NBN Book of the Day

Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) argues that women activists, wage workers, and homemakers in the Romanian capital Bucharest became de facto social workers in the interwar period through their "austerity welfare work". Revealing links and tensions between the performers of different types of underpaid or unpaid austerity welfare work, each empirical chapter focuses on a key domain: - knowledge production about social problems by "women welfare activist" (professional social workers, lay experts, left wing militants); - municipal-level social assistance policy, with emphasis on a pioneering generation of women local politicians in shaping welfare practices; - paid household work by underpaid servants; - unpaid household work by homemakers or precariously employed women in working class communities. The book offers a novel interpretation of state-society relations after the First World War, showing that unpaid labor and gender relations were crucial in responding to economic crisis in an Eastern European urban setting and beyond. At once a local and transnational history of women's work, Welfare Work Without Welfare contributes to the historicization of social reproduction work and to the rethinking of the history of welfare states. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and political and economic upheaval, an integrated marketplace shaped by upper-class patrons broke down entirely. In its place, Maddalena Alvi argues, can be found the origins of a recognizably modern market of nationalized spheres driven by capitalist investment and speculation, yet open to wider social strata. Delving into auction records, memoirs, newspaper articles, financial and legal documents in six languages, Alvi explores these cultural and socio-economic developments across the British, French, and German markets, as well as trade spheres such as Russia and Scandinavia. 1914 marked the end of the European art market and cemented the connection between art and finance.  The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925 (Cambridge University Press, 2025) Maddalena Alvi holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford, and an MLitt in Art History from the University of Glasgow. Priya S. Gandhi is a writer and strategist based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Black women comedians are more visible than ever, performing around the world in physical venues like comedy clubs and festivals, along with appearing in films, streaming specials, and online videos. Across these mediums, humor—and particularly sass—functions as a tool for Black women to articulate and redress cultural, social, and political marginalization. In Sass: Black Women's Humor and Humanity (UNC Press, 2025), J Finley theorizes sass as a new critical lens to better understand the power of Black women’s humor and humanity and explores how sass functions as a powerful resource in Black women’s expressive repertoire. Challenging mainstream assumptions about “sassiness” as an identity or personality trait to which Black women humorists may be reduced, Finley deploys sass to create a new genre of discourse for understanding the ways in which Black women use language, style, gesture, and intent to produce meaning—often humorous—in speaking back to authority. Grounded in an ethnographic approach to Black women’s experiences, Finley conducted extensive interviews as well as participant-observation as a critic, audience member, and comic herself to collect and honor the stories that Black women comics tell about themselves. Interdisciplinary and conceptually rigorous, Finley’s work shows us how we can and should read Black women’s expressions of sass in humor as attempts at social transformation that involve a fundamental critique of power and authority, and a gesture at collective liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet (Cornell University Press, 2025) concerns the Tibetan Buddhist revival in China, illustrating the lives of Tibetan Buddhist nuns and exploring the political effects that arise from their nonpolitical daily engagements in the remote, mega-sized Tibetan Buddhist encampment of Yachen Gar. Yasmin Cho's book challenges two assumptions about Tibetan Buddhist communities in China. First, against the assumption that a Buddhist monastic community is best understood in terms of its esoteric qualities, Cho focuses on the material and mundane daily practices that are indispensable to the existence and persistence of such a community and shows how deeply gendered these practices are. Second, against the assumption that Tibetan politics toward the Chinese state is best understood as rebellious, incendiary, and centered upon Tibetan victimhood, the nuns demonstrate how it can be otherwise. Tibetan politics can be unassuming, calm, and self-contained and yet still have substantial political effects. As Politics of Tranquility shows, the nuns in Yachen Gar have called forth an alternative way of living and expressing themselves as Tibetans and as female monastics despite a repressive context. ------------------ Jing Li teaches Chinese language, literature, and cinema. Her research focuses on rural China, independent filmmaking, and digital media cultures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode (Wayne State UP, 2025), scholar Michelle Anya Anjirbag examines Disney's method of fairy-tale storytelling to determine how the corporation has shaped public understanding of what fairy tales are and who belongs within them. Covering a span of years "from mermaid to mermaid"—from the 1989 animated The Little Mermaid to the 2023 live-action remake starring Halle Bailey—she deconstructs and interrogates Disney's corporate commodification of multiculturalism and diversity, centering its impact on misrepresented people and cultures over the stated intentions of the producers. Further, Anjirbag demonstrates that Disney shapes childhood experiences and imagination in a way that strategically promotes American cultural imperialism. Through close film analysis, applied critical theory, and social analysis of the Disney corporation, Anjirbag unearths a new framework for studies of Disney fairy tales and how they shape popular culture. For a limited time, Wayne State University Press is offering a discount when customers use the code RHOLIDAY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day