NBN Book of the Day

In Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Duke University Press,
2023), Elizabeth Anne Davis explores how Cypriot researchers,
scientists, activists, and artists process and reckon with civil and
state violence that led to the enduring division of the island, using
forensic and documentary materials to retell and recontextualize
conflicts between and within the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot
communities. Davis follows forensic archaeologists and anthropologists
who attempt to locate, identify, and return to relatives the remains of
Cypriots killed in those conflicts. She turns to filmmakers who use
archival photographs and footage to come to terms with political
violence and its legacies. In both forensic science and documentary
filmmaking, the dynamics of secrecy and revelation shape how material
remains such as bones and archival images are given meaning. Throughout,
Davis demonstrates how Cypriots navigate the tension between an ethics
of knowledge, which valorizes truth as a prerequisite for recovery and
reconciliation, and the politics of knowledge, which renders evidence as
irremediably partial and perpetually falsifiable.

Elizabeth Anne Davis is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.

* This episode is part of a special collaboration between the New Books Network and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe,
a section of the American Anthropological Association. Together, we’re
highlighting exciting new work in Europeanist anthropology—featuring
authors from across the field, including winners of the William A.
Douglass Book Prize and contributors to the European Anthropology in Translation series published by Berghahn Books.
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Hear "American Girl" or "Born in the U.S.A." and, like it or not, chances are you begin to hum along. The soundtrack of grocery stores, pool halls, bowling alleys, flea markets, chain restaurants, drug stores, and political rallies--heartland rock, while beloved by some and derided by others, is inescapable even today. As rollicking as the music it describes, acclaimed music critic Erin Osmon's Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2026) tells the story of the origins, chart-topping development, and tangled legacy of heartland rock, the music that ruled the airwaves of the 1980s and remains instantly recognizable to millions.

Spinning an entertaining and eye-opening account, Osmon delves into the complicated afterlife of heartland rock's classic albums and songs, including Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," Bob Seger's "Against the Wind," John Mellencamp's "Small Town," and Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." She demonstrates the centrality of often-overlooked women like Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, and Lucinda Williams--explaining how some of the most popular music of the time was made beyond its white-male stereotypes. She traces the genre's connections to country and Americana, and reveals how legendary figures like Prince were inspired by and expanded heartland rock. And she shows how its success revitalized the careers of figures like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Through it all, she explores the '80s cultural developments that fostered the genre--such as the rise of MTV and the switch to CDs--and argues that the music played a vital role in opposition to '80s conservatism and in support of LGBTQ rights, labor issues, and the environmental movement.

A fair-minded critic with an ear for a great behind-the-scenes story, Osmon makes clear that at its best, heartland rock connected with millions of overlooked people longing to be heard.

Erin Osmon is a music journalist, critic, and author of books on John Prine and Jason Molina. Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Rolling Stone, and others. She won the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award for album notes in 2023 and several LA Press Club Southern California Journalism awards. She lives in Nashville.

Erin Osmon’s website and Instagram.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.
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Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the latest in a long line of forces affecting human-animal relations. Grey parrots travelled the world as pets; rats used global shipping infrastructure to spread to far-off islands and became the object of cross-border extermination campaigns; and California sea otters were relocated to accommodate global oil transportation needs. The language of globalization, however, is rarely used to understand the history of these creatures. Globalizing Wildlife (UNC Press, 2026) shows how wild animals were not simply affected by globalization but shaped its concrete trajectories at local, national, and international scales.

The editors and contributors of this collection bring the more-than-human turn to globalization studies, foregrounding not only how globalization matters for wildlife but also how wildlife matters for and constitutes globalization. The volume presents a range of geographically- and species-diverse case studies spanning from the 1870s to the present day to show that globalizing wildlife is far from a homogenous process. Ultimately, contributors reconceptualize globalization and wildlife in relation to one another and foster new connections between the longstanding study of globalization and the dynamic, rapidly consolidating field of historical animal studies.

Contributors are Vincent Bijman, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Regina Horta Duarte, George Iordachescu, Nancy J. Jacobs, Ajit Menon, Gregg Mitman, Nitin D. Rai, Simone Schleper, Jules Skotnes-Brown, Monica Vasile, and James L. A. Webb Jr.

Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he’s currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day.
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Why do people read? In The Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object (Manchester University Press, 2026) María Angélica Thumala Olave, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science, explores people’s relationship to books and to reading, demonstrating the pleasure and importance books provide in contemporary life. Moving beyond a narrow focus on the social status offered by books and reading, the analysis shows the role of material objects, along with the emotional engagements and social bonds forged by the practices associated with books and reading.
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Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America (Rutgers University Press, 2025) is
an ethnographic study of the Liberian refugee community in Staten
Island, New York, home to the largest per capita concentration of
Liberians in the U.S., that sheds light on the racialization of Black
refugees and the racism they have experienced at every step of their
migration journey. In this pioneering study, sociologist Bernadette
Ludwig explores
how Liberians have responded to such racist exclusions, noting how
members of this community reject the informal refugee label once they
are resettled in the United States. Liberian migrants often view the
label as a liability since the larger general public, the media, and the
U.S. government tend to regard Black refugees as an economic and social
burden unworthy of assistance. Indeed, Black refugees’ humanity is
often ignored,
Ludwig contends, in favor of overemphasizing presumed barbaric
violence, endemic wars, cultural backwardness, and diseases. By
detailing the lack of aid and support for Black refugees and describing
how Liberian refugees in particular have had to overcome various
struggles and barriers in coming to the U.S. and while living here, Unwelcome Shores highlights the overarching role of race and anti-Black racism in American society.

Dr. Bernadette Ludwig is a Sociologist and the Assistant Dean of the
Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences at Western Connecticut State
University. She is also an Affiliated Faculty with The New School's
Zolberg Institute on Migration & Mobility. 

Host:
Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy
University, studying racial politics, media, and democracy. His most
recent book, Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside Grassroots Political Organizing, is now available with the University of North Carolina Press.

In this episode, Dr. Ludwig mentioned an opportunity to get involved in asylum and deportation cases. Here is the link for scholars to submit their information or attend trainings to become country conditions experts.
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