Associate Professor of History Dana Sajdi was recently interviewed about her book The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press). Her book looks at the life and work of Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, a barber in Damascus in the 18th century. The barber wrote a book recording events that took place in the city during his lifetime—part of a new phenomenon, nouveau literacy, or history writing by people outside the learned establishment. Listen to the New Books Network podcast of the interview.