We’ve hit a new milestone! 1 5 0 members in our @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast host group over on LinkedIn! A big welcome to everyone who's recently joined. It's amazing to see a space for #podcast enthusiasts to support each other. Excited to learn from all of you and see where we go next!

@calebzakarin.bsky.social, editor of the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social, interviewed me for a podcast about my John McPhee book. It's a wide-ranging conversation, including talking about what makes McPhee so extraordinary and the many discoveries in the book. bit.ly/3SyEvXT

Great to see my new book "Coming Clean" (@mitpress) highlighted by @calebzakarin.bsky.social, Editor of the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social. We discussed the future of progressive #politics. newbooksnetwork.com/coming-clean

Thanks to @princetonupress.bsky.social and to @calebzakarin.bsky.social, a terrific interviewer.

What Substacks should I subscribe to?

This will be a boon for elite, non-American institutions. Classes are better when the student body is internationally diverse. We make education in America more parochial at our own peril. www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

Middle class families are often squeezed the hardest by higher ed tuitions. I imagine the high fees, without a clear return on investment especially for parents, are a major source of the backlash against elite institutions. news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

"Ultimately, the transition beyond single title purchase models for ebooks seems to be picking up, suggesting a sort of second digital transformation for the monograph..." @rschon.bsky.social scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/03/19/s...

Europe courts US scientists after cuts on.ft.com/41xIOqy Europe courts US scientists fleeing Donald Trump crackdown

TEA TIME! Read the latest edition of our newsletter every Thursday. newbooksnetwork.substack.com/p/tea-time

I’ll be at odd lots trivia tonight

The electric red pill acid test

I wrote up what happened to the CFPB this weekend, made possible by a years long lobbying campaign by Wall St and a recent push by Silicon Valley. Plus, a bunch of under the radar recent actions the Bureau took that enraged the business world

Just wrapped our weekly roundup show with @lukewgoldstein.bsky.social, where we broke the news: this is the final day of his 2-year fellowship with @theprospect.bsky.social. It was a great run and we look forward to seeing his career continue. Congratulations!

I've listened to a few interviews with Lionel Barber about his new book on Masayoshi Son, including his profile in the @financialtimes.com. I might have to buy the book... newbooksnetwork.com/gambling-man

An interview I recently did with Rumu Sarkar on international development. Seems relevant. newbooksnetwork.com/internationa...

If there is any doubt that tariffs are passed through to consumers, the cost of propane to heat my house just went up by the amount of the tariff

I think this is one of our best newsletters yet!

A modern home in Pacific Palisades survived the fire while all the homes around it burned. It was luck, but also it was made to withstand a wildfire, and it did. I spoke with the architect who designed it, plus other architects, about designing for disaster: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

In 2013, I started a French Studies channel on the New Books Network & hosted it solo for over a decade. This interview w/Emily Marker re: BLACK FRANCE, WHITE EUROPE is my last official episode (for now, anyway). Biggest gratitude to all the authors & listeners out there. I had the best time!✌️

If you read anything at all about the LA fires, please read this: burningdownthehouse2025.blogspot.com/2025/01/burn...

NEW PODCAST 📚🎙️ | Explore the Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (2024). Spanning up to 600 CE, this 6-volume set bridges NT studies & patristics, linking Judaism, ancient history & philosophy. @degruyterbrill.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/brill-encyclopedia-of-early-christianity-6-vol-set

< braddelong.substack.com/p/thinking-a... I get to try to teach incoming economics graduate students how to gain a much deeper and richer understanding of preferences, market structures, supply, demand, equilibrium, and surplus by looking behind them at the processes of historical development... 1/

with advances in AI and deepfakes we are proud to announce that Pagliacci will soon be able to attend a reasonable facsimile of his performance, likely curing him forever

My resolution in 2025 is to find 5-10 books that deserve multiple re-reads. I’m currently on my second read through of @michaelpettis.bsky.social’s Trade Wars are Class Wars, and I find that many of the insights are only starting click for me now. What are other books that deserve this approach?

“This is the great lesson of Smoot-Hawley: countries with large trade surpluses have them only because they cannot consume all they produce, which makes them extremely vulnerable to a decline in international trade.” (Trade Wars are Class Wars)

Doug has a whole big book full of America trying alternative trade policies - press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... Every time I open it up it's a reminder of how the current debate echoes ones America has had since its birth. There's really nothing new about tariffs...

My resolution in 2025 is to find 5-10 books that deserve multiple re-reads. I’m currently on my second read through of @michaelpettis.bsky.social’s Trade Wars are Class Wars, and I find that many of the insights are only starting click for me now. What are other books that deserve this approach?

If you'd liked to learn more about What to Save and Why, check out my interview with @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social #philsky newbooksnetwork.com/what-to-save...