Q&A with Andrew Bayliss

  

 

 

Andrew Bayliss is the author of the new book Sparta: The Rise & Fall of an Ancient Superpower. He also has written the book The Spartans: A Very Short Introduction. He teaches at the University of Birmingham, and he lives in Cheltenham, England.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Sparta?

 

A: My previous book on the Spartans had a hard limit of 35,000 words. So every time I wanted to add an interesting fact or story about the Spartans, I had to cut out a different fact or story to squeeze it in.

 

I really wanted to be able to tell some of the amazing personal stories about the Spartans like the bizarre rivalry between Leonidas’ half-brothers Cleomenes and Dorieus. Although Cleomenes was the elder brother and recognised heir, Dorieus refused to accept being ruled by his brother, and churlishly ran off and got himself killed trying to found a colony in southern Italy.

 

Had Dorieus coped better with being a “spare” royal, he would have been the one who succeeded Cleomenes rather than Leonidas. So Dorieus could have been the big Spartan hero everyone knows about today rather than Leonidas.

 

Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about the Spartans?

 

A: I think everyone has a romanticised image of the Spartans as a super-disciplined caste of warriors not unlike the Japanese samurai.

 

But in reality, the Spartans were wealthy landowners who spent their time hanging out in the gymnasium, playing ball games, singing, dancing, hunting, and eating and drinking with their fellow citizens.

 

Spartan citizens were far from austere – they ate a lot, and drank a truly astonishing amount of wine every single night. Even more surprisingly, not one extant contemporary source describes the Spartans practicing fighting.

 

Q: The author Stephen Pressfield said of the book, “Whereas most standard modern histories depict the Spartans one-dimensionally, the truth, as Andrew Bayliss shows, is far more complex and human.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: I was blown away when I read that. I read Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire on my morning commute when I was teaching Sparta to Classical Civilisation students at a school near Cambridge more than 20 years ago, so it’s always in the back of my mind when I teach about Sparta.

 

I really enjoyed his story, especially how he depicted the toughness of upbringing of young Spartans. I also respected the way Pressfield managed to make the Spartans the good guys of his story without covering up how horrifically the Spartans treated their helot slaves.

 

In my book, I tried to avoid making the Spartans seem one-dimensional by explaining why they were the way they were. I wanted to show that if they had not been so controlling and so greedy for their own freedom, the Spartans might have been the good guys of the story more often than they actually were.

 

Q: What do you see as Sparta’s legacy today?

 

A: That is a really tricky question to answer, because I don’t want to resort to trite stereotypes based on the Spartans’ own propaganda about their fight to death at the Battle of Thermopylae.

 

If we do that, we end up with Sparta’s legacy being an inaccurate and romanticised image as freedom fighters who would happily sacrifice themselves for the freedom of others.

 

Sadly, in many ways the Spartans’ true legacy is being a caricature of hypermasculinity, which has often been exploited for questionable political purposes.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Right now, I’m working on some academic articles focusing on the psychological impact of the Spartan upbringing on Spartan boys and men. I’m interested in exploring how the collective upbringing fuelled their intense hostility to outsiders.

 

I’m also thinking more deeply about how the rules of Spartan society impacted on the lives of the underclasses, especially the helots. I want to explore how centuries of terrorisation by the Spartan citizens affected their mindset. The theory of “internalised oppression” is a key concept for me.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I find it fascinating that so many people in the USA today admire the Spartans and see them as role models to emulate and invoke.

 

But I think they might be less keen to compare themselves to the Spartans if they realised how little regard many of the Founding Fathers of the United States had for Sparta. Some saw positives in the stability of Spartan government, but they tended not to admire the Spartans as people.

 

John Quincy Adams accused the Spartans of “barbarous cruelty,” while Thomas Jefferson dismissed them as “military monks” ruling over helots “reduced to abject slavery.” Alexander Hamilton wrote that “Sparta was little better than a well-regulated camp,” while John Adams even described aspects of Spartan society as “stark mad.”

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Kira Ganga Kieffer

  

 

 

Kira Ganga Kieffer is the author of the new book Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America. She is a visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Fairfield University. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Unvaccinated Under God?

 

A: I’ll explain what led me to write this book. Growing up, my family used traditional Western medicines, but each of us turned to alternative medical treatments, such as herbalism or acupuncture, when we struggled with health problems that were chronic or not easily treatable.

 

I learned from a young age that there were a variety of health frameworks out there and that modalities that were “alternative” were often dismissed by conventional doctors.

 

I went to graduate school at Boston University for my Ph.D. in Religious Studies during the late 2010s. I found myself gravitating toward topics in American religious culture spanning “alternative spirituality” and “alternative medicine.”

 

I was fascinated that these worlds were religious but not in a traditional way of being Christian, for instance, nor scripture based. I was working out how to think about contemporary healthcare through a lens of religion.

 

In 2018-2019, vaccine hesitancy came into my consciousness with news reports about measles outbreaks throughout the country, and even a mumps outbreak at Harvard.

 

I realized that there was a lot more driving vaccine concerns than ignorance about how effective vaccines are at preventing measles, mumps, or polio. I wanted to really learn what was going on for people, especially moms, who worried about vaccinating their kids.

 

As I read sources from the 1980s, ‘90s, 2000s, I recognized recurring existential questions about suffering, authority, and moral injury that I did not feel were represented in mainstream media coverage of these public health crises.

 

The project turned into a book shortly after Covid began when I realized that I had a lot to say about how vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic seemed different than in the earlier periods I was researching. I wanted to know why, and my training brought a unique perspective.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says of it and of you: “Although critics often dismiss dissenters as scientifically illiterate, she argues that vaccine hesitancy isn’t a lack of education—it’s a religious matter rooted in existential concerns about justice and morality.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: This description is on point! I want to push readers to expand what they think religion is beyond the traditional boundaries and players.

 

I do this by depicting vaccine dissenters as regular people who hold sincere beliefs that vaccines can be dangerous for some children and that forcing people to take them is morally unjust. These core beliefs motivated many people over hundreds of years to trust their individual intuition and research to subvert mainstream health authorities.

 

Vaccine-hesitant people have historically believed that they are morally responsible to call for justice for children who are harmed by medical policies that do not serve all children. Vaccination is mandatory for school attendance, it is supported by powerful institutions, and it is backed by scientific evidence.

 

Yet, people who are hesitant find validation for their beliefs through religious practices, such as witnessing and testifying to conversion to alternative medical worldviews, purifying and healing their children’s bodies from perceived toxins in the environment, and fighting to maintain legal exemptions to mandatory vaccines by calling on religious freedom protections.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: The project was inspired by current events. However, once I decided to really tackle it, I took a historical approach and worked chronologically from the 18th century to the present. The earlier history did not make it into this book, but it was in my dissertation.

 

Based on reading great historical coverage of vaccines and vaccination in the United States, I put together a timeline of important periods where there was controversy. A few of those foundational books were State of Immunity by James Colgrove, Vaccine Nation by Elena Conis, and Vaccine Court by Anna Kirkland.

 

For Unvaccinated Under God, I reconstructed vaccine hesitancy culture from 1982 through 2022, by finding primary sources in which hesitant people expressed their fears, concerns, and positions publicly.

 

I collected and analyzed newspaper articles, books, congressional testimonies, letters to the editor, documentaries, newsletters published by vaccine safety organizations such as National Vaccine Information Center and Children’s Health Defense, blogs, and social media posts.

 

I used my knowledge of American religious history to pull out core themes in each controversy and analyze them as expressions of mainstream religiosity that corresponded with the moment they were happening––this could be the rise of alternative spirituality and wellness culture or conservative White Christians fighting culture wars using religious liberty arguments.

 

It also was thinking about secular cultural trends, such as intensive mothering or health food lifestyles as demonstrating very religious qualities.

 

I think the number one thing that surprised me when I really started researching was that vaccine history and vaccine hesitancy are very much about children and mothers.

 

Q: Given the current political situation, what do you see looking ahead when it comes to vaccines and the health of the American people?

 

A: Right now, in May of 2026, our political climate remains very polarized, and how Americans feel about vaccines is tied––unfortunately––to our political identities.

 

We are seeing an increase in the number of kindergarteners who are utilizing non-medical exemptions to abstain from certain vaccines. This number has been trending upwards for many years. As a result, there will be more outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.

 

My guess is that we will reach a tipping point, and the exemptions will slow down as more kids get sick.

 

However, as I show in Unvaccinated Under God, choosing an exemption for a vaccine is not driven by a belief that the vaccine does not work. It is based on the belief that the vaccine may do more harm than good.

 

I hope that our public health and medical professionals will start to drive the national conversation toward more nuance around what parents are fearful about with vaccination and less on shaming them for choosing not to vaccinate.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m starting work on my next book, which will trace the history of political and religious conservatism and alternative medicine in the United States. It was inspired by the grassroots medical freedom activists who I cover in chapter 6 of Unvaccinated Under God.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Unvaccinated Under God tells a complex set of intertwining stories that explain people’s feelings toward vaccination at given time. In the book, I take people at their word and do not fact-check scientific claims because I want to give readers a template for seeing religion in unexpected places in their daily life and our national conversations about health.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Doug Rand

  

Doug Rand is the author of the new children's picture book Shavuot, Shavuot, Why Are You Sad?. It focuses on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Shavuot, Shavuot, Why Are You Sad?

 

A: I've always wanted to write a children's book. And I've always felt sorry for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which I was never taught much about growing up — it was just a date on the calendar when Jewish people are more likely to eat blintzes and other dairy foods for some reason.

 

So I wrote a very niche manuscript about all the more famous Jewish holidays like Hanukkah and Passover trying to cheer up Shavuot, and I was thrilled to get picked up by Kar-Ben, a wonderful publisher of Jewish-themed children’s books.

 

Q: What do you think Paweł Gierlinski’s illustrations add to the book?

 

A: This was my first experience being matched with an illustrator, and I couldn’t be happier. Paweł brought so many inspired ideas that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own (even if I could draw so well, which I can’t).

 

For example, there’s an adorable little dog romping around on nearly every page, which wasn’t in the manuscript and adds an extra delightful element to pull in the kids.

 

I hope that Paweł (whom I’ve never met in person!) enjoyed the artistic challenge of anthropomorphizing every Jewish holiday – Hanukkah is a talking menorah, Passover is a talking matzoh, etc.

 

His version of Tu BiShvat (the Jewish holiday celebrating nature) is particularly inspired: it’s a great big tree with a great big mustache. On the cover, the tree spreads its branches over all the other holidays gathering to cheer up Shavuot – it’s perfect.

 

Q: What do you hope readers learn about Shavuot from the book?

 

A: I hope that both kids and their grownups learn what I did while delving into the source texts about Shavuot – that there really isn’t much in the Torah explaining why we’re commanded to have this celebration exactly seven weeks after Passover, but later generations came up with something special for us to commemorate.

 

There’s no other holiday dedicated to the delivery of the Torah itself, when Moses was on Mt. Sinai. And we’ve been celebrating, debating, and interpreting the Torah ever since.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, “Humorous and sweet—made especially relevant by the relatively small number of picture books on the topic.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: Spot-on! I’m so grateful that Kirkus enjoyed the book on its own merits … and at the same time, yes, I was looking to fill a very particular gap in a very particular literary niche.

 

I just saw that the library in my own synagogue has a bunch of featured titles on display for Shavuot: A couple about the Book of Ruth (which is read out loud as part of the holiday), and several about blintzes (of course) – but only Shavuot, Shavuot, Why Are You Sad? dares to center Shavuot itself! :)

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Well, the final page of this book arguably sets up a sequel. (There are some Jewish holidays that are even more underappreciated…)

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: My son just told me to check the web for read-aloud videos of the book and some people have already posted them. What an honor! C’mon, BookTok, let’s make this the biggest Shavuot-themed bestseller ever!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

May 22

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
May 22, 1927: Peter Matthiessen born.

Q&A with F.T. Lukens

  

 

 

F.T. Lukens is the author of the new young adult novel The Last Best Quest Ever. Their other books include Love at Second Sight. They live in North Carolina. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Last Best Quest Ever, and how did you create your character Ellinore?

 

A: I had written a string of contemporary fantasies and wanted to return to fantasy realms like the ones I’d written in So This is Ever After and In Deeper Waters. That was the starting point for The Last Best Quest Ever.

 

I had also read several novels that had dragons as characters and realized I had never written a dragon despite loving them. And once I had dragons, I knew the world would need to be populated with other fantasy creatures and that’s how the world building began.

 

After I had the initial setting and world mechanics, I thought about who would be a good character to have the story center around. I wanted the plot to be quest based, but I didn’t want the dragon to be the subject of the quest or really a main character.

 

After a bit of brainstorming, I decided there was nothing more comedic than a character who had to bluff their way through some kind of situation (a convention which is pretty much a rom-com staple) and thus Ellinore was created—a decorated adventurer who had basically lied about their accomplishments but had to actually complete a life-or-death quest while under the scrutiny of other questers. The ultimate “fake it till you make it” story.

 

Q: The School Library Journal review of the novel calls it a “witty fantasy adventure that deconstructs heroic legend while celebrating found family and queer romance...” What do you think of that description?

A: That description is fairly spot on, though I don’t think of myself as “witty.” I’m glad the reviewer did, though!

 

I just really like playing around with trope expectations and pushing situations toward the absurd while ensuring the underlying theme remains consistent throughout the narrative.

 

Also, anyone who has read my other books know that I always include queer romance and some type of found family.

 

Q: How did you create the world in which the novel is set?

A: I think of myself as a “what if” type of creator. Like “what if the dragon is the main character’s best friend?” and then tease out details from that point.

 

For this book, the large set pieces are fantasy staples—castles, small towns, haunted forests, etc. The finer details all stem from what allows the plot to work—like the tiers of magical creatures, why history has been lost, what allowed Ellinore to get away with her not-quite-truthful version of events for so long, why is that faery so murderous and so on.

 

Worldbuilding for each book is different based on where the spark of the initial idea comes from. For this one, I started with the larger picture, then built inward toward the finer details.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

A: There are a few messages in there if a reader wants to look, but I always say first and foremost that I hope readers have a good time and are entertained.

 

I hope readers can find comfort in the found family and queer romance, especially as we are living in stressful times.

 

Beyond that, there is discussion of imposter syndrome and living up to others’ expectations, environmental conservation, and how difficult it can be, but the importance of the truth, just in general but also in relationships and in media.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I just turned in my next YA novel called Chaos Ensues, which was announced last year. I’m awaiting edits and I’m working on a pitch and first few chapters of another project.

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: A fun tidbit, I named Dave the dragon after my friend’s cat.

 

Signed copies of The Last Best Quest Ever are available via Fable Hollow Bookstore in Knoxville and Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with F.T. Lukens. 

Q&A with Fredrick E. Vars

  

 

Photo courtesy of the University of Alabama

 

 

Fredrick E. Vars is the author of the new book Through the Fire: How People with Mental Illness Are Empowering Each Other. He is also the co-author of the book Weapon of Choice. He is the Robert W. Hodgkins Chairholder of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, and he lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

Q: What inspired you to write Through the Fire?

 

A: I had been teaching mental health law for many years and wanted to step back and survey the system more broadly. 

 

I started with my own journey, including two psychiatric hospitalizations eventually leading to law reform in five states, when I quickly discovered the peer movement. 

 

I was shocked to learn that there are many more peer-run organizations providing mental health services in this country than traditional non-peer organizations.  That's when the subtitle and plan for the book emerged: "How People With Mental Illness Are Empowering Each Other."

 

I hope that inspiring stories about people with mental illness working within the system and working to make the system better might counter negative stereotypes and might suggest evidence-based policy reforms.

 

Q: What do you see as the role of peer support in helping people with mental illness?

 

A: One of the 50 peers I interviewed for the book defined "recovery" as "living the life you choose." That is the operating principle of peer support. Peer support therefore starts with questions: "What do you need?" "What do you want?" There is no limit. 

 

One peer who worked in housing explained: "If you tell me you want to live in a Park Avenue condominium, I'll try to help you get one." "If you need me to translate a notice from the gas company into Spanish, I'll do that." And when a client (who had initially been racist toward him) requested that the peer visit her on her deathbed, he did not hesitate.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I described the book to about 10 college friends and collected suggestions. No winners, but some great ideas! As mentioned above, I think the subtitle emerged relatively quickly. 

 

"Through the Fire" is part of an Oscar Wilde quotation: "They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens." The idea, of course, is that lived experience builds strength, but also empathy and the capacity to help others.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

 

A: I intersperse some of my own experiences throughout the book, so writing about them helped me put them in context. If just one or two things had been different in my life, I know my outcomes would have been much worse. I am now even more thankful of the layers of privilege that kept me from homelessness, jail, or death.

 

But the biggest takeaway for me is awe and respect for my interviewees. They survived some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable and instead of running away, ran right back into the fire, and started pulling other people out. I hope telling their stories will debunk stereotypes about people with mental illness and inspire action.

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am working on three scholarly projects: two related to firearm policy and one criticizing the practice of arresting people for misconduct on psych wards.

 

Q:  Anything else we should know?

 

A: I experienced my third psychiatric hospitalization while writing this book. It was particularly traumatic and underscored so many of the themes in the book. As a result, I wrote an entirely unexpected epilogue. 

 

The one point I want to emphasize is that involuntary, coerced treatment imposes greater harm than anyone who hasn't experienced it can appreciate. Make a list of everything that should be tried before resorting to forced treatment. Now double or triple the list. Bolster community care, of course, but add housing, education, and employment interventions. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Christian B. Miller

  

 

 

Christian B. Miller is the author of the new book The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World. His other books include Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue. He is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Honesty Crisis?

 

A: I had three things that motivated me at the same time.

 

One was that I noticed writers didn’t seem to be paying enough attention to honesty. In my own field of philosophy, for instance, I found only a couple of articles written in the span of 50 years!

 

At the same time, it seemed to me (and still does) that honesty is tremendously important, and that at some level most of us recognize this fact. Indeed the subtitle of the book says that honesty is our most treasured virtue, and there is some data to back that up.

 

Yet sadly – and this is the third motivation for the book – it became apparent to me that honesty was (and is) under attack, eroding at an alarming rate in multiple areas of society all at once. If we don’t do something to stop this erosion, we are all going to be much worse off.

 

Q: You’ve written about honesty before--what has compelled you to explore this topic?

 

A: Prior to my work on honesty, I lead a huge research project on character, and wrote several books and 30+ articles on the topic. After a while, though, I got a bit tired of that topic, as I felt like I had said everything I could say about it.

 

So I was looking for something fresh but not completely unrelated to character. That’s when I started thinking about what might be called “neglected virtues.” They are neglected in the sense that academics were not writing on them. They are neglected also in the sense that they are rarely possessed in society in general.

 

Virtues like generosity, practical wisdom, and patience all fit this description. But so too did honesty. And I wanted to do what I could to try to get more people – both my fellow academics and non-academics too – to pay a lot more attention to this especially neglected virtue that, it seemed to me, was and still is gradually eroding in our society.

 

Q: What are some of the factors that have made society “increasingly dishonest,” as your subtitle says, and do you see any hope for the future?

 

A: In the book, I focus on six different honesty crises having to do with AI student cheating, sermon plagiarism, celebrity and dishonesty, deepfakes, political misinformation, and Internet infidelity.

 

If there is one factor that runs throughout these crises, it is the role of technology in facilitating greater opportunities for dishonest behavior that is harder to detect.

 

For instance, student cheating has been around forever, and we already had one honesty crisis with the Internet and the ability of students to extract material from websites for their use without citation. But now we are all keenly aware of the most recent honesty crisis surrounding AI student cheating.

 

As far as hope goes, I think it depends. For some of these crises, I honestly do not see much hope.

 

The student cheating case is one of them. It is so easy to use an AI now to improve a student paper, and to do so in a way that minimizes the risk of detection. When such a resource is so powerful and easy to use, I fear the temptation will be too much.

 

In other areas, though, I am a bit more hopeful. For instance, there is good momentum at the moment to push back against the creation and distribution of harmful deepfake videos, especially pornographic ones. Here legal interventions can be especially impactful.

 

So I can’t give a simple answer to the hope question. It’s a mixed bag for me.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I already had a lot of the conceptual framework for thinking about honesty worked out in my head, and actually published that framework in a prior academic book which came out in 2021.

 

The research I had to do for The Honesty Crisis was mostly empirical. I consulted studies on lying behavior, on pornography, on political misinformation, on student cheating, and on a dozen of other topics as well.

 

In every case, I learned something that surprised me. For example, in chapter two I talk about research which finds that most people don’t lie most of the time, and it is only a handful of people who are responsible for most of the lying that happens in society today.

 

And in the chapter on politics, I looked at cutting-edge work on how social media can take people out of an accuracy mindset and make them much more likely to share political misinformation, even when they wouldn’t ordinarily think it is true.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have been working a bit on some other virtues that academics have not been paying much attention to, like generosity, patience, and practical wisdom.

 

But in the coming years I think I will be shifting my focus more and more to topics concerning religion and morality, including whether morality comes from a higher power and whether religion tends to be good for us.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: If you are interested in a more general discussion of character and of how good or bad most people are today, then I’d encourage you to check out my first book for a general audience, The Character Gap: How Good Are We?. It is where I first got to explore writing for people other than my fellow academics!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb