought to establish
their own legacies within this landscape - including the likes of Jurgen
Klopp, Roberto De Zerbi, Luis Enrique and Mikel Arteta. And with his
time at Manchester City coming to an end - in a world where his
influence is arguably diminishing - it also speculates on what the next
generation of tactics may look like, and how Guardiola's legacy will be
viewed in the future.

If you want to understand football today, you have to understand the
tactical spectre of Pep Guardiola. To do that, you need this book.

Jon Mackenzie is a writer and presenter working for The Athletic.

Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University.
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