NBN Book of the Day

The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas.

On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theaters. Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, the movie originally called The Star Wars quickly drew blocks-long lines, bursting box-office records and ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. It is now one of the most adored–and successful–movie franchises of all time.

Now, the author of the bestselling biography Jim Henson delivers a revelatory look into the life and times of the man who created Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Indiana Jones in George Lucas: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

If Star Wars wasn't game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with Indiana Jones, and he completely transformed the world of special effects and the way movies sound. His innovation and ambition forged Pixar and Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX sound.

Lucas's colleagues and competitors offer tantalizing glimpses into his life. His entire career has been stimulated by innovators including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, actors such as Harrison Ford, and the very technologies that enabled the creation of his films-and allowed him to keep tinkering with them long after their original releases. Like his unforgettable characters and stories, his influence is unmatched.

Brian Jay Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller Jim Henson: The Biography, as well as Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of An American Imagination and Washington Irving: An American Original. His most recent book is The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building. He continues to believe that Han shot first.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, available here on the New Books Network and wherever podcasts are found.

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In 2021, the NAACP Image Award-winning poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers made her fiction debut with The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, a magisterial epic of African American historical fiction—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—chronicling the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War, to our own tumultuous era.

Five years, and numerous awards and best-of lists later, Honorée joins the podcast on the anniversary of the novel’s publication to talk about what it meant then, what it means now, and that call from Oprah that shifted everything.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an essayist, novelist, poet, and a student of United States history. She is the author of seven books spanning three genres, including the NAACP Image Award-winning poetry collection, The Age of Phillis. She was on the podcast on June 20, 2025 to discuss her book, Misbehaving at the Crossroad: Essays and Writing. You can find Honorée on Substack, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive
(Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one
of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal
of individuals from within the regime.

From Kim Jong Un's
execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a
hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the
survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why
dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects.

Drawing
on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in
dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea
as well as Turkey, Dr. Goldring examines the logic behind purges and
their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power,
punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats.
But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their
tenure, purges actually weaken
their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting
pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian
norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain—and sometimes lose—power.

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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Steve Feldstein's Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare (St. Martin's Press,
2026) opens with a juxtaposition: China spending vast sums to reach the
far side of the moon, and Ukraine using cheap drones to blunt a far
larger military. Both are stories about technology and power, but they
point in opposite directions.

In our conversation, Feldstein
argues that the outcome of technological competition is not
predetermined. Small states, non-state actors, and private companies
with the right engineers can now challenge much stronger adversaries. We
discuss Iran, whose military innovation grew out of decades of
sanctions rather than in spite of them, and why Western analysts
dismissed what was in plain sight. We then turn to China and Feldstein's
concern that the United States is making unforced errors, hollowing out
the basic research on which its edge depends.

Bytes and Bullets
resists both technological determinism and the claim that nothing has
changed. But this book is also candid about what cannot be predicted: as
machines take on decisions humans once made, who, if anyone, will set
the limits?

Our guest is Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).
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In Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Sandeep Vaheesan recounts the rather overlooked story of how electricity spread across the U.S. economy during the 20th century. This book sheds careful light on the varied institutions and interests mediating the process, including investor-owned utilities and the rural electric cooperative. Vaheesan does not hesitate to critique the successes and failures cropping up along the way; rather, he lays them all bare in service of paving an actionable path toward the decarbonization and democratization of power.

Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads their legal research and advocacy, including the amicus program. He has written and spoken widely on antimonopoly law and policy and building a fair economy. Previously, he worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and American Antitrust Institute.

Anna Olteanu is a senior in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University, where she focuses on intellectual history. Her interests include political ecology, the history of economic thought, and literary criticism.
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