In this episode of Publish My Book, we dive into how to approach acquisitions editors with confidence and clarity. We discuss their role in the publishing process, what they're looking for in a manuscript, and how to make a strong first impression—whether at conferences or via email. We share practical tips on tailoring your pitch, respecting their time, and navigating feedback. Acquisitions editors are key partners in your publishing journey, and understanding their perspective can make all the difference.Relevant links<a href="https://www.aclang.com/authors-handbook/">Hear personal insights and recommendations from acquisitions editors and publishing leaders on navigating the publishing journey</a> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</a>

<description>In this episode of Publish My Book, we dive into how to approach acquisitions editors with confidence and clarity. We discuss their role in the publishing process, what they're looking for in a manuscript, and how to make a strong first impression—whether at conferences or via email. We share practical tips on tailoring your pitch, respecting their time, and navigating feedback. Acquisitions editors are key partners in your publishing journey, and understanding their perspective can make all the difference.
Relevant links
Hear personal insights and recommendations from acquisitions editors and publishing leaders on navigating the publishing journey
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</description>

Publish My Book Episode 9

In this episode of Publish My Book, we dive into how to approach acquisitions editors with confidence and clarity. We discuss their role in the publishing process, what they're looking for in a manuscript, and how to make a strong first impression—whether at conferences or via email. We share practical tips on tailoring your pitch, respecting their time, and navigating feedback. Acquisitions editors are key partners in your publishing journey, and understanding their perspective can make all the difference.
Relevant links
Hear personal insights and recommendations from acquisitions editors and publishing leaders on navigating the publishing journey
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Presenting Yourself to Acquisitions Editors

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook? In <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780262550727">Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery</a> (MIT Press, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a new approach to fighting an increasingly exhausting war. By putting the work of cancer research into the hands of nonspecialists, Yoshimi believes, we can accelerate the process of outgaming the disease once and for all. Gamers have already used “serious games” to discover new galaxies, digitize ancient texts, decode viruses, and solve theoretical problems in neuroscience. Cancer is a multilayered threat, and our best bet at overcoming it is via more minds working in concert. Gaming Cancer is an instruction manual for engineering games that motivate users to strain and sweat to find cancer cures. It integrates game design with research in cancer biology, data visualization techniques, and developments in cognitive science and AI while remaining sensitive to the limitations of citizen science and ethical concerns. Yoshimi sees in cutting-edge game technology the potential to educate and empower people to outwit cancer, an indirect route to richer science literacy that draws on the boundless resources of the mind. This book offers anyone invested in beating this seemingly intractable disease a concrete playbook that combines real science with creative vision in an effort to defeat the boss monster, cancer.Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU &amp; University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</a>

<description>Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook? 
In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a new approach to fighting an increasingly exhausting war. By putting the work of cancer research into the hands of nonspecialists, Yoshimi believes, we can accelerate the process of outgaming the disease once and for all. Gamers have already used “serious games” to discover new galaxies, digitize ancient texts, decode viruses, and solve theoretical problems in neuroscience. Cancer is a multilayered threat, and our best bet at overcoming it is via more minds working in concert. Gaming Cancer is an instruction manual for engineering games that motivate users to strain and sweat to find cancer cures. It integrates game design with research in cancer biology, data visualization techniques, and developments in cognitive science and AI while remaining sensitive to the limitations of citizen science and ethical concerns. Yoshimi sees in cutting-edge game technology the potential to educate and empower people to outwit cancer, an indirect route to richer science literacy that draws on the boundless resources of the mind. This book offers anyone invested in beating this seemingly intractable disease a concrete playbook that combines real science with creative vision in an effort to defeat the boss monster, cancer.
Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU &amp; University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</description>

An interview with Jeff Yoshimi

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook? 
In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a new approach to fighting an increasingly exhausting war. By putting the work of cancer research into the hands of nonspecialists, Yoshimi believes, we can accelerate the process of outgaming the disease once and for all. Gamers have already used “serious games” to discover new galaxies, digitize ancient texts, decode viruses, and solve theoretical problems in neuroscience. Cancer is a multilayered threat, and our best bet at overcoming it is via more minds working in concert. Gaming Cancer is an instruction manual for engineering games that motivate users to strain and sweat to find cancer cures. It integrates game design with research in cancer biology, data visualization techniques, and developments in cognitive science and AI while remaining sensitive to the limitations of citizen science and ethical concerns. Yoshimi sees in cutting-edge game technology the potential to educate and empower people to outwit cancer, an indirect route to richer science literacy that draws on the boundless resources of the mind. This book offers anyone invested in beating this seemingly intractable disease a concrete playbook that combines real science with creative vision in an effort to defeat the boss monster, cancer.
Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Jeff Yoshimi, "Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery" (MIT Press, 2025)

This special issue of Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies is the product of a collective experiment with materials that are assembled, imagined, and agentive in the context of South Asian religions. The articles are available <a href="https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/issue/view/1615">here</a>.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</a>

<description>This special issue of Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 
is the product of a collective experiment with materials that are assembled, imagined, and agentive in the context of South Asian religions. The articles are available here. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</description>

An interview with Leah Elizabeth Comeau

This special issue of Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 
is the product of a collective experiment with materials that are assembled, imagined, and agentive in the context of South Asian religions. The articles are available here. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Material Religion, Assemblage, and the Agency of Things in South Asia

Our book is: <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781646425938">Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores </a>(UP of Colorado, 2024) which presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life. The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment. A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-read for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.Our guest is: Dr. Rachel Gross, who is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches US environmental, business, and public history. She works with university and community partners to bring history into the public realm. She is the author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, and the co-editor of Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores.Our host is: <a href="https://christinagessler.com/">Dr. Christina Gessler</a>, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She uses her PhD in history to explore what stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may enjoy this playlist:<ul>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/disabled-ecologies-2#entry:354600@1:url">Disabled Ecologies</a></li>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-killer-whale-journals#entry:215450@1:url">The Killer Whale Journals</a></li>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/stylish-academic-writing-2#entry:302154@1:url">Stylish Academic Writing</a></li>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/dissertations-wanted-a-conversation-with-the-editor-of-university-of-wyoming-press#entry:156110@1:url">A Conversation with the editor of University of Wyoming Press</a></li>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/university-press-submissions-and-the-peer-review-a-discussion-with-rachael-levay#entry:51500@1:url">The Peer Review</a></li>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/at-every-depth-2#entry:308814@1:url">At Every Depth</a></li>
</ul> Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/academic-life">here.</a> And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</a>

<description>Our book is: Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores (UP of Colorado, 2024) which presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life. The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment. A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-read for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.
Our guest is: Dr. Rachel Gross, who is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches US environmental, business, and public history. She works with university and community partners to bring history into the public realm. She is the author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, and the co-editor of Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She uses her PhD in history to explore what stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell.
Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Disabled Ecologies

The Killer Whale Journals

Stylish Academic Writing

A Conversation with the editor of University of Wyoming Press

The Peer Review

At Every Depth


Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</description>

A Discussion with Rachel Gross

Our book is: Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores (UP of Colorado, 2024) which presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life. The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment. A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-read for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.
Our guest is: Dr. Rachel Gross, who is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches US environmental, business, and public history. She works with university and community partners to bring history into the public realm. She is the author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, and the co-editor of Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She uses her PhD in history to explore what stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell.
Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Disabled Ecologies

The Killer Whale Journals

Stylish Academic Writing

A Conversation with the editor of University of Wyoming Press

The Peer Review

At Every Depth


Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America's Biggest Retail Stores

In times of extreme violence, what explains peace in some places? This book investigates geographic variation in Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, an event witnessed closely by the author. Dhattiwala compares peaceful and violent towns, villages, and neighborhoods to study how political violence spreads. A combination of statistical and ethnographic methods unpack the mechanisms of crowd behavior, intergroup relations, and political incentives. She analyzes macro-level risk factors to provide a close understanding of the behavior of people who participated in the violence, were targeted by it and, often, compelled to carry on living alongside their perpetrators. Keeping the Peace systematically demonstrates the implicit political logic of the violence. Most of all, by moving up close to the people caught in the middle of violence, the author highlights the interplay between politics, the spatial environment, and the cognitive decision-making processes of individuals. Raheel Dhattiwala is an independent social scientist based in India (D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University) and honorary member of the <a href="https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/en/stipendiaten/dhattiwala.php">South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg</a> (formerly, Baden-Württemberg Fellow 2023-24). <a href="https://vatsalnaresh.com/">﻿Vatsal Naresh</a> is a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. His recent publications include co-edited volumes on Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism (OUP 2021) and Constituent Assemblies (CUP 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</a>

<description>In times of extreme violence, what explains peace in some places? This book investigates geographic variation in Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, an event witnessed closely by the author. Dhattiwala compares peaceful and violent towns, villages, and neighborhoods to study how political violence spreads. A combination of statistical and ethnographic methods unpack the mechanisms of crowd behavior, intergroup relations, and political incentives. She analyzes macro-level risk factors to provide a close understanding of the behavior of people who participated in the violence, were targeted by it and, often, compelled to carry on living alongside their perpetrators. Keeping the Peace systematically demonstrates the implicit political logic of the violence. Most of all, by moving up close to the people caught in the middle of violence, the author highlights the interplay between politics, the spatial environment, and the cognitive decision-making processes of individuals.
 Raheel Dhattiwala is an independent social scientist based in India (D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University) and honorary member of the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (formerly, Baden-Württemberg Fellow 2023-24).
 ﻿Vatsal Naresh is a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. His recent publications include co-edited volumes on Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism (OUP 2021) and Constituent Assemblies (CUP 2018).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network</description>

An interview with Raheel Dhattiwala

In times of extreme violence, what explains peace in some places? This book investigates geographic variation in Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, an event witnessed closely by the author. Dhattiwala compares peaceful and violent towns, villages, and neighborhoods to study how political violence spreads. A combination of statistical and ethnographic methods unpack the mechanisms of crowd behavior, intergroup relations, and political incentives. She analyzes macro-level risk factors to provide a close understanding of the behavior of people who participated in the violence, were targeted by it and, often, compelled to carry on living alongside their perpetrators. Keeping the Peace systematically demonstrates the implicit political logic of the violence. Most of all, by moving up close to the people caught in the middle of violence, the author highlights the interplay between politics, the spatial environment, and the cognitive decision-making processes of individuals.
 Raheel Dhattiwala is an independent social scientist based in India (D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University) and honorary member of the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (formerly, Baden-Württemberg Fellow 2023-24).
 ﻿Vatsal Naresh is a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. His recent publications include co-edited volumes on Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism (OUP 2021) and Constituent Assemblies (CUP 2018).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Raheel Dhattiwala, "Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

Interviews with Authors about their New Books
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