New Books in Geography

Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City (Cambridge University Press, 2026), Dr. Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city's silver. Free and enslaved people from Africa and Asia, immigrants, and Native Americans pursued opportunities in a wealthy, yet deeply unequal environment, where working people claimed parts of the city for themselves. They carved out spaces to create new businesses and protect their livelihoods, altering the cityscape itself in the process. American Metropolis brings Mexico City to life from the perspective of the working people who transformed this early modern metropolis.

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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Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center (Cornell UP, 2026) traces the extraordinary journey of the twisted remnants of the World Trade Center. When the Towers fell on September 11, 2001, nearly all that remained was pulverized concrete and contorted steel. Dr. Samuel and Dr. Max Holleran investigate how fragments of these skyscrapers became modern relics, scattered across all fifty states and beyond, built into hundreds of local memorials in firehouses, parks, and plazas, providing new and creative ways to grieve and remember.

Drawing on years of research and interviews with artists, city officials, and first responders, the authors reveal a semi-improvised process that transformed industrial debris into sacred objects. They explore the aesthetics of rust and ruin, the rituals of transport and dedication, and the cultural tensions between grief, patriotism, and public art. From a quiet town square in Wyoming to a monumental glass "book" in Padua, Italy, these memorials tell a story not only of loss but of how communities far from Ground Zero took a piece of the tragedy—and made it their own.

At once deeply human and sharply analytical, Scattered Steel asks urgent questions: What does it mean to sanctify matter? How do memorials shape collective memory in an age of global, and highly visual, trauma? And what happens when the symbols of tragedy become part of everyday landscapes?

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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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

From misty mountain oolongs to the global boba boom, Taiwan’s teas carry far more than flavor. They embody contested borders, evolving identities, and the complexities of nationhood. Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Po-Yi Hung traces tea varieties, processing expertise, and merchants across Taiwan and Southeast Asia to reveal how a simple leaf has become a force in global politics.Drawing on decades of fieldwork and extensive archival research, Dr. Hung delves deep into the history of Taiwan’s tea industry, from its roots in the Qing empire to its role in modern food nationalism. Hung shows how advocacy for Taiwanization—the movement to recover and celebrate the island’s unique history and culture—occurs not only within Taiwan’s food scenes but also through cross-border exchanges. Oolong cultivation in Thailand’s highlands and bubble tea’s rise in Vietnam demonstrate how tea acts as a nonhuman agent, fostering connections and unsettling conventional notions of sovereignty. Through these routes, tea becomes more than agriculture; it becomes an instrument of diplomacy, a marker of authenticity, and a symbol of cultural pride.Offering a fresh perspective on Taiwan’s geopolitical positioning, Routes of Taiwan Tea redefines how borders are imagined and lived. It is an essential contribution to food studies, political geography, and East and Southeast Asian studies, illuminating how everyday practices like drinking tea shape global relations.

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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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

This interview with Professor Amihai Mazar was conducted by Željko Stanojević for the New Books Network. The conversation focuses on Tel Reḥov: A Bronze and Iron Age City in the Beth-Shean Valley, especially Volume V, where the report turns from architecture and pottery to smaller objects and scientific evidence that help reconstruct life at the site.

Amihai Mazar is a leading archaeologist of ancient Israel. His research examines the Bronze and Iron Ages, archaeology and biblical history, ancient Near Eastern art and architecture, and historical geography. Tel Reḥov is especially important because it offers a rich archaeological sequence from the Beth-Shean Valley and evidence for the social, economic, and environmental history of northern Israel.

Volume V is particularly revealing because it asks what can be learned from material that might appear secondary beside monumental architecture. Its first part examines clay, bone, stone and gypsum vessels; grinding stones and other stone implements; metal objects and metallurgical evidence; beads; objects connected with textile production; scale weights; and lithics. Together, these finds illuminate household work, craft activity, exchange, measurement, and technology.

The volume also analyzes the spatial distribution of finds in a distinctive group of ninth-century BCE buildings in Area C. Archaeology is also about understanding where objects were found and how groups of finds functioned together. Distribution patterns can help reconstruct activities within buildings and suggest how work, storage, production, and daily routines were organized. It also includes Assyrian-period burials and later Islamic-period material, showing the site's long history.

The second part of Volume V brings natural-science methods directly into the archaeological interpretation. Radiometric dating contributes to chronology. Studies of animal and fish remains, molluscs, and botanical material offer evidence for diet, agriculture, environment, trade, and the use of local and non-local resources. A soil-flotation project recovers small botanical remains that might otherwise disappear from the archaeological record. These studies show how modern archaeology depends on collaboration between excavators and natural-science specialists.

One striking example is the paleomagnetic study of tilted walls in Area C, Stratum V. Instead of treating damaged architecture only as a descriptive feature, the researchers used physical evidence to investigate seismic destruction. This demonstrates a central strength of Volume V: interpretation is built by combining objects, context, chronology, biological remains, geology, and physical-science methods.

Our discussion with Professor Mazar therefore uses Volume V to ask a larger question: how do small finds and scientific analyses change the historical picture created by excavation? The volume shows that understanding an ancient city requires more than identifying buildings or connecting archaeological horizons with historical narratives. It requires reconstructing technologies, food systems, craft production, movement of goods, environmental conditions, patterns of use within buildings, and the events that transformed them.

Željko Stanojević is a host with the New Books Network and President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Belgrade. He is also Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, an international Diamond Open Access journal supporting research in Hebrew, biblical, Jewish, linguistic, historical, and related studies. He also coordinates the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. Authors of recent academic books are welcome to contact him regarding possible New Books Network interviews.
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What is the future for cities? In Postcapitalist Cities: Towards a common urban future (Manchester University Press, 2026) Oli Mould, a Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London,
looks at the past, present and future of the city to consider
alternatives to the current capitalist urban model that dominates the
world. Re-examining key concepts such as gentrification and care,
introducing new ideas like solarpunk, and packed with a huge range of
global case studies, the book offers approaches to resist, reject and
reimagine the city. A significant intervention for geographers and
social scientists, the book will also be essential reading for anyone
living in a city today. 
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