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Eran Shalev, "The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation" (U Virginia Press, 2025)
- Interview
Why does the American flag use stars to represent the states? In The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation (U Virginia Press, 2025), Eran Shalev answers this and many other questions, considering the cosmic imagery—so familiar today but so peculiar on reflection—that suffused the United States’ early political culture. In this comprehensive study, Shalev uncovers how “political astronomy”—the discussion and representation of politics through astronomical models, allusions, and metaphors—reflected and facilitated the emerging worldview that enabled Americans to justify and find meaning in the country’s new democratic modes of governance and its federal system...
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to talk to Professor Erran Chelev about his new book, The Star-Spangled Republic, Political
. .
led you to write this book? Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me, Edward. It's a great honor.
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Is this episode right for you?
B2 · Upper-intermediate
Comfortable if you already follow TV news
- 80% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 109 words a minute: slow, clear speech.
- 115 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
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Welcome to the New Books Network. Welcome podcast friends to Revolutionary America, podcast hosted by the New Books Network in collaboration with the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, known far and wide as Shear.
I'm Edward Bloom, Professor of History at San Diego State University, and we're here to talk to Professor Erran Chelev about his new book, The Star-Spangled Republic, Political astronomy and the rise of the American constellation. Thank you so much for joining me today. What led you to write this book? Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me, Edward. It's a great honor.
And the first podcast that I'm recording about this book. And actually, I think I was led to write this book. There wasn't a lot of agency in the beginning. It was actually one of those happy accidents in which a colleague of mine asked me to read one of his papers on early modern European cosmology. And I was reading that paper, and it was a fascinating
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