New Books in Politics and Polemics

Billionaire Backlash

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, host John Torpey sits with Pepper Culpepper, Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of Oxford, to explore the core thesis of his recent book, Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy (co-authored with Taeku Lee).

Drawing historical parallels to the American Progressive Era and the trust-busting of the early 20th century, Culpepper explains how corporate missteps act as catalysts for public action. The discussion delves into the concept of "latent opinion"—the submerged, widespread unease regarding corporate power, tech monopolies, and unchecked wealth that may be missed by conventional polling endeavors — and how high-profile scandals mobilize this sentiment into concrete regulatory reform. From the fiasco of Cambridge Analytica and controversies over AI data centers to the rising political tension surrounding billionaires, this conversation offers a nuanced, "possibilist" framework for how public outrage can revitalize democratic institutions and establish essential guardrails for modern capitalism.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lily Geismer on the Democratic Party in the 1990s

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, hosts Lee Vinsel and Ben Waterhouse, along with producer Joe Forte, chat with historian Lily Geismer. Their conversation covers the evolution of the Democratic party, what it means to study political science as history, and a bit about how a scholar’s work can emerge from their personal experience and identity. Lily is Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (2015) and Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality (2022). She teaches contemporary history and is a key participant in a group of scholars working to rethink and revitalize our approach to political history of the United States. One product of those collaborations has been her edited volume, with Brent Cebul, Mastery and Drift: Professional Class Liberals since the 1960s (2025). This conversation was recorded in July of 2026.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Voters Support Politicians Who Undermine Democracy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Why do so many citizens continue to support politicians who undermine democracy? And why have nationalist appeals become such a powerful tool for democratic backsliding? In this episode of the People, Power, Politics podcast, Nic Cheeseman talks to Filip Milačić about his new book, Abandoning Democracy for the Nation (Cambridge UP, 2026). Drawing on evidence from Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Israel and Turkey, Milačić argues that democratic erosion is often driven not simply by populism or polarization, but by political leaders convincing citizens that the nation itself is under threat. The discussion explores why democratically minded voters sometimes accept attacks on democratic institutions, whether this argument travels beyond the cases in the book, and what lessons it offers for those seeking to defend democracy.

Transcript here

Guest:

Filip Milačić is a Senior Researcher for Democracy and Society at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's Democracy of the Future officein Vienna, visiting professor at the Central European University and a Research Affiliate at CEU's Democracy Institute. His research focuses on nationalism, democratic backsliding and resistance, political identity and party politics, with a particular emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He is the author of Abandoning Democracy for the Nation, a new book exploring the relationship between nationalism and democratic erosion. Through his academic research and policy work, Milačić examines the forces shaping the future of democracy and the challenges facing democratic societies today.

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Voices from North Korea: Refugees Tell Their Stories

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Sep 2026 21:28:00 +0000

n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North Korean refugees rebuild their lives through personalised English education, mentoring and public-speaking opportunities. Crucially, FSI enables refugees to tell their own stories in their own voices.

Their testimony reveals the human cost of repression in North Korea while highlighting the importance of the humanitarian work undertaken by FSI: helping refugees develop the skills and confidence to pursue their ambitions, rebuild their independence and ensure that their experiences are heard internationally.

Freedom Speakers International (FSI) is a Seoul-based non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting North Korean refugees as they rebuild their lives after escape from North Korea. Founded in 2013 by Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, it began as Teach North Korean Refugees and has developed into an organisation focused on empowering refugees through education, mentoring and public speaking opportunities.

FSI provides North Korean refugees with tuition-free, individualised English and public-speaking mentorship. This is particularly important because many refugees arrive in South Korea having experienced severe disruption to their education and face significant disadvantages in employment and higher education, where English proficiency can be important. FSI works with refugees according to their own objectives, helping them improve their language skills, confidence and ability to participate fully in South Korean and international society.

An especially important part of FSI's work is enabling North Korean refugees who wish to do so to tell their own stories. Through its public-speaking programme, its “I Am From North Korea” English Speech Contest and its Keynote Speaker Network, FSI gives refugees opportunities to communicate their experiences directly to international audiences rather than having others speak on their behalf. Its speaker network now includes more than 30 speakers.

The humanitarian importance of this work extends well beyond language teaching. North Korean refugees have often endured repression, traumatic journeys of escape, separation from their families and the considerable difficulties of adapting to an unfamiliar society. Effective resettlement therefore requires more than providing physical safety. It also means helping people recover independence, confidence and the ability to determine their own futures. FSI's personalised model is particularly valuable because it treats refugees not simply as recipients of assistance but as individuals with their own ambitions, experiences and voices. Its work helps turn escape from persecution into the possibility of a genuinely independent life.

At the same time, by enabling refugees to speak about North Korea from personal experience, FSI performs a wider human-rights function. First-hand testimony preserves awareness of conditions inside North Korea and ensures that the experiences of those who have escaped remain part of international discussion. Supporting North Korean refugees in finding their own voices is therefore both an important humanitarian activity and a contribution to the broader defence of human dignity and freedom.

Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security at the University of Bradford.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah M. Rios, "Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice" (Temple UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice (Temple University Press, 2026) investigates how communities in Central Valley, California deal with Valley Fever, a painful illness caused by a soil fungus. The airborne disease’s symptoms can last from two months to a patient’s lifetime and may be fatal. Nearly a third of the national cases are reported in California, where those infected are disproportionately farmworkers and people incarcerated in the region. Poverty, pollution, and prison expose these groups to cumulative environmental and health risks that deny Valley Fever patients adequate medical treatment.

Dr. Sarah M. Rios examines how these populations face racial health disparities and develop strategies of care. She connects environmental justice activists as well as prison advocates and abolitionists who mobilize protests and issue calls to action to the past and ongoing efforts for medical autonomy and healthy communities. Diseases Have No Eyes emphasizes that vulnerable groups have developed an expertise and understanding of Valley Fever out of necessity. In the process, these community members offer an alternative public health response that extends beyond the individual body.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Richard Ned Lebow, "Why Nations Still Fight" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Drawing on an original data set of interventions and wars from 1945 to the current day, as well as numerous short case studies, Richard Ned Lebow offers a novel account of their origins and outcomes - one that emphasises miscalculation, failure to conduct meaningful risk assessments, and cultural and political arrogance.

A successive work to Why Nations Fight (2010), in this book Why Nations Still Fight (Cambridge UP, 2026) he explains why initiators routinely lose militarily and politically when they resort to force, as well as accounting for why the great powers, in particular, have not learned from their failures.

Lebow offers both type- and region-specific forecasts for the future likelihood of interventions and wars.

His account reveals the inapplicability of theories nested in the realist and rationalist paradigms to the study of war.

He argues what is needed instead is an "irrationalist" theory, and he takes the initial steps in this direction.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srirupa Roy, "The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Defying the dire predictions that attended its birth as an independent nation-state in 1947, the Indian republic is more than seventy-five years old. And yet, it is a place where criticisms of actually existing democracy are intense and strident. In recent years, the trope of victimized people suffering at the hands of a predatory elite and political dysfunction has reaped rewards. The populist language of redemptive outsiders pledging to combat a corrupt system has been harnessed in successful electoral campaigns, like the majoritarian regime of Narendra Modi.

Tracking the shift from postcolonial nation-building to democracy-rebuilding, Srirupa Roy shows how the political outsider came to be a valorized figure of late-twentieth century Indian democracy, tasked with the urgent mission of curing a broken democratic system—what Roy terms "curative democracy." Drawing attention to an ambivalent political field that folds together authoritarian and democratic forms and ideas, The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism (Stanford University Press, 2024) argues that the long 1970s were a crucial turning point in Indian politics, when democracy was suspended by the declaration of a national emergency and then subsequently restored. By tracing the crooked line that connects the ideals of curative democracy and the political outsider to the populist antipolitics and strongman authoritarian rule in present times, this book revisits democracy from India, and asks what the Indian experience tells us about the trajectory of global democratic politics.

Dhiren Swain is a MIPA PhD Candidate, affiliated to The University of Melbourne and IIT Madras. His current research focuses on the Urban Policies and Community Politics in India and South Asia.

He can be reached at kishoredhiren8@gmail.com

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In a matter of decades, a spectacular cold-water paradise thirty million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one of Earth’s most wondrous and underappreciated marine habitats. It’s an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars, crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens?

For readers who know kelp only as tangles on the ocean surface or smelly mounds of seaweed littering beaches, Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp (Princeton University Press, 2026) reveals a thriving three-dimensional underwater world of color and beauty whose loss if allowed to happen will reverberate in unimaginable ways for both nature and humans. David Helvarg, a veteran journalist and accomplished scuba diver, takes us on a memorable journey beneath the waves through kelp’s natural and human history, the billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its survival, and the hopeful movements around the world to restore kelp habitat. Helvarg introduces us to Indigenous leaders promoting sea otter reintroduction, out-of-work urchin fisherman, documentary filmmakers, and ocean scientists all working in an unlikely collaboration to restore and protect kelp forests while promoting a growing range of uses for food, medicine, and energy.

Forest of the Sea is the first book to document what is at stake if we lose these irreplaceable marine jewels, helping readers to understand how these natural systems might adapt and survive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A.J.A. Woods, "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West" (Verso, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books, 2026) is the definitive history of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory.

“Cultural Marxism” is one of the far right’s favorite buzzwords. But despite its currency, the meaning and origins of the term are rarely investigated. This book uncovers the bizarre story of the cult leaders, right-wing intellectuals, and White House officials who believe a coterie of left-wing scholars and students is plotting to undermine Western civilization. Drawing on years of archival research and using the tools of critical theory, A.J.A. Woods reveals how a group of German thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was recast as the sinister orchestrators of a global conspiracy. Instead of simply debunking this conspiracy theory, Woods offers a sharp analysis and critique of the political movements that have declared war on all that passes for Cultural Marxism in the US, the UK, and Brazil.

Only when we understand the practices and weaknesses of those reactionaries committed to fighting this illusory threat—a conflict causing real-world damage—can we effectively resist. This is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand the ideological currents shaping politics in the twenty-first century.

A.J.A. Woods is an intellectual historian who lives in Brighton, England. In 2022, Woods received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, Canada. Their writings on conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice, and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jacob Hagstrom, "Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

The forces that fight asymmetric wars are so distinct that one side avoids direct military confrontation in favor of political, social, or otherwise unorthodox means of resistance. These conflicts have been a mainstay of modern times, though scholars have often separated them into various designations by era. Observers have referred, in chronological order, to Indian warfare, petite guerre (small war), guerrilla warfare, irregular or revolutionary war, and terrorism. The proliferation of labels over time has obscured the continuity of asymmetric wars throughout modernity. Stark distinctions in resources and capabilities have shaped the reasons why states and societies have decided to fight, and the manner in which they have fought. Across the modern era, mismatches arose in the domains of technology, intelligence production, and law. But in recent decades, so-called weak powers have neutralized many of the typical advantages of strong military states.

Jacob Hagstrom is an army veteran and historian. He earned a PhD in history from Indiana University, Bloomington, and taught courses at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina.

Chris Millington is Professor of Modern European History and lead of the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of eight books including Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe ((Manchester University Press, 2025), The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford University press, 2023), and France in the Second World War Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the significance of the 1990s as a point of departure for new work in this field and segued to the interventions made by their two edited volumes published in 2016 and 2025. We discussed the paths opened up by earlier radical historiographical paradigms, such as Subaltern Studies, which nonetheless failed to address the caste question. The guests noted three key emphases of contemporary Dalit Studies: one, centering Dalit historical agency and intellectual production; two, decentering the binary of colonialism and nationalism, and illuminating the colonial period as a complex terrain of maneuver; and three, foregrounding the importance of “the Dalit social” as a field of variegated power irreducible to the state. We ended with a discussion of the heterogeneity of Dalit sociopolitical formations, what makes “Dalit” cohere as a category, and future directions for the field of Dalit Studies.

Read the transcript here

References

Ramnarayan Rawat and K. Satyanarayana eds. Dalit Studies (Duke University Press, 2016)

Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan eds. Dalit Journeys for Dignity: Religion, Freedom, and Caste (SUNY Press, 2025)

Rajni Kothari, “Rise of the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste.” In State and

Politics in India, edited by Partha Chatterjee, 439–58 (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1998).

Gopal Guru, “The Language of Dalit-Bahujan Political Discourse.” In Dalit Identity and

Politics, edited by Ghanshyam Shah, 96–107 (New Delhi: Sage, 2001).

Baburao Bagul, Dalit Sahitya ajache Kranti Vidynana (Nagpur: Buddhist Publishing

House, 1978).

Belcchi: village in Patna district of Bihar where eight Dalits and three Backward Caste men were killed by members of the landowning Kurmi caste in 1977.

Keezhvenmani: hamlet in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu where upper caste landlords burnt alive 44 Dalit agricultural laborers in 1968.

Karamchedu: village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh where members of the Kamma landholding caste murdered six Dalit men, raped three Dalit women, and displaced hundreds of Dalit families in 1985.

Vempenta: village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh where, in response to the killing of a village official by the People’s War Group, landholders killed more than thirty Dalits and burned more than 100 of their houses in 1998.

Chundur: village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh where members of the Reddy landholding caste killed eight Dalit men in 1991.

Mandal Commission:

Divya Cherian, Merchants of Virtue

B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Phule: Jyotirao Phule was an anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.

NTR: Indian actor and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for four terms between 1983 and 1995.

Mahad Satyagraha: mass mobilization by B.R. Ambedkar to claim Dalit access to a public water tank in Mahad, Maharashtra.

Ayyankali: Indian social reformer and lawmaker who worked for the advancemetnt of Dalits in the princely state of Travancore.

Ad Dharm: an anticaste movement in the 1920s that claimed a distinct identity for Dalits separate from Hinduism and Sikhism.

Adi Hindu Mahasabha: sociopolitical organization founded in 1923 by Dalit leader Swami Achhutanand in Uttar Pradesh that claimed for Dalits the identity of originary Hindus.

IITs: the Indian Institutes of Technology

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Edward T. G. Anderson, "Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India’s vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades.

Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India’s diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities.
Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities.

Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Georgia Kernell, "Inside Parties: How Party Rules Shape Membership and Responsiveness" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Inside Parties: How Party Rules Shape Membership and Responsiveness (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Georgia Kernell examines how party rules determine how parties select candidates, nominate leaders, and set policy goals. Most research on party organisation pays very little attention to what happens within political parties; this book addresses this gap by examining how internal party rules and procedures shape party membership and political responsiveness. Drawing on an original dataset of party statutes covering 65 political parties across 20 parliamentary democracies, the book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of party organisation to date. The book develops a formal model of party membership and tests these hypotheses using cross-national surveys, member studies, experiments, and computer simulations of projected vote shares. The book finds that a party's level of decentralisation - the degree to which it incorporates rank and file members into decision making - determines which voters it best represents. Decentralised parties may attract more members to campaign for the party, but they do so at the cost of adopting more extreme positions that pull them away from moderate voters. The book challenges our understanding of inner-party democracy, it reveals that Parties that are more internally democratic don't necessarily end up being more representative or responsive to the electorate as a whole. This novel and comprehensive research is an indispensable resource not only for party scholars but also for anyone working on comparative politics and multi-method research. And for anyone who wants to sneak a peek into the "secret garden" of party organisation.

Satyaki Barua is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. His research focuses on party organisation, party institutionalisation, and political mobilisation, particularly examining the interactions between the state, society, and political parties in India and South Asia. Outside of academia, Satyaki enjoys watching and discussing movies, as well as practising Hindustani classical music.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Aug 2026 17:11:00 +0000

"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had fought. This is the story of his childhood journey through the chaos of that new country's birth to Britain, where he arrived alone, a teenager, burning with ambition but utterly lost in ways he had yet even to discover. Told with astonishing insight, his memoir describes the drama of his quest to belong and to succeed, and how his worldview was both shaped and shattered by Britain, ultimately setting him on a quest to uncover the truth of his parents' past. In excavating their story alongside his own, he brings us closer than ever before to understanding one of the greatest upheavals in modern times - the freeing of a continent from colonial rule - not as history or politics but as a psychological and emotional force, one that divides families from within, even while those same divisions bind them fiercely together across time.

Read the transcript here.

Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics at the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is broadly interested in the politics of global health and epidemics, race and identity, citizenship and activist movements, with a regional focus on Africa and the African diaspora.

Simukai is the author of The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2020), an examination of the social and political causes and consequences of Zimbabwe’s catastrophic cholera outbreak in 2008/09, the most extensive in African history. This monograph won the Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award from the American and International Political Science Associations. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Uganda, The Gambia, and Tanzania, and has publications in several leading social science and medical journals.

Simukai has recently published his first book for the trade, Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire, published by The Bodley Head and Crown in March 2026. This book combines memoir, political history and cultural criticism to show how colonialism continues to shape politics, society and culture in Africa and in Britain and to explore what it really means to decolonise.

Prior to working in academia, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service. He holds a DPhil in International Development from the Oxford University for which he was awarded the biennial Audrey Richards Prize for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies examined at a UK university.

Simukai teaches on the MPhil in Development Studies and supervises DPhil students.

Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a master of party politics. Schooled as a Whig in the rough-and-tumble of Illinois electioneering in the 1830s, Lincoln skillfully navigated treacherous partisan crosscurrents and helped build the Republican party into a viable force. His decades of experience as a party leader proved invaluable to him as president and commander in chief during the Civil War.

Matthew Pinsker’s groundbreaking Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln (W.W. Norton & Company, 2026) draws extensively on Lincoln’s private correspondence to move beyond the marble icon and realize a flesh-and-blood character in Boss Lincoln. Behind closed doors he was shrewd and insistent, capable of deft manipulation, blunt intimidation, or thoughtful argument as needed. As a decision-maker he was attentive to detail but kept his own counsel and trusted his own acumen. His aides noted that in cabinet meetings Lincoln had the final say, and “there is no cavil.” Devoted to elections, he kept careful, handwritten tallies of party turnout, even gifting one to Mary Todd, another partisan, during their courtship. His hymn to democracy at Gettysburg in 1863 carried a partisan message to the political leaders gathered there: The fight for the union would take place at the polls as well as on the battlefield. Boss Lincoln often sacrificed candor for purpose. He used his White House meeting with Frederick Douglass in 1864, ostensibly about emancipation, to send a message to radicals about his need for their support. With emancipation and the war’s outcome at stake, facing withering criticism from all sides, Lincoln won reelection by building a new political coalition through the Union party. Here was Boss Lincoln at his height, captured in absorbing detail in this indelible portrait of our greatest president.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eric O Silva, "Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization: Identity Construction in the Culture Wars" (De Gruyter, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Much scholarship has sought to decode the polarization of American culture. Eric O Silva's analysis of the public discourse on contested realities (immigration, vaccines, electric vehicles, transgender youth medicine, campus protests of Israel, the regulation of AR-15s, and race and police brutality) reveals that Americans are not governed by coherent, diametrically opposed worldviews. U.S. culture is more fractured than dominant narratives of a polarized society would suggest. Moreover, these cultural disputes result in the generation of materials for constructing identities. Disagreement over how to define reality inevitably leads to a contest over the authority and moral worthiness of the individuals involved in the dispute. Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization: Identity Construction in the Culture Wars analyzes how participants in public discourse stigmatize but also destigmatize their adversaries. This study not only demonstrates that there are people who are seeking to "turn down the temperature" in public discourse but the generic processes by which they do so.

Michael O. Johnston is Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. His research explores symbolic interaction, leisure, meaning, place, community, and sociology of everyday life. He is the author of the forthcoming book Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America (Bloomsbury, 2027), The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla, and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest. His forthcoming book examines how small towns create moments of urbanity through festivals, public gatherings, and everyday social life. Since joining the New Books Network in 2017, he has interviewed more than 100 authors across sociology and the social sciences, helping connect scholars and their work with a broad public audience.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Isabel Heger-Laube, "China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability" (Würzberg UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

As part and parcel of China’s compressed modernization, processes of state-led rural urbanization through land expropriation and rural-to-urban relocation have been transforming rural Chinese people’s lives in unprecedented ways. This has led to different, often adverse outcomes for the affected populations – China’s “landless peasants” - as well as to the construction of divergent narratives about the role of the Chinese state’s measures for them. To provide a so-far missing perspective to existing research, Isabel Heger-Laube reconstructs the role of the experienced changes from landless peasants’ own narratives, drawing on the “big” and “small” stories collected through fieldwork in Huaming model town in Tianjin’s Dongli district. By focusing on ordinary people’s subjective processes of meaning making, this book not only puts into perspective objective assessments and persistent narrative tendencies, but also sheds new light on the puzzle of social stability in the wake of large-scale, state-led transformations in contemporary China.

China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability was published open access with Würzburg University Press in 2025. Free e-book version.

Dr. Isabel Heger-Laube (isabelheger@gmail.com) is a sinologist and social scientist with an interdisciplinary footing in social anthropology, sociology, and psychology. She earned her PhD in Chinese Studies from Freie Universität Berlin in 2024 and currently works as a scientific associate at the School of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). Alongside her work, she is pursuing a degree in psychosocial counseling. Her research interests include urbanization and social change, higher and adult education, aging and care, as well as narrative meaning making and identity formation. ORCiD.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Resurgence of War and the Collapse of Arms Control

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:44:00 +0000

How the nuclear guardrails were dismantled. What arms control actually did (risk management, predictability, geography), how it unravelled from the 2000s onward, and why its collapse matters more now as we see a resurgence of strategic instability and armed conflict.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2026), civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of us and should be judged in a spirit of forgiveness. He explains that American society is too often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable by fixating narrowly on the question What did they do? and imagining that those who have done great wrongs have no past worth learning and no future worth preserving.
Through intimate interviews, his rich chapters bring to life 6 men and women, sharing their (sometimes brutal) crimes, the grim but all-too-human paths that led them there, and their evolution and insights. Eye-opening and unflinching, Cast Out makes us truly see those society locks away—the so-called “worst of the worst.” It challenges the reader to see us in them and them in us, and in that way, to recognize the humanity we all share.

Guest: Joseph Margulies is a writer, litigator, Professor of the Practice of Law and Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), and in Munaf v. Geren (2008). His books include Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power; and Cast Out.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Building A Freedom Infrastructure in the Age of Networked Control

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Host Licia Cianetti talks to Venezuelan democracy activist and co-founder of the World Liberty Congress Leopoldo López. As part of PPP’s ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Democracy they discuss Leopoldo’s recent article on Democracy in an Age of Networked Control. They discuss the technological challenges that democracy activists worldwide face today, and how some activists are rethinking their use of technology to elude the infrastructure of control and create new infrastructures for freedom.

Guest:

Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan democracy activist and the cofounder of the World Liberty Congress, which is a global network that connects democracy advocates and leaders from across the world. From 2014 to 2020 he was imprisoned for leading peaceful protests and civil resistance against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Currently he is a Fellow at the Wilson Center.

Presenter:

Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. She is the Principal Investigator of an upcoming research project on “Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions” (funded by the EU under Horizon Europe grant no. 101286676).

Transcript here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kurt Warner, "False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy" (Vernon Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy (Vernon Press, 2024) examines how modern forms of diversion shape civic life and weaken democratic responsibility. Drawing on the ancient Roman idea of “bread and circuses,” Kurt Warner explores how contemporary society is saturated with distractions that keep citizens focused on what is immediate, pleasurable, profitable, or spectacular, rather than on what is politically and socially meaningful.

The conversation introduces listeners to the book’s central concern: how celebrity culture, consumerism, economic pressures, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games can become “false idols.” These forces do not merely entertain us; they influence how we think, what we value, and how we understand our responsibilities to one another.

A key point of discussion is the book’s comparison between ancient Rome and the contemporary United States. Warner uses “bread and circuses” to consider how societies become complacent when citizens are absorbed by basic needs and entertainment while civic duty fades into the background.

The episode also explores the book’s opening narrative, which follows an ordinary man, Chris, through a day filled with advertising, media, branding, and social pressure. This scene illustrates one of the book’s central arguments: distraction is often woven into everyday life before people have noticed its influence.

Warner’s background in psychotherapy adds an important dimension to the discussion. 'False Idols' connects personal awareness with civic awareness, asking how people can recognize the forces directing their attention and reclaim the ability to think critically.

Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to reflect on the relationship between attention and democracy. 'False Idols' asks what it would mean to wake up from the collective daze of distraction and choose more meaningful forms of civic, ethical, and social engagement.

Key Themes and Context:

“Bread and circuses” in the modern world - One of the book’s central ideas is that Juvenal’s famous phrase “bread and circuses” remains relevant today. Warner uses it to examine how entertainment, consumption, and everyday distraction can draw citizens away from civic responsibility.

The many forms of diversion- The book considers a wide range of modern distractions, including celebrity worship, money, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games. Together, these examples show how distraction can operate across culture, politics, economics, and everyday life.

Democracy and civic duty - At the heart of the book is a concern with democracy. Warner argues that distraction becomes dangerous when it weakens civic engagement and allows people to avoid the difficult work of political and ethical responsibility.

Critical thinking as resistance - The later chapters of 'False Idols' focus on critical thinking as a way of resisting manipulation and recovering agency. The book invites readers to examine not only what they consume, but also how their attention, values, and judgments are shaped.

The psychological dimension of distraction - Warner’s background in psychotherapy informs the book’s attention to emotion, avoidance, and self-awareness. Distraction is presented not only as a social or political problem, but also as something that affects how individuals relate to themselves and others.

Vernon Press – Bridging Scholarly Ideas and Global Readership

Vernon Press stands out as a bilingual independent publisher of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. Their mission is crucial — to provide a home for ideas of international importance and to embrace scholarship from underrepresented voices and perspectives. Through its diverse catalog, Vernon Press engages with global readers, contributing to academic and public discourse.

Dessy Vassileva, the Marketing & Design expert at Vernon Press, brings a 360º multidisciplinary approach to her work at Vernon Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

J. W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev, "Against Money" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Money is everywhere in our daily lives. It lurks in the swipe of a card at the grocery store, in looming student-loan debts, in the prices of things we want, and in our subconscious navigation of the modern world. In this revelatory book, economists Mason and Jayadev explain how and why money is so deeply misunderstood by the world it dominates—as well as the dangerous social implications of this misunderstanding. Against Money (University of Chicago Press, 2026) tackles the most dearly held “truths” of economics, arguing that the world of money has never been an impartial representation of the world of things. Instead, its existence in different forms—debt, capital, liquidity, and interest—increasingly shapes events in the real world rather than just reflecting them. Sometimes money enables new forms of cooperation; more often it facilitates domination. Human existence is not just facilitated by money but also governed by it.

J.W. Mason is an Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and a Senior Fellow at the Groundworks Collective. He was formerly the Policy Director for the New York State Working Families Party. Arjun teaches Economics at the University. Arjun Jayadev is Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University in India.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Susanne Paola Antonetta, "The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today" (Catapult, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today (Catapult, 2025) delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong.

In The Devil’s Castle, Susanne Paola Antonetta weaves a haunting narrative that confronts the darkest chapters of psychiatric history while offering a bold vision for the future of mental health care. In 1939, the eugenics movement growing throughout the West did its worst in Nazi Germany. Through the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, five asylums and an abandoned jail were transformed into gas chambers. Tens of thousands of lives—predominantly adults with neuropsychiatric conditions—were extinguished in those structures, ultimately paving the way for the horrors of the Holocaust.

Interlacing her experiences of psychosis with the complex history of psychiatry, Antonetta sheds light on the intersections of madness and societal perceptions of mental difference. She brings to life the stories of Paul Schreber and Dorothea Buck, two historical figures who act as models for mind care and acceptance. This gripping exploration traverses the spectrum of neurodiversity, from the devastating consequences of dehumanization to the transformative potential of understanding and acceptance.

With The Devil’s Castle, Antonetta not only unearths the failures of our past, but also envisions a more compassionate, enlightened approach to consciousness and mental health care. This is a story of tragedy, resilience, and hope—a rallying cry for change that dares to challenge the limits of how we define and support the human mind.

Susanne Paola Antonetta is the author of The Devil's Castle: Eugenics, Nazi Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Hurts Us Now. She is also the author of The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, Make Me a Mother, Entangled Objects, Body Toxic, A Mind Apart, and four books of poetry. Her awards include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, an Amazon Best Memoir of the Year award, and others. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, Ms., The Huffington Post, The UK Independent, The Hill, Orion, Psychology Today, and The New Republic and have been featured on CNN as well as the CBC Ideas documentary series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

For more information about her work please visit her website here and sign up for notifications about her regular contributions to Psychology Today.

Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher in Massachusetts. You can follow her on Instagram, Insight Timer, YouTube (@drelizabethcronin) or visit her website.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, "Animals and the Right to Politics" (Oxford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The assumption that only humans can engage in politics—that only humans are 'zoon politikon'—is foundational to the Western tradition of political philosophy. While there is increasing recognition of animals' moral status (both within moral philosophy and at the level of public opinion), animals are not recognized as political subjects. This carefully researched but accessibly written volume—following on from the authors' earlier book Zoopolis—argues that animals too have a right to politics: a right to be recognized as political subjects and agents, and as members of political communities entitled to collective self-determination. ⁠Animals and the Right to Politics⁠ (Oxford University Press, 2026) draws on recent scientific work on animal societies, cultures, and decision-making, as well as recent work by political theorists rethinking ideas of agency and community—especially the significance of emplaced and embodied encounters and relationships to the activity of politics. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka draw a picture of what it would mean to create spaces and practices, not only for politics conducted by humans on behalf of animals, but also politics with and by animals on their own terms. It then explores how this approach could inform a wide range of contemporary debates in human-animal relations, including wildlife conservation, urban planning, and animal labour.

⁠Sue Donaldson⁠ is a Canadian author and animal advocate. She has published more than 40 academic articles, and is the co-author, with Will Kymlicka, of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford University Press, 2011) which won the Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2013, and has been translated into 11 languages. She is co-convenor of the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics research group at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.

⁠Will Kymlicka⁠ is the author of seven books published by Oxford University Press, including Contemporary Political Philosophy (2nd ed., 2001), Multicultural Citizenship (1996), and Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (co-authored with Sue Donaldson; 2011). He is currently the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. His works have been translated into 34 languages.

⁠Kyle Johannsen⁠ is Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent authored book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christopher M. Federico et al., "The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate" (Oxford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Political Scientists Christopher Federico, Stanley Feldman, and Christopher Weber have an important and fascinating new book from Oxford University Press focusing on understanding authoritarianism, especially in the American context. As experts in political psychology, the authors are keen to consider authoritarianism as a psychological concept, which is more about submitting to authority, as a kind of conformity, and less about a particular political regime structure. The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate (Oxford UP, 2026) is about trying to understand voters and how some of them are attracted to this idea or concept, and how this attraction then works itself out within the electorate and within our contemporary political moment.

In order to understand this theory of psychological authoritarianism, the authors trace the idea from origins in critical theory and pre-World War I European thinkers (Freud, Benjamin, etc.) who were examining the concepts of conformity vs. autonomy, and how these ideas functioned in political life. The authors also examined differing approaches to child-rearing, since this also reflects these same concepts of conformity and autonomy, but in how they are put into practice in bringing up children, either with more freedom or in a more rules bound approach. In using these measures, Federico, Feldman, and Weber also pulled together data from election surveys starting in the 1990s and moving forward that include questions that get at some of the same ideas. The authors also used experiments to test individual inclinations towards autonomy or uniformity. The thrust of voter’s choices was not about economics or specific public policy in these analyses, but around social issue differentiation and social context. The research for The Authoritarian Divide is complex and brings together a variety of different methodological approaches in order to examine this political divide, and to tease out the impact of psychological authoritarianism in American politics.

The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate reveals that this inclination towards psychological authoritarianism is much more prevalent among white conservative voters than among other voting blocs in the United States. This has also led voters to sort themselves within the two parties accordingly, with far more of those who are inclined towards psychological authoritarianism moving into the Republican Party, and fewer moving into the Democratic Party. The result of this sorting has contributed to the rise in polarization within American politics over the past thirty years.

The Authoritarian Divide explains a lot about voter thinking and approaches to American politics over the past three decades. It helps to decipher the entrenched polarization because the examination is not about policy distinctions or issues, it is about how individual voters think and why they are inclined to think in particular ways about politics. The authors clearly assess the distinctions within the voting populace of the United States, and, in so doing, unpack different approaches to voting and vote choices in different sectors of the electorate. The Authoritarian Divide really helps us to understand our current political climate and to see how the rise of Donald Trump fits into a temporally longer era of American politics, partisan politics, racial politics, and the tensions between democracy and authoritarianism.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Luna Sabastian, "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva" (Harvard UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.
Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva’s reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India’s “Muslim problem.”
Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought.

Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Emerging Anocracy: AI, Tech Oligarchs, and the Future of Democracy with Alexis Cruz

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny sits down with Alexis Cruz, founder of Enough Consulting and former strategic advisor for governance at Meta. Cruz explores how the proliferation of AI and digital platforms has shifted global politics into an "anocracy"—a precarious gray zone situated between traditional democracy and authoritarianism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Democratic Backsliding and Resistance: Poland’s Civil Society, Electoral Strategies, and Institutional Levers

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, Frances Cayton speaks with four experts on Polish politics about the success of Poland’s opposition coalition in 2023, and the headwinds that democracy continues to face today.

What challenges do parties and civil society face in building pro-democracy electoral coalitions? If victorious, how do these challenges affect post-election governance and efforts at pursuing democratic renewal? This episode brings together politicians, political scientists, and civil society leaders who each played a critical role in the 2023 elections to examine what made Poland’s pro-democracy mobilization possible, the gains the 2023 coalition has achieved since entering power, and the challenges it continues to face in pursuing democratic renewal.
This episode was originally recorded as a part of the Lessons from Global Democratic Resistance panel series. The series brings together frontline activists, civic leaders, institutional actors, and field‑informed scholars to examine how democratic actors have resisted, responded to, and learned from democratic backsliding across countries. The series aims to identify practical lessons and comparative insights for those defending democracy today and is organized in collaboration with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University; Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania; the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame; the Democratic Futures Project at the University of Virginia; Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mikołaj Cześnik, Director of the Institute of Social Science at SWPS University, Chairman of the Council of the Stefan Batory Foundation

Michał Wawrykiewicz, Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Co-Founder of the civic initiative Wolne Sady (Free Courts)

Marek Tatała, President and Co-Founder of the Economic Freedom Foundation

Dominika Lasota, Student and Activist in the Youth Climate Strike Poland, Co-Founder of Inicjatywa WSCHÓD

Frances Cayton is a PhD Candidate in Government at Cornell University. Her research focuses on questions surrounding democratic backsliding, civil society, and political communication.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What are the Limits of Political Speech? A Conversation with Erik J. Olsen

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A New Approach to Political Speech: Democratic Theory, Constitutional Law, and Public Liberty After January 6 (de Gruyter, 2026) challenges conventional understandings of political speech and its relationship to democracy. Through a focused case study of Donald Trump's role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election and the prosecutions stemming from it, Erik Olsen develops a critique of the prevailing view that political speech is a private right that is only instrumentally related to political action. He advocates instead for a theoretical framework that treats political speech as a form of communicative action and balances the protection of free expression with the need to safeguard core democratic practices and processes. He thus outlines a more robust First Amendment jurisprudence that can better defend both public liberty and democratic institutions from authoritarian threats in the current era of democratic backsliding.

Erik J. Olsen is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Seattle University.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are Capitalism and Democracy Fundamentally Incompatible? A Conversation with Mordecai Kurz

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A. G. Hopkins, "The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature peeling paint, weeds, and broken railings. Public services are no longer fit for purpose. A malaise seems to infect every aspect of British life: its economy, polity, social order, sense of well-being, domestic regional relationships, and place in the world. In The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot (Princeton University Press, 2026), the distinguished historian A. G. Hopkins offers an explanation, tracing Britain’s current problems to decisions made in the 1980s that abandoned its postwar experiment in social democracy and mimicked policies of deregulation and privatisation promoted by the United States.

In 1945, the new Labour government’s development programme aimed at creating a social democracy that would benefit all members of society. The counterrevolution launched by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979, which remains in force today, promoted individualism and deregulation. The transition from one programme to another was a response to the growth of finance and services centred on the City of London, and to decolonisation, which redirected trade to Europe. The expansion of credit led to the financial crisis of 2008 and the years of austerity that followed, and fuelled the populist movement that culminated in Brexit. Hopkins argues that, instead of following the free-market policies of its mentor, the United States, Britain should draw on its own history of social democracy and borrow from its neighbours in Europe, where communitarian principles continue to be upheld.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Campaigning, Parties and the Digital in Contemporary Politics

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Politics, parties and campaigning are all changing. AI, digital tools and the rapid spread of messages all mean that the conduct and content of politics are changing. In many respects, it feels like the only constant is change. But closer observation often illuminates a patchier picture with elements of change and elements that remain. Moreover, change can be more evolutionary than revolutionary, and the change is not always along the lines we might predict. So, how and in what ways is political campaigning changing? What role are digital tools playing? What do citizens want from their political parties, and what are they (or could be) doing to meet those desires and expectations? Join Tim Haughton and guest Kate Dommett for a discussion of campaigning, digital politics and political parties.

Kate Dommett is Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield. Among her many publications are The Reimagined Party: Democracy, change and the public, published by Manchester University Press in 2020, and a co-authored book with Glenn Kefford & Simon Kruschinski, Data Driven Campaigning and Political Parties: Five Advanced Democracies Compared, published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Tim Haughton is Professor of Comparative and European Politics and a Deputy Director of CEDAR at the University of Birmingham. He is the author, inter alia, of The New Party Challenge published by Oxford University Press in 2020 and Clicks and Mortar: Electoral Campaigning in the 21st Century published last year in Government and Opposition.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nicholas Freudenberg, "Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since The 1960s" (Columbia UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today I'm speaking with Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the CUNY School of Public Health. We are discussing his book, Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since the 1960s (Columbia University Press, 2026). In March 2020, during one of the first major US outbreaks of Covid, New York became an epicenter of the spread. New York's connective tissue, like the walkable city streets, subways, and taxi cabs, became pathways of transmission. In places where ideas and cultures can spread, diseases can, too. As the hospitals began to fill, essential workers from doctors and nurses to ambulance drivers and social workers stepped up to help heal the city in a time of crisis. For a brief moment, health workers became highly visible in our public consciousness. For many, the pandemic came as a shock. It had been more than 100 years since the last pandemic of comparable magnitude hit the five boroughs. We soon discovered that there already existed a network of public health workers and activists waiting to spring into action to blunt the virus's spread. Many wished that this network had been more robust, better developed, and better funded. Fighting for New York looks at the long sweep of public health activism in New York City from the 1960s to now. Covid was not the first public health crisis the city faced, and it certainly won't be the last. Nicholas details various initiatives to mobilize support for public health projects in the city. How have activists identified problems in their communities? How have they gained institutional support in addressing these problems? And how do they discover and implement workable solutions to the identified problems? Though primarily a work of history, Fighting for New York also serves as a road map for public health workers and activists seeking to navigate contemporary issues.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Molly Crabapple, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund" (Random House, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Molly Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund’s rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity, was largely destroyed?

Highlights include:

Crabapple’s personal connection to the Bund through her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort;
How the Bund built a vibrant youth counterculture amid harsh anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe;
The significance of “Hereness” to the Bund’s politics and how it distinguished the group from Zionist groups advocating the colonization of Palestine;
A discussion of “theory-pilled nerds” and how Crabapple’s activism and journalism since Occupy Wall Street shaped her insights into the inner life of the Bund;
The future of anti-Zionism in the context of Israel’s ongoing destruction of Palestine.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage is the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art.

Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anna Terwiel offers A Moment of No to the Prison-Industrial Complex (JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Punishment makes nobody safer, imprisonment only impoverishes us as a society. And yet, we lock up our own, more and more for worse and worse reasons. What might finally inspire us to run the equation another way, and come up with a different solution?

Anna Terwiel joined John to discuss her remarkable new book, Prison Abolition for Realists, which charts a path away from paranoid (as documented by Eve Sedgwick) and purity politics in favor of an abolitionism that fuses "abstract normative theorizing" with attainable worldly goals. One name for this is agonistic abolitionism; it offers, as Anna sees it a positive vision alongside its criticism of the status quo.

Anna is a professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, where she co-directs their Prison Education Project. She beings by tracing the impact of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975) and his activism with the Prisons Information Group, and credits the influence, during her schooling, of the Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project in Illinois at Statesville Prison.

John (apropos of his earlier work) mentions the failed pursuit of purity among late 19th century Chartists, while Anna makes the case not for perfect solutions but for remainders, a form of politics of the possible. They explore possibilities of "non-reformist reform"; Anna stresses the enduring importance of Angela Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete and her contribution to revolutionary black Marxist thought; and she praises local gender-based-violence organizations like CARA in Seattle. They discuss Sharon Dolovich's recent work on conditions for correctional officers, and Anna explores the notion of a new "right to comfort" that might take into account the current inhumanity of treatment inside prisons as regards profound but basic factors like ventilation and heat. As well as the right to a loved one's hugs.

Listen to and read the episode here.

Also mentioned in the episode

Abolitionist work by Mariame Kaba,
Ruth Wilson Gilmore , e.g. Golden Gulag

Recallable Books

Nils Christie, "Conflicts as Property."
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A Conversation with Gregory Claeys

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Jul 2026 21:24:00 +0000

Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking volumes that dramatically revise our previous understanding of his activities as a writer and his importance as a democratic theorist in the age of revolutions. It includes about 180 new letters and some two hundred works newly attributed to Paine, with twenty-nine works previously regarded as Paine’s being deattributed. Drawing on pioneering computerized text analysis that makes possible for the first time attributions of anonymous and pseudonymous texts, this collection includes in volumes 5–6 newly identified pamphlets and newspaper and journal contributions, and suggests that Paine was extremely active as a Grub Street oppositional Whig writer in the decade prior to the American Revolution. Many writings from the period of his residence in France (1792–1802) and his subsequent return to the United States are also restored to his published output. Paine emerges as a much more consistent and serious democratic theorist than is often assumed, whose contributions to revolutionary debates in America, Britain, and France were unparalleled in their time. This volume spans the years 1772 to 1782, a decade that witnessed a diverse output of writings from Paine, from editorials and magazine pieces to pamphlets and newspaper articles. The book includes the Forester Letters, the Crisis papers, the Deane Affair articles, and Common Sense, with Gregory Claeys’s general introduction and commentary by the editors providing invaluable historical context.

Gregory Claeys is professor emeritus of the history of political thought at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kate Bayliss, "Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets" (Manchester UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets (Manchester UP, 2026) is the latest book from Dr Kate Bayliss, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London. Dr Bayliss’ excellent title, published with Manchester University Press, is a critical examination of the privatisation paradigm.

In the book, Dr Bayliss specifically analyses the history, processes, political economy and outcomes of privatisation policies in Britain across three major economic sectors – that of water, energy, and housing. Infamously, Britain was arguably in the vanguard of a proliferation of privatisation policies in the 1980s, courtesy of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a key proponent of the neoliberal revolution at this time. Privatisation was touted as a solution for increased efficiency, the creation of a shareholder society, and relieving taxpayer burdens. Dr Bayliss’ book, Privatising Humanity, is a crucial tool to understand how privatisation policies were applied, who benefited, and whether the outcomes lives up to these expectations. It is both an exceptionally detailed account of the web of interests that have profited from privatisation, on the one hand, and on the other, a highly accessible volume that is critical reading in this current moment.

Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ranita Ray, "Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A powerful exposé of the American public education system's indifference toward marginalized children and the "slow violence" that fashions schools into hostile work and learning environments.
In 2017, sociologist Ranita Ray stepped inside a fourth-grade classroom in one of the nation’s largest majority-minority districts in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was there to conduct research on the lack of resources and budget cuts that regularly face public schools. However, a few months into her immersion, a disturbed Ray recognized that that greatest impediment to students was the “slow violence” that preys on their minds, bodies, and spirits at the hands of teachers and administrators who are charged with their care.
Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom (St. Martin's Press, 2025) lays bare the routine indifference, racism, and verbal and emotional abuse and harassment that teachers and administrators perpetrate routinely against the most vulnerable children in our schools. We meet Nazli, a bright, funny Black girl, and math wiz, who loses her baby brother, and is told that “grit” will enable her to rise above her grief. Reggie is a devoted student and curious scholar, but his path to success is derailed when teachers fashion him as a predator after they find him looking at two inappropriate photos on his iPad. There’s Nalin, a shy and determined Filipina who has just arrived in the US, but is ignored based on her educator’s assumption that “Asians” are “good at math.” Her entire journey through school is darkened by this stereotype. And there’s Miguel, a sharp, distracted Latino boy who can’t overcome his teachers’ urge to incorrectly diagnose him with autism.
Bolstered by an empathetic and passionate voice as well as the latest breaking research in the social sciences, Ray goes beyond timeworn discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline, funding, and achievement gaps to directly address what happens behind the closed doors of classrooms, introducing a compelling—and crucial—new perspective into the conversation about our education system.
In the warm, luminous spirit of character-driven books like Invisible Child, Slow Violence allows us to see that the way we’ve tried to make a start in education reform is wrong. To forge new approaches that foster young minds and flourishing generations we have to start with how children experience the classroom. Unflinchingly, Slow Violence tells us—and shows us where to begin.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bryan Alexander, "Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Over the past decade, American colleges and universities have seen enrollment decline, campuses close, programs cut, faculty and staff laid off, and public confidence erode. In Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026), futurist Bryan Alexander forecasts what the next decade might hold if we continue down this path. He argues that the United States has passed its high-water mark for postsecondary education and now faces a critical turning point. How will higher ed institutions respond to this wave of change and crisis? Combining data-driven research with scenario modeling, Alexander outlines a powerful framework for understanding what led to this moment: declining birthrates, surging student debt, rising tuition, shifting political winds, and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree. He maps out how these forces, if left unchecked, could continue to reshape academia by shrinking its footprint, narrowing its mission, and jeopardizing its role in addressing the planet's most pressing challenges, from climate change to artificial intelligence. Alexander explores how institutions might adapt or recover, presenting two possible futures: a path of managed descent and a more hopeful course of reinvention. Peak Higher Ed examines the fraying of the "college for all" consensus, the long shadow of pandemic-era disruptions, and the political polarization that has placed universities in the crosshairs. Written for educators, policymakers, students, and anyone invested in the future of higher learning, this book offers a deeply informed, unflinching look at the road ahead and the choices that will determine whether colleges and universities retreat from their peak or rise to a new one.

Guest: Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future.

He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry. Then Bryan taught literature, writing, multimedia, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana. There he also pioneered multi-campus interdisciplinary classes, while organizing an information literacy initiative.

From 2002 to 2014 Bryan worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges and universities best integrate digital technologies. With NITLE he held several roles, including co-director of a regional education and technology center, director of emerging technologies, and senior fellow. Over those years Bryan helped develop and support the nonprofit, grew peer networks, consulted, and conducted a sustained research agenda. In 2013 Bryan launched a business, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC. Through BAC he consults throughout higher education in the United States and abroad.

Bryan is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars in their Learning, Design, and Technology program.

You can learn more about Peak Higher Ed here

You can follow Bryan’s writing on AI, academia, and the Future here

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John K. Roth, "Saving the American Dream: Meditations for Dark Times" (Wipf and Stock, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The American Dream at its best is an ethical ideal and a moral compass. If respected and sustained, it can guide the United States through Trump 2.0. Anchored in the US Constitution, Saving the American Dream: Meditations for Dark Times (Wipf and Stock, 2026) features meditations for dark times. Meditations are intentional acts of focused attention.Its fundamental premise is that individuals moved to communal action by warned awareness and committed resistance are indispensable to meet challenges that grow by the day. Guidance from reliable American writers—philosophers, historians, novelists, poets, essayists, religious thinkers—maps the way.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Democracy’s Troubles Should Come as No Surprise

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Why have so many democracies become more polarized, unstable, and vulnerable to authoritarianism? And why did so many political observers fail to see it coming? In this episode of the People, Power, Politics podcast, Nic Cheeseman talks to Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, about her recent article, “Democracy’s Troubles Should Be No Surprise”, and its powerful argument that democracy’s current troubles follow a familiar historical pattern. Drawing on classic theories of democratic stability, Berman explains how rising inequality, declining social mobility, polarization, and the erosion of cross-cutting cleavages have undermined even long-established democracies – and what policymakers can do in response. This podcast is part of our regular collaboration with the Journal of Democracy.

Read the transcript here

Guest:

Sheri Berman is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is one of the leading scholars of democracy, liberalism, and political development, and the author of numerous influential books and articles on the historical foundations of democratic stability and crisis. Professor Berman’s recent article, Democracy’s Troubles Should Be No Surprise, published in the Journal of Democracy, explores why rising inequality, polarization, and declining social mobility have left even long-established democracies increasingly vulnerable to instability and authoritarianism. A widely read commentator and public intellectual, Berman’s work bridges academic research and contemporary political debate.

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robin Dembroff, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality" (Oxford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality (Oxford University Press, 2026), Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child.

These categories are presented as natural truths, but Dembroff reveals them as man-made myths--ones that construct a reality in which being characterized as Woman, Animal, or Child marks moral degradation. By no coincidence, feminization, dehumanization, and infantilization are the very degradations used to make a man 'less of a man'.

But this book is more than critique; it's also a guide to transformation especially for those grappling with what it means to be a man under patriarchy. Patriarchy's myths celebrate the identity Man, but these myths are no friend to most men. Promising strength and superiority, they instead fuel isolation, emotional repression, and relentless pressure to prove oneself while propping up systems that enrich the powerful few. Rather than deliver freedom and prosperity, these myths entrap and impoverish. Real Men on Top invites readers to see through them and, in so doing, to find new possibilities for living, relating, and becoming human.

Sharp, daring, and deeply felt, Real Men on Top is a book for anyone who senses that something is deeply wrong with the way we live and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality.

Robin Dembroff is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale University

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Blair LM Kelley, "Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) is the first fully illustrated history of Juneteenth and other Emancipation Day celebrations, told through photographs, art, and an engrossing narrative.

For more than 150 years, Black communities have gathered to honor freedom, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for true liberation. While Juneteenth has recently gained wider recognition, it was one of many Emancipation Day traditions celebrated across the United States.

These observances were spaces of joy, remembrance, and resistance—even as the fight for full freedom was unfinished. This volume brings together stirring essays and striking images from Juneteenth and beyond, offering a sweeping portrait of how Black people have created and sustained rituals of remembrance, a testament to the generations who, through celebration and storytelling, demanded that their contributions to the making of America be fully recognized.

Blair LM Kelley is an award-winning author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. She is also the president and director of the National Humanities Center, the only independent center for advanced study in the world dedicated exclusively to the humanities.

Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Steven Segal, "Mandela’s Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom" (Routledge, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Mandela’s Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom (Routledge, 2026) Steven Segal explores Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary ability to lead through moments of existential crisis and uncertainty. Central to Mandela's leadership was his attunement to mood—the emotional and existential atmosphere through which people experience disruption. Long overlooked in leadership studies, mood shaped the way Mandela created trust, defused fear, and opened possibilities when conventional strategies failed. Mandela’s wisdom was forged not only in prison but in the existential challenges he faced upon leaving the familiarity of his ancestral homeland and confronting the disorientation of city life. From this early rupture through to his imprisonment, the collapse of apartheid, and the assassination of Chris Hani, he demonstrated a rare capacity to transform existential threats into opportunities for renewal and unity. This book examines how Mandela combined strategic foresight with therapeutic sensitivity, allowing him to guide individuals and nations through disruption with ethical resolve and visionary clarity. Drawing on frameworks from Heidegger and Ubuntu it highlights Mandela’s "existential practical wisdom"—the ability to embrace uncertainty, work with paradox, and foster collective transformation through attuned presence. By investigating Mandela’s profound relational sensitivity, including his ability to turn estrangement and enmity into trust and collaboration, the book offers timeless lessons for navigating today’s global crises. It is ideal for professionals seeking inspiration for leading in turbulent times and for students interested in leadership, philosophy, or history.

Steven Segal was formerly an Associate Professor of Management at Macquarie University, Australia and is currently in private practice as a psychologist and leadership coach. He also runs professional development workshops for coaches and psychotherapists.

Elena Sobrino is an anthropologist studying environmental emotions and politics. Her current writing projects focus on the Flint water crisis, and she regularly teaches undergraduate courses on environment, race and racism, crisis, and science and technology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Derek R. Peterson, "A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda" (Yale UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Idi Amin ruled Uganda between 1971 and 1979, inflicting tremendous violence on the people of the country. How did Amin's regime survive for eight calamitous years? Drawing on recently uncovered archival material, Derek Peterson reconstructs the political logic of the era, focusing on the ordinary people—civil servants, curators and artists, businesspeople, patriots—who invested their energy and resources in making the government work.

In A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda (Yale University Press, 2025), Peterson reveals how Amin (1928-2003) led ordinary people to see themselves as front-line soldiers in a global war against imperialism and colonial oppression. They worked tirelessly to ensure that government institutions kept functioning, even as resources dried up and political violence became pervasive. In this case study of how principled, talented, and patriotic people sacrificed themselves in service to a dictator, Peterson provides lessons for our own time.

Derek Peterson is the Ali Mazrui Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan. His books include Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent and The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Curtis Dozier, "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" (Yale UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Curtis Dozier's The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate (Yale University Press, 2026) explores how white nationalist thought leaders use ancient Greece and Rome to claim historical precedent for their violent and oppressive politics.
It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.

Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.

Curtis Dozier is associate professor of Greek and Roman studies at Vassar College. He is the director of the internationally recognized website Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics, which documents appropriations of Greco-Roman antiquity by hate groups. He lives in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI, Algocracy, and Democracy's Challenging Road Ahead with Andrew Sorota

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Like many people, I've been following the developments of AI, testing out new models and following the deluge of news stories about the fight for supremacy. Much has been written about the existential and economic risks posed by AI, but the political implications of superintelligent systems have often been sidelined. In the United States and elsewhere, AI companies steam ahead with little regulation or oversight. Meanwhile, politicians appear flatfooted and unsure about the best way to integrate AI into the government to make democracies stronger and more responsive to the needs and will of the people. AI will undeniably change how governments work, but how can we ensure that democracy and individual rights are safeguarded amidst the most transformative technological revolution in more than a century? Today I'm speaking with Andrew Sorota, Head of Research for the Office of Eric Schmidt. Andrew has written extensively about the relationship between democracy and artificial intelligence. His writing has appeared in outlets like the New York Times and Noema magazine. Andrew will dispel many myths about AI, where he looks to call bullshit on the idea that democracy is a system heading fast into the dustbin of history.

Follow Andrew Sorota on LinkedIn

"This Is No Way to Rule a Country" in the New York Times

"Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI" in Noema

Andrew Sorota is currently Head of Research for the Office of Eric Schmidt.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Margaret O’Mara on the Clintons, Tech, and Memory

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We were joined by Professor Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, who had a front row seat to the Clinton campaign and went on to become an expert in the history of information technology and Silicon Valley.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans and partners standing together in the fight against the rise of the transnational far right. After laying out Hindu supremacy as an ideology, we considered the different phases of consolidation of the Hindu right in the United States from its late 20th century orientation around homeland politics to its 21st century effort to forge a Hindu American identity, first through an alignment with U.S. civil rights organizations and then through a realignment with white supremacist forces. We delved more deeply into the role of caste within this formation, in particular the longstanding efforts of the Hindu right in both India and the U.S. to forge Hindu unity by opposing anticaste politics. This took us to a discussion of the Hindu right’s embrace of the pro-Israel lobby’s tactics, especially its weaponization of Hinduphobia as an echo of the weaponization of antisemitism, to battle criticisms of the Modi government in India, and the need to distinguish this from the real rise in both anti-Hindu and antisemitic sentiment. We ended with Savera’s efforts to forge a broad-based antiracist, left majority as a counterweight to the multiracial far right.

Read the transcript

Guests

Prachi Patankar is a writer and activist based in New York. Her speaking and organizing is grounded in feminist, anti-caste, and solidarity commitments. Her writing has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Indian Express, Al Jazeera, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Jacobin. She has been interviewed in media including Democracy Now, Jewish Currents, and National Public Radio.

Ram Vishwanathan is an organizer with the Savera coalition based in New York City.

References

Savera, “The Global VHP’s Trail of Violence,” January 2024.

Savera, “Cut From the Same Cloth: the VHP-A’s Ties To Its Indian Counterpart,” April 2024.

Savera and Political Research Associates, “HAF Way to Supremacy: How the Hindu American Foundation Rebrands Bigotry As Minority Rights,” October 2024.

Jyotiba Phule: an anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.

Satyashodhak Sangh: a social reform society founded by Jyotiba Phule in Pune, Maharashtra in 1873 that addressed caste and gender injustices.

Golwalkar: M.S. Golwalkar was the second supreme leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing paramilitary organization that advanced the ideology of Hindu supremacy and mobilized around the transformation of India into a Hindu nation.

Pracharak: refers to a full-time organizer of the RSS.

Houston 2019: “Howdy Modi” was an event organized by the Texas India Forum to welcome Narendra Modi to Houston and featured a joint address by Modi and Donald Trump.

Ahmedabad 2020: designed as a reciprocal counterpart to Howdy Modi, “Namaste Trump” was an event organized to celebrate Donald Trump’s official state visit to India and hosted by Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Article 370: article of the Indian Constitution that granted a special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This status was abrogated by the Modi government in 2019.

CAA/NRC: the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are policies introduced by the Modi government. The 2019 CAA fast-tracks the naturalization of populations identified as victims of persecution by Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan and explicitly excludes the eligibility of Muslims. The 2019 NRC aims to create an official record of legal citizens of India. Critics and human rights organizations argue that the policies together discriminate against Muslims. If a nationwide NRC is implemented, individuals who lack the required documentation to prove their citizenship could be excluded from the final registry. Because the CAA allows non-Muslims to claim citizenship if they fall through the cracks, Muslims left off the NRC list would face disproportionate risks of statelessness, detention, or deportation.

Edward Blum: a conservative legal strategist and the president of the American Alliance for Equal Rights and Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), an organization that fought to overturn affirmative action on the grounds that it constitutes "reverse discrimination" against white and Asian applicants.

Dan HoSang: professor of American Studies at Yale University.

“Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism,” Recall this Book/New Books Network, Episodes 118, 119, 120, 143, 144, 145.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael Brownstein et al., "Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference. Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural change without individual people making different—more structure-facing—decisions. In Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change (MIT Press, 2025), Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly show us how we can connect our personal choices to structural change and why individual choices matter, though not in the way people usually think. The authors paint a new picture of how social change happens, arguing that our most powerful personal choices are those that springboard us into working together with others—warehouse worker Chris Smalls’s unionization at Amazon is one powerful example. Taking inspiration from the writer Bill McKibben, they stress how one “important thing an individual can do is be somewhat less of an individual.” Organized into three main parts, the book first diagnoses the problem of “either/or” thinking about social change, which stems from the false choice of making better personal choices or changing the system. Then it offers a different way to think about social change, anchored in a new picture of human nature emerging across the social sciences. Finally, the authors explore ways of putting this picture into practice. Neither a how-to manual nor an activist’s guide, Somebody Should Do Something pairs stories with science (plus some jokes) to help readers recognize their own power, turning resignation about climate change and racial injustice into actions that transform the world.

My guests today are Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva and Daniel Kelly. Michael is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at John Jay College and Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, Cuny. Alex is Professor of Philosophy, Director of the California Center for Ethics and Policy, and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Consortium at Cal Poly Pomona. Daniel Kelly is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center at Purdue University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Geraldine Fela, "Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis" (UNSW Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The claim that real change is enabled by grassroots, community-based movements might seem a distant ideal, but Dr Geraldine Fela shows such assertions are far from hypothetical. Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis (UNSW Press, 2024) shows that grassroots movements were what made Australia’s response to the AIDS epidemic better than elsewhere.

HIV and AIDS devastated communities across Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. In the midst of this profound health crisis, nurses provided crucial care to those living with and dying from the virus. They negotiated homophobia and complex family dynamics as well as defending the rights of their patients. Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela documents the extraordinary care, compassion and solidarity shown by HIV and AIDS nurses. Critical Care unearths the important and unexamined history of nurses and nursing unions as caregivers and political agents who helped shape Australia's response to HIV and AIDS.

In addition to this NBN interview Geraldine Fela has a podcast episode on the ABC Rewind series, 'Blood Prejudice and Nursing'

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gary Hoover, "Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026), Gary Hoover asks the reader a simple question: Is our economy a ladder or a lottery? Are people able to control their position on the economic spectrum by their actions? Some argue that, in our market-based economy, if you play by certain rules and make certain choices, you'll achieve upward mobility no matter what economic position you were born into.

Drawing on his vast economic expertise, Hoover explores what this "social contract" requires of its citizens, and what it offers in return. Hoover shows how civil unrest is often directly related to broken society-level promises, exploring protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, and student debt forgiveness as case studies. He also predicts where future protests can be expected if results promised are not results delivered.

This insightful and data-driven book tackles challenging issues around income inequality, health care, and artificial intelligence, and ultimately equips readers to answer these pressing questions: Is our social contract a ladder to higher economic standing, accessible to all no matter where they start? Or rather a lottery in which many will buy a ticket but only a few will find success? And how can we best align social promises with our lived economic realities?

Gary Hoover is Executive Director of the Murphy Institute, Professor of Economics, and Affiliate Professor of Law at Tulane University.

Dr. Zachery Williams is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at LSU.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew Demshuk, "The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2026) traces how a community shrouded by "industrial fog," at the brink of gaping coal pits, became a symbol that galvanized grassroots ecology—campaigns by diverse local actors that exposed environmental and economic crises East Germany's political system could not resolve. Notoriously known by the late 1980s as "the filthiest village in Europe," Mölbis suffocated downwind from the massively polluting carbochemical Espenhain plant. Applying a myriad of private collections, interviews, and untapped archival sources, Andrew Demshuk reveals how pastors, parents, officials, inspectors, workers, and spies negotiated ossified party structures whose inability to reform was showcased by ever-worsening environmental conditions.

After peaceful protests a few kilometers north in Leipzig triggered a revolution, pre-1989 grassroots players launched innovative reconstruction programs with financial and organizational expertise from West Germans. Together, they transformed Europe's filthiest village into a healthy place to live and imbued it with new symbolism, turning it into a sign of hope. The political will and social engagement that saved Mölbis and rejuvenated the surrounding wasteland can inform how to revitalize other postindustrial "filthy places" in our world today.

Andrew Demshuk (he/him) is a Professor of History at the American University in Washington D.C. His research focuses on post-1945 German and Polish history with an emphasis on how grassroots human stories can help to explain big political developments.

Jenna Pittman (she/her), is a PhD student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is known for his outfits. Since rising to become India’s head of government in 2014, photographers and journalists have long followed his clothing styles, each saying something about India. It’s part of a long tradition of using clothing to make a statement about India—and about defining a political brand. Nor is it unique to India–remember Obama’s tan suit, or now the MAGA red cap?

That observation is part of Shefalee Vasudev’s recent book Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and The Politics of Appearance (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025), where she dives into how clothing, appearance, politics and social change are intertwined, covering topics like streaming dramas, influencers, and “the airport look.”

Shefalee Vasudev is a journalist, cultural commentator, and narrative psychotherapist. The editor-in-chief of The Voice of Fashion for the last nine years and the founding editor of Marie Claire India, she has spent three decades working across news and lifestyle media. Her first non-fiction work, Powder Room: The Untold Story of Indian Fashion, was published in 2012.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Stories We Wear. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paige Towers, "What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption" (U Iowa Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In 1955, following the devastation of the Korean War, Bertha and Harry Holt made headlines for adopting eight Korean children. Driven by evangelical convictions and emboldened by a special act of Congress, the couple founded the Holt Adoption Program, which would facilitate the migration of tens of thousands of Korean children to the United States over the following decades.

The Sueppels were among the families profoundly shaped by the legacy of the Holt Adoption Program. To their suburban Iowa City community, Steven and Sheryl Sueppel were kind and charitable, humble yet magnetic—seemingly ideal candidates to adopt. But in 2008, when Steven found himself facing federal embezzlement and money laundering charges, he murdered Sheryl and their adopted children before ending his own life.

In What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption (University of Iowa Press, 2026), Paige Towers traces the interwoven histories of the Holts and the Sueppels, exploring the deeper, often hidden complexities of intercountry adoption: the ethical gray zones, the influences of religion and race, and the global inequalities that made such large-scale child migration possible. Meticulously researched and sensitive with its storytelling, What They Stole examines how good intentions can coexist with systemic harm—and how the consequences of systems like the Holts’ can reverberate across generations.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Franziska Sittig and Noam Petri, "Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future" (Ibidem Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In my recent conversation with Sittig, we explored her co-authored book Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future (Ibidem Press, 2025), written with Noam Pitri and distributed by Columbia University Press. Drawing from her experiences as a German journalist and former student at Columbia University, Sittig offers a deeply personal and rigorously documented account of what she describes as a growing “anti-Western coalition” within academic spaces across the United States and Europe.

At the heart of the book is a provocative thesis: that the West’s greatest threat may not come from external adversaries, but from an internal intellectual shift—one that prioritizes ideological certainty over open inquiry, and moral posturing over evidence-based reasoning. Sittig and Pitri trace this pattern across campuses, where unlikely alliances have formed between strands of “woke” theory and political Islam. While these movements differ philosophically, Sittig argues that they converge tactically in their shared suspicion of Western liberal values and their embrace of absolutist moral frameworks.

Our discussion brought these ideas into sharp focus through Sittig’s own experiences. As a student, she encountered resistance—and at times hostility—when attempting to research topics such as Islamism and terrorism in Europe. What should have been a space for intellectual exploration instead became, in her telling, a site of constraint. This tension between inquiry and ideology echoes one of the book’s central historical parallels: the case of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union, where political dogma overrode scientific truth with devastating consequences.

Sittig also details the evolving dynamics of campus activism, particularly in the aftermath of October 7th. She points to organized student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and examines their funding structures and messaging strategies. Of particular concern, she notes, are instances of social media activity and organizing efforts that appeared to anticipate or justify acts of violence, raising urgent questions about the boundaries between activism and endorsement.

Yet the book is not only a critique—it is also a warning grounded in historical consciousness. Referencing moments such as the intellectual climate surrounding Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Sittig suggests that the current moment reflects a longer trajectory in which academic culture has increasingly struggled to balance respect for cultural difference with a commitment to universal principles like free speech.

Despite the book’s ambition to reach a wide and ideologically diverse audience, Sittig shared that its reception has largely mirrored existing divides. Readers already aligned with its arguments have embraced it, while critics have remained unconvinced. The elusive “middle ground,” it seems, remains difficult to access—perhaps itself a reflection of the polarization the book seeks to diagnose.

And yet, there is a note of cautious optimism. The very fact that Intellectual Self-Destruction was published and distributed through major academic channels suggests that spaces for dissenting perspectives still exist, even if they are contested.

As educators, scholars, and engaged citizens, we are left with a pressing challenge: how do we cultivate environments that encourage rigorous debate without collapsing into ideological conformity? Sittig’s work does not offer easy answers, but it insists that the question cannot be ignored.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Billionaire Backlash: Can It Help Save Democracy?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Maya Tudor speaks with her colleague and fellow political scientist Pepper Culpepper about his new book Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy, co-authored with Taeku Lee. They explore how corporate scandals—from industry exposes to data privacy breaches—can become moments of democratic reckoning, mobilizing public outrage against concentrated corporate power. The conversation examines why scandals matter politically, the circumstances under which public backlash can still generate meaningful accountability, and what good populism is in an era of growing economic inequality and democratic strain.

Links:

Bloomsbury here

Journal of Democracy here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stuart Schrader, "Blue Power: How Police Organized to Serve and Protect Themselves" (Basic Books, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In America today, police enjoy unmatched power. On the streets, officers employ violence at their own discretion. Behind closed doors, they are even more powerful. In city halls, police strong-arm local leaders and nullify attempts at public oversight. And in state legislatures and Washington, DC, police lobbyists and union leaders zealously uphold a bipartisan consensus against even mild reform. Yet as recently as fifty years ago, police still served at the pleasure of democratically elected politicians, not the other way around. In Blue Power: How Police Organized to Serve and Protect Themselves (Basic Books, 2026), Stuart Schrader narrates the rise of a bottom-up movement of rank-and-file officers who lifted policing above the law.

Organizers launched their campaign in the 1960s, courting a public backlash to urban uprisings and civil rights. City by city, county by county, they formed unions and other organizations and won control over working conditions, impunity from oversight, and insulation from lean budgets. By the 2000s, this movement had triumphed nationally, shoring up the power of the police to overrule the public interest in the name of law and order.

Through deep archival detective work, Blue Power reveals how police forced American democracy to back the blue.

Stuart Schrader is an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, where he is the director of the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism.

Michael Stauch is an associate professor of modern US history at the University of Toledo, specializing in policing and incarceration, urban studies, and social movements.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shyam Ranganathan, "Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Why have moral philosophers largely ignored colonialism? In Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), Shyam Ranganathan tells the story of moral philosophy and colonialism and reveals the benefits of drawing from a colonized tradition to a create a rigorous logic-based ethics. This is a timely exploration of the the ways in which Western colonialism has structured moral theorizing to insulate itself from criticism. In his account of the domination of the European tradition and the suppression of questions of its colonialism, Ranganathan covers the evolution of metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics in ancient European, Chinese, and Indian traditions of philosophy. We see the presence of white supremacy in the writings of J.S. Mill, Marx and Engels, and the importance placed on autonomy and sovereignty in Hobbes and Kant. The European influence of interpretation on our peer review of historical philosophy is evident throughout. Using South Asia as an example Ranganathan examines how colonizers are able to erase moral philosophical history and redefine cultures as religions, judged in terms of their conformity to, or deviation from, the Western tradition, which is treated as secular. His acknowledgment of Yoga as a basic ethical theory introduces us to thinking that recognizes persons as a diverse group, traversing sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, and species. Through this analysis of colonized traditions and ethics, Ranganathan is able to de-colonize moral philosophy by looking outside the colonizing tradition. If we want sophisticated and inclusive ways of thinking about how to live we must turn towards indigenous thought.

Shyam Ranganathan is a member of the Department of Philosophy and York Center for Asian Research at York University, Toronto, Canada, and founder of the Yoga Philosophy Institute.

Dr. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Indian mythology and seasoned online educator. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom where he delivers original courses applying Indian wisdom teachings to modern life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

“The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said in those days, ‘for God’s sake, make sure it's a white one.’ We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder—on your head—to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other n******.” James Baldwin (1967)

Professor and journalist Steven Thrasher, author of the critically acclaimed The Viral Underclass (one of Kirkus Reviews best books of 2022), explores in The Overseer Class: A Manifesto (Amistad, 2026) what happens when members of historically minoritized groups are selected for high-visibility positions of power within existing institutions—law enforcement, academia, the military, for profit and not-for-profit corporations, and government—under the conditions of a kind of Faustian bargain.

This is a conversation, and a book, not to be missed.

You can find author Steven Thrasher on Bluesky and Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" (Desassossego, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Carlos Martins joins the New Books Network to discuss his book Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini (Desassossego, 2022) (in Portuguese Fascismos: Para Além de Hitler e Mussolini), a comparative study of fascist movements across Europe and beyond. Working from a rigorous definition of fascism based on its ideological content, Martins examines eight case studies, analysing these specific manifestations of fascism to identify what they had in common and what separated them.

In this conversation, we discuss the problem of defining fascism, the distinctions between fascism and populism and why Martins argues that not every dictatorship or radical right movement should automatically be classified as fascist. The discussion also turns to the Portuguese case, including the Estado Novo, National Syndicalism and the debate surrounding Salazarism’s relationship to European fascism.

At a moment when the word “fascism” is increasingly invoked in public debate, Martins makes the case for conceptual precision without losing sight of fascism’s historical adaptability and political force. The result is a wide-ranging conversation about ideology, political modernity and the uses, and misuses, of language.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Inken Von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas, "Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change” (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Why do states exit international organizations (IOs)? How often does exit from IOs – including voluntary withdrawal and forced suspension – occur? What are the effects of leaving IOs for the exiting state?

Despite the importance of membership in IOs, a broader understanding of exit across states, organizations, and time has been limited. Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change (Cambridge UP, 2025) addresses these lacunae through a theoretically grounded and empirically systematic study of IO exit. Von Borzyskowski and Vabulas argue that there is a common logic to IO exit, which helps explain both its causes and consequences. By examining IO exit across 198 states, 534 IOs, and over a hundred years of history, they show that exit is driven by states' dissatisfaction, preference divergence, and is a strategy to negotiate institutional change.

The book also demonstrates that exit is costly because it has reputational consequences for leaving states and significantly affects other forms of international cooperation.

NOTE: This book was just awarded the 2026 Chadwick Alger prize for best book in international organizations from the International Studies Association.

Our guests are Felicity Vabulas who is the Blanche E. Seaver Associate Professor of International Studies at Pepperdine University and Professor Inken von Borzyskowski, who is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Beyond Minorities: Power, Identity, and Conflict in the Middle East

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Helen Haas speaks with political scientist Sean Lee about the changing relationship between majorities and minorities in the Middle East, the collapse of the post-October 2023 regional order, and why questions of citizenship, identity, and political power remain at the centre of conflicts from Syria and Lebanon to Israel–Palestine.

In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Dr. Sean Lee, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, discusses the evolving relationship between majority and minority groups in the Middle East. He argues that the minority question is not simply about ethnic or religious groups themselves, but about how political power, history, and institutions shape the categories of majority and minority. These identities are not fixed; they change depending on political and historical circumstances.

Using examples from Syria, Lebanon, Israel–Palestine, and other regional conflicts, Lee explains how civil wars and political violence reshape social boundaries and reinforce divisions between communities. In Syria, for example, the post-war political transition has intensified tensions between Sunni Arab majorities and minority groups such as the Druze, Kurds, and Alawites. Lee also highlights how outside powers increasingly use minority groups as instruments in regional politics.

A major theme of the discussion is the breakdown of the liberal international order after October 2023. According to Lee, this has weakened international law and increased instability in the region. He suggests that unresolved questions about citizenship and equal rights, especially in Israel and Palestine, continue to fuel conflict and resistance.

Drawing comparisons beyond the Middle East, Lee argues that similar dynamics can be observed globally, particularly with the rise of ethnonationalism and populism. He concludes that long-term stability depends on moving away from systems based on ethnic or religious identity and toward citizenship-based political systems in which all individuals enjoy equal rights regardless of background.

Helen Haas is a Middle East researcher at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and the Middle East Coordinator at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on the diversity of Islam. She teaches Turkish and courses on Islamic history and culture, and works as an interpreter and translator of Turkish literature. She is the managing editor of the Usuteaduslik Ajakiri (Journal of Religion).

Sean Lee is an assistant professor of political science at The American University in Cairo. His research focuses on political violence and social movements in the Levant. He is currently completing a book manuscript on minoritized communities during the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robin Andersen, "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza" (OR Books, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Robin Andersen's latest book, The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza (OR Books, 2026), is a forensic and unflinching examination of how establishment media abandoned journalistic integrity to manufacture consent for the genocide in Gaza, creating an environment in which unprecedented escalations and war crimes have become a terrifying new normal.

Since October 7th 2023, the story of what was to become the genocide in Gaza was immediately shaped by the mobilisation of a very particular narrative: one of unprovoked terror, of Israel's right to defend itself, of a war between equals. What was not made clear, and what Andersen's book documents in meticulous detail, was the extent to which those attacks would be used by Western elites, the global military industrial complex, and US legacy media to condone a full-scale genocide, including horrors that continue as this book goes to print, despite a ceasefire.

The Complicit Lens is published by OR Books in collaboration with the Institute for Palestine Studies, and features an introduction by the Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, who writes: "This book does not make for easy reading. Andersen walks us through the mainstream media's misleading coverage, its bland and unquestioning repetition of lies and distortions by spokespersons for the Israeli and US governments, and its racist defamation of the Palestinians, when it is not ignoring their voices entirely. In analyzing this dereliction of the most basic duties of journalists, she offers detailed alternative and independent media accounts of Israel's massacres, its intentional destruction of the infrastructure necessary for normal life, and its starvation of over two million people, obscured by this almost universal mainstream media malpractice."

About the Author

Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media.

About the Host

Stuti Roy is currently an editor at Oxford University Press. She has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford and holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Steffen Mau et al., "The Trigger Points: Inequality and Political Polarization in Contemporary Society" (Policy Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s political debates are fiercely polarized. But looking beyond the headlines, The Trigger Points: Inequality and Political Polarization in Contemporary Society (Policy Press, 2026) shows that ordinary citizens hold much more nuanced, less divided views.

Drawing on rich survey data and group discussions, this work maps four major areas of conflict: migration, climate change, diversity, and economic justice.

Across these conflicts, most citizens take positions that are middle-of-the-road, contradictory, or undecided. It is only certain ‘trigger points' – like gendered pronouns or refugee admissions – that predictably ignite tensions and deep disagreement.

Political entrepreneurs know this and weaponize trigger points for their agenda. Yet the real key to contemporary conflicts, the book argues, lies in social inequality.

This is a vital work that maps today’s political landscape without sensationalism, offering a fresh lens on public debate.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool, a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Her research focuses on human mobilities and her new book has been published in 2025 by Oxford University Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are We Entering An Arms Race in Outer Space?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This week on International Horizons, RBI interim director Eli Karetny interviewed Mallory Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Strategic Risks. Stewart discusses the evolving role of the US Space Force and the shift in its doctrine toward achieving "space superiority" and orbital control. The blurry lines between the militarization and weaponization of space were widely noted, especially given the challenges of operating in a grueling and opaque environment. Stewart also commented on the limitations of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty in regulating modern technology, noting the US's preference for establishing norms of responsible behavior rather than entering new, unverifiable treaties. Finally, Stewart recognized the importance of public-private partnerships in building resilience, but also acknowledged the urgent need for international risk reduction measures to prevent a destabilizing space arms race.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents in the United States. As such, it is well positioned to overcome white domination and anti-Black racism and their social and economic consequences. Yet Prince George’s does not raise tax revenue sufficient to provide consistent high-quality public goods and services. In Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia (Russell Sage Foundation, 2026) sociologist Angela Simms examines the factors contributing to Prince George’s financial troubles.

Dr. Simms draws on two years of observations of Prince George’s County’s budget and policy development processes, interviews with nearly 60 Prince George’s leaders and residents, and budget and policy analysis for Prince George’s County and its two Whiter, wealthier neighbors, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. She argues legacy and ongoing government policies and business practices—such as federal mortgage insurance policy prior to 1968, local government reliance on property taxes, and private investment patterns—have resulted in disparities in wealth accumulation between Black and white Americans, not only for individuals and families but local jurisdictions as well. Fighting for a Foothold is an in-depth analysis of the fiscal challenges experienced by Prince George’s County and by the suburban Black middle-class and majority-Black jurisdictions, more broadly. The book reveals how race, class, and local jurisdiction boundaries in metropolitan areas interact to create different material living conditions for Americans.

Our guest is: Dr. Angela Simms, who is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Fighting for a Foothold.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Odd Arne Westad, "The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History" (Henry Holt and Co, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

From a renowned Yale historian comes a chilling look at the looming threat of the next Great Power war and the urgent interventions necessary to avoid it in the twenty-first century.
The vast majority of people alive today have come of age in a world of remarkable stability, presided over by either one or two Superpowers. This is not to say the world has been peaceful; but it has, to a great extent, been predictable. As an increasing number of Great Powers jostle for regional supremacy, as well as competitive advantage in nuclear technology, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and trade, our world has become more fragile, unpredictable—and combustible. The outbreak of global war among today’s Great Powers seems increasingly likely. Such war, as Odd Arne Westad powerfully argues in this urgent book The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History (Henry Holt and Co, 2026), would be of a magnitude and devastation never before seen.
To understand the threats that face us in this complex new terrain, we must look to the lessons of the past, and especially the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—a time when Great Powers clashed and sought regional dominance, nationalism and populism were on the rise, and many felt that globalization had failed them; a time when tariffs increased, immigration and terrorism were among the biggest issues of the day, and a growing number of people blamed the citizens of other countries for their problems. A time, in other words, that carries eerie parallels with our own.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Harding has long been one of the premier essayists and journalists of our day. Elegant, committed and free of cant, Harding's writing has often appeared in the London Review of Books, from which a number of these essays were drawn. Harding explores the intersection of politics and culture on the African continent, and unearths stories that explain the dialectical relations between the two spheres during the colonial and post-colonial moments. Never heavy-handed, Harding's mode is the exploratory, and one comes away from his nuanced narratives edified. Discussed in the podcast are several of Harding's pieces, including the complicated and unanticipated journey of Kamel Daoud in his rewriting of Camus's The Stranger, and Camus's own ambivalent legacy around colonial rule.

Read the transcript here.

Leonard Benardo is a vice president for the Open Society Foundations.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Does the American Presidency Mean?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Coming in the thick of the second Trump term, What Does the American Presidency Mean? The Need for Interpretation in Presidency Studies is a timely and provocative new title for the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. In it, Richard Holtzman sets an agenda for interpretivist presidency research. Using Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency as a bridge between presidency studies and interpretive political science, the book succinctly outlines how by interpreting presidential words and symbols our understanding of the presidency is enriched, and causal-inferential studies of presidential behaviour, complemented. Though the book directly addresses researchers of the American presidency, as we discuss in this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, it holds lessons for researchers of executive power everywhere.

Presidency studies your thing? Other episodes on the New Books Network that might interest you include Coe and Scacco on The Ubiquitous Presidency, and Hennessey and Wittes talking about their Unmaking the Presidency.

Looking for something to read? To start the day Rich suggests Thich Nhat Han’s Peace is Every Step, and perhaps to conclude it, Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

This interview summary was not synthesised by a machine. Unlike the makers and owners of those machines, the author accepts responsibility for its contents.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alana Lentin, "The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy" (Pluto Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The New Racial Regime begins by interrogating the backlash against critical race theory and explains how the so-called war on woke can be used against educators or to curtail struggles challenging settler colonialism. Alana Lentin grounds her analysis with an engagement of the ideas making up the Black radical tradition and explicates the work of Cedric Robinson in particular. She builds a historically situated analysis of ‘race’ as inherently unstable and explains that the racial regime requires constant recalibration to maintain hierarchies of dominance within global systems of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.

Exposing the limitations of liberal anti-racism, Lentin’s analysis explores how racialism is embedded in social institutions and can inhibit a clear understanding of antisemitism, as well as anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. The New Racial Regime is an insightful and principled response to present-day struggles over culture, education, and politics.

Alana Lentin is a Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University.

Genevieve Ritchie is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Russell McCutcheon, "Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia, second edition" (Oxford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

First published in 1997, Manufacturing Religion was a controversial book because it critiqued a widely adopted style of scholarship that presumes that religion is utterly unique, inexplicable, and therefore able only to be interpreted by privileged scholars. Claiming religion to be sui generis (or self-caused), this approach has undisclosed practical effects--institutional and geo-political--at a variety of sites, from the types of textbooks commonly used in introductory classes to the way that political events are often represented in the mass media. Russell McCutcheon documented the ubiquity of this approach and showed how harmful it was Updating its wide-ranging evidence and adding new chapters, this new edition demonstrates the impact of this critique while showing how little the field has generally moved in the past thirty years.

Russell T. McCutcheon earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and is now an honorary life member of the International Association for the History of Religions. Beginning in 2001, he was the Department Chair at the University of Alabama, a role that he played for 18 years. His many publications on the history of the field and the practical effects of the category religion in liberal democracies, along with a number of resources created specifically for teachers and students, are widely used in the field today.

This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com00:00

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Gross, "Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World" (Haymarket, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

My guest today, Daniel Gross, comes to NBN to discuss his new book Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World (Haymarket, 2026). Written with workers in mind, it’s an accessible and very practical guide to organizing one’s workplace, bringing Gross’ multiple decades as a union organizer and labor lawyer to readers who might know what they need, but don’t know where to start or how to get there. Gross breaks the massive task of organizing ones workplace into easy steps that also leave a lot of room for individuals to flexibly apply to their own particular situations, giving them some basic scaffolding on which to operate. It also comes with sample forms one can use at various stages of the process, giving readers a clear sense of how to organize and break everything down into clearly compartmentalized and more manageable tasks. Readers can also go online to Unions of Our Own to get printable versions of these forms as an accessible way to start their journey.

Daniel Gross is a longtime labor organizer and labor lawyer. He is the coauthor of Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law, and currently works with the Solidarity Union Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

William I. Robinson, "Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism (Cambridge UP, 2025) is the most recent book from Professor William Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This title is the latest in excellent and ground-breaking titles from Professor Robinson in a distinguished career, where he began writing books on United States intervention into Nicaragua in the late 1980s and early 1990s, expanding this focus on United States hegemony more broadly in the ground-breaking book Promoting Polyarchy in 1996, up to then grappling with the totality of the capitalist world system more recently in titles such as The Global Police State in 2020, Can Global Capitalism Endure in 2022, and War, Global Capitalism and Resistance in 2024, alongside many other books.

Professor Robinson’s latest instalment we discuss in this episode, Epochal Crisis, tracks the multifactorial crises that are impacting the global capitalist system today, across economic, social, ecological, political and other dimensions, and how these intersecting and overlapping crises are degrading or exhausting the ability for capitalism to renew itself. This contemporaneous epochal crisis, as Professor Robinson carefully details, is catalysing morbid symptoms that express themselves as wars, unprecedented violence, ecological emergencies, rock-bottom political legitimacy and a host of other dangerous and cataclysmic effects. Epochal Crisis is both a wide-ranging and extensive investigation into the current, overlapping and intersecting crises that are plaguing the world capitalist system, as it appears in its final, violent death throes, and also a highly engaging work that is easy to digest and will help you understand the very naked reality of capital crisis that is so obvious to us all today. Thankfully, Professor Robinson also addresses what we can do in this latest, perhaps final, epochal breakdown of the capitalist system, to find some revolutionary hope in these dark times.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How can lives and things that are rendered invisible be crucial to identity, politics, and the future? Drawing on experimental ethnographic research in northeastern Estonia, this book offers vivid answers.

The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia (Cornell UP, 2025) analyzes the territorial dimensions of secrecy and how concealment occurs in relation to energy infrastructure and identity politics in eastern Estonia. It shows that secrets and hiding places are intrinsic to human affairs, while reconsidering the possibilities of relating ethnographically to what appears to be the extraneous. Francisco Martínez highlights how basements, garages, bunkers, holes, and cottages favor alternative forms of sociality, allowing local residents to redesign the terms of their public selves. Shadow spaces in this liminal region, at the border with Russia, are created against the institutional demand to be knowable. People engage in ordinary forms of ambivalence and refusal to negotiate a sense of loss and the consequences of a century of extractive activities. The Future of Hiding invites cross-disciplinary dialogue on topics like mining, transparency, belonging and cultural landscapes, offering insights into infrastructure's reproduction and destruction, recolonizations, and the ecological memory of a sacrificed area.

Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic research. His work is known for its critical insights and experimental style. He was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and currently works as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow at the University of Murcia, Spain. His email address is francisco.martinez14@um.es.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trevor Jackson, "The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World" (Norton, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How did an economic system that was the result of largely uncoordinated and unplanned individual decisions come to dominate our modern world? This is the core question that my guest, Berkeley economic historian Trevor Jackson, tries to answer in his new book, The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World (Norton, 2026). Jackson begins with the origins of the global monetary system in the fifteenth century and ends in the early twentieth century, when capitalism faced its most serious challenges from communism and socialism. While wage labor and financial instruments like loans and stocks feel unremarkable today, he reminds us that “it wasn’t always this way.” Capitalism is not natural, timeless, or inevitable.

Trevor Jackson is an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley. He previous book, Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690–1830, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

Steven P. Rodriguez is a scholarly publishing professional and historian.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rugged Individualism

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:37:00 +0000

In this special student edition of High Theory, Andrew Bennett, Jo Hoffman, Kai North, and Ally Sullivan tell us about Rugged Individualism, a concept they link to Marxist theory. They made this episode for an assignment in Professor John Linstrom’s course on Theory and Criticism at Centenary College of Louisiana. The students provided the show notes below.

The baby theorist pictured in the fetching onesie is John's newest daughter, and not a member of the theory class that produced this episode.

The transcript of the episode lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF.

Show Notes

1. First minute or so is spent in the introduction of each speaker, being Centenary senior Andrew

Bennett and Centenary junior Jordan Hoffman, Andrew starts off with name dropping the podcast name, being High-Theory student version.

2. The discussion is first spent in going over the origins of rough individualism and what encourages it, which is mostly due to monetary stability.

3. Rugged individualism was seen most utilized during American expansionism during the mid to late nineteenth century, as citizens who moved to the frontier had little to no government to assist them and their families. The discussion later follows up into its more referenced era during the economic boom of the 1920’s under President Herbert Hoover and his take on rugged individualism.

4. First question: Socioeconomic status quo

5. Under the modern era, rugged individualism has been viewed as a negatively impacting idea, especially with lower economic citizens. That is not to say that there aren’t examples of individuals succeeding; however, it is not common. It is a system to keep the poor poorer and the rich richer. This shift started to fully come into view within the Reagan and Clinton administrations from the 80’s to the 90’s and even still in the present day.

6. If we were to compare the American lifestyle to other communities that center around having a community life, they would view it as a form of self-destructiveness.

7. Second question: How to utilize rugged individualism and Marxist, feminist theories

8. Rugged individualism can only work in a true meritocracy with definable gender structures, given the eras it could be said rugged individualism was properly utilized, at least before it was subverted by the wealthy's schemes for power.

9. Third question: Understanding Rugged Individualism in saving the world

10. Having the lower classes become aware of the system that holds them from achieving success for the rich.

11. The discussion begins to arrive to its end as the speakers dwell on how the rich scheme away to keep their advantage, as well as comments regarding gender roles that rugged individualism promotes, particularly with masculinity

12. Conclusion with some minor mentions to previous topics and how they correlate to their lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Assessing Global Democratic Health Amidst a Growing Shadow of Autocracy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Maya Tudor speaks with two democracy experts at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Freedom House to understand the headlines from Freedom House’s 2026 Report, entitled the growing shadow of autocratization. We discuss the drivers behind the 20th consecutive year of global democratic decline and compare the similarities and differences between Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy reports. We conclude by anticipating what lies ahead, what our experts are looking to understand, and what everyday citizens can do to strengthen democracy.

Links:

Freedom in the World 2026

25 Years of Autocratization

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Caste and Race: Ambedkar and King with the Ambedkar King Study Circle

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This episode features S. Karthikeyan and S. Subbulakshmi, the Convenor and Secretary of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, an anti-caste organization based in Silicon Valley. Our conversation began with a discussion of the choice of B. R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. as the titular heads of the organization, then moved on to a conversation about its membership-based structure, the anti-caste struggles in which the AKSC has participated, and the significance of California in general, and the Silicon Valley in particular, as an epicenter of caste consolidation and anti-caste mobilization.

Guests:

S. Karthikeyan is an IT professional based in Silicon Valley and regular contributor to public outlets such as The Wire.

S. Subbulakshmi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Centre on Longevity.

Mentioned in the episode:

B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?”

Savera is a multiracial, interfaith, anticaste coalition of organizations and activists.

S. Karthikeyan, “The Hindu Supremacist Disinformation Campaign Against the Caste Discrimination Litigation in US”

S. Karthikeyan, “How Protections Against Caste Discrimination Are Being Opposed in the US”

S. Karthikeyan, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing”

Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Shakeup Is Coming for the Nation-State: A Conversation with Stephen Sims

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Sims’ New Atlantis essay examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the structure and authority of the modern nation-state. He argues that innovations such as artificial intelligence, drones, and networked warfare are weakening the traditional link between territorial control and the projection of power, enabling smaller actors to operate with unprecedented reach. At the same time, advanced states are enhancing their internal capabilities through data-driven governance and automation, increasing their ability to monitor and manage populations. This dynamic creates a paradox in which states grow more powerful domestically while becoming more vulnerable externally. Sims contends that sovereignty is fragmenting, with authority dispersing both to non-state actors and to transnational technological systems. The result is not the end of the nation-state, but its evolution into a more contested, uneven, and technologically mediated form.

Stephen Sims is associate professor of political science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oil and Militancy in Nigeria: A Conversation with Noo Saro-Wiwa

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York.

Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta), was published to critical acclaim in 2012. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012; named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, 2012; shortlisted for the Author’s Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year in 2013; nominated by The Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. Looking for Transwonderland has been translated into French and Italian, and was awarded the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy in 2016.

Noo's second book, Black Ghosts (Canongate, 2023) explores the African community in China and was named Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year in 2025.

Her latest publication, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria (Columbia Global Reports) examines the social and environmental effects of the insurgency that arose in the oil-rich Niger Delta after the death of her father, the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. In the report, Noo highlights the undervalued role of women and meets individuals who are working towards sustainable development. It will be published in the US on 14th April 2026, and in the UK on 28th May 2026.

Noo has also contributed to the following anthologies: Go Girl 2: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure (2024); An Unreliable Guide to London (Influx Press, 2016); A Place of Refuge (Unbound, 2016), an anthology of writing on asylum seekers; and La Felicità Degli Uomini Semplici, an Italian-language anthology based around football.

Noo is a staff writer for Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and she has contributed book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for various publications including The Guardian newspaper, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, City AM, and Chatham House.

She lives in London and supports Liverpool FC.

Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nikki Luke, "Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Nikki Luke traces the intertwined history of Atlanta’s racialized uneven development and growing electricity use to show how electricity infrastructure shapes everyday life. Nikki Luke looks at how quotidian relationships with the electric utility catalyze intersectional organizing for energy democracy. She also investigates the legal and material construction of the investor-owned utility as a regulated monopoly and the state public service commission that regulates it.
Contemporary organizing for energy democracy questions how the utility and the systems that govern it need to change to ensure energy affordability, provide remedy and reparation for enduring environmental and energy injustice, and build a just and equitable energy transition from fossil fuels. Bridging urban, environmental, and labor studies, the author demonstrates how these demands to change the utility emerge from the tradition of civil rights, labor, and environmental organizing for fair treatment from the utility, affordable energy, protection from pollution, and good jobs. The book is available Open Access.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Jaffe, "From the Ashes: Grief and Transformation in a World on Fire" (Bold Type Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

From the author of Work Won't Love You Back, a stirring examination of how collective grief can ignite powerful change. Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change, in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. This is capitalism's death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others, for the marginalized and the vulnerable but increasingly for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning those futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a political act. Sarah Jaffe shows how the act of public memorialization has become a radical statement, a vibrant response to loss, and a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to grieve well the ones we have lost, the causes they fought for, or the examples they bequeathed us, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future.

Sarah Jaffe is a journalist and labor reporter who writes about work, inequality, and social movements. Her work has appeared in major publications such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Jaffe has long reported on labor struggles and worker organizing, including movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 campaign. She is also the author of Necessary Trouble and Work Won't Love you Back. She is co-host of the labor podcast Belabored. Her writing focuses on how economic systems shape everyday life and workers’ experiences.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Information State: How is the State Surveilling and Manipulating us These Days?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged to create a new public‑private regime of control over information, attention, and consent. He discusses the intellectual roots of technocratic governance from Francis Bacon and Leibniz through progressivism, World War I propaganda, and cybernetics, and explains how the “information state” differs from classical authoritarianism. Finally, Siegel reflects on Trumpism, the tech counter‑elite around figures like Elon Musk, and how AI may usher in a more “Pharaonic” and quasi‑spiritual form of politics beyond traditional expert‑driven technocracy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. In Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.
President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself.
Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable achievements of these years while also showing how respect for science clashed with scorn toward the deep state and left the nation unprepared for the next health crisis.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ladder or Lottery? Gary Hoover on the Consequences of Broken Economic Promises

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Gary Hoover about his new book, Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026). Gary is Professor of Economics and Executive Director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. One of the most challenging aspects of life is that sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we still miss the mark. Life can feel like a lottery, where success comes down to luck or the privilege to have the resources to buy as many lottery tickets as possible. For some, life appears like a ladder. No matter where you start, all you need to do is climb to get to the top. These metaphors encapsulate the dilemmas explored by Gary in his important work, as he examines in a variety of case studies whether economic conditions look more like a ladder or more like a lottery. When enough people feel that the system is more like a lottery than a ladder, social order breaks down, protests erupt, and, on occasion, revolutions take place. To take on this weighty topic, I’m thrilled today to have Gary Hoover on the podcast.

Gary A. Hoover is Executive Director of the Murphy Institute, Professor of Economics, and Affiliate Professor of Law at Tulane University.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous books related to North Korea and is a regular commentator on the country’s elite social and political structures.

I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service (Independently Published, 2026) is Levi’s tenth book, a collaborative work based on extensive dialogues with Han Jin-myung (a pseudonym), a former member of the North Korean elite who served in a specialized military drone unit and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, before defecting in 2015. The book provides a rare, ground-level look at the life of the North Korean upper class, tracing Han’s journey from a privileged childhood in Pyongyang to the high-pressure world of international diplomacy and illicit regime fundraising in Southeast Asia.

Through Han’s testimony, the book explores the psychological realities of loyalty, the "golden cage" of the North Korean elite, and the climate of fear following the 2013 execution of Jang Song-thaek, offering readers a unique perspective on the inner workings of the North Korean state.

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

169* Hannah Arendt on Oases (JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Our Recall This Buck series began by speaking with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School about how key ideas—and the actual currency, physical coins and bills— underlying the modern monetary system get “invisibilized” with that system’s success, so that seeing money clearly is both harder and more vital. Today, illustrious Princeton historian Peter Brown narrates the … Continue reading "42 Recall This Buck 2: Peter Brown on wealth, charity and managerial bishops in early Christianity (JP)"

Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alisa Kessel, "Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Political theorist Alisa Kessel (University of Puget Sound) has an important and impressive new book, Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Kessel’s research grew out of her work on questions of consent and how consent is embedded within the social contract structure. Initially the plan for the research was to critique this concept of “rape culture” which had found its way into popular discourse as well as academic work and was somewhat unclear in terms of application and understanding. Kessel notes in the book and in our conversations that her thinking about the idea of rape culture owes a great deal to black feminists who had been writing about and discussing the underlying issue at the heart of rape culture, which is not just about violence against women, but more broadly about the political, societal, and cultural dimensions of domination, victimhood, and human value. Rape Fantasies develops this understanding and provides fascinating examples of this intersectional concept. One of the key claims of the book is that sexual violence is not accidental, it is not necessarily based on physical urges that just cannot be controlled; it is, instead, based in the dynamic of political domination thus making rape itself a political act. Part of the unexamined problem with rape is that it is built around an entitlement to dominate, which also makes the threat of sexual violence a political act. Rape Fantasies traces this idea through a number of different case studies that unpack the dimensions of this threat of sexual violence in a variety of circumstances and situations, tied, inevitably, to the duality of domination and subordination or victimization, which is also wrapped up with questions of who is deserving of protection and who is not as deserving.

Kessel explains that in examining sexual violence, what she found was multifaceted reflections and refractions, since the issue and the individual’s experience with sexual violence are neither simple nor linear. And the examples and case studies that make up the thrust of the book present this multidimensional nature of sexual violence. This multifaceted thinking about sexual violence also integrates an intersectional analysis, drawing on work from indigenous studies, feminist and women’s studies, feminist theory, black feminism, political theory and other connected schools of thought. The interrogation of rape and rape culture, particular in context of the political valence, “occurs across multiple axes of oppression, including white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, cisgender, settler colonial, and capitalist axes.”[1] The case study examples in Rape Fantasies include bathroom bills across the states, the idea of the frontier and modes of extraction, consent contracts and consent apps, and OnlyFans and intimacy on demand. Each example is deeply researched and unpacked, providing the reader with historical, legal, political, economic, cultural, and societal analyses of these complex areas of domination and entitlement.

Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence is an expansive undertaking, bringing together theoretical frameworks from different schools of thought and analysis, threaded with important case studies that help the reader think deeply about this concept and how it is operationalized in our daily lives. Even if we are not aware of these narratives, they surround us and shape so much of our thinking about how the world works. And why sexual violence remains so persistent.

Susan Liebell is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Lilly J. Goren is a Professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

[1] Alisa Kessel. Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Oxford University Press, 2025. p. 6.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel A. Bell, "Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Daniel A. Bell joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future (Princeton UP, 2026). This isn't your standard, dusty history — it’s a series of modernized dialogues that grew out of Bell’s own classroom at the University of Hong Kong. In this episode, Daniel tells us about the time he spent as an academic Dean at Shandong University, and where he saw firsthand how ancient Legalist ideas about strict punishment were making everyday life, and even faculty meals, feel rigid and 'joyless'. We talk about why he chose to write the book as a 'heavyweight match' between the descendants of thinkers like Confucius and Zhuangzi, and why he believes the ancient concept of 'harmony' is actually about celebrating differences rather than enforcing sameness. Whether we're talking about the 'fire exit' of modern divorce laws or the high stakes of corruption in Beijing, Daniel shows why these ancient voices are still the most relevant ones in the room.

The book is an entertaining introduction to ancient Chinese thinkers, and what they can teach us about today’s most pressing political questions in China and beyond. China’s most original, diverse, and fascinating political debates took place more than two millennia ago, but they have profoundly shaped Chinese political thinking and practice ever since and, remarkably, their influence on the country’s leaders is only growing today. Yet these timeless debates which are very likely to influence the answers to such questions as whether China should use military force to take control of Taiwan seem far too little understood in the West. In this enlightening and entertaining book, Professor Bell takes the greatest thinkers from China’s past — Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi, Zhuangzi, and Mozi—and puts them in dialogue with each other in modern settings.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lia Kent, "The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

“What might it mean to take the dead seriously as political actors?” asks Lia Kent in this exciting new contribution to critical human rights scholarship The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste (U Wisconsin Press, 2024). In Timor-Leste, a new nation-state that experienced centuries of European colonialism before a violent occupation by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999, the dead are active participants in social and political life who continue to operate within familial structures of obligation and commitment. On individual, local, and national levels, Timor-Leste is invested in various forms of memory work, including memorialization, exhumation, reburial, and commemoration of the occupation’s victims. Such practices enliven the dead, allowing them to forge new relationships with the living and unsettling the state-building logics that seek to contain and control them.

With generous, careful ethnography and incisive analysis, Kent challenges comfortable, linear narratives of transitional justice and argues that this memory work is reshaping the East Timorese social and political order—a process in which the dead are active, and sometimes disruptive, participants. Community ties and even the landscape itself are imbued with their presence and demands, and the horrific scale of mass death in recent times—up to a third of the population perished during the Indonesian occupation—means Timor-Leste’s dead have real, significant power in the country’s efforts to remember, recover, and reestablish itself.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems.

Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI’s inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action.

This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español.

This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences.

Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation:

Instituto Nuevos Horizontes
Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez
Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke.
The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor.
The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias.
DukeGPT
Wendy Brown
Ivan Illich
"Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena
"We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender
"The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena
"AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender
"It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna
"It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna
"The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna
"The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender
"The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender
"Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna
"How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jasper Bernes, "The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising" (Verso Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed?

Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising (Verso Books, 2025) illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century.
When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persist. Historical revolutions reveal essential features of our communist horizon, which would-be revolutionaries, then as now, must negotiate one way or another. In chapters that move from a critical history of the workers’ council to a reading of Marx’s theory of value as an inverted description of communism, Jasper Bernes synthesizes from a history of failure the key criteria for success. He defines for our present moment the urgent mission of the world proletariat.

Jasper Bernes lives in Oakland and teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A regular contributor to the Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail, he is the author of The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization and two books of poetry, We Are Nothing and So Can You and Starsdown.

YouTube Channel: here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Annahid Dashtgard, "Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders" (Dundurn Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Annahid Dashtgard about her new book, Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders (Dundurn Press, 2026).

Necessary tactics for BIPOC leaders to navigate from survive to thrive.
In these politically fraught times, organizations need strong leadership to help navigate uncertainty and complexity. A crucial yet overlookedgroup of leaders are also racial minorities, who often move into positions of influence with little support or acknowledgement. If you’re one of these leaders (or hope to be), this book is specifically for you. Fire and Silence offers a roadmap to leadership using compassion instead of trauma, authority without victimhood, and strength inclusive of vulnerability, in ways that are fair to all.
From the trenches of social activism to coaching boardroom executives, Annahid Dashtgard offers proven strategies and real-world stories alongside practical tips and tools to support growing numbers of BIPOC leaders in achieving the impact and recognition they so richly deserve — without having to sacrifice who they are in the process.

Annahid Dashtgard is CEO of Anima Leadership, a racial justice consulting firm. Over the last two decades she has worked with hundreds of organizations and leaders to create more inclusive workplaces. Her first book, Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Reconciliation, met rave reviews. Toronto is her chosen home.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence (Beacon Press, 2025) reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circumstances of in-custody deaths. Through rigorous research—including critical records analysis, public health studies, and interviews with victims’ families—this book unmasks the systemic failures within forensic medicine. Dr. Terence Keel shows how incomplete autopsy reports, mishandled medical documents, and strategically lost evidence effectively shield law enforcement from accountability.
The Coroner’s Silence uncovers how the current system of death investigation operates as a mechanism of institutional safeguarding. By highlighting the structural powerlessness of coroners and their disconnection from the communities most affected by police violence, Dr. Keel demonstrates how bureaucratic processes can render human suffering invisible. True accountability requires more than procedural reform. It demands a fundamental reimagining of how we investigate, document, and understand deaths at the hands of state institutions. The Coroner’s Silence is a crucial intervention that challenges us to confront the deeply ingrained mechanisms that perpetuate systemic violence.

Our guest is: Dr. Terence Keel, who is an award-winning scholar, the founding director of the BioCritical Studies Lab, and a professor of human biology, society, and African-American studies at UCLA. He received fellowships from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health, and is the author of Divine Variations, and The Coroner’s Silence.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Melissa Butcher, "The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future" (Manchester UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

As Melissa Butcher puts it in her book The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future (Manchester UP, 2026) when asked to rank the importance of freedom to them most Americans would put it as an 11 out of 10. So, what happens when the idea of freedom becomes not something that unites Americans but rather, through its different interpretations, ideals and priorities becomes something that polarises Americans? Based upon extensive fieldwork and interviews with Americans across the states, Butcher is able to explore not just the different conceptions of freedom of America across realms such as justice, COVID, the rural/urban divide and religion, but also gives us an insight into how Americans think about America and how, especially at the local level, there are areas of hope which confound the claims we hear at the national level.

In our conversation we discuss issues such as how she identified her places to visit and people to speak to, the daily experiences of crossing the US/Mexico border at El Paso, Texas, the important conversations that can come from speaking to people as people rather than labels and why, precisely, so many Americans bring up postmodernism at the same time that Universities no longer teach it.

Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of The Anthem Companion to Henri Lefebvre (2026, Anthem Press) along with other texts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emotions of LGBT Rights

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Saronik talks to Senthorun Raj about the Emotions of LGBT Rights. Emotions from disgust and fear to love and joy shape the legal frameworks that attempt to govern human sexual behavior around the world. Sen cautions against dividing emotions into good and bad, but instead asks us to take a critical stance on all emotions, to understand how they shape our policies.

In the episode, we talk about Sara Ahmed, the Stonewall Riots, conversion therapy, and efforts to mandate for and against inclusive sex education. The transcript lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF.

Sen’s book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law (Edinburgh University Press 2025) uses emotion as a novel analytic lens to understand, analyse, and critique the relationship between individual, interpersonal, and institutional conflicts over LGBT rights. Emotions are central to the pursuit, organisation, and contestation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in law. Drawing from critical legal theories, this book cultivates the concept of “emotional grammar” to show how emotions structure law reform pursuits by threading together Hansard, legislation, case law, law reform consultations, and statutory guidance. By doing so, it explains why addressing this emotional grammar is important for scholars, lawyers, judges, legislators, and activists seeking to navigate conflicts over LGBT rights and reforms that aim to repair the inequalities faced by LGBT people.

Senthorun Raj is an academic human rights lawyer with expertise in issues of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. He works as a Reader in Human Rights Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sen’s research and teaching interests include LGBTIQ+ rights, emotion, culture, equalities and human rights law, legal education, and critical legal theory. His latest monograph, builds on his previous book, Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge, 2020), which explored the ways emotions shape legal judgments that enable progress for LGBT people. He is also the co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom (Palgrave, 2020) and Queer Judgments (Counterpress, 2025).

The image for this episode is a coloured lithograph, from 1868, depicting a double rainbow, by René Henri Digeon after Étienne Antoine Eugène Ronjat. It was sourced by Lili Epstein for High Theory from the Wellcome Collection.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ho-fung Hung, "The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

"The contempt and naive idealization of China are two sides of the same coin. The latter cannot be an antidote to the former."

So argues Ho-Fung Hung in the conclusion of The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear (Cambridge University Press, 2026). For centuries, Western scholars portrayed China either as a land of superior morality, economy, and governance or as a formidable country of pagans that posed a global threat to Western values. Idealized images of China were used to shame rulers for their incompetence, while China was demonized as an external threat to cover up domestic political failures. In the twentieth century, the geopolitics of global capitalism have facilitated more nuanced perspectives, but the diversifying of knowledge about China is far from complete. In this thought-provoking study, Ho-fung Hung finds that both Western elites and China's authoritarian regime today continue to promote many Orientalist stereotypes to advance their economic interests and political projects. He shows how big-picture historical, social, and economic changes are inextricably linked to fluctuations in the realm of ideas. Only open debate can overcome extremes of fantasy and fear.

Ho-Fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Sociology Department and the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stephen Onyango Ouma, "Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation" (Brill, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

I had a substantive conversation with Dr. Stephen Onyango Ouma, author of Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation (Brill, 2026). He explained that, despite achieving political independence, African countries still experience significant colonial and neo-colonial influences in their economies, education systems, cultures, and political structures.

The book argues that genuine liberation must include economic independence, epistemic freedom, cultural reclamation, and Pan-African unity. Dr Ouma highlights the importance of revitalising indigenous knowledge systems, strengthening regional cooperation, and addressing dependencies that limit Africa's ability to determine its own path.

We discussed topics ranging from the lasting mental effects of colonialism to the potential of the AfCFTA, the rise of youth activism, and the key role African women play in liberation movements. It was a thoughtful look at what decolonisation should mean today.

For those interested in African philosophy, global politics, or contemporary decolonial thought, this book and the accompanying interview offer valuable insights.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Pennington, "Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom by Mark Pennington

This highly original and innovative book is the first to comprehensively engage the ideas of the French social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault from within the tradition of liberal political economy. Divided into two parts the book commences by demonstrating important commonalities between Foucault's ideas and those of a neglected 'post-modern' stream in liberal political and economic thought. These ideas draw on a social theory emphasising a culturally situated individualism; a philosophy of science highly critical of socio-economic 'scientism' and 'expert rule'; and an understanding of freedom as an open-ended process of 'self-creation' in the face of cultural power relations—a freedom threatened by alignments between state power and more decentred manifestations of power.
Part two combines the tools of Foucault's critical social theory with those of a post-modern liberalism to problematise four separate though overlapping 'bio-political' or 'pastoral' dispositifs in contemporary liberal societies focused on social justice, public health, ecological sustainability, and law and order. Where the Foucauldian and the post-modern liberal approaches suggest that freedom requires a cultural and economic 'creative destruction' that destabilises existing modes of thought and ways of being, the pastoral dispositifs that seek to 'monitor and correct' multiple pattern anomalies are shown to stifle the space for that creative freedom.
Though the book does not engage the question of whether Foucault himself moved towards endorsing liberal political economy, it throws considerable light on how key Foucauldian concerns may be addressed within the liberal tradition, and why Foucauldians may have reason to embrace a reconstituted or post-modern liberalism

Mark Pennington has been Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy, King's College, University of London, since 2012, and is currently Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society. Prior to King's he taught for twelve years in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He has a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas Hegghammer and Diego Gambetta eds., "Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Time spent and words spent—what does each signal?

Deceptive mimicry—the manipulation of individual or group identity—includes passing off as a different individual, as a member of a group to which one does not belong, or, for a group, to ‘sign’ its action as another group. Mimicry exploits the reputation of the model it mimics to avoid capture (flight), to strike undetected at the enemy (fight), or to hide behind or besmirch the reputation of the model group (‘false-flag’ operations).

Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict (Oxford UP, 2024) offers a theory and game-theoretic model of mimicry, an overview of its use through history, and a deep empirical exploration of its modern manifestations through several case studies by leading social scientists. The chapters cover mimicry in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict, terrorism campaigns in 1970s Italy, the height of the Iraq insurgency, the Rwandan genocide, the Naxalite rebellion in India, and jihadi discussion forums on the Internet.

Thomas Hegghammer is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Hlavacik, "Willing Warriors: A New History of the Education Culture Wars" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.

On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton’s school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton’s school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.

In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment.

Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform.

Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Trump as a “World Historical Individual” with author John B. Judis

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel “viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval,” the author John B. Judis wrote in a recent essay for NOTUS, and “assigned to what he called ‘world-historical individuals’ a special role in spurring the transition from one era to another.” Trump, Judis posited, “is exactly such an individual,” comparable in this respect to Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon. In our conversation, we discuss this proposition—including the forces that brought Trump to this role and the bleak destiny that typically greets “world-historical individuals.” Judis is the author of a number of books, including The Populist Explosion (Columbia Global Reports, 2016).

John B. Judis is an author and American journalist, a contributing editor at Talking Points Memo, a former senior writer at the National Journal, and a former senior editor at The New Republic

Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. His companion Substack newsletter, America and Beyond,” offers commentary and insights on the podcast. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Jaffe, "Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone" (Bold Type Books, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Bold Type Books, 2021), Sarah Jaffe argues that modern culture encourages workers to see their jobs as a “labor of love.” This idea tells people that passion and dedication should motivate them more than pay or working conditions. Jaffe shows that this belief often allows employers to justify low wages, long hours, and poor treatment. Through stories of workers across many fields, such as teachers, domestic workers, nonprofit employees, artists, athletes, and tech workers, the book demonstrates how devotion to work is used to normalize exploitation. Jaffe calls for a reevaluation of the relationship between work, identity, and personal fulfillment, suggesting that workers should organize collectively and demand fair compensation and conditions instead of relying on passion alone.

Sarah Jaffe is a journalist and labor reporter who writes about work, inequality, and social movements. Her work has appeared in major publications such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Jaffe has long reported on labor struggles and worker organizing, including movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 campaign. She is also the author of Necessary Trouble and most recently From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in A World on Fire. She is co-host of the labor podcast Belabored. Her writing focuses on how economic systems shape everyday life and workers’ experiences.

My co-producer on this episode is Kelly Knight, a graduate student in the MA program in Communication at Oakland University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

⁠The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health⁠

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A powerful blend of deeply human stories and rigorous research, The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health (Beacon Press, 2026) reveals how social and structural factors like income, occupation, race and ethnicity, neighborhood conditions, and social connections, profoundly shape our well-being. Dr. Monica Wang, an award-winning public health researcher, educator, and working mother who came of age as an Asian American bussing student, brings a personal lens to these complex issues and shares a hopeful, action-oriented vision for building healthier communities from the ground up.
Through her own personal and professional journey and the lives of 3 extraordinary women across the US, readers are invited to see how health is shaped in everyday spaces: Marielis, a first-generation Latina student navigating financial insecurity in the Bronx; Dorothy, a semi-retired Black community organizer in rural Alabama; and Rosa, an Indigenous clinical social worker preserving ancestral traditions in Texas.

With clarity, urgency, and optimism, The Collective Cure bridges powerful storytelling with evidence-based solutions. More than a diagnosis, this book is a call to reimagine what’s possible when we invest in people and places.

Our guest is: Dr. Monica L. Wang, who is an award-winning public health researcher and educator. She is an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, an adjunct associate professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and executive editor at Public Health Post.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and developmental editor. She produces and hosts the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Miriam Ticktin, "Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this timely and bold book, Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World (U Chicago Press, 2025), Miriam Ticktin explores how a concept that consistently appears as a moral good actually ends up creating harm for so many. Claims to innocence protect migrant children, but often at the expense of their parents; claims to the innocence of the fetus work to punish women. Ticktin shows how innocence structures political relationships, focusing on individual victims and saviors, while foreclosing forms of collective responsibility. Ultimately, she wants to understand how the discourse around innocence functions, what gives it such power, and why we are so compelled by it, while showing that alternative political forms already exist. She examines this process across various domains, from migration, science, and environmentalism to racial and reproductive justice.
Throughout the book, Ticktin shows how the concept of innocence intimately shapes why, how, and for whom we should care and whose lives matter—and how this can have devastating consequences when only an exceptional few can qualify as innocent. A politics grounded on innocence justifies a world built on inequality, designating most people—especially the racialized poor—as unworthy, undeserving, and less than human. As an alternative, she explores the aesthetics and politics of “commoning”—a collective regime of living that refuses a liberal politics of individual identity and victimhood.

Miriam Ticktin is professor of anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center and director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. She is the author of Casualties of Care and the coeditor of In the Name of Humanity.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Her book, Diasporic Connections: How Afro-Brazilians Use African American Culture to Challenge Racial Exceptionalism is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our Age of War: A Discussion with Author Robert Pape

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, has been writing about war for decades, including in his book Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell University Press, 1996). In our conversation, we step back from the immediate conflict in Iran to reflect on what can be called our Age of War. We are in an era of chronic political violence, including in the United States, Pape notes—what he views as a Hobbesian period in global history. And there is not necessarily, he says, an end in sight.

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs.

Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, "The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late" (Verso Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster, by the bestselling authors of Overshoot

The world is crossing the 1.5°C global warming limit, perhaps exceeding 2°C soon after. What is to be done when these boundaries, set by the Paris Agreement, have been passed? In the overshoot era, schemes proliferate for muscular adaptation or for new technologies to turn the heat down at a later date by removing CO2 from the air or blocking sunlight. Such technologies are by no means safe; they come with immense risks and provide an excuse for those who would prefer to avoid limiting emissions in the present. But do they also hold out some potential? Can the catastrophe be reversed, masked or simply adapted to once it is a fact? Or will any such roundabout measures simply make things worse?
The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late (Verso Books, 2025)maps the new front lines in the struggle for a liveable planet and insists on the climate revolution long overdue. In the end, no technology can absolve us of responsibility for our planet and each other.

Cody Skahan is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford as a recipient of a Grand Union ESRC doctoral training partnership. His work focuses on the intersections of people, the environment, and technology. Currently, he is focusing on the emergence of carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal, as well as running a series of public engagement workshops across the UK and the Arctic around the topic of geoengineering.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tristan J. Rogers, "Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2025), Tristan J. Rogers argues that philosophical conservatism is a coherent and compelling set of historically rooted ideas about conserving and promoting the human good. Part I, “Conservatism Past,” presents a history of conservative ideas, exploring themes, such as the search for wisdom, the limits of philosophy, reform in preference to revolution, the relationship between authority and freedom, and liberty as a living tradition. Major figures include Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, G.W.F. Hegel, and Roger Scruton. Part II, “Conservatism Present,” applies philosophical conservatism to contemporary conservative politics, focusing on issues such as nationalism, populism, the family, education, and responsibility.

Rogers shows that conservatism has been defined differently at different times: as a loose set of connected ideas reacting against the French Revolution; as a kind of disposition or instinct in favor of the status quo; and more recently as any ideas opposed to the political left. But he also allows a set of questions to guide his argument for conservatism’s merits: What is conservatism? Is it a coherent and attractive philosophy? What are conservatives for? And how is today’s conservatism related to its past? In his answers, Rogers paints a compelling and coherent picture of an aligned and attractive set of ideas.

Dr. Tristan J. Rogers teaches Logic and Latin at Donum Dei Classical Academy in San Francisco, CA. He has also taught philosophy at Santa Clara University, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Authority of Virtue: Institutions and Character in the Good Society (2020).

YouTube Channel: here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee, "Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Giant companies, launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But they are also seen as promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and violating privacy. Big banks, reeling since the financial crisis of 2008, continue to be racked with major scandals. Drawing on examples such as the VW scandal in Germany, Cambridge Analytica and Samsung the authors of Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2026) show that these scandals are opportunities for real political change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Understanding Iran Under Attack: A Discussion with Author Vali Nasr

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Eleven days into the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, starting on Feb. 28, 2026, I speak with Vali Nasr, a renowned analyst of Iran. He’s the author of several books dealing with Iran, including most recently Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton University Press, 2025). Nasr was born in Tehran in 1960 and is currently a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In our talk, he discusses his surprise at the resilience the Iranian government has so far displayed in the war, as well as the high degree of advance planning the government performed in anticipation of the attack. Although many Iranians do not like the Islamic Republic, he told me, there is nevertheless a resurgent element of Iranian nationalism in Iranian society. The West, he believes, underestimates the cohesion of Iran.

Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

Paul Starobin is a former contributing editor of The Atlantic and a former Moscow bureau chief of Business Week. His companion Substack newsletter America and Beyond includes transcripts of podcasts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wendy Brown, "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A sympathetic critique that attempts to free Left politics from its own snares, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2025) explores how woundedness became a basis for contemporary political identity. Without condemning identity politics, Wendy Brown carefully probes the varied historical forces generating them today and the ways these formative conditions constrain emancipatory desire. Along the way, she advances a novel feminist critical theory of liberalism and the liberal democratic state. She also develops an original theoretical practice that weaves together Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, Foucault, and cultural theories of gender and race to analyze contemporary political predicaments. In a new preface, Brown places States of Injury in political and intellectual context, including the rise of neoliberalism, and addresses the book’s renewed relevance in today’s political landscape.

Wendy Brown is the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include Nihilistic Times, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, and Undoing the Demos.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In an era of deepening polarization, Sari Hanafi examines how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative perspectives.

He introduces the concept of symbolic liberalism - a contradiction in which individuals espouse classical liberal principles, yet act in politically illiberal ways. This, he argues, has exacerbated the pathologies of late modernity: authoritarianism, economic precarity, and environmental destruction, now all unfolding in a climate where reasonable debate seems increasingly impossible.

Examining key flashpoints of contemporary polarization, Hanafi critiques how symbolic liberalism inflates the universality of rights while simultaneously narrowing the space for dialogue. Rather than this rigid ideological stance, he calls for a dialogical turn, a renewed public sphere where diverse conceptions of the ‘common good’ engage in genuine conversation.

Blending political and moral philosophy with sociological critique, Hanafi offers a path forward in an age when intellectual exchange is more necessary, yet also more imperilled, than ever. Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology (Liverpool UP, 2025) is not just a critique of polarization but a critical and impassioned call to reclaim meaningful intellectual discourse.

Sari Hanafi is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. He served as President of the International Sociological Association (2018–23) and Vice President of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (2015–16). An International Fellow of the British Academy, he was also the Editor of Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology (2007–22). His contributions to the field have been recognized with some of the Arab world’s most prestigious academic awards, including the Abdelhamid Shouman Award (2014) and the Kuwait Award for Social Science (2015). In 2019, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of San Marcos, Peru.

YouTube Channel: here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stuck: How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Fifty years of changemaking and reform haven't fixed Congress—what does that reveal about American democracy? In Stuck: How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress, Maya Kornberg chronicles the efforts of congressional reformers over the last fifty years and documents the mounting forces that have kept their reforms from creating meaningful change.

Dr. Kornberg reveals how political violence, astronomical campaign costs, relentless fundraising demands, shrinking staff, and centralized party leadership all constrain the ability of new members to legislate and represent their constituents. Social media, while offering new platforms for political expression, has also heightened harassment and fed a performative culture that rewards spectacle over substance. Bolstered by dozens of interviews, congressional records, and the voices of lawmakers past and present—including Henry Waxman, Toby Moffett, Phil English, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Lauren Underwood—Stuck offers a sobering portrait of a legislative body paralyzed by its own internal dynamics.

Dr. Kornberg outlines tangible reforms that could restore Congress's capacity to function and amplify the power of its newest members. At a time when Americans are losing faith in democracy's most representative institution, Stuck makes the case for how it could be saved.

A Neuroscientist's Guide to a Healthier, Happier Life

Our guest is: Dr. Maya Kornberg, who is a senior research fellow and manager in the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program. She’s taught political science at NYU, Georgetown and American University, worked on democratic governance issues at numerous institutions, and led research for a UNDP and IPU project examining civic engagement in the work of over 80 parliaments around the world. She is the author of Stuck.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Bears and Ballots

House of Diggs

The Fight To Save The Town

The End of White Politics

Understanding Disinformation

You Are Not American

The Vice-President's Black Wife

You Have More Influence Than You Think

We Refuse

Dear Miss Perkins

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sezai Ozan Zeybek, "Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) by Dr. Sezai Ozan Zeybek explores the intricate relationship between humans and animals in the context of modern Turkish history. From drafted animals in war, to urban stray dogs and the role of cattle in the Kurdish conflict, the cases developed in this book show how animal lives are deeply entangled with human affairs, including complex social organisations such as families, states and nations. In doing so, the book exposes power dynamics, exploitative practices, and the discursive regimes that underpin development, nationalism, and urban growth.

This book offers a timely exploration of human-animal relations, critically revising a number of concepts such as human rights, productivity, health and efficiency from a multispecies perspective.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, situationism and political nihilism.

Arguing that traditional approaches to political change are ineffective in the face of the climate crisis and the failures of liberal institutions, the book advocates for rejecting the possibility of meaningful political change within the existing political system.

Drawing on historical cultural movements like the Russian and Japanese nihilists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Sean Parson calls for a politics of pure negation, centered on the destruction of the current social order, rather than its reform – advocating for a revolutionary politics that embraces resentment against the wealthy and rejects hierarchical power dynamics. Punk Anarchism asks: what if resistance were motivated by a sense of playfulness and enjoyment, rather than hope for a better future? Ultimately, Parson proposes an anti-theory of negation as a way to imagine political agency beyond traditional frameworks.

Sean Parson is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University, USA. They are the author of Cooking Up a Revolution: Resistance to Gentrification (2019) and the co-editor of four edited books includingRepresentations of Political Resistance and Emancipation in Science Fiction (2020).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, "Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

As European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet instead of a rebirth for democracy, what emerged was a silent coup – namely, the unstoppable rise of global corporate power.

Exposing the origins of this epic power grab as well as its present-day consequences, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Claire Provost & Matt Kennard is the result of two investigative journalist's reports from 30 countries around the world. It provides an explosive guide to the rise of a corporate empire that now dictates how resources are allocated, how territories are governed, and how justice is defined.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Barbie Zelizer, "How the Cold War Broke the News: The Surprising Roots of Journalism's Decline" (Polity, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Most of us would agree that American journalism has problems. Rushed reporting and thin coverage. Timidity in the face of adversity. Polarized perspectives and euphemistic language. Groupthink about complicated events.
While much blame has been levelled at big tech, in How the Cold War Broke the News: The Surprising Roots of Journalism's Decline (Polity, 2025) Dr. Barbie Zelizer traces the decline of American journalism to the Cold War. She makes the bold claim that Cold War-era practices are to blame for the state of journalism today, undermining a once trusted media environment. This groundbreaking book shows how journalism's current problems can be traced back to customs developed over half a century ago and demonstrates how they've continued to upend journalism, journalists and the news ever since.

We all need a news environment that works. This book tells us why it doesn't and offers a plan to make it better. If our news is better, so is our democracy. And, if our democracy is better, we may be too.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Josh Milburn, "Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How would we eat if animals had rights? A standard assumption is that our food systems would be plant-based. But maybe we should reject this assumption. Indeed, this book argues that a future non-vegan food system would be permissible on an animal rights view. It might even be desirable.

In Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully (Oxford University Press, 2023), Josh Milburn questions if the vegan food system risks cutting off many people's pursuit of the 'good life', risks exacerbating food injustices, and risks negative outcomes for animals. If so, then maybe non-vegan food systems would be preferable to vegan food systems, if they could respect animal rights.

Could they? The author provides a rigorous analysis of the ethics of farming invertebrates, producing plant-based meats, developing cultivated animal products, and co-working with animals on genuinely humane farms, arguing that these possibilities offer the chance for a food system that is non-vegan, but nonetheless respects animals' rights. He argues that there is a way for us to have our cake, and eat it too, because we can have our cow, and eat her too.

Josh Milburn is a British philosopher and a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at Loughborough University. He has previously worked at the University of Sheffield, the University of York, and Queen's University (in Canada), before which he studied at Queen's University Belfast and Lancaster University. He is the author of Just Fodder: The Ethics of Feeding Animals (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022), and the regular host of the animal studies podcast Knowing Animals.

Kyle Johannsen is a philosophy instructor at Trent University and Wilfrid Laurier University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kenneth Lowande, "False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age

The University of Chicago Press, 2024

Kenneth Lowande

Political Scientist Kenneth Lowande (University of Michigan) has a new book, False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age, examining the ways in which presidents seem to be using their extraordinary powers (of the office itself) but are often holding back so as to avoid the full implementation of policies and ideas. This is an interesting thesis, since it takes apart the ways in which presidents operate, getting at not only the presentation of presidential power and the rhetoric used by presidents to illuminate their powers, but also where the full capacity of the Executive branch may not be put into action around issues, policies, or ideas. Lowande is assessing what is essentially symbolic, especially for the president, but is not substantive, even if it may seem that way.

This concept, this “false front”, comes out of the polarization within the American political system, and the difficulty that presidents also have in trying to accomplish policy shifts and changes. This is also in context of a Congress that has ceded significant power to the Executive and is generally less productive in terms of passing and implementing policy than it was in the past. This is then combined with the adjustments that presidents and presidential candidates have made in the way they approach the campaign and then their work while in office, since they are compelled to construct their own “brand” as a means to getting elected. Once in office, presidents then need to perform in some way that convinces the public that they are trying to execute what they promised while on the campaign trail. But the political climate makes those outcomes extraordinarily difficult. So, presidents have constructed this path where they publicly lean into policy areas, making public statements, having ceremonies and press releases, taking executive actions, or signing Executive Orders to illustrate their commitment and their activity, but when these policy areas are examined in some depth, it turns out that not much happened after all of this attention and apparent action.

Lowande notes, in our conversation, how once he had zeroed in on this presidential mode of operating it is very difficult not to see it. This becomes a kind of model of presidential behavior and strategic approaches. False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age essentially interrogates the founding basis for the American presidency, where Alexander Hamilton argued that the president is to be held accountable and responsible for the actions taken in the office itself. The media plays a role in this as well, since they report on the actions taken by the president—at least in terms of rhetoric, press releases, signing ceremonies, and executive actions—but there is no follow on analysis, for the most part, of the actual implementation of the policies and the plans. If there is no measurable outcome to distinguish how the policy solved the problem, or satisfied the demand for the policy, then the presidential action or rhetoric is disconnected from any particular policy or public good. This is also at odds with the reason for a democratic republic—where the demands of the voters are to be translated into real outcomes, not imaginary ones.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion in an increasingly news-avoiding nation. Drawing on an eclectic array of original data, Dr. Eunji Kim demonstrates how, amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news.

Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and MasterChef. Dr. Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility, promoting a false narrative of rugged individualism and meritocracy that contradicts what is being reported in the news. By taking seriously what people casually watch every day, The American Mirage shows how rags-to-riches programs perpetuate the myth of the American Dream, glorifying the economic winners, fostering tolerance for income inequality, and dampening support for redistributive policies that could improve people’s lives.

Our guest is: Dr. Eunji Kim, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. As a political communication scholar, she primarily studies the impact of media content on mass attitudes and political behavior. She is the author of The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy. Her research explores a range of topics, and has been published in many leading journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com.

Playlist for listeners:

Understanding Disinformation

100 Years of Radio in South Africa

You Have More Influence Than You Think

Black Girls and How We Fail Them

Live From The Underground

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas Zeitzoff, "No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis" (Oxford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

An authoritative history of the radical environmental movement in the United States, No Option But Sabotage explores how far activists are willing to go to defend the planet in the face of repression and the escalating climate crisis.

After 9/11, the radical environmental movement was considered the number one domestic terror threat by the U.S. government. But by the end of the decade the movement had largely gone silent. What happened? And given the threat from climate, why haven't more radical tactics re-emerged?

In No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2026), Thomas Zeitzoff traces the origins, rise, fall, and potential rise again of the movement. Using in-depth interviews with past and current activists, as well as experts, Zeitzoff covers the main factions and actors. These include: Earth First! and its early advocacy for "monkeywrenching;" the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and his years-long anti-technology bombing campaign; the connections between animal liberation, punk, and the emergence of the Earth Liberation Front and its arson campaign; and more recent climate activists and their use of disruptive tactics. Along with providing a comprehensive overview of the movement and its various sub-movements that emerged over time, Zeitzoff also asks the bigger question-given the scope and threat from climate change why haven't activists escalated their tactics? Property destruction, sabotage, and even arson were once regular features of the movement in the 1990s and early 2000s--will activists use them again, or will they stick to non-violence? Will the threat of increasing state repression scare activists, or radicalize them?

Not just a history of a major extremist movement, this book tells the story of radical environmentalism and highlights how activists are confronting the dual threats of climate change and repression, and asking themselves how far they are willing to go to protect the planet.

Thomas Zeitzoff is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University. His research focuses on political violence, social media, and political psychology.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hélène Landemore, "Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule" (Penguin, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Host Jun Wei Lee speaks with Hélène Landemore about her book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule (Penguin, 2026). An acclaimed political theorist, Professor Landemore has spent her career trying to understand the advantages of democracy, what makes it function, and how to make it work better. In her most recent book, Landemore puts forward a radical proposal. Democracy doesn’t need politicians: ordinary people can govern much better.

In this NBN episode, Landemore analyzes how a lottery system designed to select everyday people to govern—not as career politicians but as temporary stewards of the common good. Drawing from ancient Athenian practices of democracy and her firsthand experience in contemporary citizens’ assemblies, Landemore explains that when regular citizens come together to make important political decisions, they make better decisions, develop meaningful bonds of community, and even convince experts that self-governing assemblies are viable ways of doing politics.

This is not a book about what’s wrong—it’s a manifesto for what’s possible. If you’ve ever felt powerless, Politics Without Politicians will show you how “We the People” take back democracy.

Hélène Landemore is a political theorist and the Damon Wells '58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

Jun Wei Lee is a 4th-year undergraduate student of History and Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He works on the international legal regulation of migrant labor in the nineteenth-century British Empire.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom Bolton, "Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations" (Strange Attractor, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The United Kingdom has sixteen nuclear power stations. Most go under the radar, but their presence is enormous, both physically and culturally. They divide opinion like nothing else. Are they relics of a past era, or a crucial part of our futures? Are they cathedrals of science or temples of doom?

Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations (Strange Attractor, 2025) by Dr. Tom Bolton is a journey around Britain’s nuclear power stations and the country itself. From the Essex marshes to the Anglesey coast, from the Dungeness shingle to the far north of Scotland, Tom Bolton explores how nuclear sites shape the places around them, and enters the awesome world of nuclear power and weapons.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter S. Goodman, "Davos Man: How the Billionaire Class Devoured Democracy" (Custom House, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more in his book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House, 2022).

Peter S. Goodman is the global economic correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

If you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this true? What exactly is anarchism?

Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2022) provides a new point of departure for our understanding of anarchism. Prichard describes anarchism as a lived set of practices, with a rich historical legacy, and shows how anarchists have inspired and criticised some of our most cherished values and concepts, from the ideals of freedom, participatory education, federalism, to important topics like climate change, and wider popular culture in science fiction. By locating the emergence and globalization of anarchist ideas in a history of colonialism and imperialism, the book links anarchism into struggles for freedom across the world and demonstrates that anarchism has much to offer anyone trying to envision a better future.

Alex Prichard is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter. His research on anarchism has shed new light on old problems of constitutional politics, order and anarchy in world order, and the history of international thought. He is the co-founder of the Political Studies Association specialist group for the study of anarchism, the Manchester University Press monograph series, Contemporary Anarchist Studies, and a trained chef.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lisa Min et al. eds., "Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State" (punctum books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

When it comes to the political, acts of redaction, erasure, and blacking out sit in awkward tension with the myth of transparent governance, borderless access, and frictionless communication. But should there be more than this brute juxtaposition of truth and secrecy?

Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State (punctum books, 2024) brings together essays, poems, artwork, and memes—a bricolage of media that conveys the experience of living in state-inflected worlds in flux. Critically and poetically engaging with redaction in politically charged contexts (from the United States and Denmark to Russia, China, and North Korea), the volume closely examines and turns loose this disquieting mark of state power, aiming to trouble the liberal imaginaries that configure the political as a left-right spectrum, as populism and nationalism versus global and transnational cosmopolitanism, as east versus west, authoritarianism versus democracy, good versus evil, or the state versus the people—age-old coordinates that no longer make sense. Because we know from the upheavals of the past decade that these relations are being reconfigured in novel, recursive, and unrecognizable ways, the consequences of which are perplexing and ever evolving.

This book takes up redaction as a vital form in this new political reality. Contributors both critically engage with statist redaction practices and also explore its alluring and ambivalent forms, as experimental practices that open up new dialogic possibilities in navigating and conveying the stakes of political encounters.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures. Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton UP, 2025) traces the history of the collection and distribution of African architectural fragments, documenting the brutality of the colonial regimes that looted Africa’s buildings and addressing the ethical questions surrounding the display of these objects.
Dr. Itohan Osayimwese ranges across the whole of Africa, from Egypt in the north to Zimbabwe in the south, and spanning the western, central, and eastern regions of the continent. She describes how collectors employed violent means to remove elements such as columns and door panels from buildings, and how these methods differentiated architectural collecting from conventional collecting. She shows how Western collectors mischaracterized building components as ornament, erasing their architectural character and concealing the evidence of their theft. Dr. Osayimwese discusses how the very act of displacing building parts like floor tiles and woven screen walls has resulted in a loss of knowledge about their original function and argues that because of these removals, scholars have yet to fully grasp the variety and character of African architecture.
Richly illustrated, Africa’s Buildings uncovers the vast scale of cultural displacement perpetrated by the West and proposes a new role for museums in this history, one in which they champion the repatriation of Africa’s architectural heritage and restitution for African communities.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nicole Wegner, "Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nicole Wegner is not a book about peacekeeping practices. This is a book about storytelling, fantasies and the ways that people connect emotionally to myths about peacekeeping. The celebration of peacekeeping as a legitimate and desirable use of military force is expressed through the unproblematised acceptance of militarism.

Introducing a novel framework – martial peace – the book offers an in-depth examination of the Canadian Armed Forces missions to Afghanistan and the use of police violence against Indigenous protests in Canada as case examples where military violence has been justified in the name of peace. It critically investigates the peacekeeper myth and challenges the academic, government and popular beliefs that martial violence is required to sustain peace.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bradley R. Simpson, "The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The idea of self-determination is one of the most significant in modern international politics. For more than a century diplomats, lawyers, scholars, activists, and ordinary people in every part of the globe have wrestled with its meaning and implications for decolonization, human rights, sovereignty, and international order. The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000 (Oxford UP, 2025) argues that there was no one self-determination, but a century-long contest between contending visions of sovereignty and rights that were as varied and changing as the nature of sovereignty itself. In this globe-spanning narrative, Simpson argues that self-determination's meaning has often emerged not just from the United Nations but from the claims of movements and peoples on the margins of international society. Powerful states, he shows, persistently rejected expansive self-determination claims, arguing that these threatened great power conflict, the dissolution of international order, or the unravelling of the world economy.

Pacific Island territories, indigenous peoples, regional and secessionist movements, and transnational solidarity groups, among others, rejected the efforts of large, powerful states to define self-determination along narrow lines. Instead, international historian Bradley R. Simpson shows they offered expansive visions of economic, political, and cultural sovereignty ranging far beyond the movement for decolonization with which they are often associated. As they did so, these movements and groups helped to vernacularize self-determination as a language of social justice and rights for people around the world.

An ambitious work of global breadth on a key geopolitical issue, The First Right transforms how we think about the making of the twentieth century world order and the place of the global South and decolonization in it.

Dr. Bradley R. Simpson is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Romeo, "The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy" (PublicAffairs, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed: a provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy.

Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century - widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of millions of workers around the world - many economists and business leaders still preach dogmas that lack evidence and create political catastrophe: Private markets are always more efficient than public ones; investment capital flows efficiently to necessary projects; massive inequality is the unavoidable side effect of economic growth; people are selfish and will only behave well with the right incentives.

But a growing number of people - academic economists, business owners, policy entrepreneurs, and ordinary people - are rejecting these myths and reshaping economies around the world to reflect ethical and social values. Though they differ in approach, all share a vision of the economy as a place of moral action and accountability. Journalist Nick Romeo has spent years covering the world's most innovative economic and policy ideas for The New Yorker. In The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy (PublicAffairs, 2024), Romeo takes us on an extraordinary journey through the unforgettable stories and successes of people working to build economies that are more equal, just, and livable.

Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily Mendenhall, "Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Inspired by her work with long COVID patients, in Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID (U California Press, 2026) medical anthropologist Dr. Emily Mendenhall traces the story of complex chronic conditions to show why both research and practice fail so many. Mendenhall points out disconnects between the reality of chronic disease—which typically involves multiple intersecting problems resulting in unique, individualized illness—and the assumptions of medical providers, who behave as though chronic diseases have uniform effects for everyone. And while invisible illnesses have historically been associated with white middle-class women, being believed that you are sick is even more difficult for patients whose social identities and lived experiences may not align with dominant medical thought. Weaving together cultural history with intimate interviews, Invisible Illness upholds the experiences of those living with complex illness to expose the failures of the American healthcare system—and how we can do better.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Betto van Waarden, "Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How did politicians deal with mass communication in a rapidly changing society? And how did the performance of public politics both help and hinder democratization? In Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire (Cambridge UP, 2025), Dr. Betto van Waarden explores the emergence of a new type of politician within a system of transnational media politics between 1890 and the onset of the First World War.

These politicians situated media management at the centre of their work, as print culture rapidly expanded to form the fabric of modern life for a growing urban public. Transnational media politics transcended and transformed national politics, as news consumers across borders sought symbolic leaders to make sense of international conflicts. Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire historicizes contemporary debates on media and politics. While transnational media politics partly disappeared with the World Wars and decolonization, these 'publicity politicians' set standards that have defined media politics ever since.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Richard A. Falk and Hans von Sponeck, "Liberating the United Nations: Realism with Hope" (Stanford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The United Nations (UN) has always loomed large in international conflicts, but today accepted wisdom declares that the organization has lost its way. Liberating The United Nations: Realism with Hope (Stanford UP, 2024) is a thorough review of its founding and history that tracks critical junctures that obscured or diverted the path to a powerful and just UN that abides by international law. Based on the extensive expertise of two former UN-insiders, Richard Falk and Hans von Sponeck, the book goes beyond critique and diagnosis, proposing ways to achieve a more effective and legitimate UN. The historical sweep of the book offers a uniquely broad perspective on how the UN has evolved from the time of its establishment, and how that evolution reflects, and was defined by, world politics. The book explores these themes through the specific cases of intervention in Palestine, Iraq, and Syria. Liberating The United Nations hopes to reinvigorate the original vision of the UN by asserting its place in a world of amplifying chauvinistic nationalism. Falk and von Sponeck argue for how important the UN has become, and could be, in aiding with the transnational and global challenges of the present and future, including pandemics, environmental crises, and mass migration.

Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University.

Hans von Sponeck is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and served as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yunus Emre Ozigci, "NATO’s Meaning and Existence: Within the Interstate Intersubjectivity" (Vernon Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

NATO’s Meaning and Existence: Within the Interstate Intersubjectivity (Vernon Press, 2026) a forthcoming 2026 book by Yunus Emre Ozigci, offers a deep analysis of NATO's identity and role, suggesting it's stuck in bureaucratic inertia despite modern crises, aiming to redefine its purpose through exploring shared identity and transformation, particularly in the context of Russia's actions. This scholarly work uses intersubjectivity to understand how NATO's internal dynamics and external relations, especially concerning the Ukraine conflict, shape its meaning beyond mere military power, potentially moving beyond traditional IR theories to explore collective identity and systemic challenges.

In NATO’s Meaning and Existence: Within the Interstate Intersubjectivity (2026), Ozigci treats NATO as an intersubjective phenomenon rather than an objective entity. To him, NATO “does not exist objectively” but rather appears “meaningfully through intersubjective recognition.” His skillful integration of philosophical innovations from such thinkers as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre supports his deep insights into Kenneth Waltz's structural interpretations of the balance of power, John Mearsheimer’s offensive realism, and Robert Keohane's complex interdependence and invites readers to reconsider how alliances exist beyond the surface of policy and power. This work reminds us that NATO’s real strength does not necessarily come from being the most efficient military structure in the world, promoting those who excel at following orders, but rather from its ingenuity, resourcefulness, and unity of purpose. His study provides a rare synthesis of diplomatic experience and philosophical depth, inviting readers to reconsider how alliances exist beyond the surface of policy and power. This is an original, meticulously argued, and intellectually stimulating contribution to both NATO studies and the philosophy of international relations.

Piotr Pietrzak, Ph.D. -- In Statu Nascendi Think Tank

Yunus Emre Ozigci holds a PhD degree in Political Sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain. He graduated from the Galatasaray University (International relations) and completed his MA studies at the University of Ankara (International relations). His research interests and publications cover the IR theory and phenomenology. Since 2000, he has been working as a diplomat in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served, besides various departments of the Ministry, in Algeria, Belgium, Switzerland and Russia. Currently, he is the First Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy in Nairobi and Deputy Permanent Representative to UNON (UNEP and UN-Habitat). ORCID: 0000-0003-3388-7149

Please note: This publication is a personal work. It does not reflect the official views of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laurie Parsons, "Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown" (Manchester UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Climate change is devastating the planet, and globalisation is hiding it. Laurie Parsons's book Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown (Manchester UP, 2023) opens our eyes.

Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant progress on climate change. World leaders are queuing up to proclaim their commitment to tackling the climate crisis, pointing to data that shows the progress they have made. Yet the atmosphere is still warming at a record rate, with devastating effects on poverty and precarity in the world's most vulnerable communities. Are we being deceived? Outsourcing climate breakdown explores the murky practices of exporting a country's environmental impact. A world in which corporations and countries are allowed to maintain a clean, green image while landfills in the world's poorest countries continue to expand and droughts and floods intensify under the auspices of globalisation, deregulation and economic growth. Taking a wide-ranging, culturally engaged approach to the topic, the book shows how this is notonly a technical problem, but a problem of cultural and political systems and structures - from nationalism to economic logic - deeply embedded in our society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gonzalo Lizarralde, "Unnatural Disasters: Why Most Responses to Risk and Climate Change Fail But Some Succeed" (Columbia UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Unnatural Disasters: Why Most Responses to Risk and Climate Change Fail But Some Succeed (Columbia UP, 2021) offers a new perspective on our most pressing environmental and social challenges, revealing the gaps between abstract concepts like sustainability, resilience, and innovation and the real-world experiences of people living at risk. Gonzalo Lizarralde explains how the causes of disasters are not natural but all too human: inequality, segregation, marginalization, colonialism, neoliberalism, racism, and unrestrained capitalism. He tells the stories of Latin American migrants, Haitian earthquake survivors, Canadian climate activists, African slum dwellers, and other people resisting social and environmental injustices around the world. Lizarralde shows that most reconstruction and risk-reduction efforts exacerbate social inequalities. Some responses do produce meaningful changes, but they are rarely the ones powerful leaders have in mind.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Angie Hobbs, "Why Plato Matters Now" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Does Plato matter? An ancient philosopher whose work has inspired and informed countless thinkers and poets across the centuries, his ideas are no longer taught as widely as they once were. But, as Angie Hobbs argues in this clear-sighted book Why Plato Matters Now (Bloomsbury, 2025), that is a mistake.
If we want to understand the world we live in – from democracy, autocracy and fake news to celebrity, cancel culture and what money can and cannot do – there is no better place to start than Plato. Exploring the intersection between the ancient and the modern, Professor Hobbs shows how Plato can help us address key questions concerning the nature of a flourishing life and community, healthcare, love and friendship, heroism, reality, art and myth-making. She also shows us how Plato's adaptation of the Socratic method and dialogue form can enable us to deal with contested issues more constructively.
Plato's methodology, arguments, ideas and vivid images are explained with a clarity suitable both for readers familiar with his work and for those approaching Plato for the first time. This book shows why Plato really matters, now more than ever.

Angie Hobbs is emerita Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. She gained a degree in Classics and a PhD in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and her chief interests are in ancient philosophy and literature, and ethics and political theory from classical thought to the present, and she has published widely in these areas, including Plato and the Hero. She works in a number of policy sectors, and contributes regularly to media around the world, including many appearances on In Our Time on Radio 4; she has spoken at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Athens Democracy Forum, the Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and Westminster Abbey and been the guest on Desert Island Discs and Private Passions. Website here

YouTube Channel: here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stephen Skowronek, "The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Has American democracy outstripped its constitutional accommodations? Faith in the resilience and adaptability of the US Constitution rests on a long history of finding new ways to make the system work. In The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience (University of Chicago Press, 2025), political scientist Stephen Skowronek examines the rearrangements that regenerated the American government in the past and brings that experience to bear on our current predicament. He shows how a constitution framed in writing some 230 years ago can run into serious difficulties directly related to its long and impressive history of adaptation. Skowronek connects questions about the Constitution’s adaptability to the challenges of democratization. For most of American history, serial rearrangements of constitutional relationships widened the government’s purview as a national democracy without giving either nationalism or democracy free rein. Skowronek argues that the politics of adaptation shifted fundamentally with the “Rights Revolution” of the 1960s and `70s when American national democracy approached the inclusion of all its citizens on equal footing. Since then, power and authority have been reconfigured in ways that have steadily magnified conflicts over the essentials of good order. Conservatives aim to dismantle a Constitution that progressives are intent on building upon, and the consensus necessary for a constitutional democracy to function effectively has all but evaporated. No longer a socially bound framework for national action, the Constitution has become an abstract matrix of possibilities, a disembodied opportunity structure open to starkly different, mutually unacceptable futures. Rather than being liberated by this unbound Constitution, the American people now appear entrapped by it. Is it possible that the development of American democracy has exhausted the adaptive capacities of the Constitution? A timely reminder that constitutional democracies do not survive on faith alone, The Adaptability Paradox is a sober appraisal of the unfamiliar ground on which we now tread.

Professor Stephen Skowronek is Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political Science and Professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. He is the author of many books on American Political Development, the presidency, and the administrative state.

Dr Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amitav Acharya, "The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West" (Hachette UK, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—especially China—threaten to unravel today’s Western-led world order. Many fear this would lead to global chaos. But the West has never had a monopoly on order.
Surveying five thousand years of global history, political scientist Amitav Acharya reveals that world order—the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West. Moving from ancient Sumer, India, Greece, and Mesoamerica, through medieval caliphates and Eurasian empires into the present, Acharya shows that humanitarian values, economic interdependence, and rules of inter-state conduct emerged across the globe over millennia. History suggests order will endure even as the West retreats. In fact, the end of Western dominance offers us the opportunity to build a better world, where non-Western nations find more voice, power, and prosperity. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the Rest to forge a more equitable order.

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bruce Berglund, "The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Power" (Triumph Books, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

An eye-opening account of how Russia's leaders have used sports as a political tool to solidify their global power

"Victories in sport do more to cement the nation than a hundred political slogans." This was the pep talk Russian athletes heard in 2000 from their new president, Vladimir Putin. And so, for more than two decades, Putin has used sports like his Soviet predecessors to stoke nationalism at home, boost prestige abroad, and cement his position as leader.

The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Gold is the first book to fully examine the intersection of Russian sports and geopolitical power, from the dominant Soviet teams of past Olympics to recent doping scandals and international sanctions. With new research from Olympic archives, records of the Soviet bloc and current Russian media, historian Bruce Berglund shows how Moscow's leaders have defied the rules of the game for decades as the world's governing bodies turned a blind eye.

Featuring oligarchs, sportocrats, and famous athletes from Olga Korbut to Alex Ovechkin, this is a timely investigation into the gears of power, nationalism, and money that drive the Russian sports machine.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In the thirty years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the lives of disabled people have not improved nearly as much as activists and politicians had hoped. In Crip Negativity (U of Minnesota Press, 2023), J. Logan Smilges shows us what’s gone wrong and what we can do to fix it.

Leveling a strong critique of the category of disability and liberal disability politics, Smilges asks and imagines what horizons might exist for the liberation of those oppressed by ableism—beyond access and inclusion. Inspired by models of negativity in queer studies, Black studies, and crip theory, Smilges proposes that bad crip feelings might help all of us to care gently for one another, even as we demand more from the world than we currently believe to be possible.

J. Logan Smilges (they/them) is assistant professor of English language and literatures at the University of British Columbia and author of Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (Minnesota, 2022).

Clayton Jarrard is a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts. His scholarly engagement spans the subject areas of Cultural Anthropology, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, and Religious Studies. Clayton is also a host for the Un/Livable Cultures podcast.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Summer 1936: Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, is tried for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman. The all-white, all-male jury takes just four and a half minutes to find him guilty. Bethea is hanged near the banks of the Ohio River in Owensboro, Kentucky, with more than twenty thousand white people in attendance. The crowd turns the violent spectacle of Bethea's hanging—the last documented public execution in the United States—into a brutal carnival.

Bethea's story came to author Sonya Lea through her family, and it is through her family that she reckons with its truths. At her grandmother's funeral, Lea received an oral history recorded by a neighbor. In its pages, Lea, who is descended from white Kentuckians on both sides, discovered that two of the spectators at Bethea's execution were her grandparents, teenage newlyweds Sherrel and Frances Ralph. Lea's research would also divulge that she was related to the prosecuting attorney for the Commonwealth, the man considered most responsible for Bethea's hanging.

American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture (University Press of Kentucky, 2025) combines memoir with reportage and cultural criticism to interrogate and complicate the traditional narrative about how lynch culture is created in families, communities, and institutions. The essays in this collection grapple with our complicity in these atrocities—including the agreement in our silences—and demonstrate how we, as descendants, might take responsibility and bring new scrutiny to ancestral and communal crimes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Dietz, "Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender (Routledge, 2023) is a socio-legal study that offers a critique of what it means to self-declare with regard to legal gender. Based on empirical research conducted in Denmark, the book engages in some of the most controversial issues surrounding trans and gender diverse rights. The theoretical analysis draws upon legal consciousness, affect theory, vulnerability and governmentality, to cross jurisdictional boundaries between law and medicine. The book reflects on the limits of progress that legislative reform may make, and the way that increased regulation can actually limit access to rights protections. Broadly transferrable beyond its specific field, this book will be useful to socio-legal scholars, feminist scholars, trans scholars, policy makers and practitioners.

Dr Chris Dietz is a Lecturer at the Centre for Law & Social Justice at The University of Leeds.

Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What happens when liberalism stops feeling like a victory and starts feeling like an exhaustion?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director (acting) Eli Karetny speaks with philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre about liberalism not merely as a political doctrine, but as a lived way of life.

Against the backdrop of rising populism, nationalism, and post-liberal regimes, Lefebvre revisits the liberal tradition—from Locke and Mill to Rawls and Berlin—to argue that liberalism has always contained a moral and existential core. Drawing on John Rawls’s early work and Pierre Hadot’s idea of philosophy as spiritual exercise, the conversation explores freedom and generosity as liberal virtues, the tension between neutrality and perfectionism, and why liberal societies struggle to defend themselves against more overt visions of the good life.

Moving between political theory, international order, nationalism, and spirituality, Karetny and Lefebvre ask whether liberalism can still offer meaning without becoming imperial, moralistic, or coercive—and what liberals stand to lose if they fail to recognize the depth of their own commitments.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hans Kundnani, "Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

"Today’s 'pro-Europeans' would be horrified at the suggestion that their idea of Europe had anything to do with whiteness. In fact, many would find the attempt to link the two baffling and outrageous," writes Hans Kundnani in Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (Oxford UP, 2023).

Yet, he does so - taking the reader on a historical journey through the development of European identity from Christendom to the coincidence of the Enlightenment and the development of colonialism to the pan-European movement that grew out of the first world war and peace project (or was it?) that emerged from the second.

Not only is pro-Europeanism “analogous to nationalism - something like nationalism but on a larger, continental scale," Kundani argues, but the EU itself has “become a vehicle for imperial amnesia" thereby promoting and privileging “whiteness”.

Hans Kundnani is a fellow at the Open Society Foundations Workshop, an associate scholar at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), and a visiting scholar at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School for Social Research. From 2018-22, he was a full-time researcher at Chatham House, including as director of the Europe Programme. Before that, he was a researcher at the German Marshall Fund, the Transatlantic Academy, and the European Council on Foreign Relations. In 2014, he published The Paradox of German Power.

*The author's own book recommendations are Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism by Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) and The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (Penguin Modern Classics, 2006 - first published in 1956)

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bernard Forjwuor, "Critique of Political Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

What is political independence? As a political act, what was it sanctioned to accomplish? Is formal colonialism over, or a condition in the present, albeit mutated and evolved?

In Critique of Political Decolonization (Oxford UP, 2023), Bernard Forjwuor challenges what, in normative scholarship, has become a persistent conflation of two different concepts: political decolonization and political independence. This scholarly volume is an antinormative and critical refutation of the decolonial accomplishment of political independence or self-determination in Ghana. He argues that political independence is insufficiently a decolonial claim because it is framed within the context of a country, where a permanent colonial settlement was never deemed necessary for the consolidation of future colonial political obligations. So, while territorial dissolution was politically engineered by Ghanaians, the colonial merely reconstitutes itself in different legal and ideological forms.

Forjwuor offers new methodological, theoretical, and conceptual approaches to engaging the questions of colonialism, political independence, political decolonization, justice, and freedom, and constructs multiple conceptual bridges between traditional disciplinary fields of inquiry including politics, history, law, African studies, economic history, critical theory, and philosophy and political theory. Using the Ghanaian experience as a rich case study, Forjwuor rethinks what colonialism and decolonization mean, and asserts that decolonization is primarily a question of justice.

Bernard Forjwuor is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is a scholar of black political thought, and his research focuses on the philosophical, critical, and theoretical claims advanced by global black political thinkers. His recent work challenges the ways the colonial and the racial are routinely affirmed as extinguished in the liberal democratic affirmation of sovereignty.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Russell T. McCutcheon, "Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Russell T. McCutcheon's essay collection Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Routledge, 2023) argues that the study of religion must be rethought as an ordinary aspect of social, historical existence, a stance that makes the scholar of religion a critic of cultural and historical practices rather than a caretaker of religious tradition or a font of timeless wisdom and deep meaning.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan Sumption, "The Challenges of Democracy: And the Rule of Law" (Profile Books, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Across the globe, democracy is in crisis - in the UK alone, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypass legal norms.

But how did this happen, and where might we go from here?

Jonathan Sumption cuts through the political noise with acute analysis of the state of democracy today - from the vulnerabilities of international law to the deepening suppression of democracy activism in Hong Kong, and from the complexities of human rights legislation to the defence of freedom of speech.

Timely, incisive and wholly original, Challenges of Democracy: And the Rule of Law (Profile Books, 2026) applies the brilliance of 'the cleverest man in Britain' to the most urgent and far-reaching political issue of our day.

Jonathan Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice for six years. He is the author of the Sunday Times Bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize.

Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy why, he realized that to answer her honestly, he had to confront what almost killed him—the weight of being a Black man in America; of bearing witness, as a journalist, to relentless Black death; and of a family history scarred by enslavement, lynching, the Great Migration, the also insidious racism of the North, and gun violence that stole the lives of two great-uncles, a grandfather, a stepbrother, and two cousins.
In this powerful narrative, Lee weaves together three strands: the long and bloody history of African Americans and guns; his work as a chronicler of gun violence, tallying the costs and riches generated by both the legal and illegal gun industries; and his own life story. With unflinching honesty he takes readers on a journey, from almost being caught up in gun violence as a young man, to tracing the legacy of the Middle Passage in Ghana through his ancestors’ footsteps, to confronting the challenges of representing his people in an overwhelmingly white and often hostile media world, and most importantly, to celebrating the enduring strength of his family and community.
In A Thousand Ways to Die (St. Martin’s Press, 2025) Lee answers Nola and all who seek a more just America. He shares the hard truths and complexities of the Black experience, but he also celebrates the beauty and resilience that is Nola’s legacy.

In this episode we discuss the work of Dana Tenille Weeks. You can hear her talk about the reimagination of future at Episode 22 of her podcast, The Rest of Us.

Find Trymaine Lee at his website and on Instagram.

Host Sullivan Summer is at her website, Instagram, and on Substack.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Beenash Jafri, "Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity.

Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Caitlin Schroering, "Global Solidarities Against Water Grabbing: Without Water, We Have Nothing" (Manchester UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Conflicts over water are human-caused events with socio-political and economic causes. From Brazil's Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB) to environmental activists in Pittsburgh, people are coming together to fight for control of their water. In Global Solidarities against water grabbing: Without water, we have nothing, Caitlin Schroerer examines how movements are communicating and organizing against water privatization and other forms of water grabbing, and explores how movements engage with and learn from each other. Water is at the heart of this book, but Global solidarities against water grabbing is as much about collective struggle and popular organization as it is about water. Based on extensive fieldwork with two movements fighting against water privatization, the book uses anticolonial and feminist research methods to show how global communications and organizing are occurring around water and how Global North movements are engaging with and learning from the Global South and vice versa.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University, where he specializes in the cultural and interpretive study of space, behavior, and identity. His scholarship examines how designed environments shape social interaction, connectedness, and moral life across diverse settings. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His current research projects include ethnographic studies of escape rooms as emotion-structured environments, the use of urban aesthetics in rural downtown districts, and the lived experience of belongingness among college and university students. To learn more about his work, visit his personal website, Google Scholar profile, or connect with him on Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social) or Twitter/X (@ProfessorJohnst). He can also be reached directly by email.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.
That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.
Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.
In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history.

Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City.

Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Leo R. Chavez, "The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation" (Stanford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, both US-born and immigrants, are an invading force bent on destroying the American way of life. Leo R. Chavez challenges the basic tenets of this assumption and other myths of the "Latino threat," providing a critical investigation into the fears and prejudices that are used to malign an entire population. In this updated and expanded third edition of his groundbreaking book, Chavez incorporates Donald Trump's emergence in American political life, with particular focus on the US-Mexico border as a site of political theater and the further sharpening of anti-Latino and anti-immigration rhetoric in public discourse. He also includes new discussions of "anchor babies," Dreamers and DACA, Latina reproduction and white replacement theory, and the emotional and psychological effects of negative political rhetoric on those whom it targets. Through trenchant analysis, this book reexamines urgent questions about what it means to be American.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pierre D'Alancaisez and Amir Naaman, "Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual" (Verdurin, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

With contributions by Blake Smith, Roger Lancaster, David Moulton, Stephen Adubato, Amir Naaman, Ran Heilbrunn, Pierre d'Alancaisez, Travis Jeppesen, Oliver Davis, Yotam Feldman, and Marcas Lancaster.

Today's world of PrEP, Pride parades, and gay marriage eclipses the wildest dreams of the sexual revolution. While it was formerly deviant to promote gay lifestyles, it is now 'problematic' to suggest that not all departures from the norm are in the homosexual's best interest. Amidst this excess, a new wave of discontentment rises among the once-keenest proponents of sexual progress: gay men.

What happened in the transition from inversion to homosexuality, gayness, and queerness? Why do some gay men lament the freedoms afforded to them by sexual and social acceptance? Bold and daring, the essays in Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual (Verdurin, 2025) reflect on the vicious cycle of debasement, acceptance, sacrifice, and liberation that homosexuality has been stuck in for longer than it wishes to acknowledge.

As gay culture fails to confront its history, it adopts hollow narratives of struggle. Some gay men fear losing their freedoms, some advocate for sexual restraint, while others, lost in the ever-expanding LGBTQIA+ 'community, ' continue to make maximalist ideological demands of those outside. These responses mark a fracture in gay life. If there is some essence to homosexual desire, how is it being served by today's gay culture and queer politics? Has the gay man - homosexual, queer, or inverted - rendered himself obsolete?

Bringing together contributions by eleven leading thinkers, theorists, and critics who examine the consequences of pink-washing history, denial of sexual realities, and the memetic nature of desire, Inversion reclaims homosexuality's lost depth in an era of profound discontent.

Fearless in its critique and challenging in its proposals, Inversion considers the cultural and political aspects of gay life after homosexuality as it battles with queerness and the allure of a reactionary return, pharmacologically fueled sexual degeneration, and existential dread.

Pierre d'Alancaisez is a critic, curator, and researcher interested in the changing role of art and its social institutions. His writing has appeared in The Critic, ArtReview, The Spectator, and Compact.

Amir Naaman worked as a mailman, a cook, a bookseller, a comics publisher, a house painter and is now a personal trainer at the gym. His first novel The Hummingbirds, a homosexual horror story, was published in 2020.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Katrina Navickas, "Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England" (Reaktion, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A radical history of England, Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katrina Navickas is a gripping overview of increasingly restrictive policing and legislation against protest in public spaces. It tells the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across the country. Dr. Navickas reveals how protesters claimed these spaces as their own commons, resisting their continuing enclosure and exclusion by social and political elites. She investigates famous and less well-known demonstrations and protest marches, from early democracy, trade union movements and the Suffragettes to anti-fascist, Black rights and environmental campaigners in more recent times. Contested Commons offers positive as well as troubling lessons on how we protect the right to protest.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mirya Holman, "The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy" (Temple UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy (Temple UP, 2025) by Dr. Mirya Holman explicates the purpose, role, and consequences of appointed boards in U.S. cities. Dr. Holman finds cities create strong boards that generate policy, consolidate power, and defend the interests of businesses and wealthy and white residents. In contrast, weak boards pacify agitation from marginalized groups to give the appearance of inclusivity, democratic deliberation, and redistributional policymaking. Cities preserve this strong board/weak board dichotomy through policymaking power, institutional design, and by controlling who serves on the boards.

The Hidden Face of Local Power examines the role of boards in the development of urban political institutions, the allocation of power in local politics, and the persistence of inequality. Holman enhances our understanding of how political institutions have contributed to racism and their impact on how people use and live in urban spaces. In her shrewd analysis of the creation and use of boards as political institutions, Dr. Holman proves that neither weak or strong boards achieves the goal they are advertised to achieve. In doing so, she provides a new view of the failures of local democracy along with ideas for improvement.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

161 One Battle After Another: A West Newton Cinema Discussion with Peter Coviello and Ethan Warren (JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema.

Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about "PTA" and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things examined by Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in what follows, a very unusual live Recall This Book conversation.

Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, a consolidation of the counter-insurgency ("drugs, sacrament of the 60's, Evil of the 80's) state from the post-1960's into the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically everything PTA movie but Hard Eight (1996; despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the over-the-topness of the Christmas Adventurer's Club.

Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Although Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, he sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy.

Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is a River Alive?: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.

Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada--imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane's house, a stream who flows through his own years and days.

Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers--and always has.

Robert Macfarlane's best-selling books include Is a River Alive? and Underland. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has won many prizes around the world. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Darius Cuplinskas is director at The Ideas Workshop of the Open Society Foundations. He is based in London.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yoram Hazony, "Conservatism: A Rediscovery" (Regnery Publishing, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Conservatism needs to be rediscovered. That is, it needs to be differentiated from the post WWII concept of liberal democracy and return to its traditional three pillars of religion, nationalism, and economic growth. And it needs to be thought of as Anglo-American conservatism, rooted in the tradition of the English Constitution going back to such thinkers as John Fortescue (c. 1394 –1479) and John Selden (1584 –1654). We need to be a God-fearing nation, with nation and religion at the center of our national belief system. We must live conservative lives.

These are some of the arguments made by the political theorist and public intellectual Yoram Hazony in his 2022 book Conservatism: A Rediscovery (Regnery Publishing, 2022).

It is a provocative book that even many conservatives may take issue with.

For example, Hazony puts a great deal of emphasis on the importance of hierarchy both within the family and in society at large. Given that a good deal of the rationale of right-wing thinking in recent years has been predicated on the necessity for non-violent rebellion against the establishment in the Republican party and the left-wing dominance of academia, Hazony’s arguments may not be embraced by large swaths of the right. But to get conservatives and those on the right who do not identify as such thinking about what they stand for, what they want and how to get it is one of the goals of the book. It succeeds.

To those who might blanch at the embrace of religion in the public sphere, Hazony argues that for all intents and purposes the increasingly powerful political philosophy woke neo-Marxism is itself a religion. Hazony criticizes the right for acquiescing in the relegation of traditional religion to the private sphere. He argues robustly for religion, particularly Christianity, to serve as a countervailing force to wokeism. In the face of a progressive order that leaves people in the position of being unable to distinguish between a man and a woman, Hazony advocates for such measures as ending the ban on the Bible and God in the public school classroom.

This is a full-throated defense of conservatism and is, therefore, must reading for those on all sides of the political spectrum. Hazony addresses the need for the idea of a nation, its cohesion, and its inherited traditions. For that, he says, you need conservatism. And by conservatism, he means a public conservatism, a public traditionalism in those places where there is a majority that will support it. Hazony maintains that our culture must support parents and congregations in the work of the transmission of values that ensure respect for tradition, nation and hierarchy.

This book is a substantive intellectual history of conservative thought and profiles significant figures in the conservative movement (e.g., William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk). It is also a clarion call for those who claim to be conservatives to live genuinely conservative lives. Hazony urges conservatives to stand up for principles like the public acknowledgment of God and such core values as the honor due parents by their adult children, loyalty within marriage, and observance of the sabbath. In the Hazony version of conservatism, all ten of the Ten Commandments ought to be the basis for our country’s social and political life.

He includes in his book a memoir of his days at Princeton University in the 1980s, where a campus culture of loose living and rampant drinking led him to seek out a life of faith and family. College students of today and their parents would do well to read this moving chronicle of a young person surrounded by decadence who escapes its ravages via a solid marriage and a return to traditional religion.

Let’s hear from Mr. Hazony about his book and the path forward for conservatives and America itself.

Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a crisis of liberalism. The apparent failures of liberal thinking are a starting point for an inquiry into emergent ways of living, acting, and making art in the company of others.

What happens when the framework of the nation-state, the figure of the enterprising individual, and the premise of limitless development can no longer be counted on to produce a world worth living in? It is increasingly clear that these commonplace liberal conceptions have failed to improve life in any lasting way. In fact, they conceal fundamental connections to enslavement, colonization, moral debt, and ecological devastation.

Nicholas Gamso speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the ills of liberalism and art’s role in deciding on what may come after the impasse.

Nicholas Gamso is a writer and academic who works across theory, visual culture, performance, and space/place. He’s an editor at Places.

Kara Walker, A Subtlety, 2014
Manaf Halbouni, Monument, 2017
Warren Kanders controversy at the Whitney
Triple Chaser by Forensic Architecture
My conversations with and on Forensic Architecture
Wolfgang Tillmans and his anti-Brexit campaign
Ren Hang

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the urgency of this topic. Today we welcome philosopher Jake Monaghan to discuss his book, Just Policing (Oxford UP, 2023), which applies interdisciplinary insights to examine the morality of policing.

Though the injustices of our world seemingly require some kind of policing, the police are often sources of injustice themselves. But this is not always the result of intentionally or negligently bad policing. Sometimes it is an unavoidable result of the injustices that emerge from interactions with other social systems. This raises an important question of just policing: how should police respond to the injustices built into the system? Just Policing attempts an answer, offering a theory of just policing in non-ideal contexts.

Monaghan argues that police discretion is not only unavoidable, but in light of non-ideal circumstances, valuable. This claim conflicts with a widespread but inchoate view of just policing, the legalist view that finds justice in faithful enforcement of the criminal code.

But the criminal code leaves policing seriously underdetermined; full enforcement is neither possible nor desirable. Police need an alternative normative framework for evaluating and guiding their exercise of power.

Just Policing critiques popular approaches to police abolitionism while defending normative limits on police power. The book offers a defense of police discretion against common objections and evaluates controversial issues in order maintenance, such as the policing of "vice" and homelessness, democratic control over policing, community policing initiatives, police collaborations and alternatives like mental health response teams, and possibilities for structural reform.

Jake Monaghan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Buffalo. His research is primarily in moral and political philosophy.

He is interviewed by Tom McInerney, an international lawyer, scholar, and strategist, who has worked to advance rule of law and development internationally for 25 years. He has taught in the Rule of Law for Development Program at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since 2011. He writes the Rights, Regulation and Rule of Law newsletter on Substack.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lauren E. M. Everett, "Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica's Rent-Controlled Housing" (Temple UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals’ and communities’ lives. Dr. Lauren Everett’s Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica’s Rent-Controlled Housing (Temple UP, 2025) shows how rent control impacts the lives of the renters themselves. Dr. Everett interviews residents about their experiences in low- and middle-income households in rent-controlled private market housing in Santa Monica, CA, a city where Everett was born and raised but can no longer afford to live.

Dr. Everett seeks to understand the extent to which individuals feel at home or not at home and what factors contribute to those experiences. She also explores the nexus of Santa Monica’s tenant protection policies, infrastructure, and resources and the extent to which they inform stability—both perceived and actual—and life decisions.

The first scholarly book to take a tenant-centered approach to examining the benefits and problems of rent control, Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land examines the residential experience in this specific local context and explains how it relates to policy and other externalities in cities where homeownership is not financially viable for most renters.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can Feminism be African?: A Conversation with Minna Salami

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Transcript of the interview

Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and structures of power. She formerly served as Programme Chair and Senior Fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, where she led the Black Feminism and the Polycrisis programme. Her work sits at the intersection of ideas, culture, and systems thinking, with a commitment to making complex theories accessible through books, essays, public speaking, and creative projects.

She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (Harper Collins, 2025) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury, 2020), which has been translated into multiple languages. Her writing also appears in numerous anthologies and educational publications exploring feminism, African philosophy, media, and cultural criticism.

Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Ideas Letter, Project Syndicate, and The Philosopher, and she has delivered talks at global institutions including TEDx, the Institute of Arts and Ideas, the European Commission, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Yale, and Singularity University at NASA.

Salami was the creative director of the short film Black Feminism and the Polycrisis, which won the Silver Award for Public Service and Activism at the 2024 Lovie Awards.

From 2019 to 2022, she co-directed Activate, an intersectional feminist movement that supported minoritised women in politics and community organising through visibility campaigns, mentoring, and fundraising. The initiative played a key role in shifting narratives and resources toward a more inclusive political landscape in the UK.

She has also worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, advised governments on gender equality, developed national school curricula, and curated cultural events at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Her blog, MsAfropolitan, launched in 2010, has reached over a million readers and remains a platform for exploring feminist and African-centred approaches to contemporary life.

Salami is a Full Member of the Club of Rome, a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves on the advisory boards of the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State University and Public Humanities at Cambridge University Press, as well as the council of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Links to References:
Apart Together – essay on Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire’s radical vision for the world

Africa’s Populist Trap for The Ideas Letter

The Niger River and the Dearth of History: Deconstructing the Myths of Mungo Park by Ezenwa E. Olumba

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

160* Hannah Arendt's Refugee Politics (JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

John's “Arendt's Refugee Politics ” came out in Public Books in early November. He made the case that his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt is an opponent both of identity politics and also of a cosmpolitan universalism that is blind to all the differences (of race, gender, belief) that make us who though not what we are. Going back to one of the first pieces she published in English, a 1943 essay from Menorah called "We Refugees", he reflected on how amazingly Arendt was able to air her unease about militant Zionism at the same time she warned fellow arrivals in America from rushing to disguise their origins.

Recall this Book 153 is simply John reading the article aloud. It is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side) in soliloquy. You can consult footnotes and a read a transcript by heading back to the article in its original form here.

Reach out and let us know if you think it should be the first of many, or simply a one-off!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Democracy and Bullshit with Hélène Landemore

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus on her 2020 book, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2020).

Bullshit is a feature of both democracies and dictatorships alike, but it takes different forms. In democracies, while citizens enjoy the freedom of speech and the right to vote, a range of forces often conspire to limit their real power in favor of competing elites. The political and economic elite’s toolkit includes the art of bullshit—the persuasive use of language without regard for truth. Whether meritocratic or populist, elites alike have mastered this form of manipulation, amplified by modern tools of dissemination and authority.

To help us understand the challenges that bullshit poses to democratic citizens, I’m pleased to welcome Hélène Landemore.

Hélène Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cory Doctorow on Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Caroline Jack, "Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals how American capitalism has been promoted in the most ephemeral of materials: public service announcements, pamphlets, educational films, and games—what Caroline Jack calls “sponsored economic education media.” These items, which were funded by corporations and trade groups who aimed to “sell America to Americans,”
found their way into communities, classrooms, and workplaces, and onto the airwaves, where they promoted ideals of “free enterprise” under the cloaks of public service and civic education. They offered an idealized vision of US industrial development as a source of patriotic optimism, framed business management imperatives as economic principles, and conflated the privileges granted to corporations by the law with foundational political rights held by individuals. This rhetoric remains dominant—a harbinger of the power of disinformation that so besets us today. Jack reveals the funding, production, and distribution that together entrenched a particular vision of corporate responsibility—and, in the process, shut out other hierarchies of value and common care.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joseph Stiglitz, "The Origins of Inequality" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. He is a brilliant academic, capped by sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the Nobel Peace Prize, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and more than fifty other universities, and elected not only to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters but the Royal Society and the British Academy; a public servant, who served as Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, headed international commissions for the UN and France, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor and Australia's Sydney Peace Prize; a public intellectual whose numerous books on vital topics have been best sellers.
What brought him to economics were his concerns about the inequality and discrimination he saw growing up. Wanting to understand what drives it and what can be done about it has been his lifelong passion. This book gathers together and extends to new frontiers this lifelong work, drawing upon the challenges and insights of each of these phases of his career.
In a still very widely cited paper written fifty years ago, Stiglitz set forth the fundamental framework for analyzing intergenerational transfer of wealth and advantage, which plays a central role in persistent inequality. That and subsequent work, developed most fully here for the first time, described today's inequality as a result of centrifugal forces increasing inequality and centripetal forces reducing it. In recent decades, the centrifugal forces have strengthened, the centripetal forces weakened. His general theory provides a framework for understanding the marked growth in inequality in recent decades, and for devising policies to reduce it.
A central message is that ever-increasing inequality is not inevitable. Inequality is, in a fundamental sense, a choice. Stiglitz explains that inequality does not largely arise from differences in savings rates between capitalists and others, though that may play a role (as Piketty, Marx, and Kaldor suggest); but rather, it originates importantly from the rules of the game, which have weakened the bargaining power of workers as they have increased the market power of corporations. He also explains how monetary authorities have contributed to increasing wealth inequality, and how, unless something is done about it, likely changes in technology such as AI and robotization will make matters worse. He describes policies that can simultaneously reduce inequality and improve economic performance.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr.

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922–1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to 1980, Diggs, Michigan’s first Black member of Congress, was the only federal official to attend the trial of Emmett Till’s killers, worked behind the scenes with Martin Luther King Jr., and founded the Congressional Black Caucus. He was also the chief architect of legislation that restored home rule to Washington, DC, and almost single-handedly ignited the American anti-apartheid movement in the 1960s.

Drawing on extensive archival research, including Diggs’s rarely seen personal papers, FBI documents, and original interviews with family members and political associates, political scientist Dr. Marion Orr reveals that Diggs practiced a politics of strategic moderation. Dr. Orr argues that this quiet approach was more effective than the militant race politics practiced by Adam Clayton Powell and more appealing than the conservative Chicago-style approach of William Dawson—two of Diggs’s better-known Black contemporaries. Vividly written and deeply researched, House of Diggs is the first biography of Congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the most consequential Black federal legislators in US history. Congressman Diggs was a legislative lion whose unfortunate downfall punctuated his distinguished career and pushed him and his historic accomplishments out of sight. Now, for the first time, House of Diggs restores him to his much-deserved place in the history of American politics.

Our guest is: Dr. Marion Orr, who is the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown University. He specializes in urban politics, race and ethnic politics, and African-American politics.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who produces the Academic Life podcast. She is a dissertation and grad student coach, and a developmental editor for humanities scholars at all stages of their careers. She writes the Academic Life Newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.Com.

Playlist for listeners:

The End of White Politics

The Vice-President's Black Wife

No Common Ground

The Social Constructions of Race

Smithsonian American Women

The First and Last King of Haiti

Of Bears and Ballots

Never Caught

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And get free bonus content HERE.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Liam Graham, "Physics Fixes All the Facts" (Springer Nature, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interactions of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic molecules. You emerge from the cells of your body. Not since chaos has a concept from physics spread like wildfire to other disciplines. Emergence can be found from chemistry to economics; from psychology to ecology. At its heart is the alluring idea that there's more to the world than physics, that there is a holistic component to nature, an edge of mystery.

"Physics Fixes All the Facts" starts by taking you on a tour through a fascinating world of complexity, exploring phenomena from the inside of an atomic nucleus to bacterial behaviour to the ability of your thoughts to affect the world. These examples are used along with a thorough exploration of the philosophical literature to untangle the notoriously poorly defined concept of emergence. This reveals something surprising: the term emergence is redundant. In its weak form it is so weak that it applies to everything. In its strong form it is so restrictive that it is like the belief that there are pixies in your garden, impossible to exclude but not worth spending your time on. Emergence either applies to all systems or to none. Rather than telling us something about the nature of the world, it is an illusion, an artefact of our cognitive limitations.

The past decade has seen a dozen or so monographs and collections about emergence, almost all resolutely supportive of the concept. This book aims to redress the balance. But it is more than just a campaign against the idea of emergence. Graham presents a framework called Austere Physicalism and argues that it is the only coherent way to view the world. He uses this framework to reinterpret so-called emergent phenomena and investigates its wider implications for science. In this radically materialist view, we are nothing but physical systems among others. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" ends by exploring what this means for our sense of free will and consciousness.

The book will appeal to academics in fields which use the concepts of complexity or emergence. Scientists and philosophers alike will find unexpected and exciting ideas in these pages. But the target audience is much broader including students who want to add context to their studies and the intellectually curious with some scientific background.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carol Mason, "From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Antiabortion stories, images, and policies have primed Americans to embrace attitudes and politics once deemed extreme. Abroad, US antiabortion tactics, personnel, and funds have contributed to a global rise of the Right.
From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary (University of California Press, 2025) is a scholar’s story of why and how abortion foes join other militants in waging war against the federal government. Reflecting on her thirty years of analyzing the intersections of race, reproduction, and right-wing movements, Carol Mason examines primary antiabortion sources that influenced political currents of the last fifty years. From Cold War conspiracism and apocalyptic fundamentalism to anti-statist terrorism, Tea Party populism, and MAGA insurrection, opposing abortion has come to imperil democracy worldwide.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Muhammad H. Zaman, "Infected: How Power, Politics, and Privilege Use Science Against the World’s Most Vulnerable" (The New Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Infected: How Power, Politics, and Privilege Use Science Against the World’s Most Vulnerable (The New Press, 2025), Professor Muhammad H. Zaman reveals the troubling history of how science and public health have been manipulated to serve the interests of power. Moving from the U.S.–Mexico border to Pakistan, from the Tuskegee syphilis trials to COVID-19 vaccine disinformation campaigns, the book traces a pattern in which infection becomes a weapon of exclusion, exploitation, and control. With clarity and urgency, Zaman demonstrates that the problem lies not in science itself, but in the ways it can be co-opted to marginalize, stigmatize, and even endanger the very people it is meant to protect. At once historical and contemporary, Infected is a searing call to recognize the ethical stakes of global health, and to build systems that resist the misuse of knowledge against those who can least afford its betrayal.

In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Professor Muhammad H. Zaman to discuss how power, politics, and privilege use science against the world’s most vulnerable.
Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and transferred injustice through political and financial architectures.

In Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment (Bristol University Press/Policy Press, 2024) Dr. Joshua Castellino presents a five-point plan aimed at system redress through reparations that addresses the colonially induced climate crisis through equitable and sustainable means.

In highlighting the structural legacy of colonial crimes, Dr. Castellino provides insights into the complexities of contemporary societies, showing how legal frameworks could foster a fairer, more just world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

brian bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing? In this clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin of capitalism—function and exist, organizer and author brian bean presents a clear case for the abolition of policing and capitalism.

Their End Is Our Beginning traces the roots and development of policing in global capitalism through colonial rule, racist enslavement, and class oppression, along the way arguing how police power can be challenged and, ultimately, abolished. bean draws from extensive interviews with activists from Mexico to Ireland to Egypt, all of whom share compelling and knowledgeable perspectives on what it takes to—even if temporarily—take down the cops and build a thriving community-organized society, free from the police. The lessons they offer bring nuance to the meaning of “solidarity” and clarity to what “abolition” and “revolution” look like in practice.

Featuring illustrations by Chicago-based artist Charlie Aleck, Their End Is Our Beginning is an incendiary book that offers a socialist analysis of policing and the capitalist state, a vital discussion of the contours of abolition at large, and the revolutionary logic needed for liberation.

Guest: brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International Viewpoint, and more. In addition to Their End Is Our Beginning, brian coedited and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, also published by Haymarket Books.

Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eram Alam, "The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare" (JHU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

For more than 60 years, the United States has trained fewer physicians than it needs, relying instead on the economically expedient option of soliciting immigrant physicians trained at the expense of other countries. The passage of the Hart–Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expedited the entry of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) from postcolonial South Asia and sent them to provide care in shortage areas throughout the United States. Although this arrangement was conceived as temporary, over the decades it has become a permanent fixture of the medical system, with FMGs comprising at least a quarter of the physician labor force since the act became law.

This cohort of practitioners has not been extensively studied, rendering the impacts of immigration and foreign policy on the everyday mechanics of US health care obscure. In The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, Dr. Alam foregrounds global dynamics embedded in the medical system to ask how and why Asian physicians—and especially practitioners from South Asia—have become integral to US medical practice and ubiquitous in the US public imaginary. Drawing on transcripts of congressional hearings; medical, scientific, and social scientific literature; ethnographies; oral histories; and popular media, Dr. Alam explores the enduring consequences of postcolonial physician migration. Combining theoretical and methodological insights from a range of disciplines, this book analyzes both the care provided by immigrant physicians as well as the care extended to them as foreigners.

Our guest is: Dr. Eram Alam, who specializes in the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on globalization, race, migration, and health during the twentieth century. She is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. She received her PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a BA and BS from Northwestern University and a MA from the University of Chicago.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a developmental editor, and the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes, or by donating here. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nancy Neiman, "Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures" (Routledge, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Nov 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A series of market-related crises over the past two decades – financial, environmental, health, education, poverty – reinvigorated the debate about markets and social justice. Since then, counter-hegemonic movements all over the globe are attempting to redefine markets and the meaning of economic enterprise in people’s daily lives. Assessments of market outcomes tend toward the polemical, with capitalists and socialists, globalization advocates and anti-globalization movements, those on the political right and those on the left, all facing off to argue the benefits or harms brought about by markets. Yet not enough attention has been paid to analyzing the conditions under which markets result in just outcomes.

Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures (Routledge, 2020) explores how culture, politics, and ideology help shape market incentives in an attempt to reclaim the language of economic rationality and the policymaking legitimacy that accompanies it. Through a variety of case studies – labor relations in the U.S. meatpacking industry, the globalization process in Juaìrez, Mexico, financial reform in Cuba, and an interfaith Ugandan coffee cooperative – this book provides a framework for understanding the conditions under which markets promote just or unjust outcomes (e.g., discrimination, income inequality, environmental degradation, or racial justice, human rights, and equitable growth).

This book touches on subject matter as varied as food, religion, banking, and race and gender equality, from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It offers an analysis of markets based on community rather than pure individualism that has the potential to change the way we think about economic rationality. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars in political science, economics, sociology, geography, gender studies, critical race studies, environmental studies, and all those interested in the critique of mainstream economics and neoliberal logic.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Radio ReOrient 13.3: “Why Palestine Activism & Resistance Matter,” with Hatem Bazian and Ismail Patel, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Marchella Ward

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward spoke with Ismail Patel and Hatem Bazian about Pro-Palestinian resistance and the nature of protests - from the Iraq war demonstrations to the recent protests after the events of October 7th 2023. This conversation extended into the nature of colonial projects of occupation and the role coloniality still plays in conflicts today. Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian scholar in the Departments of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California Berkley. He is also editor in chief of the Islamophobia Studies journal and president of the International Islamophobia Studies Research Association. He has been active in the struggle for Palestinian liberation at least since the 1990s when he founded the first chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley. Ismail Patel is the founder of the Friends of Al Aqsa, an UK based NGO which organises politically for the liberation of Palestine. The Friends of Al Aqsa work with MPs, grassroots organisers and educators to advocate for political change and organise events including the Palestine Expo.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Democratic Dialogues: Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A podcast from Cornell University’s Brooks School of Public Policy Center on Global Democracy

About the Podcast

Each week, co-hosts Rachel Beatty Riedl and Esam Boraey bring together leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore the challenges and possibilities facing democracy around the world. Produced by Cornell’s Center on Global Democracy, Democratic Dialogues bridges academic research with real-world debates — from democratic backsliding and authoritarian resurgence to civic resistance, renewal, and reform. We look at new books, groundbreaking articles, and the ideas reshaping how we understand and practice democracy today.

Listen on YouTube, NBN, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 1

Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries

This week, we feature an episode with Kenneth Roberts, Jennifer McCoy, and Murat Somer, joining co-hosts Rachel Riedl and Esam Boraey to discuss their collaborative article, “Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries,” recently published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Together, they unpack how democracies don’t collapse overnight, but instead erode through different pathways — from executive aggrandizement to elite collusion — and how societies can resist or even partially recover. The conversation examines how these dynamics unfold in contexts as varied as Latin America, Turkey, Hungary, and the United States, and what practical lessons citizens and policymakers can draw today. This is an essential conversation for understanding how democracies falter, and how collective action, civic mobilization, and institutional renewal can push them back from the brink.

Books, Links, & Articles

“Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2025)
Jennifer McCoy & Murat Somer, Pernicious Polarization and Its Global Impact
Kenneth Roberts, Populism, Political Mobilization, and the Latin American Left
Rachel Beatty Riedl, Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Institutions in Africa

Upcoming Episodes

Our next episode features Susan C. Stokes (University of Chicago) discussing her book The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies. Stay tuned for an in-depth conversation on why democratic leaders sometimes turn against the institutions that empower them — and what can be done to safeguard democracy in an era of uncertainty.

Subscribe and follow us on YouTube and social media for new releases every month.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael Lazarus, "Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx" (Stanford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx by Michael Lazarus

Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a way of confronting the impoverished ethical quality of life we face under capitalism. Interpreting Marx anew as an ethical thinker, Absolute Ethical Life provides crucial resources for understanding how freedom and rational agency are impacted by a social world formed by value under capitalism, with consequences for philosophy today.

Michael Lazarus situates Marx within a shared tradition of ethical inquiry, placing him in close dialogue with Aristotle and Hegel. Lazarus traces the ethical and political dimensions of Marx's work missed by Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, two of the most profound critics of modern politics and ethics. Ultimately, the book claims that Marx's value-form theory is both a continuation of Aristotelian and Hegelian themes and at the same time his most distinctive theoretical achievement.

In this normative interpretation of Marx, Lazarus integrates recent moral philosophy with a historically specific analysis of capitalism as a social form of life. He challenges contemporary political and economic theory to insist that any conception of modern life needs to account for capitalism. With a robust critique of capitalism derived from the determinations of what Marx calls the "form of value," Lazarus argues for an ethical life beyond capital.

Michael Lazarus is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Political Economy. Before coming to King’s College London, he was Deakin University Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute and a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier, "Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

AI is changing democracy. We still get to decide how.
AI’s impact on democracy will go far beyond headline-grabbing political deepfakes and automated misinformation. Everywhere it will be used, it will create risks and opportunities to shake up long-standing power structures.
In this highly readable and advisedly optimistic book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (MIT Press, 2025), security technologist Bruce Schneier and data scientist Nathan Sanders cut through the AI hype and examine the myriad ways that AI is transforming every aspect of democracy—for both good and ill.
The authors describe how the sophistication of AI will fulfill demands from lawmakers for more complex legislation, reducing deference to the executive branch and altering the balance of power between lawmakers and administrators. They show how the scale and scope of AI is enhancing civil servants’ ability to shape private-sector behavior, automating either the enforcement or neglect of industry regulations. They also explain how both lawyers and judges will leverage the speed of AI, upending how we think about law enforcement, litigation, and dispute resolution.
Whether these outcomes enhance or degrade democracy depends on how we shape the development and use of AI technologies. Powerful players in private industry and public life are already using AI to increase their influence, and AIs built by corporations don’t deliver the fairness and trust required by democratic governance. But, steered in the right direction, AI’s broad capabilities can augment democratic processes and help citizens build consensus, express their voice, and shake up long-standing power structures.
Democracy is facing new challenges worldwide, and AI has become a part of that. It can inform, empower, and engage citizens. It can also disinform, disempower, and disengage them. The choice is up to us. Schneier and Sanders blaze the path forward, showing us how we can use AI to make democracy stronger and more participatory.

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist focused on making policymaking more participatory. His research spans machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. He has served in fellowships at the Massachusetts legislature and the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Deborah Gordon, "No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World (Oxford University Press, 2021), Deborah Gordon shows that no two oils or gases are environmentally alike. Each has a distinct, quantifiable climate impact. While all oils and gases pollute, some are much worse for the climate than others. In clear, accessible language, Gordon explains the results of the Oil Climate Index Plus Gas (OCI+), an innovative, open-source model that estimates global oil and gas emissions. Gordon identifies the oils and gases from every region of the globe–– along with the specific production, processing, and refining activities–– that are the most harmful to the planet, and proposes innovative solutions to reduce their climate footprints.

Global climate stabilization cannot afford to wait for oil and gas to run out. No Standard Oil shows how we can take immediate, practical steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the crucial oil and gas sector while making sustainable progress in transitioning to a carbon-free energy future.

Deborah Gordon is a senior principal in the Climate Intelligence Program at RMI where she leads the Oil and Gas Solutions Initiative. Gordon also serves as a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and the principal investigator for the Oil Climate Project.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action" (Haymarket, 2019)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action (2019), published as part of the Historical Materialism book series from Brill and Haymarket books. The book takes on the theories of Marx and Gramsci to develop a philosophical triad of subalternity-antagonism-autonomy as a way of studying political subjectification under oppressive conditions and the potential for resistance. The book then looks at political developments in South and Latin America, trying to understand the underlying dynamics of both where it’s coming from, and what its possibilities are for anticapitalist resistance.

Massimo Modonesi is professor and chair of the Political and Social Sciences Faculty at the Autonomous National University in Mexico, and is the author of numerous books on political theory and history in Latin America, his most recent in English being Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy: Constructing the Political Subject. He is a member of the coordinating committee of the International Gramsci Society.

Maria Vignau served as a research assistant under Modonesi, and now teaches while working on her PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ron Broglio, "Animal Revolution" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Animals are staging a revolution—they’re just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, Animal Revolution (U Minnesota Press, 2022) threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate, provocative, cogent call for us to do so.

Ron Broglio reveals how fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems.

A witty, informative, and captivating work—at the juncture of posthumanism, animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies—Broglio reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism.

Ron Broglio is professor of English, director of Desert Humanities, and associate director of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life and Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art.

Callie Smith is a poet and a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elisabeth R. Anker, "Ugly Freedoms" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Freedom is often considered the cornerstone of the American political project. The 1776 revolutionaries declared it an inalienable right that could neither be taken nor granted, a sacred concept upon which the nation was established. The concept and actualization of freedom are also to be defended by the state. However, when such a concept has been arrogated, litigated, and delegitimized by a state that ignores its very definition, the concept of freedom comes under critical examination. Political theorist Elisabeth R. Anker, Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Science at George Washington University, has a new book dissecting the core of this conception of freedom. Ugly Freedoms (Duke UP, 2022) explores who defined and continues to define freedom, she also examines freedom’s rhetorical capacity, and thus its potential for weaponization. Anker illuminates how the tainted gestation of freedom birthed a status quo based on the individualistic and conditional conception of ‘freedom’ that has long been tangoing with white supremacy, colonialism, climate destruction, capitalism, and exploitation. Such a dance is by design and has been constant throughout U.S. history.

Anker establishes that for democratic government to take hold in the United States, racial domination and violence transpired, limiting the freedoms of some individuals in order to establish a governmental system that is based, in theory, on protecting liberty and freedom. This is the kind of tension that Anker explains as “ugly freedom.” Thus, American freedom, our freedom, has embedded in it the role of colonialism, imperialism, enslavement, and land theft. The shocking stains of slavery produced freedom of prosperity and leisure for white people through direct dehumanization of Black and Brown people—this is what Anker is talking about within the concept of ugly freedom. This has also been manifested through more contemporary rhetoric regarding imperial wars like those in the Philippines, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, destroying infrastructure and lives in those countries for the capital prosperity of the imperial core. These ugly freedoms legitimize the economic exploitation of the masses in the name of individual success for the few. Thus, ugly freedom examines the acts of freedom that rely on violence and brutality—this challenges how we often imagine freedom to be. Ugly Freedom explores the connection between politics and aesthetics as well, taking up an array of historical events, political theories and concepts, different forms of art, televisual productions, poetry, music, and biology to illustrate the compounding violence of the few in the name of freedom. The cultural artifacts interrogated were controversial in their own right, and Anker explores them to help understand which kinds of freedom are worth fighting for and which kinds of freedom must be fought against. Through a critical lens, Anker shifts the perception of freedom to help restore justice to its foundational value—one that is less dependent on the individual or individual heroics, and more enveloping of the community and shared collaboration.

Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Stasavage, "The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today" (Princeton UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today (Princeton University Press, 2020) draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer--democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Delving into the prevalence of early democracy throughout the world, David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished--and when and why they declined--can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future.

Drawing from examples spanning several millennia, Stasavage first considers why states developed either democratic or autocratic styles of governance and argues that early democracy tended to develop in small places with a weak state and, counterintuitively, simple technologies. When central state institutions (such as a tax bureaucracy) were absent--as in medieval Europe--rulers needed consent from their populace to govern. When central institutions were strong--as in China or the Middle East--consent was less necessary and autocracy more likely. He then explores the transition from early to modern democracy, which first took shape in England and then the United States, illustrating that modern democracy arose as an effort to combine popular control with a strong state over a large territory. Democracy has been an experiment that has unfolded over time and across the world--and its transformation is ongoing.

Amidst rising democratic anxieties, The Decline and Rise of Democracy widens the historical lens on the growth of political institutions and offers surprising lessons for all who care about governance.

David Stasavage is dean for the social sciences and Julius Silver Professor of Politics at New York University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nancy Newman, "Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes" (SUNY Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Upstate New York's Anti-Rent Movement is considered the last struggle over feudalism in the United States. Tenant farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk region engaged in organized protest throughout the 1840s to contest monopoly ownership of the land they worked. Arguing their cause in newspapers, on broadsides, and at rallies, their aspirations also took shape in poetry and song. More than twenty sets of lyrics (and one instrumental composition) were written at various stages of the conflict. Some of their musical sources, such as "Old Dan Tucker" and "Bruce's Address," are still well known. Each fully contextualized song offers insight into the role vernacular music played in one of the nineteenth century's major social reform movements.

Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes (SUNY Press, 2025) by Dr. Nancy Newman is the first book to gather the poetry and corresponding tunes into one publication (you can find recordings of some of the songs here). It provides detailed analysis of the repertory, followed by new musical scores of the songs, reconstructed from contemporary historical sources for study and performance. It also examines the movement's later dramatization in novels, film, and public commemorations as successive generations grapple with its meaning.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hamid Dabashi, "After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization" (Haymarket, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we speak with Hamid Dabashi about his new book, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket, 2025), published by Haymarket Books. Written amid the ongoing war in Gaza, the book confronts what Dabashi describes as the moral and philosophical crisis of the modern West.

After Savagery challenges long-standing traditions of Western thought, arguing that their universal claims often conceal a history of exclusion and erasure. Dabashi calls for readers to reckon with the intellectual foundations that have shaped contemporary understandings of humanity, violence, and colonialism.

At the same time, he finds hope in art, literature, and film — works that, in his view, keep alive the possibility of a shared and liberated imagination. For Dabashi, Palestine becomes both a specific struggle and a universal metaphor for resistance and renewal.
Joe Williams
History PhD researcher at the University of Coimbra and translator website
- Censorship and Sacralisation of Politics in the Portuguese Press during the Spanish Civil War
- "Year X of the National Revolution" — Salazarist Palingenetic Myth in the Diário da Manhã

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kevin M. Schultz, "Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it’s time to change the conversation about them.
If there’s one thing most Americans can agree on, it’s that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism’s beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can’t manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they’re so self-hating.
This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz’s lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.
Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.
With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics.

Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Will Kitchen, "Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitchen, an Associate Lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth explores this question using a series of literary and media case studies. Drawing on Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque, the book assesses the possibilities of media texts, including histories, literature, films and sitcoms, to offer alternative visions of work. More critically, the analysis highlights media’s role in reinforcing exploitation and alienation within its seemingly playful and positive engagements with work. Theoretically rich, but accessible for the general reader, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding how media shapes our understanding of work today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is Free Speech with Fara Dabhoiwala

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The speech debates have not abated, and it’s clear that invoking the First Amendment, and the importance of free speech for democracy, does not settle these debates but provokes more questions. We have lost our way, it seems, since people on all sides invoke free speech and then try to silence those they disagree with. Historian Fara Dabhoiwala of Princeton University reminds us that free speech has always been contested, and that it became a political and social value only recently. We invited him to discuss his new book What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

Dabhoiwala examines how free speech started as a risky and radical concept, and how it evolved through centuries of political battles to become central to democracy only at a certain point in history. As Professor Dabhoiwala explains, speech rights have come and gone long before campus protests, debates over what talk show hosts can say, and whether there ought to be limits to speech that’s defined as dangerous, offensive, or unpatriotic. If we hope to find a way out of our current predicament, we should study this history carefully – with Professor Dahhoiwala as the perfect guide.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Richard Duncan, "The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of the future on an unprecedented scale in order to ignite a new technological revolution that would cement the country’s geopolitical preeminence, greatly enhance human wellbeing, and create unimaginable wealth. This book also features a history of the Federal Reserve.

Richard Duncan has served as Global Head of Investment Strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management in London, worked as a financial sector specialist for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and headed equity research departments for James Capel Securities and Salomon Brothers in Bangkok, Thailand. He is now the publisher of Macro Watch, a video-newsletter that analyzes the forces driving the global economy in the 21st Century.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jill Elaine Hasday, "We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In a nation whose Constitution purports to speak for "We the People", too many of the stories that powerful Americans tell about law and society include only We the Men. A long line of judges, politicians, and other influential voices have ignored women's struggles for equality or distorted them beyond recognition by wildly exaggerating American progress. Even as sexism continues to warp constitutional law, political decision making, and everyday life, prominent Americans have spent more than a century proclaiming that the United States has already left sex discrimination behind.
Professor Jill Elaine Hasday's We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2025) is the first book to explore how forgetting women's struggles for equality—and forgetting the work America still has to do—perpetuates injustice, promotes complacency, and denies how generations of women have had to come together to fight for reform and against regression. Professor Hasday argues that remembering women's stories more often and more accurately can help the nation advance toward sex equality. These stories highlight the persistence of women's inequality and make clear that real progress has always required women to disrupt the status quo, demand change, and duel with determined opponents.
America needs more conflict over women's status rather than less. Conflict has the power to generate forward momentum. Patiently awaiting men's spontaneous enlightenment does not. Transforming America's dominant stories about itself can reorient our understanding of how women's progress takes place, focus our attention on the battles that are still unwon, and fortify our determination to push for a more equal future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, "The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail" (Heresy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial efforts from both the political left and right. At a time when conformist pressures threaten viewpoint diversity, and when political attacks on free expression are mounting, this book is a valuable resource for all who seek to understand and defend the right that is central to both individual liberty and our democratic self-government. This concise volume is organized around 10 claims that proponents of speech restrictions regularly assert, such as: “words are violence,” “free speech is right-wing,” and “hate speech isn’t free speech.” In lively, clear, and persuasive prose, the authors examine the flaws in these pro-censorship assertions. The book also includes an insightful introduction by Jacob Mchangama, shedding additional light on the topic from historical and international perspectives.

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and was the national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. She is a Senior Fellow at FIRE and serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and National Coalition Against Censorship.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sasha Davis, "Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A practical call to action against oppression. Across the globe, millions of people have participated in protests and marches, donated to political groups, or lobbied their representatives with the aim of creating lasting social change, overturning repressive laws, or limiting environmental destruction. Yet very little seems to improve for those affected by rapacious governments. Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail (U Minnesota Press, 2025) brings new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional, and more direct, means. Sasha Davis, an activist and scholar of radical environmental advocacy, focuses on the strategies of movements, many of them Indigenous, that have occupied contested sites and demonstrated their effectiveness at managing or governing them. Including case studies of resistance to development on Indigenous lands in Hawai'i, nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, and the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, he offers insight and direction for activists, students, academics, and others dedicated to protecting and improving the well-being of their communities and beyond. It would be easy to succumb to pessimism and political apathy in the face of governing institutions that are increasingly unresponsive to calls for change and repressive in response to protest, even as they violate human rights, ignore existential climate catastrophes, and concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands. Instead, Davis finds inspiration for genuine political change through social movements that are successfully "replacing the state" and taking over the day-to-day governance of threatened places. From contesting environmental abuse to reasserting Indigenous sovereignty, these social movements demonstrate how people can collectively wrest control over their communities from oppressive governments and manage them with a more egalitarian ethics of care.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tim Weiner, "The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century" (Mariner Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 2007, Tim Weiner published the book Legacy of Ashes. It was a history of the CIA from its founding to the early 2000s. As a university student in Italy, I bought the book as soon as it came out. The second non-fiction book I ever bought in English. The book was riveting. It kickstarted my interest in the CIA and covert operations.

Now, Tim Weiner has published a sequel to Legacy of Ashes. His new book is called The Mission: the CIA in the 21st Century (Mariner Books, 2025). It is a gripping and revelatory history of the from the late 1990s to the present. It ranges from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today's battles with Russia and China--and with the President of the United States.

At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn't being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA's officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.

Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets--Moscow, Beijing, Tehran--while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.

The book reveals how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror--and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The key message of the book is that the CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. This is made even more difficult by the attacks on the intelligence community deployed by the second Trump presidency, from unqualified senior officials to loyalty tests. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance. The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kenja McCray, "Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Academics and popular commentors have expressed common sentiments about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s—that it was male dominated and overrun with autocratic leaders. Yet women’s strategizing, management, and sustained work were integral to movement organizations’ functioning, and female advocates of cultural nationalism often exhibited a unique service-oriented, collaborative leadership style.
Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership (New York University Press, 2025) documents a variety of women Pan-African nationalists’ experiences, considering the ways they produced a distinctive kind of leadership through their devotion and service to the struggle for freedom and equality. Relying on oral histories, textual archival material, and scholarly literature, this book delves into women’s organizing and resistance efforts, investigating how they challenged the one-dimensional notions of gender roles within cultural nationalist organizations. Revealing a form of Black Power leadership that has never been highlighted, author Kenja McCray explores how women articulated and used their power to transform themselves and their environments. Through her examination, McCray argues that women’s Pan-Africanist cultural nationalist activism embodied a work-centered, people-centered, and African-centered form of service leadership. A dynamic and fascinating narrative of African American women activists, Essential Soldiers provides a new vantage point for considering Black Power leadership legacies.

This episode includes a reference to the book Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores by Katie Mitchell (Random House, 2025). Listen to Mitchell discuss her book at New Books in African American Studies, hosted by N’Kosi Oates.

Dr. Kenja McCray is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Humanities at Clayton State University and coauthor of Atlanta Metropolitan State College: A Campus History (Arcadia Publishing, 2023). You can find Dr. McCray at her website, on Facebook, and on Instagram.

Find host Sullivan Summer at her website, on Instagram, and on Substack, where she and Dr. McCray continued their conversation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney M. Milkis, "Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Nicholas Jacobs (Colby College) and Sidney Milkis (University of Virginia) have a new book, Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism (UP of Kansas, 2025), focusing on the idea of presidentialism, which is a way to think of political systems that include a dominant president or executive. In the United States, with the original constitutional system of separate co-equal branches of government, presidentialism disrupts the structure that was initially constructed under the U.S. Constitution. Over the course of more than two centuries, the United States has contended with the waxing and waning of presidential power within the multi-branch system. But Jacobs and Milkis maintain that since the 1990s we have seen an expansion of presidentialism, with a collective tendency to invest greater responsibilities and power in the presidential office itself as well as in the person who is serving in that capacity. Part of this thesis is also about how different, competing forces and ideologies have pushed for the use of presidential power to solve cultural struggles, which are not necessarily the institutional or structural role of the presidency. While the growth of American presidentialism may be more contemporary, it has origins in the struggles and ruptures of the 1960s and the 1970s—which were never fully resolved, especially in regard to who belongs within the American community. Subverting The Republic spends time examining this historical framework to help us think about the current structural, political, and cultural contexts, and especially the place of President Donald J. Trump within our understanding of presidentialism.

This book is a careful and deeply researched historical and political analysis of the shifts and changes in how the American presidency has operated over the past 75 years, and grounds many of the actions we have seen within both Trump Administrations, as well as much of the pushback against some of these actions and assertions of power. In weaving together the historical background with the structural form of the presidency and the various tools that a president has at his command, Jacobs and Milkis lay out both the precedents relied upon by presidents of the 21st century, especially Donald Trump, but also the anomalies of the Trump Administration and actions. While Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism went to press before President Trump was re-elected in 2024 (and there is a brief postscript that is included, noting the results and considering what the second Trump Administration might look like), the authors noted in our conversation that much of what they discuss about the first Trump Administration in the book has only grown and expanded in the second Trump Administration. This is an important analysis of the office of the American presidency and how that office, as conceived of by the Founders and situated within a constitutional system that includes other centers of power and responsibility, has evolved rather dramatically from that initial form and structure.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Schulman, "The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity" (Penguin, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From award-winning writer Sarah Schulman, a longtime social activist and outspoken critic of the Israeli war on Gaza, comes The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity (Penguin, 2025). This book is a brilliant examination of the inherent psychological and social challenges to solidarity movements, and what that means for the future For those who seek to combat injustice, solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals, yet it does not come without complication. In this searing yet uplifting book, award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work—and why it matters. To grapple with solidarity, Schulman writes, we must recognize its inherent fantasies. Those being oppressed dream of relief, that a bystander will intervene though it may not seem to be in their immediate interest to do so, and that the oppressor will be called out and punished. Those standing in solidarity with the oppressed are occluded by a different fantasy: that their intervention is effective, that it will not cost them, and that they will be rewarded with friendship and thanks. Neither is always the case, and yet in order to realize our full potential as human beings in relation with others, we must continue to pursue action towards these shared goals. Within this framework, Schulman examines a range of case studies, from the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain, to NYC’s AIDS activism in the 1990s, to the current wave of campus protest movements against Israel’s war on Gaza, and her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male dominated culture industries. Drawing parallels between queer, Palestinian, feminist, and artistic struggles for justice, Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed. That action comes at a cost, and is not always effective. And yet without it we sentence ourselves to a world without progressive change towards visions of liberation. By turns challenging, inspiring, pragmatic, and poetic, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity provides a much-needed path for how we can work together to create a more just, more equitable present and future.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993, and the novels The Cosmopolitans and Maggie Terry. Schulman’s honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting, and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, the American Library Association, and others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Schulman holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University and is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our Common Future: The Birth of Liberal Environmentalism

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This is the second episode of Cited Podcast’s new season, Green Dreams. Green Dreams tells stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? For the rest of the episodes, visit the series page, and subscribe today (Apple, Spotify, RSS).

An Albertan oil man and a socialist policy wonk from Saskatchewan banded together to think up “eco-development,” a precursor to today’s sustainable development. This unlikely duo forged a global consensus at the United Nations, effectively codifying the reigning orthodoxy of liberal environmental governance. They told us that capitalism and sustainability are indeed compatible. Might that be the most utopian of all green dreams?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind, "Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) by Dr. Dominic Davies & Dr. Candida Rifkind is the first in-depth study of comics about refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and detainees by artists from the Global North and South. Co-written by two leading scholars of nonfiction comics, the book explores graphic narratives about a range of refugee experiences, from war, displacement, and perilous sea crossings to detention camps, resettlement schemes, and second-generation diasporas.

Through close readings of work by diverse artists including Joe Sacco, Sarah Glidden, Don Brown, Olivier Kugler, Jasper Rietman, Hamid Sulaiman, Leila Abdelrazzaq, Thi Bui, and Matt Huynh, Graphic Refuge shows how comics challenge dominant representations of the displaced to bring a radical politics of refugee agency and refusal into view. Beyond simply affirming the “humanity” of the refugee, these comics demand that we apprehend the historical construction of categories such as “citizen” and “refugee” through systems of empire, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. The comics medium allows readers not only to visualize the lives of refugees but also refocuses the lens on citizen non-refugees—“we who can sleep under warm cover at night”, as Vinh Nguyen writes in his foreword—and interrogates their perceptions, aspirations, and beliefs.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Zahi Zalloua, "Fanon, Žižek and the Violence of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

n a novel pairing of anti-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon with Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Zahi Zalloua explores the ways both thinkers expose the violence of political structures.
This inventive exploration advances an anti-racist critique, describing how ontology operates in a racial matrix to produce some human bodies that count and others (deemed not-quite- or non-human) that do not. For Fanon and Žižek, the violence of ontology must be met with another form of violence, a revolutionary violence that delegitimizes the logic of the symbolic order and troubles its collective fantasies. Whereas Fanon begins his challenge to ontology by exposing its historical linkages to Europe's destructive imperialist procedures before proceeding to “stretch” Marxism, along with psychoanalysis, to account for the crushing (neo)colonial situation, Žižek premises his work on the refusal to accept the totality of ontology. Because of these different points of intervention, Fanon and Žižek together offer a powerful and multifaceted assessment of the liberal anti-racist paradigm whose propensity for identity politics and aversion to class struggle silence the cry of the dispossessed and foreclose radical change. Avoiding contemporary separatist temptations (decoloniality and Afropessimism), and breaking with a non-violent, sentimentalist futurology that announces more of the same, Fanon and Žižek point in a different direction, one that eschews identitarian thought in favor of a collective struggle for freedom and equality.

Zahi Zalloua is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and a Professor of Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies at Whitman College

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Should the Majority Rule – and is it time to resign democracy?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When do limits on majorities enhance democratic rule, and when do they undermine it? Join Nic Cheeseman as he talks to Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, well-known as authors of the best-selling book How Democracies Die, about their new framework for understanding when the best way to protect democracy is to constrain the wishes of the majority, and when we need to empower them. Lumping all majoritarian measures into the same category, they argue, can lead us to preserve and prescribe outdated and undemocratic institutions that distort political competition and may undermine democratic legitimacy. So does saving democracy actually depend on the recognition that while special protections for powerful minorities may have helped to secure the historical passage to democracy, today the healthiest democracies empower majorities?

This episode is based on Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s article “When Should the Majority Rule?” that was published in the January 2025 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and is part of an ongoing partnership between the Journal of Democracy and the People, Power, Politics podcast. A transcript is available for download here.

Steven Levitsky is Professor of Government at Harvard University and the co-author of How Democracies Die (2018), which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award. A leading scholar of authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, his earlier works include Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (2010). Levitsky directs Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and served as Vice Provost for International Affairs. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Karl Deutsch Award for his contributions to comparative politics. His research spans Latin American politics, party systems, and informal institutions, influencing both academic debate and public discourse on democracy’s challenges.

Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die (2018), which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award. His book Conservative Advantage (2017) received the Luebbert Prize for the Best Book on Comparative Politics. Ziblatt’s research explores democratic durability and party systems, especially in Europe. He serves as Co-Director of Harvard’s Center for European Studies and holds a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has significantly influenced understandings of conservative parties’ roles in sustaining democracy and the threats posed by their erosion.

Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“Plato and the Tyrant” with author James Romm

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 388 BCE, Plato, at the age of about forty and in the midst of writing The Republic, visited for the first time the then-Greek city state of Syracuse, on the eastern shores of Sicily. Syracuse was ruled by a tyrant, Dionysius, who on death was followed by his son, also a tyrant. Over the course of his three separate visits to Syracuse over the years, encountering both father and son, Plato arrived at the model for tyranny laid out in The Republic. That’s the argument of James Romm’s splendid book, Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece (W.W. Norton, 2025). In our conversation, Romm renders, not the familiar “marble Plato” of his God-like dialogues, but an altogether human figure grappling with his own personal vulnerabilities. We discuss, too, the parallels to today’s times, in which tyrants and would-be tyrants continue to plague the world. The tyrant, as Romm ably shows, is an archetype for all time.

James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and editor of the Ancient Lives biography series from Yale University Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley, "Good Change: The Rise and Fall of Poland's Illiberal Revolution" (Stanford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Poland between 2015 and 2023, Jarosław Kaczyński and his Law and Justice Party (PiS) attempted a novel experiment. Could a governing party sustain a coalition committed religiously inspired social conservatism, old-school left-wing welfarism, and antipathy to Moscow and Brussels while also unravelling democratic institutions?

It was, write Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley in Good Change: The Rise and Fall of Poland’s Illiberal Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2025), an experiment in "how much illiberalism the electorate would bear".

With Kaczyński and PiS now in opposition but threatening a return in 2027, Donald Tusk's liberal administration is road-testing how effectively illiberalism can be unpicked without antagonising the voters it needs to stay in office.

Stanley Bill is Professor of Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge, and Ben Stanley is an associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw.

Tim Gwynn Jones is policy analyst at Medley Advisors and a writer/podcaster at 242.news.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is the U.S. helping speed up its own decline? with Damon Linker

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We begin the new season of International Horizons by asking a crucial question: is the U.S. helping speed up its own decline? RBI Deputy Director, Eli Karetny talks with political writer and scholar Damon Linker about how Trump’s movement sees presidential power, why it challenges long-standing rules and institutions, and what it means for America’s role in the world. They explore whether U.S. influence has shifted from leading a global order after World War II to carving out its own “sphere of influence” alongside other major powers. The discussion looks at attacks on government expertise, the idea of “restraint” in foreign policy, and how fringe thinkers on the right are shaping real political choices. What happens when leaders value absolute freedom of action over laws, expertise, or alliances? Tune in for a clear look at the ideas driving today’s high-stakes political battles.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah McLaughlin, "Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships.

This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. University leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where university leaders prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. The book describes incidents in classrooms where professors hesitate to discuss controversial topics and in boardrooms where administrators weigh the costs of offending oppressive regimes. McLaughlin offers a sobering look at how the compromises made in American academia reflect broader societal patterns seen in industries like tech, sports, and entertainment.

Meticulously researched and unapologetically candid, Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025) is an essential read for anyone who believes in the transformative power of education and the necessity of safeguarding it from the creeping tide of authoritarianism.

Sarah McLaughlin is a senior scholar of global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the future. They point towards already present crisis and contradictions. They also attempt to reorient us towards alternative paths. Embedded deeply in the critical hermeneutics of writers such as Heidegger, Arendt and Beauvoir but exploring contemporary issues such as gender, climate change and machine warfare, Zabala’s book is an accessible and applicable text that simultaneously tries to destabilize us in our present complacency while grounding us in an urgent need to seek alternatives.

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous books, including one previously discussed on this show, Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Maddalena Cerrato, "Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes" (SUNY Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Michel Foucault's thought, Maddalena Cerrato writes, may be understood as practical philosophy. In this perspective, political analysis, philosophy of history, epistemology, and ethics appear as necessarily cast together in a philosophical project that aims to rethink freedom and emancipation from domination of all kinds. The idea of practical philosophy accounts for Foucault's specific approach to the object, as well as to the task of philosophy, and it identifies the perspective that led him to consider the question of subjectivity as the guiding thread of his work. Overall, in Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes (SUNY Press, 2025) Cerrato shows the deep consistency underlying Foucault's reflection and the substantial coherence of his philosophical itinerary, setting aside all the conventional interpretations that pivot on the idea that his thought underwent a radical "turn" from the political engagement of the question of power toward an ethical retrieval of the question of subjectivity.

Maddalena Cerrato is an assistant professor in the Department of International Affairs.

YouTube Channel here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cordelia Fine, "Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work" (W.W. Norton, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the world's richest countries' long-avowed commitments to gender equality, there is still so much to fix - and so much we don't see.
With perceptive and razor-sharp insight, in Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work (W.W. Norton, 2025) award-winning author Cordelia Fine reveals how the status quo - Patriarchy Inc. - is harming us all, in our working lives and beyond. Drawing on social and cultural history, examples from hunter-forager societies to high finance and the latest thinking in evolutionary science, she dismantles the existing, inadequate visions for gender equality and charts an inspiring path towards a fairer and freer society

Cordelia Fine is a Canadian-born British philosopher of science, psychologist, and writer. She is a full professor in the History and Philosophy of Science programme at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

YouTube Channel here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Edmonds, "Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You’re the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you’re wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty—but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.
Death in a Shallow Pond describes the experiences and world events that led Singer to make his radical case and how it moved some young philosophers to establish the Effective Altruism movement, which tries to optimize philanthropy. The book also explores the reactions of critics who argue that the Shallow Pond and Effective Altruism are unrealistic, misguided, and counterproductive, neglecting the causes of—and therefore perpetuating—poverty. Ultimately, however, Edmonds argues that the Shallow Pond retains the power to shape how we live in a world in which terrible and unnecessary suffering persists.

David Edmonds is the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and popular books on philosophy, including Wittgenstein’s Poker (with John Eidinow). His other books include Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick, and Would You Kill the Fat Man? (all Princeton). A Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Uehiro Oxford Institute and a former BBC radio journalist, Edmonds hosts, with Nigel Warburton, the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been downloaded nearly 50 million times.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening lasted for three tumultuous decades and ended with a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of Western sanctions, and the Russian responses to them.

In Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future (Oxford University Press, 2025), Russia analyst Thane Gustafson reinterprets the story of Russia's failed opening to the West, focusing on its economic, technological, and social aspects, and the role they played in its ultimate failure. These parallel events are essential for understanding what happened and what went wrong. Yet they have received much less attention than the military and geopolitical aspects of the current conflict. Gustafson tells the story of the West's entry into Russia, the arrival of Russians into the West, and the conflicting emotions and responses these aroused on both sides, contributing to the ultimate breakdown of relations and the unprecedented hurricane of Western sanctions. The book concludes with an examination of possible futures under a new generation of leaders.

A measured and nuanced account of the evolution of Russia's economic relations with the world, Perfect Storm illuminates the longer history of Russia's opening to the West, from its achievements and disappointments to the complexity of the post-invasion sanctions regime and Russia's responses to them.

Thane Gustafson is Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of many books, including Klimat (2021), The Bridge (2020), and Wheel of Fortune (2012).

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Donald G. Nieman, "The Path to Paralysis: How American Politics Became Nasty, Dysfunctional, and a Threat to the Republic" (Anthem Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Much has been written about political polarisation in the United States, but no one has examined it through the lens of recent U.S. history. There is nothing deterministic about how we became polarised, and it happened more recently than many think. To fully understand the problem, we must take the long view, the perspective provided by history, with its attention to change over time and the role of contingency. That’s what The Path to Paralysis does.

The book illuminates the broad forces that have shaped and reshaped American society and politics since the mid-1960s: the shift from an industrial to an information economy that produced economic inequality not seen since the 1920s; dramatic, unsettling changes in gender and sexuality; sharp conflict between those who embrace the culture of personal freedom that was a legacy of the 1960s and politically mobilised White evangelicals; persistent racial discord that transformed Southern politics and shattered the New Deal coalition; and dramatic changes in communication that transformed broadcasting into narrowcasting, creating alternate news and truths.

These developments had their origin in the late 1960s and have generated sharp political conflict for six decades. But they didn’t overwhelm the system until the 21st century. Ronald Reagan moved American politics to the right, but Republicans and Democrats forged compromise on issues as diverse as economic policy, civil rights, and immigration. After the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush tacked to the centre and sought bipartisan solutions to issues like welfare, education and immigration. Sharp conflict and governance were compatible.

The tipping point was the election of the nation’s first Black president and the economic collapse he inherited. Fault lines of religion, region, gender, sexual orientation, class, education and, especially, race widened. People chose sides and identified enemies, the number of true swing voters shrunk, fewer states and congressional districts were competitive, the two major parties became more monolithic, and appeals to the base drove strategy and what passed for policy. It was an atmosphere that provided fertile ground for a demagogue whose norm-busting appeals to White grievance and Christian Nationalism, as well as to regional and class resentment strengthened his appeal to an angry base and threatened the peaceful transition of power, the bedrock of American democracy for more than two centuries.

Donald G. Nieman is an authority on modern U.S. law and politics, and professor of history and provost emeritus at Binghamton University – State University of New York.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Spencer, "The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About?" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The relationship between science and religion has long been a heated debate and is becoming an ever more popular topic. The scientific capacity to manipulate and change humans and their environment through genetic engineering, life extension, and AI is going to take a huge leap forward in the twenty-first century, provoking endless debates around humans “playing God”.

But what do we mean by this? Asking this question is surprisingly hard work. Attempts to 'essentialise' science, let alone religion, quickly run into trouble. Where are the boundaries? Whose definition of science is definitive? Which concept of religious is the authoritative one?

Ultimately, neither “science” nor “religion” can be pinned down to one single meaning or definition. Rather, they encompass a family of definitions that relate to one another in a complex web of shifting ways. Drawing on extensive research with over a hundred leading thinkers in the UK — including Martin Rees, Brian Cox, Susan Greenfield, A.C. Grayling, Ray Tallis, Linda Woodhead, Steve Bruce, Adam Rutherford, Robin Dunbar, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, and Iain McGilchrist — The Landscapes of Science and Religion takes the much-needed step of asking what science and religion actually are, before turning to the familiar question of how they relate to one another.

Building on this, by paying particular attention to those who sense some form of conflict here, Spencer and Waite explore where the perceived conflict really lies. What exactly are people disagreeing about when they disagree about science and religion, and what, if anything, can we do to improve that disagreement and bring about a fruitful dialogue between these two important human endeavours.

Nicholas Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos, a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion and a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of a number of books including Darwin and God, The Evolution of the West and Atheists. He has presented a BBC Radio 4 series on The Secret History of Science and Religion, and has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, New Statesman, Prospect and more. He lives in London.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Catherine Malabou, "Stop Thief!: Anarchism and Philosophy" (Polity Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Why do so many philosophers value anarchy but refuse to call themselves anarchists? Why don’t philosophers draw on the classical anarchist tradition? How can we think de facto anarchism as distinct from dawning anarchism? What is at stake in doing so? Does philosophy need anarchism? To answer these questions, in Stop Thief! Anarchism and Philosophy (Polity Books, 2023), Catherine Malabou reads submerged counter-revolutionary themes in the texts of several key philosophical thinkers. By doing so, Malabou helps us understand the ways in which philosophy has left anarchy unthought, while also stealing from it, and disavowing it. What emerges in her analysis is the importance of the non-governable, not just as a problem for philosophy, but as what opens towards other ways of sharing, acting, and thinking.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Todd Mcgowan, "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess. He argues that the promise of more—more wealth, more enjoyment, more opportunity, without requiring any sacrifice—is the essence of capitalism. Previous socioeconomic systems set up some form of the social good as their focus. Capitalism, however, represents a revolutionary turn away from the good and the useful toward excessive growth, which now threatens the habitability of the planet.
Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, McGowan shows how the production of commodities explains the role of excess in the workings of capitalism. Capitalism and the commodity ensnare us with the image of the constant fulfillment of our desires—the seductive but unattainable promise of satisfying a longing that has no end. To challenge this system, McGowan turns to art, arguing that it can expose the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate capitalist society and reveal the need for limits. Featuring lively writing and engaging examples from film, literature, and popular culture, Pure Excess uncovers the hidden logic of capitalism—and helps us envision a noncapitalist life in a noncapitalist society.

Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, and Only a Joke Can Save Us, among other books. He is also the cohost of the Why Theory podcast with Ryan Engley.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alyssa Battistoni, "Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Makes for Successful Civil Resistance?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

As authoritarian leaders attack democracy from all sides, and the rights of women, ethnic minorities and the LGTBQI+ community are increasingly threatened, civil resistance is more important than ever. But what forms of resistance are most effective, and how can we build movements so that they have the greatest chance of success? Join the People, Power, Politics podcast as we talk to Erica Chenoweth, author of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, to discuss these issues and so much more!

Guest:

Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. They are widely known as one of the most important and influential voices on civil resistance and what makes for successful popular mobilization, and have authored a number of path-breaking books including Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2021) and On Revolutions (2022).

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Theo Goldberg, "The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism" (Polity Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism (Polity Press, 2023) by David Theo Goldberg discusses how “Critical Race Theory” is consuming conservative America. The mounting attacks on a once-obscure legal theory are upending public schooling, legislating censorship, driving elections, and cleaving communities.

In this much-needed response, renowned scholar David Theo Goldberg cuts to the heart of the claims expressed in these attacks. He punctures the demonization of Critical Race Theory, uncovering who is orchestrating it, funding the assault, and eagerly distributing the message. The book richly illustrates the enduring nature of structural racism, even as a conservative insistence on colorblindness serves to silence the possibility of doing anything about it. Crucially, Goldberg exposes the political aims and effects of the vitriolic attacks. The upshot of CRT’s targeting, he argues, has been to unleash racisms anew and to stymie any attempt to fight them, all with the aim of protecting white minority rule.

David Theo Goldberg is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine.

YouTube Channel here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James Kimmel, Jr., "The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It" (Random House, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

There is a hidden addiction plaguing humanity right now: revenge. Researchers have identified retaliation in response to real and imagined grievances as the root cause of most forms of human aggression and violence. From vicious tweets to road rage, murder-suicide, and armed insurrection, perpetrators almost always see themselves as victims seeking justice. Chillingly, recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies of the human brain show that harboring a personal grievance triggers revenge desires and activates the neural pleasure and reward circuitry of addiction.
Although this behavior is ancient and seems inevitable, by understanding retaliation and violence as an addictive brain-biological process, we can control deadly revenge cravings and save lives. In The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It (Random House, 2025), Yale violence researcher and psychiatry lecturer James Kimmel, Jr., JD, uncovers the truth behind why we want to hurt the people who hurt us, what happens when it gets out of hand, and how to stop it.
Weaving neuroscience, psychology, sociology, law, and human history with captivating storytelling, Dr. Kimmel reveals the neurological mechanisms and prevalence of revenge addiction. He shines an unsparing light on humanity’s pathological obsession with revenge throughout history; his own struggle with revenge addiction that almost led him to commit a mass shooting; America’s growing addiction to revenge as a special brand of justice; and the startlingly similar addictive behaviors and motivations of childhood bullies, abusive partners, aggrieved employees, sparring politicians, street gang members, violent extremists, mass killers, and tyrannical dictators. He also reveals the amazing, healing changes that take place inside your brain and body when you practice forgiveness. Emphasizing the necessity of proven public health approaches and personal solutions for every level of revenge addiction, he offers urgent, actionable information and novel methods for preventing and treating violence.

James Kimmel, Jr. is an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, a lawyer, and the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers are Changing the World

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We all have the power to change the world through the products we buy. This simple premise has driven the growth of the conscious consumer movement for decades. Indeed, what started with a handful of niche sustainability brands has exploded into the mainstream with labels like Organic, Non-GMO, and Fair Trade Certified now adorning products in major retailers across the country. Yet the true promise of ethical sourcing and conscious consumerism has not been fully realized. Paul Rice has dedicated his career to helping consumers and businesses embrace the power they have to protect the environment and improve the lives of farmers and workers on the far side of our global supply chains.
In Every Purchase Matters, Mr. Rice reveals the untold story of the Fair Trade movement and its significance for us all. Calling on the close relationships he cultivated over the last forty years with the pioneers of ethical sourcing—CEOs, activists, grassroots farmer leaders, and consumer advocates—Mr. Rice gives voice to the visionaries and practitioners who are making sustainable business the new normal. These protagonists share successes and failures, lessons learned, and their extraordinary impact in communities around the world. Their stories illuminate how sustainability is good not only for people and planet but also for business.

Our guest is: Paul Rice, who is the founder of Fair Trade USA and a pioneering figure in the conscious capitalism movement. He is the author of the national bestseller Every Purchase Matters.

Audio content correction: Dr. Gessler incorrectly stated that Mr. Rice worked in South America. He worked in Central America.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast, and the author of the show’s Substack newsletter. She is a developmental editor and writing coach for humanities scholars at all stages of their careers.

Playlist for listeners:

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ryan Griffiths, "The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Is the breakup of an increasingly polarized America into separate red and blue countries even possible?

There is a growing interest in American secession. In February 2023, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that "We need a national divorce...We need to separate by red states and blue states." Recent movements like Yes California have called for a national divorce along political lines. A 2023 Axios poll shows that 20 percent of Americans favor a national divorce. These trends show a sincere interest in American secession, and they will likely increase in the aftermath of the 2024 Presidential election.

Proponents of secession make three arguments: the two sides have irreconcilable differences; secession is a legal right; and smaller political units are better. Through interviews with secessionist advocates in America, Ryan Griffiths explores the case for why Red America and Blue America should split up.

But as The Disunited States shows, these arguments are fundamentally incorrect. Secession is the wrong solution to the problem of polarization. Red and Blue America are not neatly sorted and geographically concentrated. Splitting the two parts would require a dangerous unmixing of the population, one that could spiral into violence and state collapse. Drawing on his expertise on secessionism worldwide, he shows how the process has played out internationally-and usually disastrously. Ultimately, this book will disabuse readers of the belief that secession will fix America's problems. Rather than focus on national divorce as a solution, the better course of action is to seek common ground.

Ryan D. Griffiths is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. His research focuses on the dynamics of secession and the study of sovereignty, state systems, and international orders. He teaches on topics related to nationalism, international relations, and international relations theory.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing and co-hosts the long-running p

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City (NYU Press, 2025) argues that diversity and racial integration efforts are not sufficient to address educational inequality.

New York City schools are among the most segregated in the nation. Yet over seven decades after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, New Yorkers continue to argue about whether school segregation matters. Amid these debates, Alexandra Freidus dives deep into the roots of racial inequality in diversifying schools, asking how we can better understand both the opportunities and the limits of school diversity and integration. Unequal Lessons is based on six years of observations and interviews with children, parents, educators, and district policymakers about the stakes of racial diversity in New York City schools.

The book examines what children learn from diversity, exploring both the costs and benefits of school integration. By drawing on students’ first-hand experiences, Freidus makes the case that although a focus on diversity offers many benefits to students, it often reinscribes, rather than diminishes, existing inequalities in school policy and practice. The idea of diversity for its own sake is frequently seen as the solution, with students of color presumed to benefit from their experiences with white students, while schools fail to address structural inequality. Though educators and advocates often focus on diversity out of a real desire to make a positive difference in students’ lives, this book makes clear the gaps between good intentions and educational injustice.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.
Professor Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt (Viking, 2025) offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.

Find Professor Weathersby at his website, where you can order In Open Contempt, check out his other writings, and attend upcoming events.

Host Sullivan Summer can be found at her website, on Instagram, and on Substack, where she and Professor Weathersby continue their conversation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

154 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, Kim Stanley Robinson has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California.

All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future, his 2020 vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity’s fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. Flanked by RTB’s JP, KSR’s friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asked him to reflect on the book’s impact in this conversation with our sister podcast, Novel Dialogue.
KSR, Stan to his friends, brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.”

Mentioned in this episode:

Pact for the Future
COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference)
COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….)
Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.)
Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Paris Agreement
Don’t Look Up
Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Listen and Read.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Heather Browning and Walter Veit, "What Are Zoos For?" (Policy Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Are zoos an anachronism in the 21st century when we can watch animals in their natural habitat, close-up from our couches without worrying about cruelty? Should they go the way of other bygone era ‘spectacles’ and ‘attractions’ that we now regard as barbaric? There are vocal campaigners and activists who believe so.

Heather Browning and Walter Veit disagree, but they acknowledge there is a case to be answered. In What Are Zoos For? (Bristol University Press, 2024) they test the common justifications for zoos (entertainment, education, research, conservation) against the evidence and suggest what the best zoos of the future should look like to ensure that they are primarily for animals and not just for people.

Heather Browning is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Her primary research interests are animal welfare, ethics, and consciousness. Previously, she worked for many years as a zookeeper and zoo animal welfare officer, interested in the practical application of animal welfare measurement.

Walter Veit is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading and an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He’s also the author of A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness (Routledge, 2023). Most of his ongoing research is on the consciousness and welfare of animals and AIs.

Kyle Johannsen is Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent authored book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel José Gaztambide, "Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon's Couch" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient?

Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions--Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian--through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon's psychoanalytic practice.

Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient's presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action "on the couch," which envisions political action "off the couch" and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Linda Gordon, "Seven Social Movements That Changed America" (LIveright, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How do social movements arise, wield power, and bring about meaningful change? Renowned scholar Linda Gordon investigates these and other salient questions in this “visionary, cautionary, timely, and utterly necessary book” (Nicole Eustace), narrating how some of America’s most influential twentieth-century social movements transformed the nation.
Beginning with the turn-of-the century settlement house movement, the book compares Chicago’s celebrated Hull-House, begun by privileged women, to a much less well known African American project, Cleveland’s Phillis Wheatley House, begun by a former sharecropper. Expanding her highly praised book The Second Coming of the KKK, the second chapter shows how a northern Klan became a mass movement in the 1920s. Contrary to what many Klan opponents thought, this KKK was a middle-class organization, its members primarily urban and well educated. In the 1930s, the KKK gave birth to dozens of American fascist groups—small but extremely violent. Profiles of two other 1930s movements follow: the Townsend campaign for old-age insurance, named for its charismatic leader, Dr. Francis Townsend. It created the public pressure that brought us Social Security, which was considered radical at the time, as was the movement to bring about federal unemployment aid for millions.
Proceeding to the 1955–1956 Montgomery bus boycott—which jump-started the career of Martin Luther King, Jr.—the narrative shows how the city’s entire Black population refused to ride segregated buses; initiated by Black women, their years-long, hard-fought victory inspired the civil rights movement. Gordon then examines the 1970s farmworkers struggle, led by Cesar Chavez and made possible by the work of tens of thousands of the primarily Mexican American farmworkers. Together they built the United Farm Workers Union, winning better wages and working conditions for some of the country’s poorest workers. The book concludes with the dramatic stories of two Boston socialist feminist groups, Bread and Roses and the Combahee River Collective, which influenced the whole women’s liberation movement.

Linda Gordon is professor emerita of history and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. She is the winner of two Bancroft prizes for best book in American History. Her previous work includes The Second Coming of the KKK and a biography of the photographer Dorothea Lange.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Camilla Fitzsimons, "Rethinking Feminism in Ireland" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Camilla Fitzsimons teaches at Maynooth University and is the author of Community Education and Neoliberalism in 2017 as well as Repealed: Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights in 2021 which won the American Conference for Irish Studies James S Donnelly Sr book award for History and Social Science – she talked to us in January 2022 about that book. In this interview, she discusses her new book Rethinking Feminism in Ireland

Rethinking Feminism in Ireland offers a radical approach that sees feminism as a practical philosophy that seeks to combat all forms of oppression. Exploring a number of topics including political activism, the world of work, queer and trans-rights activism, gender-based violence, and reproductive rights, this open access book sets out a fresh approach to the future of feminism using case studies in Ireland to to illustrate global issues. Including interviews with 30 people involved in feminist activism in Ireland, this book uses Irish history and political developments to create a collaborative, collective feminist effort with a global outlook. Rethinking Feminism in Ireland articulates a vision for the future that encourages solidarity across lines of difference and that makes the case for a politically charged, praxis-oriented approach that refuses to strip feminism of its substance and potential to contribute to radical change.

Rethinking Feminism in Ireland is published with Bloomsbury and is also available as a free open access e-book

Aidan Beatty is a lecturer in history at Carnegie Mellon University

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Philip Cunliffe, "The National Interest: Politics After Globalization" (Polity Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an 'America First' agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urgency of defending their own country's national interest. But what is the national interest and why did it disappear from the political agenda? Will Trump restore American national interests, or will he betray them? How might we know the difference?

The National Interest: Politics After Globalization (Polity Press, 2025) answers these questions. It explains how and why globalist political leaders and bureaucrats abandoned the national interest over the past thirty years. Even today, many of our elites still sneer at the concept as an anachronism in an age of global environmental collapse and 'polycrisis'. But without it, there can be no political representation, and without representation there can be no democratic accountability. The national interest can be revived as part of a strategy of nation-building and national rebirth. This book makes the case for such a revival, heralding a new era of democratic renewal and international cooperation.

Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Bullshit in AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we’re continuing our series on Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. I have the privilege to speak with Arvind Narayanan co-author of the book AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What it Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference (Princeton University Press, 2024). Arvind is the perfect guest to explore the subject of bullshit in AI as AI Snake Oil takes on the ridiculous hype ascribed to the promise of AI. AI chatbots often hallucinate and many of the promoters of AI engage in the art of bullshit when selling people on wild and crazy AI applications.

Arvind Narayanan is professor of computer science at Princeton University and director of its Center for Information Technology Policy.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How Late-Stage Neoliberal Capitalism is Breaking Democracy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

For a long time many (although by no means all) scholars saw the relationship between capitalism and democracy as mutually reinforcing: economic competition and growth were expected to sustain democratic competition and improve governance and public good delivery for citizens, in turn creating a better environment for capitalist competition to flourish. But as capitalism has changed and has in many respects freed itself from the constraints of the state and of democratic processes, it has unleashed a new era of extreme wealth accumulation, deregulated markets, weak states, unresponsive political elites, and choiceless democracies. In this episode, CEDAR host Licia Cianetti talks to Rachel Riedl about her recent essay on “Neoliberalism and the Third Wave” to better understand why and how this happened and what we can do about it. This episode is part of PPP’s ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Democracy.

Rachel Beatty Riedl is Professor of public policy and government at Cornell University and the Peggy J. Koenig '78 Director of the Brooks Center on Global Democracy. Her latest co-edited book is entitled Global Challenges to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Backsliding, Autocracy, and Resilience (CUP 2025).

Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Founding Director of CEDAR. Her latest publication is “What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies” (Democratization, 2025).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Foluke Taylor, "Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room" (Norton, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 1977, The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black American feminists issued a statement communicating the harrowing following:

“The psychological toll of being a Black woman…can never be underestimated. There is a low value placed on Black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level and yet we feel the need to struggle to change the condition of all Black women.”

Almost 50 years later, we have a book that responds to this important group’s felt need.

Foluke Taylor’s Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room, delivers an archive of Black feminisms that are leveraged to explore certain psychoanalytic truths. This ambitious trajectory is however delightfully embedded within a text that also includes the potential of musical accompaniment: she prompts us to tune into Billy Paul, Sault, Norman Connors and many other musicians. Read Taylor and turn up your speakers: let your senses rise and fall, clap and hum.

The book depends in part on the author’s personal reflections that in their tenderness, read, at least to my ear, as rather different from auto theory. Indeed, Taylor seems not to be embracing a tributary of critical theory through which she then allies herself. Rather there are aspects of her history that beautifully accompany and highlight what is a heart-rending treatise about the lay of the land traversed by Black women who seek to train to become clinicians and by Black women who come to lie on the couch, a terrain that can be unduly rough, distorting, dangerous.

Chapter by chapter, Taylor is conducting a chorus of Black feminist thinkers, women with whom she works in ongoing movement to transform and trouble what subjugates and suffocates the lives of Black women. A clinician herself, she places a special emphasis on the practice of psychotherapy, demonstrating how it can participate in deadly, racist repetitions.

The book has an interior design that reminds me of the way one might arrange furniture in a room, a living room as it were. There are bolded quotes, in the upper right hand corner perhaps or the bottom left, demanding attention. Sometimes the same quote is reproduced more than once in a chapter. These quotes are the equivalent of textual wall hangings that live on the page. They take on a physicality, almost like an ottoman by the reading chair, a place to stop and stay put, feet off the ground. I experienced them also as obstacles: I had to consider them in order to move forth.

Taylor’s voice is intimate and readers are assumed into a position, dropped into her mind at times mid-sentence: a thought is forming and we are there for its birth. She offers radical hospitality, breathing us into being. All who create life, she reminds us, must breathe for those they carry forth. This she also does.

The voices of African feminists were new to me and reflective of her having left London for ten years to seek her origins in Africa, looking for her place in the world. This is where her sharing of her early life is put to powerful use as she wonders with bell hooks, with Hortense Spillers, hardly alone, yet alone, “where do I come from?” This question is one that belongs to all people whose lineages have been truncated by enslavement.

Tracy D Morgan is the founding editor of New Books in Psychoanalysis, and works as a psychoanalyst in Rome, Italy and Brooklyn, NY.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark R. Rank, "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood since the beginnings of the country, with the rhetoric only ratcheting up in recent times. Our current era of fake news, alternative facts, and media partisanship has led to a breeding ground for all types of myths and misinformation to gain traction and legitimacy.

Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty (Oxford UP, 2021) is the first book to systematically address and confront many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty. Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock powerfully demonstrate that the realities of poverty are much different than the myths; indeed in many ways they are more disturbing. The idealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, with hard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. But what if this picture is wrong? What if poverty is an experience that touches the majority of Americans? What if hard work does not necessarily lead to economic well-being? What if the reasons for poverty are largely beyond the control of individuals? And if all of the evidence necessary to disprove these myths has been readily available for years, why do they remain so stubbornly pervasive? These are much more disturbing realities to consider because they call into question the very core of America's identity.

Armed with the latest research, Poorly Understood not only challenges the myths of poverty and inequality, but it explains why these myths continue to exist, providing an innovative blueprint for how the nation can move forward to effectively alleviate American poverty.

Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Tug of War: Why Racial Progress Often Meets Resistance and Backlash

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Karyne Messina and Dr. Felicia Powell-Williams, the host and co-host of “Psychoanalytic Perspectives of Racism in America” sponsored by The American Psychoanalytic Association explored how employing mechanisms of defense perpetuates racial injustice’s movement forward and the resistance it faces as a tug of war, i.e., progress followed by backlash.

They examined the symbolic removal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bust from the White House and its implications for societal values, while also talking about the impact of Dr. King’s assassination and the current state of racial justice initiatives. The conversation included a discussion about the challenges of tolerating difficult truths and emotions in both psychoanalysis and society, including the persistence of white supremacy and its modern manifestations. It also underscored how symbols of the civil rights movement have been honored at the highest level of government yet in this case defense mechanisms initiated the physical removal of the bust.

Other topics discussed by the host and co-host covered the current administration’s sense of Juneteenth including the press secretary’s statements that suggested the day was “observed” but not “celebrated.” Her statements seemed to be in line with President Trump’s remarks about Americans having “too many holidays” which many observers interpreted as a direct critique of Juneteenth itself and, more broadly, of recent efforts to deemphasize the historical experiences of Black Americans. This approach stands in contrast to previous years when Donald Trump issued statements honoring Juneteenth.

Some analysts and advocates have noted that the timing of President Trump’s post was likely not coincidental. By choosing Juneteenth to air grievances about paid holidays, he sent a message to his political base that aligns with his administration’s broader efforts to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The lack of formal White House observance and Trump’s public complaints about holidays were viewed by some as part of a pattern of minimizing the importance of this holiday and its meaning for Black Americans as well as all people in this country who celebrate the end of slavery.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export controls affect large numbers of companies and states across the globe. Some of these penalties target nonstate actors, such as Colombian drug cartels and Islamist terror groups; others apply to entire countries, including North Korea, Iran, and Russia. U.S. policy makers see sanctions as a low-cost tactic, but in reality these measures often fail to achieve their intended goals--and their potent side effects can even harm American interests.

Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests (Columbia UP, 2022) explores the surprising ways sanctions affect multinational companies, governments, and ultimately millions of people around the world. Drawing on interviews with experts, policy makers, and people in sanctioned countries, Agathe Demarais examines the unintended consequences of the use of sanctions as a diplomatic weapon. The proliferation of sanctions spurs efforts to evade them, as states and firms seek ways to circumvent U.S. penalties. This is only part of the story. Sanctions also reshape relations between countries, pushing governments that are at odds with the U.S. closer to each other--or, increasingly, to Russia and China.

Full of counterintuitive insights spanning a wide range of topics, from commodities markets in Russia to Iran's COVID response and China's cryptocurrency ambitions, Backfire reveals how sanctions are transforming geopolitics and the global economy--as well as diminishing U.S. influence. This insider's account is an eye-opening, accessible, and timely book that sheds light on the future of sanctions in an increasingly multipolar world.

Mathias Fuelling is a doctoral candidate in History at Temple University, working on a political history of Czechoslovakia in the immediate post-WWII years. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bucephalus424

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James Cairns, "In Crisis, on Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times" (Wolsak and Wynn, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews author and academic James Cairns about his collection of essays, In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025).

In 2022, the Collins Dictionary announced that its word of the year was “permacrisis,” which it defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.” Have we reached a breaking point, arrived at the moment of truth? If so, what now? If not, why do so many people say we’re living through a period of unprecedented crises? Drawing on social research, pop culture and literature, as well as on his experience as an activist, father and teacher, James Cairns explores the ecological crisis, Trump’s return to power amid the so-called crisis of democracy, his own struggle with addiction and other moments of truth facing us today. In a series of insightful essays that move deftly between personal, theoretical and historical approaches he considers not only what makes something a crisis, but also how to navigate the effect of these destabilizing times on ourselves, on our families and on the world.

James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism and the Journal of Canadian Studies. James’ essay “My Struggle and My Struggle,” originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis’s Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Linda Quiquivix, "Palestine 1492: A Report Back" (Wild Ox Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Hello, I'm Eric LeMay, a host on the New Books Network. Today I speak with Linda Quiquivix, author of the new book Palestine 1492: A Report Back (Wild Ox Books, 2024). This is a book that so many of us need right now, and by "right now," I mean that I am recording this in July of 2025, when Palestinians in Gaza are on the verge of mass starvation as a result of a manufactured and illegal famine imposed by the Israeli army. Some 2.2 million people are experiencing "acute food insecurity," to use the United Nation's official phrasing for people being illegally deprived of humanitarian aid and forced to starve to death. Right now, we are witnessing horror on a mass scale, made all the more horrible because this is wholly preventable. Right now, we need voices who can help us to understand why this is happening, how it is we got here, and what we might do in response. Quiquivix offers us such a voice. In Palestine 1492, she undertakes a rich and wide-ranging analysis to show us how such colonial violence emerged and how we might resist it. In fact, Quiquivix goes further, sharing with us a political vision that strive toward peace, equality, and mutual acceptance of one another across our differences. A world, in short, without the violence done through and to uphold borders. I'm grateful to share with you this conversation with Linda Quiquivix.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025), Bender and Hanna offer a, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms. They show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Savannah Mandel on an Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with space anthropologist, writer, and Virginia Tech doctoral candidate, Savannah Mandel, about her book, Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration (Chicago Review Press, 2025). The book uses history, ethnography, participant observation in policy-making, and other forms of evidence to argue for the discontinuation of human space exploration until pressing forms of human suffering are brought to an end on Earth. The pair also talk about a number of other projects Mandel is working on, including a history of apocalyptic visions and her dissertation on the history of the space mining industry.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elizabeth Popp Berman, "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" (Princeton UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking—an “economic style of reasoning”—became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates over public policy today.

Introduced by liberal technocrats who hoped to improve government, this way of thinking was grounded in economics but also transformed law and policy. At its core was an economic understanding of efficiency, and its advocates often found themselves allied with Republicans and in conflict with liberal Democrats who argued for rights, equality, and limits on corporate power. By the Carter administration, economic reasoning had spread throughout government policy and laws affecting poverty, healthcare, antitrust, transportation, and the environment. Fearing waste and overspending, liberals reined in their ambitions for decades to come, even as Reagan and his Republican successors argued for economic efficiency only when it helped their own goals.
A compelling account that illuminates what brought American politics to its current state, Thinking like an Economist also offers critical lessons for the future. With the political left resurgent today, Democrats seem poised to break with the past—but doing so will require abandoning the shibboleth of economic efficiency and successfully advocating new ways of thinking about policy.

Elizabeth Popp Berman is Director and Richard H. Price Professor of Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine (Princeton).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Bullshit in Politics

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we’re continuing our series on philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. Our guest is Michael Patrick Lynch, Provost Professor of the Humanities and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. Michael is the author of the recently published book, On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It (Princeton University Press, 2025). The topic of our discussion today will be on bullshit in politics, and how we might think about ways to combat it.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carl Rhodes, "Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire" (Policy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Billionaires are an ultra-elite social class whose numbers are growing alongside their obscene wealth while others struggle, suffer or even die.

They represent a scourge of economic inequality, but how do they get away with it? A set of dangerous and deceptive inter-connected myths portrays them as a ‘force for good’:

-the ‘heroic billionaire’ asserts they are gallant protagonists of the American Dream gone global
-the ‘generous billionaire’ pretends that their philanthropic efforts and personal good deeds should be lauded for generosity and benevolence
-the ‘meritorious billionaire’ insists that extreme wealth is a worthy reward for individual hard work and talent
-the ‘vigilante billionaire’ claims to be able to solve the world’s biggest problems where bureaucrats and politicians have failed.

Each of these myths enables billionaire wealth and power to set us back to old-style feudalism and plutocracy.

Offering a trenchant critique, Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire (Policy Press, 2025)testifies to the growing international political will to take concrete actions in supporting economic justice and democratic equality.

Carl Rhodes is Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. He researches the ethical and democratic dimensions of business and work. Carl regularly writes for the mainstream and independent press on issues related to ethics, politics and the economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joseph Darda, "Gift and Grit: Race, Sports, and the Construction of Social Debt" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 1998, Bill Clinton hosted a town hall on race and sports. 'If you've got a special gift,' the president said of athletes, 'you owe more back.' Gift and Grit shows how the sports industry has incubated racial ideas about advantage and social debt since the civil rights era by sorting athletes into two broad categories. The gifted athlete received something for nothing, we're told, and owes the team, the fan, the city, God, nation. The gritty athlete received nothing and owes no one. The distinction between gift and grit is racial, but also, Joseph Darda reveals, racializing: It has structured new racial categories and redrawn racial lines. Sports, built on an image of fairness, inform how we talk about advantage and deservedness in other domains, including immigration, crime, education, and labor. Gift and Grit tells the stories of Roger Bannister, Roberto Clemente, Martina Navratilova, Florence Griffith Joyner, and LeBron James – and the story their stories tell about the shifting meaning of race in America.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paul Tucker, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order (Princeton University Press, 2024), Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system. Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.

Paul Tucker is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Unelected Power (Princeton). He is a former central banker and regulator at the Bank of England, and a former director at Basel's Bank for International Settlements, where he chaired some of the groups designing reforms of the international financial system after the Global Financial Crisis.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Didi Kuo, "The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

As the crisis of democratic capitalism sweeps the globe, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't (Oxford University Press, 2025) makes the controversial argument that what democracies require most are stronger political parties that serve as intermediaries between citizens and governments.

Once a centralizing force of the democratic process, political parties have eroded over the past fifty years. Parties now rank among the most unpopular institutions in society--less trusted than business, the police, and the media. Identification with parties has plummeted, and even those who are loyal to a party report feeling that parties care more about special interests than about regular citizens. What does a "good" political party look like? Why do we urgently need them? And how do we get them?

The Great Retreat explores the development of political parties as democracy expanded across the West in the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on mass parties, and the ways they served as intermediaries that fostered ties between citizens and governments. While parties have become professionalized and nationalized, they have lost the robust organizational density that made them effective representatives. After the Cold War, a neoliberal economic consensus, changes to campaign finance, and shifting party priorities weakened the party systems of Western democracies. As Didi Kuo argues, this erosion of political parties has contributed to the recent crisis of democratic capitalism, as weak parties have ceded governance to the private sector.

For democracy to adapt to a new era of global capitalism, Kuo makes the case that we need strong intermediaries like mass parties--socially embedded institutions with deep connections to communities and citizens. Parties are essential to long-term democratic stability and economic growth, while the breakdown of party systems, on the other hand, has historically led to democratic collapse. As trust in political parties has plummeted, The Great Retreat provides a powerful defense of political parties--for without parties, democratic representation is impossible.

Didi Kuo is Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The attack on democracy in the United States, and the new resistance

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The attack in democracy under President Donald Trump in the United States is both broader and deeper than you think. In this timely conversation with Carl LeVan, Professor and Chair of Politics, Governance, and Economics at American University – but speaking only in his personal capacity – we hear about the way that the government has attempted to silence critical voices by intimidating a remarkably wide range of institutions from law firms to universities and on to civil society groups and the media. This new challenge has led to the emergence of fresh sites of resistance, with new alliances and coalitions being formed outside of old structures. This podcast is therefore an essential guide not only to size and scale of the threat to democracy in Africa today, but also to the shape of the fightback to come.

Guest:

A. Carl LeVan is Professor and Chair of Politics, Governance, and Economics at American University. A policy engaged researcher who has experience on both sides of the divide, Carl’s research centers on political institutions, democratization, and governance. He authored Contemporary Nigerian Politics: Competition in a Time of Transition and Terror (Cambridge 2019) and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics (2018). His work also includes Constituents before Assembly (2017) and studies on Boko Haram, East African power-sharing, and U.S. political trust. LeVan is a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Study of the United States and serves on the editorial boards of Governance and Journal of Modern African Studies. Before his PhD from UC San Diego, he advised Nigeria’s National Assembly and worked in the U.S. Congress, giving him distinctive insights into the most important political struggles of our time.

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Angela Katrina Lewis-Maddox ed., "Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline" (SUNY Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Political Scientist Angela K. Lewis-Maddox has pulled together an important and useful edited volume focusing on black women political scientists and their experiences in the discipline itself and in studying topics that include race and gender. Political Science, as a discipline, is a bit more than 100 years old, and studies politics, power, institutions, policy, methodology, and theory. These are the over-arching umbrellas within the discipline and many of the specific areas within political science take up questions that are connected to these broad concepts. As with many dimensions of our society, race and gender play a role in the discipline itself and in what we study as political scientists. But race and gender have also been considered tertiary issues within the discipline in terms of research.

Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline (SUNY Press, 2025) is both autobiographical for some of the contributors as well as a rigorous interrogation of political science as a discipline. Lewis-Maddox has assembled a group of scholars across rank and position, region and geography, kinds of institutions, and scholarly emphasis. This diverse assembly of contributors have reflected on their particular experience within political science and have written about that experience from a variety of perspectives and approaches. This is a rich and deep study of those who have found themselves to be “space invaders”—black women in spaces and places that are not designed for them. These women all bring the experience of interposing themselves in a place or in places where they are not accepted. And yet they have also persevered in these spaces, in institutions, and within the discipline, and they have considered how they operate professionally and personally in “hostile” territory. Part of the thrust of Disrupting Political Science is to encourage the reimagining of political science as a discipline, to challenge the norms and expectations that have remained in place for over a century.

Angela K. Lewis-Maddox and her assembly of contributing authors have done a great service to the discipline of Political Science in publishing these analyses and considerations. Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline is shining a light on those who have often been obscured within the boundaries of the academic discipline—either because of who they are or because of what they study. Political Science is truly an expansive discipline, and to understand the world in which we live, individuals or groups should not be marginalized or erased, but re-centered and engaged. This book goes far in helping to refocus and consider otherwise obscured dimensions of political science and political scientists.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bryan D. Jones, The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History (Oxford University Press, 2025) explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of plantation owners and industrialists on the one hand, and the more democratic mindset of the mountain-dwelling small farmers on the other. These two mindsets were in continual tension from the 1800s to the 1960s, when the adherents of the more democratic side of the struggle capitulated to the oligarchical side in response to the Civil Rights movement.

Bryan Jones draws from his own family's centuries-old history in the region to explore the rise and fall of the "two minds" of the South. Through a comparison of the experiences of a slaveholding line in his family with three non-slaveholding lines, Jones provides a rich history of the politics of both class and race in the region from the Founding era to the present. The slaveholding side of his family settled in Black Belt Alabama, while ancestral members of the other side of his family were poorer uplanders. In the 1890s, the latter supported the burgeoning populist movement, which for a short window of time tried to unite poor Blacks and poor whites against the patrician planter class and industrialists. After a series of close elections, the planter class was able to stanch the populist tide. They did this in large part by sowing racial division among populism's supporters. Indeed, one of Jones' ancestors helped draft the 1901 Alabama constitution that made Jim Crow the law of the state.

Throughout, Jones shows how deep the political differences were between the two regions, with oligarchy characterizing the slaveholding region and a more democratic ethos shaping the non-slaveholding areas. Jones serves as the final observer, a white boy observing not only the demise of the Jim Crow South, but--in the wake of the Civil Rights movement--the demise of the mountain democratic South as well. Today, the vast majority of Southern whites regardless of class support an oligarchical Republican Party.

Bryan Jones is J.J."Jake" Pickle Regents' Chair in Congressional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nubar Hovsepian, "Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual" (AUC Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, which transformed his thinking and led him to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars. Said’s subsequent writings, which cast light on the interplay between cultural representation and the exercise of Western political power, caused a seismic shift in scholarly circles and beyond. In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Said’s political thought.

Through analysis of Said’s seminal works and the debates surrounding them, Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) traces the influence of Foucault on Said, and how Said eventually diverged from this influence to arrive at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation. He consequently affiliated more closely with Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, and more contemporaneously, with his friends the late Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod.

Said held that it is the intellectual’s responsibility to expose lies and deceptions of the holders of power. A passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause, his solidarity did not prevent him from launching a sustained critique of the Palestinian leadership. Hovsepian charts both Said’s engagement with the Palestinian national movement and his exchanges with a host of intellectuals over Palestine, arguing that Said’s interventions have succeeded in changing the parameters of the discourse in the humanities, and among younger Jews searching for political affiliation.

Drawing on his diaries, in which he recorded his meetings with Said, as well as access to some of Said’s private letters, Hovsepian illuminates, in rich detail, the trajectory of Said’s political thinking and the depth and breadth of his engagement with peers and critics over issues that continue to resonate to this day.

Nubar Hovsepian is associate professor emeritus of political science at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is the author of Palestinian State Formation: Education and the Construction of National Identity, and he edited and contributed to The War on Lebanon. Hovsepian has devoted enormous time to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and served, from 1982 to 1984, as political affairs officer for the United Nations Conference on the Question of Palestine.

Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Truth About Bullshit: Celebrating the 20th Anniversary Edition of On Bullshit with Pamela Hieronymi

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today I’m thrilled to launch a brand new series for the Princeton UP Ideas Podcast. 20 years ago, Princeton University Press published a short volume with an excellent title: On Bullshit (Princeton UP, 2025). Written by philosopher Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit was adapted from an essay that explored the meaning, uses, and consequences of bullshit.

At just 80 pages, On Bullshit became a favorite of readers, selling over 1 million copies and spending 27 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s not often that a work of philosophy breaks through to the mainstream, but readers of On Bullshit quickly discover why. Harry’s meditation on the meaning of bullshit can be read in one sitting, but the ideas have staying power. After you read Harry’s book, you start to see bullshit everywhere and recognize it’s uniquely pernicious effects on whatever’s left of the public square. Harry wrote his book long before modern social media and AI-generated slop. He was unbelievably prescient, making On Bullshit required reading for today. Harry sadly passed in 2023 at 94 years old, but his ideas live on. In this series, we’ll speak with scholars whose lives and work have been influenced by Harry and his seminal book.

To kick things off, I’ll be speaking with Pamela Hieronymi, one of Harry’s former students. Pamela is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA and a leading scholar in the field of moral philosophy. Like Harry, her work has resonated outside the academy. She served as an advisor on the sitcom, The Good Place, which brought philosophical concepts like the trolley problem to a mainstream audience. For the first episode in the series, Pamela will introduce readers to both the book and the man who wrote it. In subsequent episodes, I’ll speak with other scholars who explore Harry’s notion of bullshit in politics, science, and more. If you haven’t read On Bullshit, you should preorder the anniversary edition, which is set to release on August 5th. Now, let’s have ourselves a bull session.

Pamela Hieronymi is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Watch her lecture on the blame game.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Zweig, "An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions (MIT Press, 2025) is a devastating account of the decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century—the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. In fascinating and meticulously reported detail, David Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists to eminent health officials—repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence. As a result, for the first time in modern American history, millions of healthy children did not set foot in a classroom for more than a year.
Since the spring of 2020, many students in Europe had been learning in person. Even many peers at home—in private schools, and public schools in mostly “red” states and districts—were in class full time from fall 2020 onward. Whatever inequities that existed among American children before the pandemic, the selective school closures exacerbated them, disproportionately affecting the underprivileged. Deep mental, physical, and academic harms—among them, depression, anxiety, abuse, obesity, plummeting test scores, and rising drop-out rates—were endured for no discernible benefit. As Europe had shown very early, after they had sent kids back to class, there was never any evidence that long-term school closures, nor a host of interventions imposed on students when they were in classrooms, would reduce overall cases or deaths in any meaningful way.
The story of American schools during the pandemic serves as a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis and uncertainty. Ultimately, this book is not about COVID; it’s about a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.

David Zweig is the author of the novel Swimming Inside the Sun and the nonfiction book Invisibles. He has testified twice before Congress as an expert witness on American schools during the pandemic, and his investigative reporting on the pandemic has been cited in numerous congressional letters and a brief to the Supreme Court. Zweig’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York, Wired, The Free Press, The Boston Globe, and, most often, his newsletter, Silent Lunch. He lives with his family in New York State.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings" (Harper, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads.

Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression.

In Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings (Harper, 2025), Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life. She charts voyages of Black girlhood to womanhood and the currents buffeting these journeys, including the difficulties of racially gendered oppression, the challenges of documenting Black women’s ancestry; the adultification of Black girls; the irony of Black female respectability politics; the origins of Womanism/Black feminism; and resistance to White supremacy and patriarchy. As Jeffers shows with empathy and wisdom, naming difficult historical truths represents both Blues and transcendence, a crossroads that speaks.

Necessary and sharply observed, provocative and humane, and full of the insight and brilliance that has characterized her poetry and fiction, Misbehaving at the Crossroads illustrates the life of one extraordinary Black woman—and her extraordinary foremothers.

Find author Honorée Fannone Jeffers at her website, Instagram, Bluesky, and Substack.

Host Sullivan Summer can be found at her website, Instagram, and Substack.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Book Imprint from The Nation Magazine Launches with Bhaskar Sunkara and Colin Robinson

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Nation Magazine, known for its long and storied history as a publisher of in-depth political and cultural analysis, has launched a new book imprint with OR Books. The Nation’s president, Bhaskar Sunkara, and OR Books publisher, Colin Robinson, joined editor Caleb Zakarin to discuss the project and the upcoming slate of books set for publication this year.

Among the three forthcoming books are an edited volume of The Nation’s very best reporting on Supreme Court, an investigation into Silicon Valley from whistleblower Garrison Lovely, and David Griscom’s debut book on the politics of Texas.

Listen to our interview and stay tuned for future discussions with authors on Nation Books’ roster.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elizabeth N. Saunders, "The Insiders' Game: How Elites Make War and Peace" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

One of the most widely held views of democratic leaders is that they are cautious about using military force because voters can hold them accountable, ultimately making democracies more peaceful. How, then, are leaders able to wage war in the face of popular opposition, or end conflicts when the public still supports them? The Insiders’ Game (Princeton University Press, 2024) sheds light on this enduring puzzle, arguing that the primary constraints on decisions about war and peace come from elites, not the public.
Elizabeth Saunders focuses on three groups of elites—presidential advisers, legislators, and military officials—to show how the dynamics of this insiders’ game are key to understanding the use of force in American foreign policy. She explores how elite preferences differ from those of ordinary voters and how leaders must bargain with elites to secure their support for war. Saunders provides insights into why leaders start and prolong conflicts the public does not want but also demonstrates how elites can force leaders to change course and end wars.
Tracing presidential decisions about the use of force from the Cold War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Saunders reveals how the elite politics of war are a central feature of democracy. The Insiders’ Game shifts the focus of democratic accountability from the voting booth to the halls of power.

Our guest is Elizabeth N. Saunders, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a member of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the intellectual and political work of a figure some may assume has been exhausted: Karl Marx. Following on from his earlier landmark study Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Societies (University of Chicago Press, 2016), this volume turns specifically to the ‘late Marx’. In this period (1869-82), Marx spent much of his time engrossed in the study of colonialism, agrarian Russia and India, Indigenous societies, and gender among many other less known topics of his interest. His notes, especially what come to be known as The Ethnological Notebooks, along with letters, essays and a scattering of published texts remain only poorly known (and in some cases unpublished or not yet fully translated into English) and form the backbone of Anderson’s study. They evidence a change of perspective, away from Eurocentric worldviews or unilinear theories of development. Anderson shows how the late Marx sees a wider revolution that included the European proletariat being touched off by revolts by oppressed ethno-racial groups, peasant communes, and Indigenous communist groups, in many of which women held great social power.

In our discussion, we highlight some of the key themes in the late Marx, bringing out the ways in which Marx is making connections across his writings, how colonial subjects in Ireland and India share commonalities and what can be seen when we look at communal social forms in Russia and among Native Americans. We also discuss why Marx can be seen as a decolonial thinker, consider what he might have produced had he lived longer and the ways in which the late Marx can be presented to students to complement his central themes of class and capitalism.

Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), along with other texts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaime Lee Kucinskas, "The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy (Columbia University Press, 2025) explores how civil servants navigated competing pressures and duties amid the chaos of the first Trump administration, drawing on in-depth interviews with senior officials in the most contested agencies over the course of a tumultuous term. A revealing investigation that is now more relevant than ever.

Jaime Kucinskas is Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology at Hamilton College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Allen, "How to Think about Politics: A Guide in Five Parts" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 31 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What part should politics play in our everyday lives? In How to Think About Politics: A Guide in Five Parts (Oxford University Press, 2025) Peter Allen, a professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath, explores this question across a range of practical and philosophical examples. The book directly challenges the conventional academic understanding of politics, showing how politics is much more than election polls or parliamentary behaviours. This broader view of the politic allows the book to offer insights as to what needs to change in political systems, as well as more generally in societies. A much needed and urgent intervention on the current state of our world, the book should be widely read by any readers interested in politics today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karida L. Brown, "The Battle for the Black Mind" (Legacy Lit, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 May 2025 13:37:00 +0000

A gripping chronicle of the relentless fight for Black educational freedom--and the bold strategies to protect, nourish, and empower Black minds. The Battle for the Black Mind (Legacy Lit, 2025) is an explosive historical account of the struggle for educational justice in America. Drawing on over a decade of archival research, personal reflection, and keen sociological insight, this book traces a century of segregated schooling, examining how early efforts to control Black minds through education systems has laid the foundation for the systemic inequities we still live with today. NAACP Image Award-winning author Dr. Karida L. Brown, takes readers from the rural South to the bustling cities of the North and connects the dots between the experiences of Black students and educators across the nation. From the founding of early Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), such as Hampton, Atlanta, and Tuskegee University, to the rise of the Black freedom struggle, The Battle for the Black Mind weaves together the stories of pioneering Black leaders and the institutions they built to educate future generations. Far from dwelling solely on oppression, this book offers powerful insight into how Black people have always fought to create environments where Black minds could thrive. Brown concludes with an urgent and empowering call to action, equipping everyday Americans with practical steps--both big and small--to ensure that Black minds can continue to flourish, even as our education system itself comes under attack. Grounded in both historical rigor and astute social commentary, The Battle for the Black Mind speaks directly to today's national fight over the American classroom, making it clear that the battle for Black minds is far from over. This book will resonate deeply if one understands the transformative power of education and is invested in understanding how education has always played a role in shaping the moral conscience of America.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Telegraph Takeover: Power, Profit & the Press

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 May 2025 05:00:00 +0000

In the season finale of Ctrl Alt Deceit, Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones dig into the tangled web of media ownership, foreign influence and the future of free press. With a new UK government potentially greenlighting a UAE-backed bid for a stake in The Daily Telegraph, the hosts ask: does it matter who owns the news anymore? From Silicon Valley billionaires to Gulf state investors, the press is no longer just the fourth estate; it's a business, a weapon and a mirror of global power shifts. Is editorial independence a thing of the past? And can democracy survive in a world where outrage sells and facts struggle to pay the bills?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Keir Giles, "Who Will Defend Europe?: An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent" (Hurst & Co., 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Who will defend Europe? The answer should be obvious: Europe should be able to defend itself. Yet, for decades, most of the continent enjoyed a defence holiday, outsourcing protection to the United States while banking an increasingly illusory ‘peace dividend’. Now, after three decades of reducing armed forces and drawing down defence industries, Europe finds itself close to unprotected—while Russia is intent on continuing its war of expansion, and the US is distracted and divided. In Who Will Defend Europe?: An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent (Hurst & Co., 2024), Keir Giles lays out the stark choices facing leaders and societies as they confront the return of war in Europe. He explains how the West’s unwillingness to confront Russia has nurtured the threat, and that Putin’s ambition puts the whole continent at risk. He assesses the role and deficiencies of NATO as a guarantor of hard security, and whether the EU or coalitions of the willing can fill the gap. Above all, Giles emphasises the need for new leadership in defence of the free world after the US has stepped aside— and warns that the UK’s brief moment of setting the pace for Europe has already been squandered.

Keir Giles has advised governments worldwide on the Russian threat. A senior fellow with Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Programme, and Director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre, he is a regular commentator for the BBC and international media. His prescient books include What Deters Russia and Moscow Rules.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amit Ron and Abraham A. Singer, "Everyone's Business: What Companies Owe Society" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The ethics of the company in a highly politicized time. Businesses are increasingly social actors. They fund political campaigns, take stances on social issues, and wave the flags of identity groups. As a highly polarized public demands political alignment from the businesses where they spend their money, what's a company to do? Everyone's Business: What Companies Owe Society (University of Chicago Press, 2024) revises our understanding of business ethics in a world of unchecked corporate power. Political theorists Amit Ron and Abraham Singer show that the increasingly human-like role of companies in modern life is both the fundamental problem and inescapable fact of business ethics: corporate power makes business ethics necessary, and business ethics must strive to mitigate corporate power. Ron and Singer argue forcefully that the primary social responsibility of the modern business is to democracy, not politics. By wielding their newfound social influence on democratic institutions--elections, public debate, protest--businesses can be legitimated forces for good. Pragmatic and urgent, Everyone's Business offers an essential new framework for how we manufacture profit--and democracy--in our increasingly divided shared spaces.

Amit Ron is associate professor of political science at Arizona State University.

Abraham Singer is assistant professor of business at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of The Form of the Firm: A Normative Political Theory of the Corporation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Samuel Western, "The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the High Plains and Northern Rockies" (UP of Kansas)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When did the West lose its way? In 1889, when the US government carved five states out of the spawling Dakota Territory, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and North and South Dakota, all created state constitutions that enshrined certain progressive values into their structre of government. These included the right for women to vote, the power to curtail monopolies, and the ban on child labor. They also maintained a community ethos, as represented by the state ownership of running water and state-owned banks. Yet, in the 2024 presidential electinon, all five states gave their electoral votes to the hyper-individualistic conservatism of Donald Trump's Republcian Party. In The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the High Plains and Northern Rockies (UP of Kansas, 2024), longtime western journalist and educator Samuel Western traces the roots of this shift, and charts a pathway into a new, community oriented, future. Rather than purely extractive industries, Western argues for a socially and ecologically sustainable stewardship agriculture, and points to several examples from across the contemporary West where this practice is already taking place. A fascinating look at our current political moment, The Spirit of 1889 is an example of how even the most entrenched political values can blow away when the cultural winds change.

Samuel Western's Substack: https://samuelwestern.substack...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How Do Autocrats Stay in Power: A Discussion with Johannes Gerschewski

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode Licia Cianetti talks to Johannes Gerschewski about his book The Two Logics of Autocratic Rule (Cambridge UP, 2023). We discuss how autocrats try to either hyper-politicise or de-politicise their rule in order to stay in power, whether the word “fascist” is useful today, and what the two logics identified in the book might tell us about politics in contemporary autocratising democracies. As we recorded during Johannes’s stay at Thomas Mann House in LA, soon after the US 2024 elections, a lot of this had unavoidably to do with Trump. *This episode was recorded soon after the US elections, before the LA fires and Trump's second inauguration*

Johannes Gerschewski is research fellow at the WZB and academic coordinator of the Theory Network at the Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS. In his research, he works both theoretically and empirically on questions of legitimacy, stability, and crisis proneness of democratic and autocratic regimes.

Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Co-Director of CEDAR. Her most recent work on these themes is “What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies” (with Gianni Del Panta and Catherine Owen) published in Democratization in 2025.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 24 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most children who enter youth sport are driven to quit by the time they enter adolescence, and many more are sidelined by its high financial burdens. Until now, there has been little legal scholarly attention paid to youth sport or its reform. In More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport (University of California Press, 2025) Dr. Dionne Koller sets the stage for a different approach by illuminating the law and policy assumptions supporting a model that puts children's bodies to work in an activity that generates significant surplus value. In doing so, she identifies the wide array of beneficiaries who have a stake in a system that is much more than just play—and the political choices that protect these parties' interests at children's expense.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Erin Pritchard, "Midgetism: The Exploitation and Discrimination of People with Dwarfism" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

There exist problematic attitudes and beliefs about dwarfism that have rarely been challenged, but continue to construct people with dwarfism as an inferior group within society. Midgetism: The Exploitation and Discrimination of People with Dwarfism (Routledge, 2023) introduces the critical term 'midgetism', which the author has coined, to demonstrate that the socio-cultural discrimination people with dwarfism experience is influenced by both heightism and disablism.

As a result, it unpacks and challenges the problematic social assumptions that reinforce midgetism within society, including the acceptability of 'midget entertainment' and 'non-normate space', to demonstrate how particular spaces can either aid in reinforcing or challenge midgetism.

Drawing on the tripartite model of disability, this book demonstrates how midget entertainment is framed as a non-normative positivism, which makes it an acceptable form of employment. Using autocritical discourse analysis, the book exposes, examines and responds to excuses that are used to reinforce midgetism, thus critiquing the numerous beliefs influenced by cultural representations of dwarfism, such as people with dwarfism being acceptable figures of entertainment.

It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, social history, sociology and cultural geography.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jon Shelton, "The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy" (Cornell UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the only, way for Americans to access economic opportunity. As Jon Shelton shows, linking education to economic well-being was not politically inevitable. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance, public education was championed as a way to help citizens learn how to participate in a democracy. By the 1930s, public education, along with union rights and social security, formed an important component of a broad-based fight for social democracy.

Shelton demonstrates that beginning in the 1960s, the political power of the education myth choked off powerful social democratic alternatives like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin's Freedom Budget. The nation's political center was bereft of any realistic ideas to guarantee economic security and social dignity for the majority of Americans, particularly those without college degrees. Embraced first by Democrats like Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, Republicans like George W. Bush also pushed the education myth. The result, over the past four decades, has been the emergence of a deeply inequitable economy and a drastically divided political system.

Jon Shelton is professor and chair of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. In addition to The Education Myth he is the author of Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order, which was the winner of the International Standing Conference of the History of Education’s First Book Award in 2018. Shelton has also published work in the Washington Post, Dissent, Jacobin, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and other publications. He served as the Vice-Chair of the city of Green Bay’s first ever Equal Rights Commission and sits on the Board of Directors for the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Wisconsin Labor History Society. He also serves as President for Higher Education of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Executive Power and the President Who Would Not Be King: A Conversation with Michael McConnell

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of Madison’s Notes, Michael McConnell examines the gap between the Founders’ vision of a limited presidency and today’s expansive executive power. Drawing on his book The President Who Would Not Be King (Princeton University Press, 2022), we discuss how the Constitution’s safeguards against monarchical authority have eroded over the past century—and what steps might restore balance to our system of government. From war powers to administrative overreach, the conversation tackles the urgent question: How did we get here, and what can be done?

Michael McConnell is a renowned constitutional scholar, Stanford Law professor, and former federal judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. A leading voice on originalism and separation of powers, his work bridges historical intent and modern legal debates, making him the perfect guide for this critical discussion.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Price of Free Speech: Politics and Power on Campus

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 May 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Hosts Nina Dos Santos and Owen Bennett Jones explore the mounting political and financial pressures confronting higher education on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S., it unpacks the unprecedented clash between the Trump administration and Harvard, raising broader questions about academic freedom, ideological conformity, and the role of government oversight. In the U.K., the conversation turns to the sector’s growing reliance on international students and foreign funding—particularly from China—and the implications for institutional independence and research integrity. Together, the episodes chart the uneasy intersection of education, economics, and geopolitics in today’s universities.
Guests:
-Tyler Coward is the lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
-Rose Stephenson is Director of Policy and Advocacy at Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI)
Producer: Pearse Lynch
Executive Producer: Lucinda Knight

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What has gone wrong with the left—and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds. Leftists have long taught that people in the West must take responsibility for centuries of classism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and other gross injustices. Of course, right-wingers constantly ridicule this claim for its “wokeness.”

In Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left ( MIT Press, 2025), Eric Heinze rejects the idea that we should be less woke. In fact, we need more wokeness, but of a new kind. Yes, we must teach about these bleak pasts, but we must also educate the public about the left’s own support for regimes that damaged and destroyed millions of lives for over a century—Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, or the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Criticisms of Western wrongdoing are certainly important, yet Heinze explains that leftists have rarely engaged in the kinds of open and public self-scrutiny that they demand from others. Citing examples as different as the Ukraine war, LGBTQ+ people in Cuba, the concept of “hatred,” and the problem of leftwing antisemitism, Heinze explains why and how the left must change its memory politics if it is to claim any ethical high ground.

Eric Heinze is Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Embodying Normalcy: Women’s Work in Neoliberal Times (Lexington Books, 2024) calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid work to embody the latest trends for the purpose of achieving success in neoliberal culture. Using TLC reality shows, lifestyle and beauty influencers, Brazilian butt lift TikToks, and celebrities like Kim Kardashian as her archive, Lucia Soriano delivers four case studies that draw on gender studies, media studies, disability studies, and American studies to illustrate how the prerequisite for women to succeed in neoliberal culture calls for them to treat their bodies as projects that must be transformed every day.

Author Lucia Soriano is assistant professor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and ethnic studies at Albion College.

The episode is hosted by Ailin Zhou, PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California - Santa Cruz.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia. In this insightful conversation, Selgin unpacks the myths and realities of FDR’s New Deal through the lens of his book, False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 (University of Chicago Press, 2025). While the New Deal is often celebrated as a bold and successful response to the Great Depression, Selgin argues that many of its policies actually prolonged economic suffering—with unemployment remaining staggeringly high years later. Drawing on extensive historical and economic analysis, he separates the New Deal’s successes from its failures, examines the distinct roles of fiscal and monetary policy, and reveals the overlooked factor that truly ended the Great Depression (hint: it wasn’t just WWII).

This episode challenges conventional narratives and offers crucial lessons for navigating future economic crises. Tune in for a nuanced discussion on why we must assess policy decisions carefully—learning from the past to build a more resilient future.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeanne Sheehan, "American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 17 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) analyzes the roots of widespread disenchantment with American government. While blame often falls on the individuals in office, they are not operating in isolation. Rather they are working within a system designed by the Framers with one goal in mind, protectionism. Although the Framers got much right, their commitment to protection of liberty led them to design a system replete with divisions of power. Whatever its merits at the founding, the government today is frequently described as dysfunctional and far too often unresponsive to the majority, unaccountable, and unable to deliver for its people.

For those disillusioned with the current state of government and committed to effectuating meaningful change, this book advocates in favor of a fundamental reassessment of the system's primary objectives, followed by deliberation as to how it should be restructured accordingly. It not only presents specific reform proposals, but it ends with a stark warning: until and unless we embrace reasoned structural reform, we cannot be surprised if at some point the people become so frustrated that they either disengage, fight back, or seek solace in autocratic alternatives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Constitutional Crisis or a Stalemate?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

At the 100 day mark of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the political scientists at Bright Line Watch released their 25th report on the state of American democracy entitled “Threats to democracy and academic freedom after Trump’s second first 100 days.” Based on polling both experts (760 political scientists) and the public (representative sample of 2000 Americans), the Bright Line Watch researchers find that the Trump administration has challenged constitutional and democratic norms on a wide range of issues, including the scope of executive power and the authority of courts to check it, individual freedom of expression, due process and habeas corpus, immigration, and academic freedom. In this episode of POSTSCRIPT: Conversations on Politics and Political Science, two of Bright Line Watch’s co-directors analyze the latest report – and what it means for American democracy. Topics include democratic performance, threats to democracy and academic freedom and self-censorship.

Dr. John Carey (he/him) is the Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. He is the author of 6 books and dozens of articles on democratic institutions, representation, and political beliefs.

Dr. Gretchen Helmke is the Thomas H. Jackson Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Political Science and faculty director of the Democracy Center at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on democracy and the rule of law in Latin America and the United States. Her new co-authored article definition and measuring democratic norms is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science. She has been named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2025.

Mentioned:

Bright Line Watch’s April 2025 report, Threats to Democracy and Academic Freedom after Trump's Second First 100 Days (based on parallel surveys of 760 political scientists and a representative sample of 2,000 Americans fielded in April).

Bright Line Watch homepage with data and past reports
John Carey on NPR’s All Things Considered, 4/22 discussing the latest report.
Adam Przeworski’s Substack Diary (free to subscribe and read)
Democratic Erosion Project (with dataset that Gretchen mentioned)
Susan’s New Books Network conversation with Dr. Sue Stokes on the importance of integrating comparative politics and American politics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lara Montesinos Coleman, "Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights (Duke University Press 2024), Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social movements in Colombia, Coleman observes that mainstream expressions of human rights have become counterparts to capitalist violence, even as this discourse disavows capitalism’s deadly implications. She rejects claims that human rights are inherently tied to capitalism, liberalism, or colonialism, instead showing how human rights can be used to combat these forces. Coleman demonstrates that social justice struggles that are rooted in marginalized communities’ lived experiences can reframe human rights in order to challenge oppressive power structures and offer a blueprint for constructing alternative political economies. By examining the practice of redefining human rights away from abstract universals and contextualizing them within concrete struggles for justice, Coleman reveals the transformative potential of human rights and invites readers to question and reshape dominant legal and ethical narratives.

Lara Montesinos Coleman is Professor of International Law, Ethics and Political Economy at the University of Sussex, where she also teaches on the MA in Human Rights. She is author of Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights, published by Duke University Press in 2024 and shortlisted for the Susan Strange Best Book Prize, awarded for an outstanding book published in any field of International Studies.

Tim Wyman-McCarthy is a Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He can be reached at tw2468@columbia.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Fallon, "Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture" (Regan Arts, 2017)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From busting drug lords to leading the Pentagon task force charged with bringing the 9/11 terrorists to justice, Mark Fallon has spent his career on the front lines of U.S. national security.

My first guest is one of the most fascinating people I've interviewed. Former NCIS Special Agent in Charge Mark Fallon is a national security consultant, scholar, and expert in counterintelligence and counterterrorism who's been involved in some of the most significant terrorism investigations in U.S. history. Mark served more than thirty years in government—twenty-seven with the NCIS and two as a Senior Executive within the Department of Homeland Security. He received numerous awards and medals for his service, including the Department of Defense Counterintelligence Award for Outstanding Achievement and the U.S. Secret Service Director Honors Award.

As an NCIS Special Agent, Mark operated undercover in some of the most dangerous places in the world—from infiltrating drug rings in Thailand to capturing poachers in Kenya. He takes us inside his undercover operations and describes his strategy for a successful mission.

We talked about the interview and interrogation techniques that actually work (hint: they involve rapport and, occasionally, French fries), and the moment his wife discovered details of an undercover operation.

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mark was appointed Deputy Commander and Special Agent in Charge of the Pentagon task force, responsible for investigating terrorists for possible trials before military commissions. His critically acclaimed book, Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture (Regan Arts, 2017) offers a gripping account of the leadership challenges he faced while trying to bring terrorists to justice without compromising his oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

Mark opens up about what it takes to lead under pressure, the duty to disobey an unlawful order, and why interrogators make the best first dates He shares leadership lessons that extend far beyond national security—tools for navigating crisis, conflict, and high-stakes decisions in any field.

Today, as founder of ClubFed, Mark serves as an international security consultant and continues his mission for improving the practice of interviews and interrogations.

Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Bill Dedman calls Mark Fallon "the Serpico in the war on terror," and high-ranking officials call him an American hero who’s made the world safer. Listen to the podcast—and you'll understand why.

Pamela Hamilton is the award-winning author of Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale, Kirkus Best Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Editor's Pick. As a producer with NBC News for nearly 15 years, she interviewed prominent figures in business, entertainment, lifestyle, and the arts. Visit www.pamelalhamilton.com to learn more — and sign up to be notified when new episodes are released. Connect on Instagram and Facebook @pamelahamiltonauthor.

"We told them 'You may not, you must not—you have a duty not to obey an unlawful order."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Democracy for Sale: Death by Dark Money

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

On this edition of Ctrl Alt Deceit: Democracy in Danger, we are live at the Royal United Services Institute.

Nina Dos Santos and Owen Bennett Jones are joined by a world-class panel to discuss the dangers posed by the waves of dark money threatening to overwhelm our democratic institutions.
Panelists:
--Tom Keatinge, Director, Centre for Finance and Security, RUSI
--Darren Hughes, Chief Executive, Electoral Reform Society
--Gina Neff, Executive Director, Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge, and Professor of Responsible AI, Queen Mary University London

Producer: Pearse Lynch

Executive Producer: Lucinda Knight

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Threats to Universities and What We Can Do: A Conversation with Brandice Canes Wrone

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Universities are under attack, but what exactly are the threats? How does free speech in the last 10 years compare to today? What do we stand to lose if higher education collapses?

In this episode, Brandice Canes-Wrone dives into the major threats facing universities—from defunding to restrictions on free expression—and what we can do to solve them. We explore the history of universities, from their religious roots to the transformative impact of the GI Bill, examine how America’s global leadership is tied to the strength of its higher education system, and discuss why universities must remain vital spaces for intellectual experimentation, free inquiry, and personal growth.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton University Press, 2025) addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion in an increasingly news-avoiding nation.
Drawing on an eclectic array of original data, Dr. Eunji Kim demonstrates how, amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news. Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and MasterChef. Dr. Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility, promoting a false narrative of rugged individualism and meritocracy that contradicts what is being reported in the news.
By taking seriously what people casually watch every day, The American Mirage shows how rags-to-riches programs perpetuate the myth of the American Dream, glorifying the economic winners, fostering tolerance for income inequality, and dampening support for redistributive policies that could improve people’s lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Liz Pelly, "Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist" (Atria, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Liz Pelly has been closely following the evolution of Spotify and other music streaming services and the effect they have had on the music sector and musicians themselves for several years. Her book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (Atria, 2025), paints a depressing picture of how the company has exploited the popularity of playlists to grab a larger share of the money we spend on recorded music. Along with the record companies, Spotify has done this at the expense of musicians themselves and especially those is less popular areas like jazz and classical.

I spoke to Liz at an event in Brussels organised by music venue Ancienne Belgique. Later we were joined by Jozefien Vanharpe of Leuven university, professor of intellectual property law, and Nick Yule of AEPO Artis, an association for collecting societies for performing artists.

This is Simon Taylor with a podcast for New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne Nardal’s literary salon became a meeting ground for African, Antillean, and African-American intellectuals, in the Parisian suburb of Clamart.

The three discuss the slowly changing racial climate in France and globally; how to counter ethnonationalism; as well as the currents of dissent or disdain that threaten to disrupt even leftwing political solidarity.

Mentioned in the Episode

Diallo has directed 8 documentaries among which her 2013 award winning film, Les Marches de la Liberté (Steps to Freedom) . She is also the author of many books, including most recently, La France tu l’aimes ou tu la fermes or France, Love it or Shut it, a collection of her major articles on the “struggle against oppression in France and globally.”
Ne reste pas à ta place, or Don’t try to fit in, (2016) and forthcoming book Le dictionnaire amoureux du féminisme or A Feminist Lover’s Dictionary (Editions Plon, March 2025)
Les Indivisibles: humor watchdog organization. Parody ceremony Y’a Bon Awards given to the “most racist sentences” every year.
Rokahya Diallo
Coordination des Femmes Noir
Awa Thiam, La Parole aux Négresses
Afrofeminism
2005 Clichy-sous-bois, a Paris banlieue, was the site of major unrest. Zyed Benna, 17, of Tunisian descent, and Bouna Traoré, 15, of Mauritanian descent, died tragically in a substation while trying to avoid detention.
The leading French TV station, TF1, made waves (and history) by hiring Harry Roselmack in 2016
Diallo’s own strong X/Twitter presence allows her to talk about being harassed—on Twitter/X itself!--and she has a podcast with Grace Ly, Kiffe Ta Race
Diallo’s film Les Marches de la Liberté 2013
From Paris to Ferguson ( De Paris à Ferguson : coupables d'être noirs) 2016
African Americans in Paris: James Baldwin and Josephine Baker in the 1930s, but also Angela Davis in the 1960s being perceived as an Algerian
Faiza Guene Just Like Tomorrow (Kif kif demain)

Read and Listen to the episode here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Katherine Stewart, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today, and for the past several years, many people both here and abroad have been trying to make sense of the radical right and its financial and ideological grip on the Republican party. Why is it that so many Americans have turned against democracy? What explains the authoritarian reaction of so many American citizens, even when that reaction works so directly against their basic interests? How is it that this anti-democratic trend has escaped the explanatory frameworks of pundits and scholars alike? Perhaps we need to re-frame the narrative about the MAGA movement and the various constituencies that have somehow conspired to undermine democratic values and replace them with radical libertarian principles joined by theocratic, White nationalist, and anti-intellectual ideals.

Addressing these concerns, Katherine Stewart has written Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (Bloomsbury Press, 2025).

Casting a light on the religious right’s “Funders, Thinkers, Sergeants, Infantry, and Power Players,” Stewart recounts her effort “to record what I have seen and heard from the leaders and supporters of the antidemocratic movement in the auditoriums and breakout rooms at national conferences, around the table at informal gatherings of activists, in the living rooms of the rank and file, and in the pews of hard-line churches. The story features a rowdy mix of personalities: ‘apostles’ of Jesus, atheist billionaires, reactionary Catholic theologians, pseudo-Platonic intellectuals, woman-hating opponents of ‘the gynocracy,’ high-powered evangelical networkers, Jewish devotees of Ayn Rand, pronatalists preoccupied with a dearth of (White) babies, COVID truthers, and battalions of ‘spirit warriors’ who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about undermining democracy at its foundations.” Over and against the idea that religion is a relatively insignificant factor in the rise of the radical political right, Stewart makes plain how Christian nationalism is “front and center” in the effort to solidify the power of the MAGA movement and Donald Trump’s presidency.

Richard B. Miller is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Emeritus Professor of Religion, Politics and Ethics at the University of Chicago. He previously taught in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University where he also served as Director of the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions. The author of numerous articles and books, the most of which is Why Study Religion? (NY: Oxford University Press, 2021). Bluesky.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Time to Rethink Democracy: Participatory and More-Than-Human Perspectives

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 May 2025 09:00:00 +0000

This is a special episode that features a conversation between Sonia Bussu and Hans Asenbaum on democracy, capitalism, climate and the practices and prospects of participatory, deliberative and more-than-human democracy to transform their relationship. Can we rethink democracy beyond the liberal-democratic institutions that were created as part of the bargain for fossil-fuel-driven, Western-centric economic growth? What does and could democratic participation look like? What does it mean to include the non-human in our understanding of democracy?

Sonia Bussu is Associate Professor in Public Policy at the University of Birmingham. She researches participatory democracy and in her work she uses participatory and creative methods for research and public engagement. She has led on projects on youth participation to influence mental health policy, youth employment policies, as well as coproduction of research on health and social care integration, and leadership styles within collaborative governance. She is scientific coordinator of a Horizon Europe project on participatory policymaking, INSPIRE. She is co-editor of Reclaiming Participatory Governance: Social Movements and the Reinvention of Democratic Innovation. Routledge.

Hans Asenbaum is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. His research interests include radical democracy, queer and gender studies, digital politics, and participatory research methods. In 2022 he received the ECPR Rising Star Award. Hans is the author of The Politics of Becoming: Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy (with Ercan, Curato and Mendonça, Oxford University Press, 2022). His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, New Media & Society, Politics & Gender, and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stephen H. Legomsky, "Reimagining the American Union: The Case for Abolishing State Government" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Since American president Donald Trump was elected to a second term, it is common to hear citizens, journalists, and public officials distinguish between the laws and leaders of their states and the national government. Those who oppose Trump’s policies with regard to reproductive rights, gun violence, LGBTQ+, education, police, and voting often present state constitutions, courts, laws, culture, and leaders as a bulwark against Trump’s autocratic rule.

But Professor Stephen H. Legomsky sees it differently. His new book, Reimagining the American Union: The Case for Abolishing State Government (Cambridge University Press 2025) argues that – if we care about democracy – we should imagine an America without state government. No longer a union of arbitrarily constructed states, the country would become a union of one American people. Reimagining the American Union understands state government as the root cause of the gravest threats to American democracy. While some of those threats are baked into the Constitution, the book argues that others are the product of state legislatures abusing their powers through gerrymanders, voter suppression, and other less-publicized manipulations that often target African-Americans and other minority voters. Reimagining the American Union interrogates how having national, state and local legislative bodies, taxation, bureaucracy, and regulation wastes taxpayer money and burdens the citizenry. After assessing the supposed benefits of state government, Professor Legomsky argues for a new, unitary American republic with only national and local governments.

Stephen H. Legomsky is the John S. Lehmann University Professor Emeritus at the Washington University School of Law. Professor Legomsky has published scholarly books on immigration and refugee law, courts, and constitutional law. He served in the Obama Administration as Chief Counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and later as Senior Counselor to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. He was a member of President-Elect Biden’s transition team, has testified often before Congress, and has worked with state, local, UN, and foreign governments.

Mentioned:

Cambridge University press is offering a 20% discount here (until October)
Susan’s NBN interview with Richard Kreitner on Break It Up: Secession, Division, and The Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union
Jonathan A. Rodden’s Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (Basic Books 2019)
Hendrik Hertzberg’s review of Robert A. Dahl’s How Democratic Is the American Constitution (Yale)
Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court case that overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965’s pre-clearance requirement for historically discriminating districts

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cynthia Enloe, "Twelve Feminist Lessons of War" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Women's wars are not men's wars. This is the first lesson of Cynthias Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (U California Press, 2023): the lack of attention paid to women during war not only obscures their experiences but also prevents a full understanding of war and its effects. Wartime shapes women's lives and also the gendered politics of issues such as domestic relationships and childcare, labor and economic mobility, political rights and participation, violence, and much more. By paying attention to the lives of women during war, Enloe shows what women can teach us about war. And in Twelve Feminists Lessons of War it's not just the lessons about war themselves are feminist.

This book also tells lessons from feminist activists and how they have responded to war, whether it is being fought in their backyard or by their state's military tens of thousands of miles away. Drawn from insights gained during her long career researching and writing about women during war and the gendered politics of war, Enloe presents a dozen lessons to be learned about women's lives during war and how we can shorten or even prevent wars by paying attention to women's experiences.

Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor in the Department of International Development, Community and Environment at Clark University where she also has affiliations in the Women's and Gender Studies and Political Science departments. Professor Enloe researches, writes, and teaches about the politics of gender in the US and globally.

Resources mentioned during the episode:

Brown University's “Costs of War” Project
No Job for a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Cover WWII
Sudanese Feminist Reading List

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin, "Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America" (Island Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters’ own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives.

We learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals’ found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens.

It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation—and to each of us.

Sharon Udasin is a reporter for The Hill, covering U.S. West climate & policy from her home base in Boulder, Colorado. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and has also reported for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Jewish Week. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon also received a 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and was honored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in 2013.

Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that’s everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. It was through this work that she learned about, and became alarmed by, "forever chemicals." She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Claudia Rowe, "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care" (Abrams Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams Press, 2025) is compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system, told through the stories of six former foster youth. This powerful narrative nonfiction book delves into the systemic failures that lead many foster children into the criminal justice system, highlighting the urgent need for reform.

Award-winning journalist Claudia Rowe brings her extensive experience and investigative prowess to this eye-opening work. With a career spanning over 25 years, Rowe has written for publications such as The New York Times and Mother Jones, and her reporting has influenced policy changes in Washington State. Her previous book, The Spider and the Fly, was a gripping true-crime memoir that showcased her ability to blend personal narrative with broader social issues.

In Wards of the State, Rowe's storytelling is both vivid and unflinching, offering readers a deep understanding of the foster care-to-prison pipeline. Through interviews with psychologists, advocates, judges, and the former foster children themselves, Rowe paints a heartbreaking picture of the lives shaped by this broken system.

By the time Maryanne was 16 years old, she had been arrested for murder. In and out of foster and adoptive homes since age 10, she'd run away, been trafficked and assaulted, and finally pointed a gun at the latest man to take her into his car. She pulled the trigger and fled. But with no family to turn to and few reliable friends, it didn't take long for the police to catch up with her.

In court, the defense blamed neither traffickers, nor Maryanne, but Washington state itself--or rather, its foster care system, which parents thousands of children every year. The courts didn't listen to that argument, but award-winning journalist Claudia Rowe did.

Washington state isn't alone. Each year, hundreds of thousands of children grow up in America's $30 billion foster care system, only to leave and enter its prisons, where a quarter of all inmates are former foster youth.

Weaving Maryanne's story with those of five other foster kids across the country--including an 18-year-old sleeping on the New York City subways; a gangbanger turned graduate student; and a foster child who is now a policy advisor to the White House--Rowe paints a visceral survival narrative showing exactly where, when, and how the system channels children into locked cells.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laleh Khalili, "Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy" (Profile Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and lucrative speculation are the hallmarks of our era, but the backbone of globalisation is still low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control. Extractive capitalism is what made - and is still making - our unequal world.

In Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy (Profile, 2025) Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits. Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world's most voracious industries.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century—but they've never been as intense as they are today.

In No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice (UNC Press, 2021), Dr. Karen L. Cox offers an eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments. Dr. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them and how a movement arose to force a reckoning. She shows the forces that drove white southerners to construct beacons of white supremacy, as well as the ways that anti-monument sentiment, largely stifled during the Jim Crow era, returned with the civil rights movement and gathered momentum in the decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Monument defenders responded with gerrymandering and "heritage" laws intended to block efforts to remove these statues, but hard as they worked to preserve the Lost Cause vision of southern history, civil rights activists, Black elected officials, and movements of ordinary people fought harder to take the story back. Timely, accessible, and essential, No Common Ground is the story of the seemingly invincible stone sentinels that are just beginning to fall from their pedestals.

Our guest is: Dr. Karen L. Cox, who is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her other books include Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture and Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from?

Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray (Bristol University Press, 2024) tells the fascinating story of David Ricardo, Adam Smith’s only real rival as the ‘founder of economics’. The wealthiest stock trader of his day, Ricardo introduced the study of abstract models to economics. He also developed the theory of trade that underpinned globalization and hides, behind its mathematical facade, a history of power, empire, and slavery.

Brimming with fresh ideas and stories, Ricardo’s Dream shows how too many economists, from Ricardo’s day to our own, have turned away from observing the real world and led us astray.

Nat Dyer is a writer and researcher specialising in global political economy. He is a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute and the Royal Society of Arts. He has worked for Global Witness and for Promoting Economic Pluralism and his stories have been reported on by the BBC, the New York Times and Bloomberg

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Good Father Syndrome: Why Strongmen Still Seduce

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein, co-authors of The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future (Polity Press, 2024). In this conversation, they discuss how today’s right-wing movements, from the United States to Hungary, are waging a new form of politics that undermines the very foundations of the modern, rules-based state. Drawing on Max Weber’s concept of “patrimonialism,” Hanson and Kopstein explore how these leaders erode public trust, demolish impersonal bureaucracies, and replace rational governance with personal loyalty and whim. Along the way, they examine the role of conspiracy theories, the rise of “deep state” narratives, and the uneasy alliances connecting libertarians, Christian nationalists, and advocates of an all-powerful executive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emma Casey, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up" (Manchester UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How has the rise of digital platforms changed domestic labour? In The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up (Manchester UP, 2025), Emma Casey, a Reader in Sociology at the University of York, explores the rise of the ‘cleanfluencer’. Situating the way specific online discourses now valorise and glamourise housework, the book gets under the false promise of happiness that hides the reality of gendered labour inequalities. Linking housework, digital and platform society, self-help, and feminist theory, the book is a wide-ranging critical blueprint for a new domestic revolution. It is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding the gendered and racialised division of labour in contemporary society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How to Found A College: A Conversation with University of Austin President Pano Kanelos

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with Pano Kanelos, founding president of the University of Austin. A scholar and professor of Shakespeare studies, Panos’ advocacy for the liberal arts eventually lead him to become president of St. John’s College in Annapolis. In the past few years, Pano has found himself at the center of an academic project that seemed rather unlikely in an era where the big universities are getting bigger and other colleges are shuttering their doors. The University of Austin’s creation points to the potential for dynamism and change in academia. While it’s just getting started, the story of University of Austin is one to follow for anyone interested in how higher education is changing in the 21st century.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word.

Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (Norton, 2024), a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep-seated in the American past as the founding ideals.

A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology.

Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis.

Steven Hahn is an acclaimed historian whose works include A Nation Under Our Feet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize, and A Nation Without Borders. He is professor of history at New York University.

Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter.

150 million lifetime downloads. Advertise on the New Books Network. Watch our promotional video.

Learn how to make the most of our library.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adam Kissel et al., "Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation" (Encounter Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What does a general education from an Ivy League mean? What structures produce the course catalogues that students can choose to customize their education from? Is a world-class degree a world-class education?

In this episode, we sit down with the three authors of Slacking: A Guide A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation (Encounter Books, 2025). Adam Kissel, Madison Marino Doan, and Rachel Alexander Cambre guide us through their process of collaboration and their argument that Ivy League institutions are not providing students with a quality education. Through the saturation of DEI-coded or hyper-specialized courses, they argue, students lack access to classical education and Western civilization–based instruction that would better serve their intellectual development. The authors discuss their approach to building the argument, the origins of their idea, and what students should keep in mind when selecting their schools and course lists.

Adam Kissel is a visiting fellow for higher education reform in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He is a board member of the University of West Florida, Southern Wesleyan University, and the National Association of Scholars. Rachel Alexander Cambre teaches for Belmont Abbey College’s new Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education program. A visiting fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Politics and Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation from 2022 to 2024, she researches and writes on liberal arts education and American political thought. She held a research postdoctoral fellowship at the James Madison Program from 2019-2020. Madison Marina Doan is a senior research associate in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Her work focuses on affordability and accountability reform in higher education and K-12 education choice initiatives. Her work may be found in Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, The Daily Signal, and the Educational Freedom Institute.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Drawing on insights from law, philosophy, sociology, and communication studies, Solove unpacks the complex ways in which digital innovations challenge traditional notions of privacy and autonomy. The book advances a nuanced argument advocating for a reevaluation of how privacy is conceptualized and protected in an age dominated by data collection, surveillance, and algorithmic governance.

In this episode, Daniel Solove discusses how contemporary privacy concerns—ranging from mass surveillance and data breaches to algorithmic bias and digital profiling—can be critically understood and addressed. Grounded in rigorous theoretical analysis, the conversation pushes against the narrative that technological advancement inevitably erodes privacy, instead highlighting strategies and frameworks through which privacy rights can be reclaimed and reinforced in the digital age.

This interview was conducted by Shreya Urvashi, a doctoral researcher of sociology and education based in Toronto, Canada.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year was not a deviation from the historic Civil Rights Movement, the contributors to this collection examine the important work of Black men and women during the previous decades to shape, expand, and preserve a multiracial American democracy.

The authors of these chapters show that Black Americans have long pushed local and national leaders to ensure that all citizens reap the full benefits of the Constitution. They discuss Black women's roles in advancing national voting rights; how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) developed "race leaders"; discriminatory news coverage and actions against it; antipoverty efforts; and the racial and gender dynamics of activist organizations.

These studies show how Black activism from the mid-twentieth century to the present has led to positive changes for all Americans, holding the nation to its democratic ideals and promises. Black Citizens and American Democracy (UP of Florida, 2025) compels recognition of many unsung people who have risked their lives and livelihoods for the good of the country.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn, ed., "We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (U Notre Dame Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997.

Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide—forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West—and searching for humanity’s possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and—perhaps most centrally—the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit.

These annotated speeches, including his timeless “Nobel Lecture” and “Harvard Address,” have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn’s sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn’s life.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn is a pianist and conductor based in New York City. The middle son of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he is translator and editor of several of his father’s works in English.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Political Scientists Ring Alarm Bell Over Trump’s Second Administration

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

After being sworn in as the 47th president, President Donald Trump quickly altered American government – and political discourse. He issued a slew of executive orders that affected how American government functions and he spoke about officers of the government, federal agencies, executive power, the press, the Constitution, and the rule of law in ways that surprised citizens, journalists, and many scholars. Postscript has devoted three podcasts to how professional historians have assessed Trump’s actions. Today, we look at how political scientists understand the second Trump presidency and how they have organized to amplify their concerns. Over 1200 trained political scientists signed a statement that lays out alarming changes to American government – and today’s podcast features the incoming president of the American Political Science Association, Dr. Susan Stokes, to discuss the statement and what it means for so many political scientists to sign it. With her forthcoming book, The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies (Princeton University Press), Sue Stokes is the perfect person to assess democratic erosion and autocracy. Our conversation provides insights into the state of American politics, resources for people who want to oppose democratic erosion, and particular suggestions for teachers – and sneak peak into her new book.

Dr. Susan Stokes is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor of political science and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at The University of Chicago. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is co-director of Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who monitor democratic practices, their resilience, and potential threats. Dr. Stokes has spent her career unpacking how democracy functions in developing societies, distributive politics, and comparative political behavior. Her books include Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (Cambridge, 2013), and Why Bother? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests, co-authored with S. Erdem Aytaç (Cambridge, 2019).

Mentioned:

Statement signed by over 1200 political scientists (closed for signatures)
Bright Line Watch: political scientists monitor democratic practices, resilience, and potential threats
APSA “take action” suggestions (really helpful if you are calling or writing your leaders)
APSA public statements and letters
Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy (2016)
Timothy Snyder, On Freedom (2024) and On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017)
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn, and Force a Democracy for All (2024), New Books Interview with Levitsky and Ziblatt by Karyne Messina
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (2018), New Books Interview with Daniel Ziblatt by Jenna Spinelle
Brendan Nyhan’s work and commentary
Democratic Erosion Consortium (nonpartisan effort with resources)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined.

The rise of online sports gambling—the immediacy of betting with your phone, the ability of the companies to target users, the dynamic pricing and offers based on how good or bad of a gambler you are—has produced a public health crisis marked by addiction and far too many people, particularly young men, gambling more than they can afford to lose. Under intense lobbying from the gaming industry, states have created a system built around profit for sportsbooks, not the well-being of players.

In Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), historian Jonathan D. Cohen lays out the astonishing emergence of online sports gambling, from sportsbook executives drafting legislation to an addicted gambler confessing their $300,000 losses. Sports gambling is here to stay, and the stakes could not be higher. Losing Big explains how this brewing crisis came to be, and how it can be addressed before new generations get hooked.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sophie Lewis, "Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation" (Haymarket Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a provocative compendium of the feminisms we love to dismiss and making the case for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we'll need to stand against fascism, nationalism, femmephobia, and cisness.

In recent years, "white feminism" and girlboss feminism have taken a justified beating. We know that leaning in won't make our jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. But in a time of rising fascism, ceaseless attacks on reproductive justice, and violent transphobia, we need to reckon with what Western feminism has wrought if we have any hope of building the feminist world we need. Sophie Lewis offers an unflinching tour of enemy feminisms, from 19th century imperial feminists and police officers to 20th century KKK feminists and pornophobes to today's anti-abortion and TERF feminists. Enemy feminisms exist. Feminism is not an inherent political good. Only when we acknowledge that can we finally reckon with the ways these feminisms have pushed us toward counterproductive and even violent ends. And only then can we finally engage in feminist strategizing that is truly antifascist. At once a left transfeminist battlecry against cisness, a decolonial takedown of nationalist womanhoods, and a sex-radical retort to femmephobia in all its guises, Enemy Feminisms is above all a fierce, brilliant love letter to feminism.

About the Author

Sophie Lewis is a writer. Her books, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, and Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, have been translated into nine languages.Sophie grew up in France, half-British, half-German, but now lives in Philadelphia and teaches online courses on utopian theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She also has a visiting affiliation with the Center for Research on Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

About the Host

Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author of Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (U California Press, 2025). Chan is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as the author of a prior book Networking Peripheries on tech movements among craftwork communities in Peru. In her current book, Chan documents how the Big Data on which AI are trained are based on long-standing data infrastructures—sets of practices, policies, and logics—that remove, imperil, devalue, and actively harm people who refuse to conform to racialized patriarchal power structures and the priorities of surveillance capitalism—most pointedly immigrant, feminist, and low-income communities.

Centered mostly in the United States as well as Latin America, Predatory Data shows how the eugenicist data practices of the past now shape our present. But her approach is fundamentally a politics of pluralism. Chan dedicates half of the book to amplifying and praising the small-scale, community-led projects of the past and present—from the legendary Hull House’s data visualizations to community data initiatives in Champaign, Illinois. There is much fuel for political outrage in this book and also fodder for solidarity and hope.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “The Politics of AI.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu .

Student collaborators on this interview were Emma Bufkin, Keyonté Doughty, Natalie Dumm, Lauren Garza, Eden Kim, Michelle Kugel, Kai Lee, Sam Mitike, Hadassah Nehikhuere, Shalini Thinakaran, Logan Walsh, and Wesley Williams.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ian Boyd, "Science and Politics" (Polity, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. But why should scientists simply “stick to the facts” and leave politics to the politicians when the world seems to be falling down around us?

Drawing on his experience as both a research scientist and an expert advisor at the centre of government, Ian Boyd takes an empirical approach to examining the current state of the relationship between science and politics. He argues that the way politicians and scientists work together today results in a science that is on tap for ideological (mis)use, and governance that fails to serve humanity’s most fundamental needs. Justice is unlikely―perhaps impossible―while science is not a fully integrated part of the systems for collective decision-making across society.

In Science and Politics (Polity, 2024), Boyd presents an impassioned argument for a series of conceptual and structural innovations that could resolve this fundamental tension, revealing how a radical intermingling of these (apparently contradictory) professions might provide the world with better politics and better science.

Professor Sir Ian Boyd is currently a professor at the University of St Andrews and Chair of the UK Research Integrity Office. He was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on Food and the Environment (2012-2019). He is a marine and polar scientist and previously served as the first Director of the Scottish Oceans Institute at St Andrews

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, writes Neil Kraus in his urgent call to action, The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement (Temple UP, 2023).

Kraus claims the idea that both the education system and labor force are chronically deficient was aggressively and incorrectly promoted starting in the Reagan era, when corporate interests and education reformers emphasized education as the exclusive mechanism providing the citizenry with economic opportunity. However, as this critical book reveals, that is a misleading articulation of the economy and education system rooted in the economic self-interests of corporations and the wealthy.

The Fantasy Economy challenges the basic assumptions of the education reform movement of the last few decades. Kraus insists that education cannot control the labor market and unreliable corporate narratives fuel this misinformation. Moreover, misguided public policies, such as accountability and school choice, along with an emphasis on workforce development and STEM over broad-based liberal arts education, have only produced greater inequality.

Ultimately, The Fantasy Economy argues that education should be understood as a social necessity, not an engine of the neoliberal agenda. Kraus' book advocates for a change in conventional thinking about economic opportunity and the purpose of education in a democracy.

Neil Kraus is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. He is the author of Majoritarian Cities: Policy Making and Inequality in Urban Politics and Race, Neighborhoods, and Community Power: Buffalo Politics, 1934-1997.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aaron Kupchik, "Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior. Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools. Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it. Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racial inequity, but few have thought to ask why. Why do we punish students the way we do, and why have we allowed this harmful practice to impact the lives of our nation’s children?

In Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice (NYU Press, 2025), Aaron Kupchik takes readers to the root of the issue. Suspensions were not intended as a behavior management tool. Instead, they were designed to remove unwanted students from the classroom. Through statistical analysis and in-depth case studies of schools in Massachusetts and Delaware, Kupchik reveals how suspension rates skyrocketed after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, serving as an unofficial means of removing Black children from newly desegregated schools. His groundbreaking research traces the legacy of these segregationist movements, demonstrating that school districts with more desegregation-related legal battles from the 1950s onward suspend more Black students today. Combining expert analysis with compelling, accessible prose, Kupchik makes a powerful case for the end of suspension and other exclusionary punishments. The result is a revelatory explanation of a pressing problem facing all children, parents, and educators today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is Liberal Democracy Dying?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Live from the Frontline Club in London, Ctrl Alt Deceit is back for its second season.

Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones host a fascinating discussion on the myriad threats to democracy, particularly in light of Trump's re-election.

Joined by Gabriel Gatehouse is an award-winning BBC journalist and broadcaster, formerly International Editor of Newsnight and host of the award winning podcast The Coming Storm.

And

Connor Tomlinson is a commentator and writer, contributing to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Courage Media and presenting the Deprogrammed podcast at the New Culture Forum. He previously hosted Tomlinson Talks on LotusEaters.com

In this provocative and timely discussion, big ideas collide as our panel tackles the fault lines shaking the foundations of the democratic world.

As power shifts, authoritarianism rises, and ideological battles intensify, is liberal democracy collapsing under its own contradictions—or is it still the best system we’ve got?

From Silicon Valley’s techno-libertarian ambitions to the push for a return to a more rigidly defined Western identity, our panel will explore the competing visions for the future. Has democracy been hijacked by global institutions that sideline voters? Was the dream of a liberal world order always doomed to fail? And if democracy is in decline—what comes next?

Producer: Pearse Lynch

Exec Producer: Lucinda Knight

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Muriel Blaive to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique. In the podcast we talked about the (failure of the) pandemic response, the necessity of critique, being shadowbanned on Facebook, censorship, and about liberal intellectuals abandoning their core values.

Pandemic Power is available in Open Access, thanks to the support of the Austrian Science Fund. You can download a PDF copy here.

You can purchase a physical copy here.

During the podcast, we discussed the following article: Laura Spinney, “Five years on, the right’s Covid narrative has been turbo-charged into the mainstream”, The Observer, 9 March 2025.

Muriel frequently posts on X.

The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books.

Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more: https://ceupress.com/

Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures.

Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava.

Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ståle Holgersen, "Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World (Verso, 2024), Ståle Holgersen develops a conceptualization of 'crisis' that moves beyond simplistic understandings of societal turbulence or even disaster, arguing that crises have come to mean something very specific. Where previous analyses have treated economic and ecological crises as separate phenomena, Holgersen reveals their profound interconnection within capitalism's contradictions. Central to the book is the idea that both economic and climate crises are crises of capitalism specifically, and the powers that be are not willing to acknowledge it.

Holgersen delves into today’s economic and ecological crises to demonstrate that they are not exceptions to an otherwise functioning system but integral to its operation. It is naive to see these upheavals as opportunities for reform or revolution. They are the bedrock of the status quo. Fortunately, the vicious circle sustaining capitalism is not founded on an iron law. Our historical mission in the face of the climate crisis is to create a historical exception to the rule. It is time for ecosocialism against crisis.

About the Author:

Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. He is a member of two research collectives: the Zetkin Collective (ecosocialist group working on political ecologies of the far right) published White Skin, Black Fuel on Verso in 2021 and Fundament (a housing research collective) published Kris i Bostadsfrågan on Daidalos in 2023. This is his first monograph in English.

About the Host:

Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. She has a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sam Wetherell, "Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What does the history of Liverpool tell us about the future of Britain? In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025), Sam Wetherall, a Senior Lecturer in the History of Britain and the World at the University of York, tells the story of the city through the lens of ‘obsolesce’. This powerful framework structures a narrative that sees the story of Liverpool as both one of state ineffectiveness, indifference, and brutality, and one of solidarity and alternative forms of community and organising. The analysis is rich with details, ranging widely across the city’s rich social, cultural and economic story. Offering Liverpool as a blueprint for pessimism and optimism, the book is essential reading across the humanities, social scientists, and anyone interested in politics, culture and society today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paddy Walker, "War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield" (Howgate, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Amid the fanfare around AI and autonomous weapons, decision-makers - both military and political - are imagining an augmented future for warfare that minimises human influence and connection. But in their rush for speed and lethality, leaders have failed to understand the behavioural and technical challenges that accompany these new weapon types, as well as the detail of their operation and the practicalities involved in deploying these assets on tomorrow's battlefields. Indeed, as autonomy starts to flood fighting practices, the classical concepts of combat, tactics and strategy may no longer be fit for task. We are not ready and, as Paddy Walker makes clear in War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield (Howgate Publishing Limited, 2025), human oversight over lethal engagement is critical if we are to do more than suffer defeats faster.

Formerly commissioned into the Fifth Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, Dr Paddy Walker is Managing Director of the Leon Group. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and an Associate at the Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict at the Imperial War Museum. Previously London chair of NGO Human Rights Watch, Paddy is a Board Member of NGO Article 36 and co-authored War's Changed Landscape, also published by Howgate, with Professor Peter Roberts in 2023. Check out the New Books Network episode on that book here.

Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Benjamin M. Studebaker, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are today experiencing a profound crisis of legitimacy. In Britain, a landslide general election result was quickly followed by a catastrophic tumble in approval ratings. In the US presidential campaign, meanwhile, voters were told that democracy itself was on the ballot, with both candidates suggesting the election might well be the last one ever.

The consensus underpinning the world’s most powerful democracies is, indeed, waning. The populaces have developed a deep dissatisfaction with their governments’ political procedures, yet no credible alternatives have emerged. In his latest book Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies (Edinburgh UP, 2024), Benjamin Studebaker argues that the kinds of disagreements which historically led to political violence today instead just linger throughout the state and society. Without alternatives, liberal democracy’s legitimation crisis leads to neither reform nor revolution.

Studebaker depicts a legitimacy crisis rife with state capacity problems, in which citizens tell each other many conflicting legitimation stories as they search for ways to live with a dissatisfying political system they cannot replace. As different factions try to ‘save’ democracy in their own ways, they appear authoritarian to one another. Efforts to build legitimacy thus only spark greater inequality, pluralism, and ever-tighter gridlock.

Benjamin Studebaker is a political theorist. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge. He has written for Aeon, Sublation, Compact, Current Affairs, The Bellows, and Huffington Post, among others. He hosts Political Theory 101 and co-hosts the film podcast The Lack.

Benjamin is also the author of The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy which we spoke about in 2023.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Will Potter, "Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable" (City Lights Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable (City Lights Books, 2025) is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecedented measures being taken to hide their impact -- on animals, public health, and the environment -- from the public.

Hiding behind the little red barns that dot the landscape of rural America and decorate so many of the animal-based products we consume is a dangerous truth and a very real threat.

Little Red Barns is the record of a harrowing journey that took investigative journalist Will Potter from factory farms to international climate summits, from congressional hearings to neo-Nazi fascist groups.

As Potter uncovers the frightening truth about animal agriculture's role in accelerating climate collapse, he shows how the authoritarian measures being taken to maintain control over this key aspect of the global food supply chain are directly linked to the proliferation and empowerment of far-right militias.

Writing in an engaging, personal style, he invites his reader to accompany him on the journey as he confronts a maelstrom of disturbing information, asking searching questions along the way about the role of a journalist and the impact of "bearing witness" in a world where we're bombarded with images, real and faked.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sally King, "Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female" (Policy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female (Policy Press, 2025), Dr. Sally King interrogates the diagnostic label of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) to expose and challenge sexist assumptions within medical research and practice. She powerfully demonstrates how the concept of the ‘hormonal’ premenstrual woman is merely the latest iteration of the ‘hysterical’ female myth. By blaming the healthy reproductive body (first our wombs, now our hormones) for the female-prevalence of emotional distress and physical pain, gender myths appear to have trumped all empirical evidence to the contrary.

The book also provides a primer on menstrual physiology beyond hormones, and a short history of how hormonal metaphors came to dominate medical and popular discourses. The author calls for clinicians, researchers, educators and activists to help improve women’s health without unintentionally reproducing damaging stereotypes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Collective Action to Support Students at American Colleges and Universities

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A coalition of educators and allies has come together to push back against a variety of different kinds of attacks on higher education and students at colleges and universities, particularly in the United States. This group is driven by the belief that a democracy is only as strong as its commitments to academic freedom, intellectual integrity, human diversity, and individual dignity. The impetus among this particular group of academics and staff members is to make sure that students at all the campuses, in all the programs at those campuses across the United States are supported and free to engage in their chosen courses of study. The various ways in which this mission is being attacked or undermined, with the slashing of grants, attempts to control curriculum, freezing of campus free speech, snatching of students off the streets, and threats to the bottom line all contribute to destabilizing the educational paths of students, and the ability of the faculty and the staff to provide students with the education, research opportunities, and higher education experiences they are seeking at these institutions.

I am joined on this installment of PostScript by three members of an organic group of educators—across disciplines—who came together in the early days of the new Trump Administration to try to figure out how to best support students at different institutions. One of the results of this collaboration among academics and educators across disciplines, institutions, and parts of the country, was to craft a letter directed at university administrators, governmental entities, and the public, explaining the value and import of education, especially in a democracy, and the need for a diversity of voices and contributors to that enterprise. I discuss the origin of the group, the genesis of the letter (which is available to sign here), and the deep concerns among those who work in higher education in the United States with Alison Gash, Daniel Laurison, and Nathan Lents.

Alison Gash is Professor of Political Science and Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Oregon.

Daniel Laurison is Associate Professor of Sociology at Swarthmore College, the former Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Sociology, and a 2021-2023 Carnegie Fellow.

Nathan Lents is Professor of Biology at John Jay College,

Links:

We are Higher Ed Letter: Speaking Out for Democracy and US Higher Education

We are Higher Ed Website: https://www.wearehighered.org/

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan Rauch, "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy" (Yale UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. We are discussing his latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy (Yale UP, 2025). The enmity between secular liberals and religious conservatives is a source of chaos in American democracy. Religious conservatives blame secular liberals for creating a decadent society without traditional norms. Secular liberals accuse religious conservatives of intolerance and hatred. Both sides want to do away with the other, when we actually need to try to understand each other. Jonathan’s book offers a powerful critique of our uncompromising ways.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We Have Never Been Woke: A Conversation with Musa al-Gharbi

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Why does occupation reliably predict political leanings? What is social capitalism, and how does it span income classes? If social capitalists are sincerely committed to equality and “wokeness,” why do they simultaneously benefit from—and perpetuate—the very inequalities they denounce?

Join us as we dive into Musa al-Gharbi’s provocative new book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite (Princeton University Press, 2024). We explore al-Gharbi’s central argument: the disconnect between the stated values of the "symbolic capital elite" and the real-world consequences of their actions, despite their genuine intentions. Al-Gharbi draws parallels to past "great awakenings"—periods of profound cultural upheaval and shifting attitudes toward civil rights. We also examine whether defining "wokeness" is essential to his thesis, and al-Gharbi clarifies some of the most frequently misunderstood aspects of his work.

Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. A columnist for The Guardian, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other major publications.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: History, Narratives, and Political Power--An Emergency Oral History Project

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

President Donald Trump has threatened the federal funding and jobs of institutions and individuals that document, archive, and analyze historical materials. On March 27, 2025, Trump signed “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” an executive order that directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate "divisive race-centered ideology" from Smithsonian museums, educational and research centers, and the National Zoo and to “restore” American history.

While Trump has framed these actions as “efficiency” measures or removing bias in favor of women and underrepresented minorities, they are better understood as removing professionals who preserve the images and documents that politicians and public officials use to create powerful narratives.

Today’s guests are two historians featured in a Washington Post article on the firing of federal historians and the new oral history project designed to capture the history of federal firings, layoffs, and the current work climate.

Dr. Jason Chernesky is a historian of medicine, public health, and environmental history whose research focuses on child health issues in the United States. Jason was the historian for the Food and Drug Administration until receiving a termination letter in February 2025. He is now on temporary administrative leave and the creator of the emergency oral history project.

Dr. Beth English is the Executive Director of the Organization of American Historians. Her research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary labor movement, working-class issues, globalization, deindustrialization, and women in the workplace. She is the author of A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry, and co-editor of Global Women’s Work: Perspectives on Gender and Work in the Global Economy. Beth has contributed to the Washington Post, NPR, Vox, Huffington Post, The New Republic, and other media outlets.

Mentioned in the podcast:

OAH’s Emergency Oral History Project for federal workers (fired, on leave, or currently working)
Gift link to the Washington Post article by Kyle Swenson about the oral history project
“Origins of the FDA History Office” on the FDA website
Organization of American Historians (OAH)’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material
Arlington National Cemetery website removes histories highlighting Black, Hispanic, and women veterans
Joint statement from the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians
Previous Postscripts with historian Dr. Wendy Rouse (Donald Trump is Erasing History – and what YOU can do about it) and executive directors of AHA and OAH, Drs. Jim Grossman and Beth English (Postscript: Not a Matter of Left or Right: Historians Fighting Censorship)
Donate to the Emergency Oral History Project

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peder Anker, "For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering" (Anthem Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U.S. scholars. The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the nuke’s ‘father’, is repeatedly centre stage, as in the case of the recent film about him. These are elitist stories that more often than not ignore the suffering and violence of the bomb to laypeople in general, and to marginalised groups in particular.

Starting with the gruesome mining of uranium by First Nation people in northern Canada, and continuing with the racialist culture of uranium enrichment in the Atomic City of Oak Ridge, in For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering (Anthem Press, 2025) Dr. Peder Anker offers alternative perspectives. It’s a story of how the bikini swimwear came to fetishise the nuclear bombardment of the Bikini Atoll with its celebration of ‘sex bombs’ and (an)atomic ‘bombshells’. Our current global warming fears also harbour back to ordinary citizens wondering if atomic bombs would blow up the entire sky. If some of this was news to you, it might have to do with how the story of nuclear bombs has been told.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Human Rights in the Trump Era: A Conversation with Kenneth Roth

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, Kenneth Roth, former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, joins RBI director John Torpey to discuss Roth’s recent book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abuse of Governments (Knopf, 2025), which reflects on strategies for defending civil, political, economic, and social rights in an increasingly complex international landscape. Roth explores the implications of Trump's dismantling of USAID, the evolving challenges posed by authoritarian regimes like China, and the critical role social media plays in both exposing and enabling human rights abuses globally. Tune in to hear how Roth maintains optimism about the human rights movement and its continued fight against human rights abuses.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance industries. And when US Immigration Customs Enforcement aggressively reinforced its program of raids, detention, and family separation, it was powered by Silicon Valley corporations. In cities of refuge, where communities on the move once lived in anonymity and proximity to familial and diaspora networks, the possibility for escape is diminishing.

As cities rely increasingly on tech companies to develop digital urban infrastructures for accessing information, identification, services, and socioeconomic life at large, they also invite the border to encroach further on migrant communities, networks, and bodies. In Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control (U California Press, 2025), Matt Mahmoudi unveils how the unsettling convergence of Silicon Valley logics, austere and xenophobic migration management practices, and racial capitalism has allowed tech companies to close in on the final frontiers of fugitivity—and suggests how we might counteract their machines through our own refusal.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (University of California Press, 2025) illuminates the throughline between the nineteenth century's anti-immigration and eugenics movements and our sprawling systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination. With this book, Anita Say Chan offers a historical, globally multisited analysis of the relations of dispossession, misrecognition, and segregation expanded by dominant knowledge institutions in the Age of Big Data.

While technological advancement has a tendency to feel inevitable, it always has a history, including efforts to chart a path for alternative futures and the important parallel story of defiant refusal and liberatory activism. Chan explores how more than a century ago, feminist, immigrant, and other minoritized actors refused dominant institutional research norms and worked to develop alternative data practices whose methods and traditions continue to reverberate through global justice-based data initiatives today. Looking to the past to shape our future, this book charts a path for an alternative historical consciousness grounded in the pursuit of global justice.

Anita Say Chan is a feminist and decolonial scholar of Science and Technology Studies and Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Media Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Not a Matter of Left or Right: Historians Fighting Censorship

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The presidents of the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians join the podcast to talk about the effects of historical censorship, data shredding, meaningful public education – and what everyone can do to fight back.

After being sworn in as the 47th president, Donald Trump issued a slew of executive orders. The order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” declares that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality...” This order has swiftly affected what people may read on websites or museum panels that describe historical events and artifacts.

As a new joint statement from the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians recounts, “Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.”

Dr. Beth English is Executive Director of the Organization of American Historians. Her research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary labor movement, working-class issues, globalization, deindustrialization, and women in the workplace. She is the author of A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry, and co-editor of Global Women’s Work: Perspectives on Gender and Work in the Global Economy. She has contributed to the Washington Post, NPR, Vox, Huffington Post, The New Republic, and other media outlets.

Dr. James R. Grossman is executive director of the American Historical Association. Previously, he was vice president for research and education at the Newberry Library, and has taught at University of Chicago and University of California, San Diego. Among his many publications are the award-winning books, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration and A Chance to Make Good: African-Americans, 1900–1929. His articles and short essays have focused on various aspects of American urban history, African American history, ethnicity, higher education, and the place of history in public culture. His public facing scholarship includes work published in the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time, The Hill, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Education.

Grossman has consulted on history-related projects generated by the BBC, Smithsonian, and various theater companies, film makers, museums, libraries, and foundations. He has served on the governing boards of the National Humanities Alliance, American Council of Learned Societies, Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Center for Research Libraries.

Mentioned:

OAH’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material
For federal workers who are interested in sharing their experiences, OAH’s Emergency Oral History Project
Arlington National Cemetery website removes histories highlighting Black, Hispanic, and women veterans
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
Removal of climate data from government websites
Contribute to AHA and OAH
5calls ap for connecting with federal senators and representatives
AHA Action Alert for Iowa residents (and AHA letter to Iowa Senate Education Committee)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Royce Kurmelovs, "Slick: Australia's Toxic Relationship with Big Oil" (U Queensland Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A riveting expose of the global oil industry' s multi-decade conspiracy to muddy the waters around the science of climate change and use the Australian government to undermine worldwide efforts to address environmental devastation.

Researched and written by one of Australia' s most fearless investigative journalists, Slick: Australia's Toxic Relationship with Big Oil (U Queensland Press, 2024) reveals how the US petroleum industry was warned about its environmental impacts back in the 1950s and yet went on to build the Australian oil industry, which in turn tried to drill the Great Barrier Reef, sought to strongarm governments, and joined a global effort to bury the science of climate change and delay action despite knowing the harms it would cause. Slick also tells the stories of fire and flood survivors, as well as of the activists engaged in a high-risk fight for the future of Australia and of the efforts being made to save ourselves from catastrophe. In this superb, in-depth work of journalism, Royce Kurmelovs provides an on-the-ground examination of how the fossil fuel industry captured Australia, and outlines what' s at stake for the survival of the planet and our democracy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Hollenbach, "Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition" (Georgetown UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In his most recent book, Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (Georgetown UP, 2024), Jesuit scholar and Georgetown professor, Fr David Hollenbach explains the Judeo-Christian roots of our concept of human rights and the contributions of secular institutions like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). He explains further when it is right for a country to intervene in the affairs of its neighbors, codified by the UN in 2005 as the Responsibility to Protect in answer to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that gave lie to the world’s promise of “never again” after the horrors of the Holocaust. He contrasts the doctrine of R2P with the tragic case of a homicide in Kew Gardens in 1964 where 38 witnesses, all law-abiding “good people,” failed to intervene because they assumed someone else would do it. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asked God (Gen 4:9). “Who is my neighbor?” The lawyer asked Jesus (Lk 10:29), to which Our Lord told the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Perhaps these questions are a little more complicated between sovereign nations than they are between travelers on a dangerous road, but Fr. David guides us through the Catholic Church’s moral teachings, the principles of proportionality and of just war, and the ability and desire to do something even when we can’t do everything.

Fr David’s book: Human Rights in a Divided World.
Fr David’s faculty website at Georgetown.
Responsibility to Protect, the R2P doctrine at the UN website.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us--A Conversation with Stephen Macedo (Part 2)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This week on Madison’s Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton UP, 2025). The book examines the institutional failures during the pandemic, including the politicization of science, inconsistent messaging, and the disproportionate impacts of policies.

We cover key questions: What did “following the science” mean before COVID-19? Macedo explains that science is inherently uncertain, but this nuance was often lost during the pandemic, leading to unrealistic expectations. He also highlights how poor communication about scientific uncertainty eroded public trust.

The conversation addresses contradictory messaging about the origins of COVID-19, with public statements often differing from internal expert discussions. Macedo notes how this disconnect fueled skepticism. He also raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest among health officials and the dangers of concentrating decision-making power in a few unchecked individuals.

Macedo discusses the politicization of masking, which overshadowed scientific evidence and deepened divisions. He advises individuals to seek reputable sources, embrace uncertainty, and remain critical of simplistic narratives. Finally, he stresses the importance of accountability, open debate, and a commitment to democratic values like tolerance and truth as essential for navigating future crises.

This episode offers a concise yet powerful reflection on the lessons of the pandemic and the need for stronger, more transparent governance. Tune in for the full conversation.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Genevieve Guenther, "The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Language of Climate Politics (Oxford UP, 2024) offers readers new ways to talk about the climate crisis that will help get fossil fuels out of our economy and save our planet. It's an analysis of the current discourse of American climate politics, but also a critical history of the terms that most directly influence the way not just conservatives but centrists on both sides of the political divide think and talk about climate change. In showing how those terms lead to mistaken beliefs about climate change and its solutions, the book equips readers with a new vocabulary that will enable them to neutralize climate propaganda and fight more effectively for a livable future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bryan Caplan, "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing" (Cato Institute, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel’ can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.’ Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free’ parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping).

This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education.

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It.

Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) is the first detailed account of Louisiana's unprecedented turn to mass incarceration from 1970 to 2020.

Through extensive research, Dr. Lydia Pelot-Hobbs illuminates how policy makers enlarged Louisiana's carceral infrastructures with new prisons and jail expansions alongside the bulking up of police and prosecutorial power. At the same time, these infrastructures were the products of multiscalar crises: the swings of global oil capitalism, liberal federal court and policy interventions, the rise of neoliberal governance and law-and-order austerity, and racist and patriarchal moral panics surrounding "crime." However, these crises have also created fertile space for anticarceral social movements. From incarcerated people filing conditions of confinement lawsuits and Angola activists challenging life without parole to grassroots organizers struggling to shrink the New Orleans jail following Hurricane Katrina and LGBTQ youth of color organizing against police sexual violence, grassroots movements stretch us toward new geographies of freedom in the lineage of abolition democracy.

Understanding Louisiana's carceral crisis extends our understanding of the interplay between the crises of mass criminalization and racial capitalism while highlighting the conditions of possibility for dismantling carceral power in all its forms.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Donald Trump is Erasing History – What YOU Can Do about it

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order announced that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality...”

The enforcement of this executive order has rippled through the United States – and has included removing words and images from websites and papering over interpretive panels in museums. For example, material related to the Enola Gay -- a WWII Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets – was removed because it contained the word “gay.” As a new joint statement from the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians recounts, “Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.”

To discuss how – and why – the Trump administration is censoring and removing historical materials, my guest is Dr. Wendy L. Rouse, Professor of History at San Jose State University where she is the program coordinator for the History/Social Science Teacher Preparation Program. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era – and her publication for the National Park Service was changed after the executive order. She is the author of books and articles, including Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement published by NYU Press in 2022. Susan’s NBN conversation with Wendy about the book is here.

Mentioned in the Podcast:

Organization of American Historians (OAH)’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material
Reports by AP about scrubbing military websites and NPR on removal of photographs and mentions of trans and queer on National Park Service websites
LBGTQ Historian statements and articles including letter signed by 360 historians
Wendy’s blogposts on OutHistory and the NYU Press blog
5calls ap for connecting with senators and representatives
GLBT Historical Association
Multiple LGBTQ organizations, represented by Lambda Legal, have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's executive orders attempting to erase transgender people and deny them access to services

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: How Trump’s Executive Order Contradicts Birthright Citizenship

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Birthright citizenship is established in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – yet Donald Trump’s recent Executive Order 14160 denies some types of birthright citizenship. The Order contradicts over a century of American law, legal practice, and constitutional interpretation. Three groups have opposed the order as unconstitutional and challenged it in the courts: and cities, civil rights organizations, and labor organizations. In the podcast, three scholars to help Susan and Lilly interrogate the meaning of natural born citizenship, the political ramifications of Trump’s order, and the complicated history of natural born citizenship in the United States.

Dr. Anna O. Law is the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights and Associate Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

Julie Novkov is Dean of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University at Albany, SUNY.

Carol Nackenoff is the Emerita Richter Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College

Mentioned:

Calvin’s Case (1608)
Donald Trump’s Executive order 14160
Julie and Carol’s 2021 book American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship and their NBN interview with Susan.
Anna’s 2025 FREE open-access article “The Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments’ Effects on Citizenship and Migration”
Anna’s NBN conversation with Heath Brown on her 2017 book, The Immigration Battle in American Courts
Lilly’s conversation with Martha Jones about her book, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America
Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from Revolution to Reconstruction (2021)
Lilly’s NBN conversation with Elizabeth Cohen and Cyril Ghosh about their 2019 book Citizenship

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tahrir Hamdi, "Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Tahrir Hamdi is a Professor of Resistance Literature at the Arab Open University in Jordan. She is the author of the award-winning Imagining Palestine and serves as an assistant editor of Arab Studies Quarterly.

National identities are inherently fluid, shaped as much by collective beliefs and cultural practices as by official borders and territory. For Palestinians, whose national status remains contested, the articulation and imagination of national identity take on particular urgency. Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity (Bloomsbury, 2022) examines how Palestinian intellectuals, artists, activists, and ordinary citizens envision their homeland, engaging with the works of key figures such as Edward Said, Ghassan Kanafani, Naji al-Ali, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Radwa Ashour, Suheir Hammad, and Susan Abulhawa.

Drawing on decolonial and resistance concepts—particularly Palestinian sumud—Hamdi argues that the imaginative construction of Palestine is central to the Palestinian struggle. This interdisciplinary study, rooted in critical theory, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and literary analysis, offers valuable insights for students and scholars of Palestine, Middle East studies, and Arabic literature.

Imagining Palestine received the Counter Current Award at the 2023 Palestine Book Awards.

Bryant Scott is a professor of English and film studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University and Texas A&M University at Qatar.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us: A Conversation with Frances Lee

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison’s Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, about her co-authored book In COVID’s Wake (Princeton UP, 2025). The book offers a comprehensive and candid political assessment of how institutions performed during the pandemic. It explores how governments, influenced by Wuhan’s lockdown, deviated from existing pandemic plans, leading to policies that often favored the “laptop class” while leaving essential workers vulnerable. Extended school closures disproportionately affected less-privileged families, and the politicization of science marginalized dissent. Lee and her co-author, Stephen Macedo, argue that future crises must uphold the values of liberal democracy: tolerance, respect for evidence, and a commitment to truth.

This discussion dives into key questions raised in the book, including the importance of conducting a post-mortem of the pandemic response. Lee highlighted how polarization in the two-party system complicates evaluations of what worked and what didn’t. We also explored the role of states as “laboratories” for different responses and whether meaningful comparisons can be drawn between them. Lee reflected on why pre-existing pandemic plans were abandoned and how the pandemic strained the public’s trust in media, policy advisors, and academic institutions. The ambiguity of desired policy outcomes, she noted, often hindered rational cost-benefit analysis, further complicating the response.

Lee emphasized the value of embracing complexity and ambiguity in conversations about societal and political issues. By examining the pandemic’s lessons, “In COVID’s Wake” challenges readers to consider how we can better prepare for future crises while staying true to democratic principles.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing her co-authored book with Ismail White, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Published in 2020, this book remains highly relevant for understanding American political behavior. While Trump did make significant gains among black voters in 2024, particularly male voters, African American voters still overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. Chryl has appeared on the NBN in the past, so while we will discuss the book, we will also discuss it in the context of today.

Chryl Laird is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: All talk and no action? How political scientists respond to racism and authoritarianism?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

After the murder of George Floyd, the United States had the largest protests in the nation’s history. Other public and private responses included corporations, organizations, and communities making policies, issuing statements, and engaging in conversations. Some political science departments issued statements. My guests today are three political scientists who looked at the substance of those statements – and reflected on what it means about the discipline of political science. Their article “An Incomplete Recognition: An Analysis of Political Science Department Statements after the Murder of George Floyd” appeared in the prestigious APSR (American Political Science Review) published by Cambridge University Press. In the podcast, the authors analyze what political scientists did – and did not do – and what their statements might tell us about how political scientists understand race, racism, and power. We also reflect on how political scientists have reacted to the second Trump presidency in a joint statement.

Dr. Nadia E. Brown is Professor of Government and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. Dr. Brown's research interests lie broadly in identity politics, legislative studies, and Black women's studies. While trained as a political scientist, her scholarship on intersectionality seeks to push beyond disciplinary constraints to think more holistically about the politics of identity. She previously discussed in one of her books on the NBN: Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites (co-authored with Danielle Casarez Lemi).

Dr. Fernando Tormos-Aponte is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and Policy Lead for the Just Transition Alliance. Dr. Tormos-Aponte specializes in environmental and racial justice, intersectional solidarity, identity politics, social policy, and transnational politics. Dr. Tormos-Aponte’s research on social movements focuses on how social movements cope with internal divisions and gain political influence. Tormos-Aponte also investigates civil society claims about the uneven government response across communities. His work in this area examines the causes and consequences of government neglect of socially vulnerable communities during disaster recoveries.

Dr. Janelle Wong is Professor of Government and Politics and Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the Director of the Asian American Studies Program. Dr. Wong’s research focuses on race, immigration, and political mobilization. As a scholar and teacher, Wong has worked closely with social service, labor, civil rights, and media organizations that serve the Asian American population. She has talked about her book on the NBN Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change and also her work on The Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey as part of Heath Brown’s Co-Authored series.

Mentioned:

Brown, Tormos-Aponte, and Wong, “An Incomplete Recognition: An Analysis of Political Science Department Statements after the Murder of George Floyd” in APSR, Cambridge
APSA Letter with 1202 signatures from political science PhDs expressing urgent concern about threats to the basic design of American government and democracy. Add your name here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail (Cambridge UP, 2023) demonstrates that a major part of the answer lies in the transformation of its state. It shows how Britain championed radical economic liberalisation only to weaken and ultimately break its own governing institutions. The crisis of democracy in rich countries has brought forward many urgent analyses of neoliberal capitalism. This book explores for the first time how the 'governing science' in Leninist and neoliberal revolutions fails for many of the same reasons. These systems may have been utterly opposed in their political values, but Abby Innes argues that when we grasp the kinship in their closed-system forms of economic reasoning and their strategies for government, we may better understand the causes of state failure in what remains an inescapably open-system reality.

Abby Innes is Associate Professor of Political Economy in the European Institute at the LSE.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kimberly Clausing, "Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital" (Harvard UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right complain that they unjustly penalize workers back home. In Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press, 2019), Kimberly Clausing takes on old and new skeptics in her compelling case that open economies are actually a force for good. Turning to the data to separate substance from spin, she shows how international trade makes countries richer, raises living standards, benefits consumers, and brings nations together. At a time when borders are closing and the safety of global supply chains is being thrown into question, she outlines a clear agenda to manage globalization more effectively, presenting strategies to equip workers for a modern economy and establish a better partnership between labor and the business community.

Kimberly Clausing holds the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. During the first part of the Biden Administration, Clausing was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the US Department of the Treasury, serving as the lead economist in the Office of Tax Policy. Prior to coming to UCLA, Clausing was the Thormund A. Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics at Reed College. Professor Clausing is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has worked on economic policy research with the International Monetary Fund, the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution, the Tax Policy Center, and the Center for American Progress. She has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Committee on Finance, the Senate Committee on the Budget, and the Joint Economic Committee. Professor Clausing received her B.A. from Carleton College in 1991 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1996, both in economics.

Other New Books Networks interviews on related themes include Yale economist Penny Goldberg, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, on The Unequal Effects of Globalization, Princeton economist Leah Boustan on how immigrants have contributed to and rapidly assimilated into US society, and University of Massachusetts economist Isabella Weber on China's process of integration into the world economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Violent Majorities 2.3: Long-Distance Ethnonationalism Roundup (LA, AS)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

John joins Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian for the roundup episode of the second series of Violent Majorities, focusing on long-distance ethnonationalism. Looking back at their conversations with Peter Beinart on Zionism and Subir Sinha on Hindutva, Lori begins by asking whether Peter underestimates the material entanglements keeping Jewish American support for Israel in place. Ajantha wonders if a space has been opened up by Zionism’s more naked dependence on coercion and brute force. When John expresses puzzlement about the fervent ethnonationalism of minorities within a pluralistic society Lori and Ajantha point out that a sense of minority vulnerability may heighten the allures of long-distance ethnonationalism.

The three explore various questions. Does the successful rise of Hindu ethnonationalism in the UK stem from a perceived contrast between benign Hinduism and dangerous Islam? Does the need for popular ratification through electoral democracy limit the scope of long-distance ethnonationalism? Is there a limit to how effectively Zionists and Hindutvites in the US and UK can wield claims to wounded religious minority sentiment while benefiting from from the hollowing out of democratic institutions? And finally, the three ask if the ominously successful assimilation of Zionism into American right-wing politics may also start working for Hindutva.

Mentioned in the episode:

Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger
Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands
Recall This Book with Shaul Magid on Meir Kahane
Ben Lorber on masculinist “Bronze-Age” Zionism

Recallable Books:

Lori singles out The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, (1979) by Rosemary Sayigh, anthropologist and oral historian. It explores the ways Palestinian nationalism and organized resistance to their dispossession and oppression took hold in the refugee camps of Lebanon.

Ajantha’s choice is Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies, published in 2020, a readable, poignant, and edgy account of US empire, Islam, and race and the challenges of being an South Asian American Muslim. She also recalls the film Mississippi Masala from 1991, a compelling take on race and class dynamics in the US Indian diaspora.

John proposes Paul Breines’ Tough Jews and Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola–to which Ajantha adds Hanif Kureshi’s Buddha of Suburbia.

Listen and Read Here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Higgins, "Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose.

What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chris Higgins confronts the contemporary university in a bid to reclaim a formative mission for higher education. In a series of searching essays and pointed interludes, Higgins challenges us to acknowledge how far our practices have drifted from our ideals, asking: What would it look like to build a college from the ground up to support self-discovery and personal integration? What does it mean to be a public university, and are there any left? How can the humanities help the job-ified university begin to take vocation seriously?

Cutting through the underbrush of received ideas, Higgins follows the insight where it leads, clearing a path from the corporate multiversity to the renaissance in higher education that was Black Mountain College and back again. Along the way, we tour a campus bent on becoming a shopping mall, accompany John Dewey through a midlife crisis, and witness the first "happening.” Through diverse and grounded philosophical engagements, Undeclared assembles the resources to expand the contemporary educational imagination.

Chris Higgins is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Formative Education in Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where he directs the Transformative Educational Studies program. He is the author of The Good Life of Teaching.

The book is available Open Access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew Boyd, "I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor" (New Society, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Andrew Boyd is a humorist and long-time veteran of creative campaigns for social change. He led the decade-long satirical media campaign “Billionaires for Bush,” and is co-founder of both Agit-Pop Communications, an award-winning creative agency and the netroots powerhouse The Other 98%, which specializes in winning the battle of the ‘story’ through meme warfare with some of the Internet’s most viral original political content.

For the last many years, he has been grappling with the issue of Climate Change, co-creating the Climate Ribbon grief-storytelling ritual and leading the Climate Clock project, which melds art, science, tech and grassroots organizing

I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor (New Society, 2023) is Andrew’s third. And it provides an intellectual journey through both essays & interviews, which at once shows Andrew’s passion and his quest to understand the paradoxes of the existential climate crisis.

About the book: WITH GLOBAL WARMING projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.

He searches out eight leading climate thinkers -- from collapse-psychologist Jamey Hecht to grassroots strategist adrienne maree brown, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, and Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer -- asking them: "Is it really the end of the world? and if so, now what?"

With gallows humor and a broken heart, Boyd steers readers through their climate angst as he walks his own. From storm-battered coastlines to pipeline blockades and "hopelessness workshops," he maps out our existential options, and tackles some familiar dilemmas: "Should I bring kids into such a world?" "Can I lose hope when others can't afford to?" and "Why the fuck am I recycling?"

He finds answers that will surprise, inspire, and maybe even make you laugh in this insightful and irreverent guide for achieving a "better catastrophe."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Successful workers were increasingly expected to show initiative and enthusiasm for change—not just to do their jobs reliably but to create new opportunities for themselves and for others. Our culture of work today is more demanding than ever, even though workers haven't seen commensurate rewards.

Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America (Harvard University Press, 2025) by Dr. Erik Baker explains how this entrepreneurial work ethic took hold, from its origins in late nineteenth-century success literature to the gig economy of today, sweeping in strange bedfellows: Marcus Garvey and Henry Ford, Avon ladies and New Age hippies. Business schools and consultants exhorted managers to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit in their subordinates, while an industry of self-help authors synthesized new ideas from psychology into a vision of work as “self-realization.” Policy experts embraced the new ethic as a remedy for urban and Third World poverty. Every social group and political tendency, it seems, has had its own exemplary entrepreneurs.

Dr. Baker argues that the entrepreneurial work ethic has given meaning to work in a world where employment is ever more precarious––and in doing so, has helped legitimize a society of mounting economic insecurity and inequality. From the advent of corporate capitalism in the Gilded Age to the economic stagnation of recent decades, Americans have become accustomed to the reality that today’s job may be gone tomorrow. Where work is hard to find and older nostrums about diligent effort fall flat, the advice to “make your own job” keeps hope alive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the political economy of the video game industry. Srauy’s work appears in various academic journals including Social Media + Society, First Mondays, Games and Culture, and Television and New Media. She teaches courses on identity, race/racism, digital media production, and video game studies/production. Prior to academia, Srauy worked for over a decade in the high-tech industry. Her experience in that field includes municipal wireless networks, open-source technology, and streaming media systems. About the book:

Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit (Routledge, 2024) offers a detailed and much needed examination of how systemic racism in the US shaped the culture, market logic, and production practices of video game developers from the 1970s until the 2010s.

Offering historical analysis of the video game industries (console, PC, and indie) from a critical, political economic lens, this book specifically examines the history of how such practices created, enabled, and maintained racism through the imagined 'gamer.' The book explores how the cultural and economic landscape of the United States developed from the 1970s through the 2000s and explains how racist attitudes are reflected and maintained in the practices of video games production. These practices constitute a 'Vicious Circuit' that normalizes racism and the centrality of an imagined gamer identity. It also explores how the industry, from indie game developers to larger profit-driven companies, responded to changing attitudes in the 2010s, where racism and lack of diversity in games was frequently being noted. The book concludes by offering potential solutions to combat this 'Vicious Circuit'.

A vital contribution to the study of video games that will be welcomed by students and scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, game studies, critical race studies, and beyond.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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:

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!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Giampaolo Conte, "A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms highlights how, since the recent financial crises, the expression ‘liberal reform’ has entered common parlance as an evocative image of austerity and economic malaise, especially for the working classes and a segment of the middle class. But what exactly does ‘liberal reform’ refer to? The research analyzes the historical origins of liberal-capitalist reformism using a critical approach, starting with the origins of the Industrial Revolution.

The book demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms was to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy by imposing, both directly and indirectly, the adoption of rules, institutions, attitudes, and procedures amenable to economic and political interests of capitalist élites and hegemonic states – Britain first, the United States later – between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. As such, the reforms became an active tool used to promote social-economical-financial institutions, norms, and lifestyles typical of a liberal-capitalist economic order which locates some of its founding values in capital accumulation, profit-seeking, and social transformation.

This book will be of significant interest to readers on capitalism, political economy, the history of the global economy, and British history.

Giampaolo Conte is Assistant Professor in Economic History at University of Roma Tre, Italy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: How to Fight Back: Charting Opposition to the Actions of the Trump Administration

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Shortly after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th American president, he issued 37 executive orders and, subsequently, the Trump administration has – through formal processes and also through extra-governmental extraordinary practices – triggered what many are calling a governmental and/or constitutional crisis. Dr. Christina Pagel has published two important Substack articles in which she groups the activities of the Trump administration into authoritarian and proto-authoritarian actions – and maps the opposition. Her unbelievable Venn diagram reveals which actions are being met with organized resistance – and which are being left unchallenged. She is a data hound – and her data not only clarifies what is happening in the United States but provides tools for those who wish to effectively oppose it in the U.S. and abroad.

Dr. Christina Pagel is Professor of Operational Research in Health Care, University College London. Operational Research is a pragmatic branch of mathematics to help people solve real-life problems. She is a member of Independent SAGE providing accessible updates on the national and international Covid-19 situation since May 2020. She has published in public-facing venues such as The Conversation and her free Substack, Diving into Data & Decision making. You can follow her on social media.

Mentioned in the podcast:

Christina’s 2/13/25 Substack, "So this is how liberty dies… " Making sense of Trump's first three weeks (categorizing 76 Trump administration actions and demonstrating how they align with authoritarianism).

Christina’s 2/17/25 Substack, How to fight back: charting opposition to the actions of the Trump administration (showing how Blue states, labor organizations, and civil rights groups are doing the most – and what can be learned from them).

The Just Security’s Litigation Tracker based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.

Vox’s 2/12/25 Unexplainable podcast, “Is Science in Danger?” (20 minutes) Noam Hassenfeld interviewing Derek Dowe (chemist/science writer) Transcript or podcast.

Susan’s interview with Corey Brettschneider on his new Norton book The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ethan Tapper, "How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World" (Broadleaf Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

For more than a decade, Ethan Tapper has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem stewardship.

He has many years of experience managing private and public forestlands. He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including Forester-of-the-Year, by the Northeast-Midwest Foresters Alliance. Ethan lives in Northern Vermont, where he manages a 175-acre forest and homestead called ‘Bear Island’…and rumor has it he is a musician in a punk-rock band.

In his tender and fearless literary debut, Tapper proffers a more complex vision. He writes that we must act now in order to protect ecosystems, and that the actions we must take will often be counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. In striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts—like loving deer and hunting deer, loving trees and felling trees—can be radical expressions of compassion. In this poetic and visionary book, Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world, reminding us that what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.

Countless decisions await. There are no perfect solutions; only endless bittersweet compromises. How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World (Broadleaf Books, 2024) offers a clear-eyed, hopeful vision of a world in which so much is wrong and so much is worth saving.

Michael Simpson has been actively working, researching and teaching in the watershed management and wetlands fields for 40 years. He is a licensed wetlands scientist where he has conducted numerous delineations, wetland assessments and restorations employing a variety of assessment approaches and data collection procedures, as well as designing wetlands for treatment of NPS run-off and wastewater.

He has also held a position as graduate school Professor at Antioch University New England, where he has taught courses in wetlands ecology, watershed science and management, climate science & climate vulnerability and adaptation

His primary research has been funded by both US EPA and NOAA, which has focused upon impact to natural systems and built infrastructure in riparian corridors and estuaries, from changes in land-use combined with increases in storm intensity and frequency due to projected climate change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism.

Literature is a mode of thinking, stories being one of the oldest thinking 'devices' known to humankind. The ways in which literature enables us to think are distinctive and necessary, because of the relationships between its material ('language') and its subject matter ('reality'). Although present in oral literature, these relationships are exposed in their full complexity with the rise of literature as a distinct form of writing. Literature Against Fundamentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) argues that literature enables us to engage with reality in language and language in reality, where both are mutually constitutive, constantly changing, and partly elusive.

Tabish Khair defines this mode of engagement as essentially an agnostic one, resistant to simple dogma. Hence, literature can provide an antidote to fundamentalism. Khair argues that reading literature as literature--and not just as material for aesthetic, sociological, political, and other theoretical discourses--is essential for humanity. In the process, he offers a radical re-definition of literature, an illuminating engagement with religion and fundamentalism, a revaluation of the relationship between the sciences and humanities, and, finally, a call to literature as in 'a call to arms'.

Tabish Khair is an Indian writer, academic and journalist, born (1966) and educated in the small town of Gaya in Bihar, India. After finishing his MA from Gaya, he completed a PhD at Copenhagen University and a DPhil at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is now an Associate Professor. He has been a visiting professor or research fellow at various universities and has received Carlsberg, Leverhulme, and other academic grants. Khair is also an internationally published novelist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Martyn Percy, "The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England" (Hurst, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England (Hurst, 2025) by Dr. Martyn Percy offers a bold and unsettling truth: the British Empire and Great Britain are primarily English constructions, and the Church of England benefited from English enterprise and exploitation, serving as the spiritual arm of the imperial project. English Anglicanism has cast itself as the lead character in its own ‘serious fiction’—the main religious player in a drama of Church and Empire.

Yet, in collusion with colonialism, it is now trapped by historical amnesia. Dr. Percy examines the English interests concealed in appeals to Britishness, showing how slavery, exploitation, classism and racism upheld elitist and hierarchical worldviews that bolstered both Empire and Church. By viewing the rest of the world as lesser, both institutions have declined in global standing, now reduced to minor national players on the world stage.

Religious, social and political imperialism thrived on deprecating others, but those once marginalised have fought for equality and independence. Today, the worldwide Anglican Communion faces a new era of moral reckoning.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Patrick Riordan, "Human Dignity and Liberal Politics: Catholic Possibilities for the Common Good" (Georgetown UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A deeply considered examination of the “common good” reconciling Catholic Social Thought with secular politics and philosophy.

The Second Vatican Council invites dialogue about the common good as the set of economic, political, legal, and cultural conditions for human flourishing, whether as individuals or as communities. However, some contemporary Catholic authors jeopardize this dialogue by polarizing liberalism and the common good, interpreting the commitment to individual liberty as incompatible with commitment to the common good.

Human Dignity and Liberal Politics: Catholic Possibilities for the Common Good (Georgetown UP, 2023) clarifies the meaning of the common good through the three lenses of Aristotelian practical philosophy, twentieth-century Catholic Social Thought, and political liberalism. It makes the case that embracing the common good does not entail a rejection of liberalism, but that a commitment to liberal politics is compatible with faithful adherence to the Catholic tradition. The book argues that liberal political philosophy is not only compatible with Catholic Social Teaching but may also be the most appropriate framework for communicating the richness of the Church’s tradition today. Furthermore, accepting political liberalism can facilitate collaboration in political life between those who hold different worldviews and foster an enriched discussion of democracy, human rights, and religious liberty.

Students and scholars of Christian ethics and political philosophy will benefit from this response to the challenges of dialogue about the “common good” in the context of the resurgence of this topic.

Sam Young is a recent PhD graduate from Cardiff University, specialising in the theological history of European social Catholic movements active during the crisis years of the 1920s and 1930s.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, this wasn’t always the case. Though for most of world history your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and for 200 years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity. Then, as the twentieth century wound down, economic and geographic stasis set in, producing deep social polarization.

What happened? In Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity (Random House, 2025), Yoni Appelbaum introduces us to the reformers who destroyed American mobility with discriminatory zoning laws, federal policies, and community gatekeeping. From the first zoning laws enacted to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California, to the toxic blend of private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in mid-century Flint, Michigan, Appelbaum shows us how Americans lost the freedom to move. Even Jane Jacobs’s well-intentioned fight against development in Greenwich Village choked off opportunity for strivers—and started a trend that would put desirable neighborhoods out of reach for most of us. And yet he also offers glimmers of hope. Perhaps our problems as a nation aren’t as intractable as they seem. If we tear down the barriers to mobility and return to the social and economic dynamism Americans invented, we might be able to rediscover the tolerance and possibility that made us distinctive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trump, Anti-DEI and Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode my co-host and I had planned to talk about how the new Trump administration could create unity in America. The episode title had been, “Starting with a Clean Slate: How the Trump administration could create unity in America.” By starting anew, without a political agenda, we intended to explore how a new sense of community and pride in America could evolve. However, after the group in charge eliminated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs in a day, we felt we needed to talk about the new way a greater divide in America is evolving and how psychoanalytic defense mechanisms can inform us about new dilemmas we are facing as a nation.

Denial, for example, appeared to be a part of what occurred. By refusing to acknowledge the existence or importance of systemic inequalities that DEI programs aimed to address, dismantling them is essentially denying reality. Since discrimination, inequity and racism are at an all-time high in our country, eliminating programs that were designed to improve them seems to overlook what is really occurring in America.

We also believe similar defense mechanisms are at play. The administration’s justification for ending DEI programs as “illegal” and “wasteful” can be seen as a form of rationalization. This defense mechanism involves creating logical-sounding reasons to justify actions that may be driven by underlying anxieties or biases. By framing DEI initiatives as discriminatory or ineffective, the administration rationalized their decision to eliminate them.

By attacking and dismantling DEI programs, it appears as though they have externalized internal conflicts, making them easier to confront and control. The strong push against DEI initiatives could be interpreted as reaction formation, where the administration overcompensated for underlying anxieties about diversity and inclusion by taking an extreme opposite stance.

Through the employment of these defense mechanisms, the Trump administration may be attempting to manage anxieties related to changing demographics, shifting power dynamics, and the challenges of addressing long-standing societal inequities. However, it’s important to note that these actions have significant real-world consequences for federal employees and the broader goals of creating a more inclusive and equitable society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

René Reinhold Schallegger, "A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames" (McFarland, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

We are witnessing the collapse of the postwar consensus, the implosion of the caring society. In times of social, economic, and political insecurity, egotism spreads. Many popular videogames follow a logic of consumerist self-gratification and self-empowerment. Deeply political, videogames contribute to the transformation of players, causing a need for change in what game designers do and how and why they do it. Awareness of the socio-political and cultural contexts can be promoted by the mainstream videogame market for critical active participation.

A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames (McFarland, 2024) focuses on the need for individual self-realization in Western societies and how it manifests in the various dimensions of videogames. Videogames remind us that we can never be isolated in a world defined by complexity and interlaced systems. Connecting videogames and new Neo-Kantian virtual ethics builds upon notions of agency, mutual respect, and obligation. This addresses humans in their entirety as thinking, acting, and feeling agents through engagement, immersion, and involvement.

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.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alpa Shah, "The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India" (OR Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India (OR Books, 2024) pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story of the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, journalists, poets – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists.

Alpa Shah unravels how these alleged terrorists were charged with inciting violence at a year’s day commemoration in 2018, accused of waging a war against the Indian state, and plotting to kill the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Expertly leading us through the case, Shah exposes some of the world’s most shocking revelations of cyber warfare research, which show not only hacking of emails and mobile phones of the BK-16, but also implantation of the electronic evidence that was used to incarcerate them. Through the life histories of the BK-16, Shah dives deep into the issues they fought for and tells the story of India’s three main minorities – Adivasi, Dalits and Muslims – and what the search for democracy entails for them.

Essential and urgent, The Incarcerations reveals how this case is a bellwether for the collapse of democracy in India, as for the first time in the nation’s history there is a multi-pronged, coordinated attack on key defenders of various pillars of democracy. In so doing, Shah shows that democracy today must be not only about protecting freedom of expression and democratic institutions, but also about supporting and safeguarding the social movements that question our global inequalities.

About the Author:

Alpa Shah is the Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford, with a Fellowship at All Souls College. She has written and presented for BBC Radio 4 Crossing Continents and From Our Own Correspondent. She is a twice-finalist for The Orwell Prize for Political Writing for her 2018 book Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas and her 2024 book The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India.

About the Host:

Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth, "The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong" (Harvard UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

When we think about "red tape" and the cost of regulation it's hard to overstate the impact of professional licensing. According to Professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth, it's bigger than unions and more expensive than sales taxes.

Millions of American workers are required - by law - to obtain a license in order to work. This barrier of entry depends on requirements set by licensing boards staffed mainly by members of the profession they oversee. It limits the number of people who can serve and also confers on licensees a certain degree of prestige and trust.

In The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong (Harvard UP, 2025), Allensworth goes deep into a complex web of conflicting priorities.

Whether it's hair stylists or doctors, plumbers or lawyers, licensing board members are asked to simultaneously represent their personal practice, fellow professionals, and the public. They have to literally "wear three hats", which leads to well-intentioned, but deeply flawed and biased, decision making.

Consumers depend on licensing boards to ensure that professionals maintain high quality and reliability standards by creating - and enforcing - licensing standards.

In reality, their decisions can be maddeningly arbitrary, creating unnecessary barriers to hopeful practitioners while simultaneously failing to protect the public from bad actors who abuse the trust placed in them.

Despite good intent, board members lack the resources and sometimes the will to investigate even serious disciplinary cases. The consequences include, but are not limited to, the failure of medical licensing boards to remove the abusive doctors who fueled the opioid crisis and a system that allows unethical predatory lawyers to continue to practice, often targeting clients who are unable to protect themselves.

While in some areas licensing is deeply flawed, in others it is critical to a well-functioning society. Allensworth argues for abolition where appropriate and reform where it is most needed.

See Professor Allensworth's faculty profile video

Author recommended reading:

- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Drug Dealer, MD by Anna Lembke, MD

Hosted by Meghan Cochran

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

American Higher Education Under the Second Trump Administration

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC Riverside, about the early days of the second Trump administration and its impact on higher education. Brint discusses the administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape federal governance, including its attacks on DEI programs, proposals to tax university endowments, and moves to condition federal funding on ideological compliance. The conversation explores how these policies could undermine academic freedom, international student enrollment, and the global reputation of U.S. universities. Brint also examines the broader crisis of public confidence in higher education, tracing concerns over cost, curriculum relevance, and perceptions of political bias. The episode concludes with a discussion of the risks facing the American university system in an era of rising authoritarianism and political polarization.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tao Leigh Goffe, "Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis" (Doubleday Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean and its people would come to pay the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuse. In Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis (Doubleday Books, 2025), Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe embarks on a historical journey to chart the forces that have shaped these islands: the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the islands’ bounty—including guano, which, at the time, was more valuable than gold—for the benefit of European powers and at the expense of the islands’ sacred ecologies.

Braiding together family history, cultural reportage, and social studies, Goffe radically transforms how we conceive of Blackness, the natural world, colonialism, and the climate crisis; and, in doing so, she deftly dismantles the many layers of entrenched imperialist thinking that shroud our established understanding of the human and environmental conditions to reveal the cause and effect of a global catastrophe. Dark Laboratory forces a reckoning with the received forms of knowledge that have led us astray.

Through the lens of the Caribbean, both guide and warning of the man-made disasters that continue to plague our world, Goffe closely situates the origins of racism and climate catastrophe within a colonial context. And in redressing these twin apocalypses, Dark Laboratory becomes a record of the violence that continues to shape the Caribbean today. But it is also a declaration of hope, offering solutions toward a better future based on knowledge gleaned from island ecosystems, and an impassioned, urgent testament to the human capacity for change and renewal.

Tao Leigh Goffe is a London-born, Black British award-winning writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before pursuing a PhD at Yale University. She lives and works in Manhattan where she is currently an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. Dr. Goffe has held academic positions and fellowships at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Princeton University in New Jersey.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to common fallacies about human difference.

Well-meaning physicians, parents, and even scientists today often spread misinformation about what biology can and can’t tell us about our bodies, minds, and identities. In this accessible, myth-busting book, Dr. Dasgupta draws on the latest science to correct common misconceptions about how much of our social identities are actually based in genetics.

Dasgupta weaves together history, current affairs, and cutting-edge science to break down how genetic concepts are misused and how we can approach scientific evidence in a socially responsible way. With a unifying and intersectional approach disentangling biology from bigotry, the book moves beyond race and gender to incorporate categories like sexual orientation, disability, and class. Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins is an invaluable, empowering resource for biologists, geneticists, science educators, and anyone working against bias in their community.

Dr. Scott Catey is a consultant, educator, and CEO of The Catey Group, LLC., a multimedia creative firm. scottcatey.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"Insurgent Ecologies: Between Environmental Struggles and Postcapitalist Transformations" (Fernwood Publishing, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

We are living through a world-rattling ecological inflection point, with an unprecedented consensus that capitalism is leading humanity into a social and ecological catastrophe and that everything needs to change, and fast. Thankfully, radical environmental movements have forced the question of “system change” to the centre of the political agenda to make way for a just and livable world.

Insurgent Ecologies: Between Environmental Struggles and Postcapitalist Transformations takes readers on an inspiring journey across key sites of ecological crisis and contestation, showing how revolutionary politics can emerge from the convergences between place-based, often disconnected struggles. These engaging essays speak to longstanding debates in political ecology around how to advance transformations in, against and beyond capitalism. The collection starts from the belief that the environmental struggles taking place across the Global South and North are a necessary component of such transformations. The book presents unique stories of the visions and strategies of struggles organized around sovereignty, land, climate, feminisms and labour, written by scholar-activists rooted in territories around the globe, offering locally grounded yet global perspectives. Each story reflects on how to build solidarity and comradeship across diverse struggles and how new political subjects and transformative collective projects for social-ecological justice are created.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Richard Rorty, "What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Chris Voparil about What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics (Princeton UP, 2023), a book of Richard Rorty's writings he co-edited with W. P. Malecki.

Richard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a Trumpian strongman in America. What Can We Hope For? Essays on Politics (Princeton University Press, 2023) gathers nineteen of Rorty’s essays on American and global politics, including four previously unpublished and many lesser-known and hard-to-find pieces. In these provocative and compelling essays, Rorty confronts the critical challenges democracies face at home and abroad, including populism, growing economic inequality, and overpopulation and environmental devastation. In response, he offers optimistic and realistic ideas about how to address these crises. He outlines strategies for fostering social hope and building an inclusive global community of trust, and urges us to put our faith in trade unions, universities, bottom-up social campaigns, and bold political visions that thwart ideological pieties. Driven by Rorty’s sense of emergency about our collective future, What Can We Hope For? is filled with striking diagnoses of today’s political crises and creative proposals for solving them.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Martín Alberto Gonzalez, "Why You Always So Political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education" (Viva Oxnard, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, document analyses, and literature on race, space, and racism in higher education, Why you always so political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education (Viva Oxnard, 2024) by Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez documents the narratives of 20 MMAX undergraduate students at a private, historically and predominantly white university in the Northeast United States. Utilizing counterstorytelling as a research method, Martín Alberto Gonzalez argues that the racially hostile campus environment experienced by MMAX students at their respective university manifests itself as a form of educational-environmental racism. By providing culturally relevant counterstories about racism in higher education, this book offers an accessible tool for teaching and learning about the harsh realities of Students of Color who attend predominantly white universities.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Corinne Mitsuye Sugino, "Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I talked to Corinne Sugino, whose book Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans (Rutgers UP, 2024) examines how mainstream stories about Asian American success have come to serve harmful ideas about progress. At the turn of the century, Asian Americans have come to embody meritocracy and heteronormative family values, and more recently, some Asian Americans have become the face of law and order. These ideas become solidified in a variety of narratives, from blockbuster movies such as Crazy Rich Asians, to (supposedly) myth-busting documentaries such as Seeking Asian Female, to legal arguments against Affirmative Action. But these stories—usually stories about American citizens of East Asian descent—erase the diverse lived experience of Asian America. In this conversation, Corine Sugino also explains how we can draw on Black Studies, including scholarship by Sylvia Wynter and Katherine McKittrick, to develop a more capacious understanding of “the human” and antiracism. This provides a foundation for imagining solidarity across racial lines.

About Corinne Sugino: Corinne Sugino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Center for Ethnic Studies. Their research focus lies at the intersections of Asian American studies, cultural studies, rhetorical theory, and media studies. Corinne's first book project, Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans (Rutgers University Press, November 2024) explores how cultural and media narratives about Asian American racial and gendered difference naturalizes a limited understanding of what it means to be human. Beyond this project, her research interests also include discourses of false inclusion, Asian American grassroots media during the Asian American movement, and transnational racialization in Japan.

About Weishun Lu: Weishun Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanitities & Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Her research focus is contemporary poetry, avant-garde writing, the history of multiculturalism, and critical ethnic studies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Zahi Zalloua, "The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury 2024) argues for ressentiment's generative negativity, prompting a shift from ressentiment as a personal expression of frustration to ressentiment as a collective “No”. Inspired by Kant and Nietzsche's philosophy, Zalloua identifies two modes of deploying ressentiment – private and public use – by substituting ressentiment for reason. This reinterpretation argues for a public use of ressentiment, for the wretched to universalize their grievances, to see their antagonism as cutting across societies, and to turn personal trauma into a common cause.

A public use of ressentiment rails against the ideology of identity and victimhood and insists on ressentiment's generative negativity, its own rationality, prompting a shift from ressentiment as a personal expression of frustration to ressentiment as a collective “No”. Reframing ressentiment as a tool to oppose the evils of capitalism, anti-Blackness, and neocolonialism, it both alarms the liberal gatekeepers of the status quo and promises to energize the anti-racist Left in its ongoing struggles for universal justice and emancipation.

Zahi Zalloua is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and a Professor of Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies at Whitman College and Editor of The Comparatist. His most recent work includes Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality (2023), Being Posthuman: Ontologies of the Future (2021), Žižek on Race: Toward an Anti- Racist Future (2020), Theory's Autoimmunity: Skepticism, Literature, and Philosophy (2018), and Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek (2017).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Violent Majorities 2.1: Peter Beinart on Long-Distance Israeli Ethnonationalism (LA, AS)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Political anthropologists Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen are back to continue RTB's Violent Majorities series with a set of three episodes on long-distance ethno-nationalism. Today, they speak with Peter Beinart (an editor at Jewish Currents and Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York) about his just-released book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (Knopf, 2025). It aims to mobilize Jewish religious ethics and teachings to reach a Jewish-American audience shaped by Zionism. Beinart seeks to debunk myths that prevent many from realizing that the moral abominations committed against Palestinians are part of the Israeli settler-colonial-nation-state project.

Peter is haunted by the fact that some of the most ardent opposition to apartheid in his parents’ country of South Africa came from secular Jewish people, and is troubled by the nationalistic tendency of religiously observant Jews there in the apartheid era. The three also discuss questions of solidarity against and among authoritarians, Israel’s threat to international law, the dangers of minority alliances with majoritarian politics, campus politics, and the importance of seeing Gaza and Palestine as connected to us all.

Peter’s Recallable Book is Accepting the Yoke of Heaven: Commentary on the Weekly Torah Portion, by Orthodox scientist, philosopher, and Judaica scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994), who emphasized the idolatry of investing the state with anything more than a supportive role in Jewish life.

Mentioned in the Episode:

119 Violent Majorities, Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism. Episode 2: Natasha Roth-Rowland with Ajantha and Lori
Aparna Gopalan, "The Hindu Nationalists Using the Pro-Israel Playbook," Jewish Currents.
Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative.
Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message.
The Beinart Notebook podcast

Listen and Read Here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment, and even invent new psychiatric drugs. But the hype obscures an unnerving reality. In The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Oberhaus tells the inside story of how the quest to use AI in psychiatry has created the conditions to turn the world into an asylum. Most of these systems, he writes, have vanishingly little evidence that they improve patient outcomes, but the risks they pose have less to do with technological shortcomings than with the application of deeply flawed psychiatric models of mental disorder at unprecedented scale.

Oberhaus became interested in the subject of mental health after tragically losing his sister to suicide. In The Silicon Shrink, he argues that these new, ostensibly therapeutic technologies already pose significant risks to vulnerable people, and they won't stop there. These new breeds of AI systems are creating a psychiatric surveillance economy in which the emotions, behavior, and cognition of everyday people are subtly manipulated by psychologically savvy algorithms that have escaped the clinic. Oberhaus also introduces readers to the concept of “swipe psychology,” which is quickly establishing itself as the dominant mode of diagnosing and treating mental disorders.

It is not too late to change course, but to do so means we must reckon with the nature of mental illness, the limits of technology, and what it means to be human.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Vittorio Bufacchi, "Why Cicero Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Why Cicero Matters (Bloomsbury, 2023) shows us how the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius, better known as Cicero, can help realize a new political world. His impact on humanitarianism, the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers of America is immense. Yet we give Julius Caesar all our attention. Why? What does this say about modern politics and political culture?

This book gives us Cicero as an antidote to the myth of the strong man of history. Reading Cicero's On Duties alongside two more introspective philosophical texts, On Friendship and On Old Age, we see how Cicero turned politics into a higher, intellectual form of art, believing in education, in culture and above all in the power of philosophy to instil morality. Cicero has reassuring words on the indispensable work philosophers make, and why the common good needs philosophy.

In an age when anti-intellectualism runs rampant, Why Cicero Matters introduces us to an ancient thinker who argues culture is, or ought to be, the foundation of any modern democracy, and books its building blocks.

Vittorio Bufacchi is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork, Ireland. He works in moral and political philosophy. He is the author of Violence and Social Justice (2007); Social Injustice (2012); and Everything Must Change: Philosophical Lessons From Lockdown (2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mirca Madianou, "Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful" (Polity, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are being championed as forces for good and as solutions to the complex challenges of the aid sector.

Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful (Polity, 2024) argues, however, that digital innovation engenders new forms of violence and entrenches power asymmetries between the global South and North. Dr. Madianou develops a new concept, technocolonialism, to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures, state power and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial legacies. The concept of technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that digital infrastructures, data and AI play in accentuating inequities between aid providers and people in need.

Drawing on ten years of research on the uses of digital technologies in humanitarian operations, Dr. Mirca Madianou examines a range of practices: from the normalization of biometric technologies and the datafication of humanitarian operations to experimentation in refugee camps, which are treated as laboratories for technological pilots. In so doing, the book opens new ground in the fields of humanitarianism and critical AI studies, and in the debates in postcolonial studies, by highlighting the fundamental role of digital technologies in reworking colonial genealogies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eugene Finkel, "Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine" (Basic Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet, to Ukrainians, this attack was painfully familiar, the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign to divide and oppress Ukraine.

In Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024), political scientist Eugene Finkel uncovers these deep roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine is a key borderland between Russia and the West, and, following the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, dominating Ukraine became the cornerstone of Russian policy. Russia has long used genocidal tactics—killings, deportations, starvation, and cultural destruction—to successfully crush Ukrainian efforts to chart an independent path. As Finkel shows, today’s violence is simply a more extreme version of the Kremlin’s long-standing policy. But unlike in the past, the people of Ukraine—motivated by the rise of democracy in their nation—have overcome their deep internal divisions. For the first time, they have united in favor of independence from Russia.

Whatever the outcome of the present war, Ukraine’s staunch resistance has permanently altered its relationship to Russia and the West. Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024) offers the vital context we need to truly understand Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Philip Rathgeb, "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across the Western world. How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA (Oxford UP, 2024) shows how they have used their political power to reform economic and social policies in Continental Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, and the USA. In doing so, it argues that the radical right's core ideology of nativism and authoritarianism informs their socio-economic policy preferences. However, diverse welfare state contexts mediate their socio-economic policy impacts along regime-specific lines, leading to variations of trade protectionism, economic nationalism, traditional familialism, labour market dualism, and welfare chauvinism.

The radical right has used the diverse policy instruments available within their political-economic arrangements to protect threatened labour market insiders and male breadwinners from decline, while creating a racialized and gendered precariat at the same time. This socio-economic agenda of selective status protection restores horizontal inequalities in terms of gender and ethnicity, without addressing vertical inequalities between the rich and the poor.

Combining insights from comparative politics, party politics, comparative political economy, and welfare state research, the book provides novel insights into how the radical right manufactures consent for authoritarian rule by taming the socially corrosive effects of globalised capitalism for key electoral groups, while aiming to exclude the rest from democratic participation.

Philip Rathgeb is an associate professor in Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz. Philip holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) and held visiting positions at Harvard University, Lund University, University of Southern Denmark, and the EUI. His research interests are in comparative political economy and comparative politics, with a particular focus on welfare states, industrial relations, and party politics. His first book Strong Governments, Precarious Workers was published with Cornell University Press in 2018.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

142* Greg Childs on Seditious Conspiracy (EF, JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

What a difference four years makes. Back in February 2021, still struggling to understand what had just happened at the Capitol, John and Elizabeth spoke with Brandeis historian Greg Childs. He is an expert in Latin American political movements and public space; his Seditious Spaces: Race, Freedom, and the 1798 Conspiracy in Bahia, Brazil is imminently forthcoming from Cambridge UP.

Greg's historical and hemispheric perspective helped bring out the differences between calling an event “sedition,” “seditious conspiracy” and “insurrection,” the new “Lost Cause” that many of those attacking the Capitol seem to hold on to and the particularities of Whiteness in the United States, as compared to elsewhere in the Americas. Greg even proposes a new word for what happened January 6th, 2021: counterinsurgency.

Mentioned in this episode:

Legitimation Crisis (1974), Jurgen Habermas
On Revolution (1963), Hannah Arendt
The Machiavellian Moment (1975), J. G. A. Pocock
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (2004), Stephanie Camp
Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 (1998), Charles Tilly
The Possessive Investment of Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (orig. 1998) 20th anniversary edition, George Lipsitz

Listen and Read.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andy Wightman, "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it" (Birlinn, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get our common good land back? In this updated edition of The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it (Birlinn, 2024), Andy Wightman updates the statistics of landownership in Scotland and explores how and why landowners got their hands on the millions of acres of land that were once held in common.

He tells the untold story of how Scotland's legal establishment and politicians managed to appropriate land through legal fixes. Have attempts to redistribute this power more equitably made any difference, and what are the full implications of the recent debt-fuelled housing bubble, the Smith Commission and the new Scottish Government's proposals on land reform? For all those with an interest in urban and rural land in Scotland, this updated edition of The Poor Had No Lawyers provides a fascinating analysis of one the most important political questions in Scotland.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brigid Schulte, "Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life" (Henry Holt, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte's groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention to the greatest culprit in America's quality-of-life crisis: the way our economy and culture conceive of work. Americans across all demographics, industries, and socioeconomic levels report exhaustion, burnout, and the wish for more meaningful lives. This full-system failure in our structure of work affects everything from gender inequality to domestic stability, and it even shortens our lifespans.

Drawing on years of research, Schulte traces the arc of our discontent from a time before the 1980s, when work was compatible with well-being and allowed a single earner to support a family, until today, with millions of people working multiple hourly jobs or in white-collar positions where no hours are ever off duty.

She casts a wide net in search of solutions, exploring the movement to institute a four-day workweek, introducing Japan's Housewives Brigade--which demands legal protection for family time--and embedding with CEOs who are making the business case for humane conditions. And she demonstrates the power of a collective and creative demand for change, showing that work can be organized in an infinite number of ways that are good for humans and for business.

Fiercely argued and vividly told, rich with stories and informed by deep investigation, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life (Henry Holt, 2024) lays out a clear vision for ending our punishing grind and reclaiming leisure, joy, and meaning.

Brigid Schulte is the author of the bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time and an award-winning journalist formerly for the Washington Post, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize. She is also the director of the Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and gender equity program at New America.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin. "Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum" (NYU Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How the US asylum process fails to protect against claims of gender-based violence.

Through eyewitness accounts of closed-court proceedings and powerful testimony from women who have sought asylum in the United States because of severe assaults and death threats by intimate partners and/or gang members, Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum (NYU Press, 2024) examines how immigration laws and policies shape the lives of Latin American women who seek safety in the United States. Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin describe the women's histories prior to crossing the border, and the legal strategies they use to convince Immigration Judges that rape and other forms of "private violence" should merit asylum - despite laws built on Cold War era assumptions that persecution occurs in the public sphere by state actors.

Private Violence provides much-needed recommendations for incorporating a gender-based lens in the asylum process. The authors demonstrate how policy changes across Presidential administrations have made it difficult for survivors of "private violence" to qualify for asylum. Private Violence paints a damning portrait of America's broken asylum system. This volume illustrates the difficulties experienced by Latin American women who rely on this broken system for protection in the United States. It also illuminates women's resilience and the determination of immigration attorneys to reshape asylum law.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

August H. Nimtz and Kyle A. Edwards, "The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution" (Brill, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest and urgency to questions of racial oppression and emancipation. We’ve now had about a decade of activists fighting for the idea that Black Lives Matter which eventually culminated in the summer of 2020 with millions taking to the streets. The actual concrete victories have been more of a mixed bag, which leads us to the question: what sort of politics are needed to achieve real emancipation? This led Kyle Edwards and August Nimtz back to the American Civil War, and more specifically to the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass. Both wrote quite prolifically on the events that were happening and were enthusiastic about its possibilities for the advancement of human freedom, but both brought some very different political values and ideas to their analysis. In studying these two figures together, Edwards and Nimtz are able to show how both a fight for Communism rooted in class struggle and a revolutionary liberalism rose to this profound historical moment. The result is The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution: Comparing Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass in Real-Time (Brill, 2024), a study with a concrete answer to the question of what sort of politics will be needed going forward.

Published as part of the Historical Materialism book series by Brill and Haymarket.

Kyle Edwards is a Curriculum Administrator at the University of Minnesota, and a member of AFSCME 3800.

August Nimtz is a professor in the political science department at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books, including Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative Real-Time Political Analysis and The Ballot, the Streets―or Both: From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alva Gotby, "Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing" (Verso, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Housing is more than bricks and mortar. The home is where our hopes and dreams play out, and it lies at the heart of our lives. This is where we rest, eat, and relax. The home we enjoy can determine our health, life expectancy, and day-to-day well-being. In contrast, the lack of a stable residence can lead to mental and physical illness and often premature death. This is central to how we conceive of a good and dignified life.

In Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing (Verso, 2025), Alva Gotby grapples with the practical and emotional questions of housing – domestic labour, privacy, security, ownership, and health. Is it possible to imagine success without home ownership? Gotby makes clear that solving the housing crisis is about much more than housing stock. It is about revolutionising our everyday lives and labours.

Louisa Hann has a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres. Her recent book, HIV/AIDS and the Stage, is out with Liverpool University Press

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Congressional Deliberation: A Conversation with Kevin J. Burns and Jordan T. Cash

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we sit down with Professors Jordan T. Cash and Kevin J. Burns to discuss their recently published book, Congressional Deliberation: Major Debates, Speeches, and Writings, 1774–2023 (Hackett, 2024). Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, the book offers a deep dive into key historical debates and turning points in U.S. congressional history. We explored how the dynamics of deliberation in the House and Senate have shaped fundamental issues like war powers, impeachment, civil rights, and legislative leadership. With their expertise in American political thought, constitutionalism, and the history of political institutions, Professors Cash and Burns provide a rich, scholarly perspective on the role of Congress in the development of the American political system. Whether you’re a student of history or simply curious about the workings of the U.S. government, this conversation offers valuable insights into the continuing evolution of congressional deliberation.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anthony Walton, "The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation" (David R. Godine, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Born into the Civil Rights Movement, author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw systemic racism and the vicious backlash against Black progress embodied in the Southern Strategy, Tea Party, and MAGA. Over time, Walton came to believe that moving forward requires a "Third Reconstruction" to accomplish what remains: better health outcomes, secure voting rights, and sustained economic and educational opportunity. Only this approach, he believes, will accomplish what remains unfinished for true African American equality.

Blending social history, bracing analysis, and autobiography, this dazzling collection includes essays published in The New York Times and The Atlantic--including "Willie Horton and Me" and the much-anthologized "Technology vs. African Americans"--as well as new work that probes Walton's earlier thinking. Throughout, the author delivers insights that wrestle with the hydra-headed, ever-changing realities of an American society in which the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation (David R. Godine, 2024) illuminates recent American history as experienced by a writer who has remained open to hope, unfazed by failures, and unflinchingly dedicated to the truth. This book will leave you changed. And just may incite you to be a part of the change we need.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mariam Motamedi Fraser, "Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences" (Manchester UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story,' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to dogs' evolutionary becoming, suggest that they do. Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Mariam Motamedi Fraser dissects this story.

This book offers a rich empirical analysis and critique of the development and consolidation of dogs' species story in science, asking what evidence exists to support it, and what practical consequences, for dogs, follow from it. It explores how this story is woven into broader scientific shifts in understandings of species, animals, and animal behaviours, and how such shifts were informed by and informed transformative political events, including slavery and colonialism, the Second World War and its aftermath, and the emergence of anti-racist movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book pays particular attention to how species-thinking bears on 'race,' racism, and individuals.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nancy Reddy, "The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy's The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom. When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong?

For answers, Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from midcentury researchers. Yet, their bad ideas about so-called “good” motherhood have seeped so pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one (1!) illustration of a father interacting with his child. This timely and thought-provoking book will make you laugh, cry, and want to scream (sometimes all at once). Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Shui-yin Sharon Yam, author of the new book Doing Gender Justice: Queering Reproduction, Kin, and Care (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew McManus, "The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism (Routledge, 2024), McManus presents a comprehensive guide to the liberal socialist tradition, stretching from Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine through John Stuart Mill to Irving Howe, John Rawls, and Charles Mills.

Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of liberal socialism from a sympathetic but critical standpoint, McManus traces its core to the Revolutionary period that catalyzed major divisions in liberal political theory to the French Revolution that saw the emergence of writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine who argued that liberal principles could only be inadequately instantiated in a society with high levels of material and social inequality to John Stuart Mill, the first major thinker who declared himself a liberal and a socialist and who made major contributions to both traditions through his efforts to synthesize and conciliate them. McManus argues for liberal socialism as a political theory which could truly secure equality and liberty for all.

An essential book on the tradition of liberal socialism for students, researchers, and scholars of political science and humanities.

Matthew McManus is a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of The Political Right and Equality (Routledge) and A Critical Legal Examination of Liberalism and Liberal Rights among other books.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures―women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society.

In Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (Norton, 2018), psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.

Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove, "White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy" (Liveright, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

My guest today is Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove. Wilson-Hartgrove is a writer, preacher, and moral activist. He is an assistant director at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. Wilson-Hartgrove lives with his family at the Rutba House, a house of hospitality in Durham, North Carolina that he founded with H his wife, Leah. Wilson-Hartgrove directs the School for Conversion, a popular education center in Durham committed to "making surprising friendships possible," and is an associate minister at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church. Jonathan is the author or coauthor of more than a dozen books, including Reconstructing the Gospel, The Third Reconstruction, and Strangers at My Door.

About White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy (Liveright, 2024):

One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty--along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps--as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?

These are among the questions that the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, a leading advocate for the rights of the poor and the "closest person we have to Dr. King" (Cornel West), addresses in White Poverty, a groundbreaking work that exposes a legacy of historical myths that continue to define both white and Black people, creating in the process what might seem like an insuperable divide. Analyzing what has changed since the 1930s, when the face of American poverty was white, Barber, along with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, addresses white poverty as a hugely neglected subject that just might provide the key to mitigating racism and bringing together tens of millions of working class and impoverished Americans.

Thus challenging the very definition of who is poor in America, Barber writes about the lies that prevent us from seeing the pain of poor white families who have been offered little more than their "whiteness" and angry social media posts to sustain them in an economy where the costs of housing, healthcare, and education have skyrocketed while wages have stagnated for all but the very rich. Asserting in Biblically inspired language that there should never be shame in being poor, White Poverty lifts the hope for a new "moral fusion movement" that seeks to unite people "who have been pitted against one another by politicians (and billionaires) who depend on the poorest of us not being here."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti, "Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of Illiberal and Antidemocratic Views" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic values? This question has become particularly pressing after the recent successes of right-wing populist leaders and parties across Europe, in the US, and beyond. Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of Illiberal and Antidemocratic Views (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Alasia Nuti and Gabriele Badano develops a normative account of liberal democratic self-defence that denounces the failures of real-world societies without excusing those supporting illiberal and antidemocratic political actors. This account is innovative in focusing not only on the role of the state but also on the duties of nonstate actors including citizens, partisans, and municipalities. Consequently, it also addresses cases where the central government has at least been partly captured by illiberal and antidemocratic agents. Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti's approach builds on John Rawls's treatment of political liberalism and his awareness of the need to 'contain' unreasonable views, that is, views denying that society should treat every person as free and equal through a mutually acceptable system of social cooperation where pluralism is to be expected. The authors offer original solutions to vexed problems within political liberalism by putting forward a new account of the relation between ideal and non-ideal theory, explaining why it is justifiable to exclude unreasonable persons from the constituency of public reason, and showing that the strictures of public reason do not apply to those suffering from severe injustice. In doing so, the book further politicizes political liberalism and turns it into a framework that can insightfully respond to the challenges of real politics.

Alasia Nuti is senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of York. Her work is situated at the intersection of analytical political theory, critical theory, gender studies and critical race theory

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made movements like Black Lives Matter possible. Adam Elliott-Cooper analyses racism beyond prejudice and the interpersonal - arguing that black resistance confronts a global system of racial classification, exploitation and violence.

Imperial cultures and policies, as well as colonial war and policing highlight connections between these histories and contemporary racisms. But this is a book about resistance, considering black liberation movements in the 20th century while utilising a decade of activist research covering spontaneous rebellion, campaigns and protest in the 21st century. Drawing connections between histories of resistance and different kinds of black struggle against policing is vital, it is argued, if we are to challenge the cutting edge of police and prison power which harnesses new and dangerous forms of surveillance, violence and criminalisation.

Black Resistance to British Policing is a must read for all those who are interested in the history of the British Empire, its enduring legacies, and anti-colonial and anti-racist resistance.

Adam Elliot-Cooper is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public and Social Policy at Queen Mary University of London. He is also co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto Press, 2021). He sits on the board of The Monitoring Group, an anti-racist organisation challenging state racisms and racial violence.

Deniz Yonucu is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University. Her work focuses on counterinsurgency, policing and security, surveillance, left-wing and anti-colonial resistance, memory, racism, and emerging digital control technologies. Her book, Police, Provocation, Politics Counterinsurgency in Istanbul (Cornell University Press, 2022), presents a counterintuitive analysis of policing, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence and perpetual conflict by state security apparatus.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among others. While these arguments focus on the macro problems that contribute to growing inequality, they overlook one innocuous but substantial contributor to the widening divide: the explosion of fees accompanying virtually every transaction that people make.

As Devin Fergus, Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professor of History, Black Studies, and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, shows in Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class (Oxford University Press, 2018), these perfectly legal fees are buried deep within the verbose agreements between vendors and consumers – agreements that few people fully read or comprehend. The end effect, Fergus argues, is a massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few: large banking corporations, airlines, corporate hotel chains, and other entities of vast wealth. Fergus traces the fee system from its origins in the deregulatory wave of the late 1970s to the present, placing the development within the larger context of escalating income inequality. He organizes the book around four of the basics of existence: housing, work, transportation, and schooling. In each category, industry lobbyists successfully influenced legislatures into transforming the law until surreptitious fees became the norm.

The average consumer is now subject to a dizzying array of charges in areas like mortgage contracts, banking transactions, auto insurance rates, college payments, and payday loans. The fees that accompany these transactions are not subject to usury laws and have effectively redistributed wealth from the lower and middle classes to ultra-wealthy corporations and the individuals at their pinnacles. By exposing this predatory and nearly invisible system of fees, Land of the Fee will reshape our understanding of wealth inequality in America.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Todd McGowan, "Universality and Identity Politics" (Columbia UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of such aspirations. Critics see the invocation of universality as a form of domination or a way of speaking for others, and have come to favor a politics of particularism—often derided as “identity politics.” Others, both centrists and conservatives, associate universalism with twentieth-century totalitarianism and hold that it is bound to lead to catastrophe.

This book develops a new conception of universality that helps us rethink political thought and action. Todd McGowan argues that universals such as equality and freedom are not imposed on us. They emerge from our shared experience of their absence and our struggle to attain them. McGowan reconsiders the history of Nazism and Stalinism and reclaims the universalism of movements fighting racism, sexism, and homophobia. He demonstrates that the divide between Right and Left comes down to particularity versus universality. Despite the accusation of identity politics directed against leftists, every emancipatory political project is fundamentally a universal one—and the real proponents of identity politics are the right wing. Through a wide range of examples in contemporary politics, film, and history, Universality and Identity Politics (Columbia UP, 2020) offers an antidote to the impasses of identity and an inspiring vision of twenty-first-century collective struggle.

Todd McGowan is professor of film studies at the University of Vermont. His previous Columbia University Press books are The Impossible David Lynch (2007), Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (2016), and Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (2019). He is the coeditor of the Diaeresis series at Northwestern University Press with Slavoj Žižek and Adrian Johnston. He is also cohost of the Why Theory podcast, which brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Victor D. Cha, "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

North Korea is, to this day, still one of the world’s most mysterious countries. What little we know about daily life in the country comes from defectors or foreigners who’ve spent time there–some of whom have been on this show. But both camps present narrow, if not slanted, views of what life is like in the country.

Korea expert Victor Cha, along with several other researchers, have put together a collection that tries to tackle the topic of North Korea with a more rigorous approach, in The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press: 2024)

What do we know about North Korea’s cyberwarfare capability? Do U.S.-South Korea military exercises really cause North Korean belligerence? What do ordinary North Koreans believe? And what do U.S. and South Korean experts think are their “known unknowns” when it comes to North Korea?

Victor D. Cha is Distinguished University Professor, D.S. Song-KF Endowed Chair, and professor of government in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He serves in senior advisory positions for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Department of Defense Policy Board, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Cha previously served on the National Security Council as director for Asian affairs.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Black Box. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commercially produced birds. In this brief book, bestselling author Peter Singer tells their story—and, unfortunately, it’s not a happy one. Along the way, he also offers a brief history of the turkey and its consumption, ridicules the annual U.S. presidential “pardon” of a Thanksgiving turkey, and introduces us to “a tremendously handsome, outgoing, and intelligent turkey” named Cornelius. Above all, Singer explains how we can improve our holiday tables—for turkeys, people, and the planet—by liberating ourselves from the traditional turkey feast. In its place, he encourages us to consider trying a vegetarian alternative—or just serving the side dishes that many people already enjoy far more than turkey. Complete with some delicious recipes for turkey-free holiday feasting, Consider the Turkey (Princeton University Press, 2024) will make you reconsider what you serve for your next holiday meal—or even tomorrow’s dinner.

Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics, with a background in philosophy. He works mostly in practical ethics and is best known for Animal Liberation and for his writings about global poverty.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Larry S. Temkin, "Being Good in a World of Need" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In a world filled with both enormous wealth and pockets of great devastation, how should the well-off respond to the world's needy?

This is the urgent central question of Being Good in a World of Need (Oxford UP, 2024). Larry S. Temkin, one of the world's foremost ethicists, challenges common assumptions about philanthropy, his own prior beliefs, and the dominant philosophical positions of Peter Singer and Effective Altruism. Filled with keen analysis and insightful discussions of philosophy, current events, development economics, history, literature, and age-old wisdom, this book is a thorough and sobering exploration of the complicated ways that global aid may incentivize disastrous policies, reward corruption, and foster “brain drains” that hinder social and economic development.

Using real-world examples and illuminating thought experiments, Temkin discusses ethical imperialism, humanitarian versus developmental aid, how charities ignore or coverup negative impacts, replicability and scaling-up problems, and the views of the renowned economists Angus Deaton and Jeffrey Sachs, all within the context of deeper philosophical issues of fairness, responsibility, and individual versus collective morality. At times both inspiring and profoundly disturbing, he presents the powerful argument that neglecting the needy is morally impermissible, even as he illustrates that the path towards helping others is often fraught with complex ethical and practical perils. Steeped in empathy, morality, pathos, and humanity, this is an engaging and eye-opening text for any reader who shares an intense concern for helping others in need.

Larry S. Temkin is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers. He graduated number one from the University of Wisconsin/Madison before pursuing graduate work at Oxford and earning his PhD from Princeton. He is the author of Inequality, hailed as "one of the [20th century's] most important contributions to analytical political philosophy" and of Rethinking the Good, described as a "tour de force" and "a genuinely awe-inspiring achievement." Temkin's approach to equality has been adopted by the World Health Organization. An award-winning teacher, he has received fellowships from Harvard, All Souls College and Corpus Christi College at Oxford, the National Institutes of Health, the Australian National University, the National Humanities Center, the Danforth Foundation, and Princeton.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Leah Downey, "Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How the creation of money and monetary policy can be more democratic.

The power to create money is foundational to the state. In the United States, that power has been largely delegated to private banks governed by an independent central bank. Putting monetary policy in the hands of a set of insulated, nonelected experts has fueled the popular rejection of expertise as well as a widespread dissatisfaction with democratically elected officials.

In Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters (Princeton UP, 2024), Leah Downey makes a principled case against central bank independence (CBI) by both challenging the economic theory behind it and developing a democratic rationale for sustaining the power of the legislature to determine who can create money and on what terms. How states govern money creation has an impact on the capacity of the people and their elected officials to steer policy over time. In a healthy democracy, Downey argues, the balance of power over money creation matters.

Downey applies and develops democratic theory through an exploration of monetary policy. In so doing, she develops a novel theory of independent agencies in the context of democratic government, arguing that states can employ expertise without being ruled by experts. Downey argues that it is through iterative governance, the legislature knowing and regularly showing its power over policy, that the people can retain their democratic power to guide policy in the modern state. As for contemporary macroeconomic arguments in defense of central bank independence, Downey suggests that the purported economic benefits do not outweigh the democratic costs.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Couldry, "The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can't?" (Polity, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Is human solidarity achievable in a world dominated by continuous digital connectivity and commercially managed platforms? And what if it’s not? Professor Nick Couldry explores these urgent questions in his latest book, The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can’t? (Polity, 2024), as discussed in a recent interview with the New Books Network.

In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, Couldry reflects on how society has ceded critical decisions to Big Tech, enabling these companies to construct what he calls our "space of the world"—the artificial environment of social media platforms that now shapes much of our social existence. He argues this delegation of power was reckless, with far-reaching and damaging social consequences.

While the harmful effects on social life, youth mental health, and political solidarity are widely recognized, Couldry emphasizes a deeper issue that has been overlooked: humanity’s decision to allow businesses to define and exploit this shared digital space for profit. In doing so, we disregarded centuries of political thought on the conditions required for healthy and non-violent politics. This oversight has jeopardized a vital resource in the era of the climate crisis: solidarity.

In The Space of the World, the first book in his trilogy Humanising the Future, Couldry proposes a transformative vision for redesigning digital spaces to foster, rather than erode, solidarity and community. He stresses that caring for our shared digital space is no longer optional—it is an urgent task that must be tackled collectively.

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. As a sociologist of media and culture, he approaches media and communications from the perspective of the symbolic power that has been historically concentrated in media institutions. He is interested in how media and communications institutions and infrastructures contribute to various types of order (social, political, cultural, economic, ethical). His work has drawn on, and contributed to, social, spatial, democratic and cultural theory, anthropology, and media and communications ethics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matt Beane, "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" (HarperCollins, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

As part of our informal series on artificial intelligence, Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Beane, Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about his book The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in the Age of Intelligent Machines (HarperCollins, 2024).

Beane outlines the fascinating forms of research he did - both his own ethnographic work and reanalyzing the data of other ethnographers - to better understand how automating technologies are being adopted in organizational settings and how such adoption may threaten traditional mentor-mentee relationships through which junior workers learn crucial skills. Beane also discusses ways in which the worst negative skill-learning outcomes may be avoided and his own work trying to create new training systems to improve our current situation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, "The Unequal Effects of Globalization" (MIT, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increased inequality within countries. Is this phenomenon a small hiccup in the overall wave of globalization, or are we at the beginning of a new era of deglobalization? Former Chief Economist of the World Bank Group Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg tells us that the answer depends on the policy choices we make, and in The Unequal Effects of Globalization (MIT Press, 2023), she calls for exploring alternative policy approaches including place-based policies, while sustaining international cooperation.

At this critical moment of shifting attitudes toward globalization, The Unequal Effects of Globalization enters the debate while also taking a step back. Goldberg investigates globalization's many dimensions, disruptions, and complex interactions, from the late twentieth century's wave of trade liberalizations to the rise of China, the decline of manufacturing in advanced economies, and the recent effects of trade on global poverty, inequality, labor markets, and firm dynamics. From there, Goldberg explores the significance of the recent backlash against and potential retreat from globalization and considers the key policy implications of these trends and emerging dynamics.

As comprehensive as it is well-balanced, The Unequal Effects of Globalization is an essential read on trade and cooperation between nations that will appeal as much to academics and policymakers as it will to general readers who are interested in learning more about this timely subject.

Pinelopi (Penny) Koujianou Goldberg is the Elihu Professor of Economics and Global Affairs and an Affiliate of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She holds a joint appointment at the Yale Department of Economics and the Jackson School of Global Affairs. From 2018 to 2020, she was the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Goldberg was President of the Econometric Society in 2021 and has previously served as Vice-President of the American Economic Association. From 2011-2017 she was Editor-in-Chief of the American Economic Review. She is member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Sloan Research Fellowships, and recipient of the Bodossaki Prize in Social Sciences. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER), research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in London, UK, fellow of the CESifo research network in Germany, and member of the board of directors of the Bureau of Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).

Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco, a nonresident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center, an alumnus of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. His research focuses on the economics of information, incentives, and institutions, primarily as applied to the development and governance of China. He created the unique Master’s of Science in Applied Economics at the University of San Francisco, which teaches the conceptual frameworks and practical data analytics skills needed to succeed in the digital economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources--our data--exploiting our labor and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations, and discriminate against us. These companies tell us this is for our own good, to build innovation and develop new technology. But in fact, every time we unthinkingly click "Accept" on a set of Terms and Conditions, we allow our most personal information to be kept indefinitely, repackaged by companies to control and exploit us for their own profit.

In Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (The University of Chicago Press, 2024), Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry explain why postindustrial capitalism cannot be understood without colonialism, and why race is a critical factor in who benefits from data colonialism, just as it was for historic colonialism. In this searing, cutting-edge guide, Mejias and Couldry explore the concept of data colonialism, revealing how history can help us understand the emerging future--and how we can fight back.

Mention in this episode: Tierra Comun (English Version)

Ulises A. Mejias is professor of communication studies at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Nick Couldry is professor of media, communications, and social theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Free Inquiry in the Academy and Beyond

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of Madison’s Notes, we’re joined by Professors Amna Khalid and Jeff Snyder for a thought-provoking discussion on the state of free speech in today’s polarized climate. We explore the role of the university as a space for critical inquiry, the challenges to academic freedom, and the growing tensions between open discourse and political pressures. Professors Khalid and Snyder share their perspectives on the biggest threats to free speech today, offering insight into how institutions of higher learning can navigate these complex issues while remaining true to their educational mission. Tune in for a deep dive into the intersection of free expression, education, and the broader societal forces shaping our public discourse.

Amna Khalid is an Associate Professor in the department of History at Carleton College. She specializes in modern South Asian history, the history of medicine and the global history of free expression. Khalid is the author of multiple book chapters on the history of public health in nineteenth-century India, with an emphasis on the connections between Hindu pilgrimages and the spread of epidemics. She completed a Bachelor’s Degree at Lahore University of Management Sciences and earned both an MPhil in Development Studies and a DPhil in History from Oxford University. Growing up under a series of military dictatorships in Pakistan, Khalid has a strong interest in issues relating to free expression. She hosts a podcast and accompanying blog called “Banished,” which explores censorship controversies in the past and present.

Jeff Snyder is an Associate Professor in the department of Educational Studies at Carleton College. He is a historian of education, whose work examines questions about race, national identity and the purpose of public education in a diverse, democratic society. Snyder is the author of the book, Making Black History: The Color Line, Culture and Race in the Age of Jim Crow. He holds a BA from Carleton, an EdM in Learning and Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a PhD in the History of Education from New York University. Before pursuing graduate studies, Snyder taught English to Speakers of Other Languages in the Czech Republic, France, China, India, Nepal and the United States.

Khalid and Snyder speak regularly together about academic freedom, free speech and campus politics at colleges and universities across the country. They write frequently on these issues for newspapers and magazines, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Republic and The Washington Post. During the 2022/23 academic year, Khalid and Snyder were fellows with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Their research focused on threats to academic freedom in Florida, the state at the epicenter of the conservative “culture wars” movement to encourage state intervention in public school classrooms. Based on interviews they conducted with Florida faculty members, Khalid and Snyder submitted an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs who are challenging the Stop WOKE Act.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Violence, Consent, and Coercion in American Football

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Last week, the press focused on what the press repeatedly characterized as an “ugly” fight between American college football players that broke out after the University of Michigan beat The Ohio State. But another story received less attention. Medrick Burnett Jr., a 20 year old from Southern California was playing his first season as a linebacker with Alabama A&M University when he sustained a head injury during the annual Magic City Classic against in-state rivals Alabama State University on Oct. 26. A month later, Burnett died. Today’s Postscript features two prominent scholars of sports raising questions about the hypocrisy of blaming players for a fight yet downplaying the death caused by playing by the rules. This remarkable conversation includes an unpacking of the “consent” to physical, psychological, and economic impacts, insight into the Foucauldian elements of discipline, punishment, and surveillance, and concrete reform suggestions for all people who watch football and/or work at universities. This nuanced conversation is for those who love or loathe football as a college sport.

Dr. Nathan Kalman-Lamb (he/him) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick and Dr. Derek Silva (he/him) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King’s University College at Western University. They are co-authors of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game published by UNC Press in 2024 – and their public-facing scholarship appears in outlets such as The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times. They are the co-hosts (with Johanna Mellis) of The End of Sport podcast.

Mentioned:

“The hypocrisy of shaming college football player brawls,” Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva, LATimes
“A player’s foreseeable death raises existential questions for college football,”Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva, The Guardian
“Alabama A&M football player dies a month after suffering a head injury in a game,” Pat Duggins, Alabama Public Radio
Paul Knepper’s New Books Network interview with Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva on their 2024 book, “The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game”
Dr. Jill A. Fisher’s Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials (Rutgers University Press 2008)
Dr. Erin Hatton’s Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment (University of California Press, 2020)

On the University of Missouri football team’s successful threat to strike if the university president didn't resign see

"The Power of a Football Boycott,” Jake New, Inside Higher Education,
The Forgotten History of Head Injuries in Sports:
Stephen Casper, a medical historian, argues that the danger of C.T.E. used to be widely acknowledged. How did we unlearn what we once knew? Ingfei Chen, The New Yorker

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sara Cantillon et al., "Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective" (Agenda, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Challenging mainstream narratives in political economy, the new book Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective (Agenda Publishing, 2023) serves as an introduction to a new era of critical research. It is written by Prof. Sara Cantillon, Dr. Sara Stevano and Prof. Odile Mackett, who have carried out incredible work to deconstruct gender-blind approaches in contemporary economic research. The book brings together the most important topics in political economy and demonstrates why feminist approaches are crucial to understanding social relations. It begins with an overview of feminist political economy and then offers a nuanced perspective on care, social reproduction, inequalities in households and labour markets, and the feminisation of poverty. As mentioned in the podcast, the book not only takes a feminist approach to theory, but is also an example of the practice of feminist research, focusing for example on female scholars.

The host, Sarah Vogelsanger, is a feminist researcher, who is interested in social justice, critical migration studies and political ecology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert Danisch, "Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current state of American democracy rooted in the American pragmatist tradition. Robert Danisch analyzes the characteristics of communication systems and communication practices that inhibit or enhance democratic life. In doing so, this book provides a detailed explanation of the ways in which the communication systems and practices that constitute democratic life are currently fostering polarization and how they might be made to foster cooperation. Scholars of communication, rhetorical studies, political science, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.

Robert Danisch is Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo whose research interests include rhetorical theory, persuasion, and public communication in democratic societies. He is the author of Pragmatism, Democracy and the Necessity of Rhetoric, Building a Rhetorical Democracy: The Promise of Rhetorical Pragmatism as well as journal articles and several co-authored books. He is also the host of the podcast Now We’re Talking that focuses on communication skills.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State (Penn State University Press, 2024), Dr. Barbara A. Biesecker explores the prestige and rhetorical power of the “Good War,” revealing how it was retooled to restore a new kind of social equilibrium to the United States.

Biesecker analyzes prominent cases of World War II remembrance, including the canceled exhibit of the Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum in 1995 and its replacement, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Situating these popular memory texts within the culture and history wars of the day and the broader framework of US political and economic life, Dr. Biesecker argues that, with the notable exception of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, these reinventions of the Good War worked rhetorically to restore a strong sense of national identity and belonging fitted to the neoliberal nationalist agenda.

By tracing the links between the popular retooling of World War II and the national state fantasy, and by putting the lessons of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, and their successors to work for a rhetorical-political analysis of the present, Dr. Biesecker not only explains the emergence and strength of the MAGA movement but also calls attention to the power of public memory to shape and contest ethnonational identity today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Toby Manning, "Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music" (Repeater, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original exploration of popular music’s role in shaping our society. Told through a Marxist lens, Toby Manning traces the last seventy years of political and social upheavals through its most iconic US and UK-based music.

Mixing Pop and Politics examines the connections between popular music and political ideology and explores themes like the liberation of rock ’n’ roll, containment of girl groups, defiance of glam, resignation of soft rock, the communal spirit of disco, and the individualism of 1980s pop. Spanning the early 1950s to today, the book reveals how music—from doo-wop to hip-hop, punk to crunk, and grunge to grime—has both reflected and resisted the political forces of its time.

Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carré and the Cold War (2018).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Melissa B. Jacoby, "Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal" (New Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (New Press, 2024) reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence. In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject.

Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

S4E18 Who Cares? A Conversation with Emily Kenway

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press, 2023), an eye-opening exploration of the invisible world of unpaid caregivers. Drawing from her own experience caring for her terminally ill mother, Emily sheds light on the challenges faced by millions who provide critical care while being marginalized, unsupported, and overburdened. In our conversation, she urges us to reimagine a society that places care at its core, rather than on the sidelines. This conversation is a call to action for all of us to recognize and support those who give so much and ask for so little in return. Tune in to hear why Who Cares? is a book for everyone, now and in the future.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Benjamin J. Shestakofsky on How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His research centers on how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here?: Perspectives on Fascism and America" (W. W. Norton, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins about the new, edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (W.W. Norton, 2024). Danny is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University and the steward of a fantastic interview series in The Nation magazine. Did it Happen Here? presents a snapshot of the fascism debate being waged on American campuses, in magazines, and on social media. The most recent iteration of the fascism debate began, as with many debates about the state of American politics, with the election of Donald Trump. Since his first term in 2016, speculation about the true nature of Trumpism has generated countless think-pieces and books. Did It Happen Here? is the definitive summary of the major scholarly views on whether fascism has come to America. As Danny puts it, “the fascism debate is Rorschach test for understanding what is truly ailing American society.”

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karyne E Messina, "A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia: Searching for Truth" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia: Searching for Truth (Routledge, 2024) provides psychoanalytic insight into the motives of this complex and contradictory topic.

The chapters written by the editor of this book focus on the importance of truth-telling and evidence as it relates to presidents of the United States. She studied the way in which some of these leaders have failed to tell the American people the truth about the Maddox incident, Abu Ghraib, the Iran-Contra affair, My Lai, and the real reasons why atomic bombs were detonated in Japan.

In the process of uncovering lies, over time this process has eroded trust in our leaders. She also explains epistemic trust which refers to the trust we place in others as sources of knowledge and information. It is a fundamental aspect of how we learn and understand the world, relying on the belief that the knowledge we receive from others is reliable and truthful. It plays a crucial role in various contexts, including education, science, with the media, and in everyday interpersonal interactions.

The other contributors, from different professional and academic backgrounds, use a range of methods including quantitative research and literary analysis to shed light on Putin’s background, outlook and current actions. Reflecting a range of perspectives on how Putin’s background may have informed his beliefs and his actions, particularly with respect to the invasion of Ukraine, the book brings together diverse viewpoints.

A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and to readers seeking to understand the complex dynamics of populist leadership.

Interview conducted by C.K. Westbrook.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Larry Alan Busk, "The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, and fascism as a matter of course. The philosophical differences, however, may be more apparent than real.

The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) argues that dominant trends in critical and radical theory inadvertently reproduce the cardinal tenets of the twentieth century’s most influential right-wing philosophers. It finds the rejection of foundationalism, rationalism, economic planning, and vanguardism mirrored in the work of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Strauss. If it is to be more than merely an inverted image of the Right, critical theory must reevaluate its relationship to what Julius Nyerere once called “deliberate design” in politics. In the era of anthropogenic climate change, a substantial—not merely nominal—departure from right-wing talking points is all the more necessary and momentous.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eric Drott, "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024) provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western Marxism, social reproduction theory, eco-socialist thought and more to approach the complex and highly contested relationship between music and capital. By attending to the perverse ways in which recorded music has been ultimately decommodified under the current regime of music production, circulation and consumption, Eric Drott explores issues that far exceed music - consumer surveillance, Silicon Valley monopolism, the crisis of care, capitalist extractivism and the climate emergency - while showing us how the streaming economy is thoroughly imbricated, and implicated, in these processes. Drott's rigorous and wide-ranging analysis thus offers novel ways of understanding music, culture, digitalisation and capitalism in present and future tenses .

Eric Drott is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today’s book is: That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Amanda Jones, which offers her story of life as a small-town librarian. One of the things she values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and "Christian." But she wouldn't give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance. Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.

Our guest is: Amanda Jones, who is the school librarian at the same school she attended as a child. She is the author of That Librarian: Fighting Book Banners in Today’s America. She was the 2021 School Library Journal Co-Librarian of the Year, a 2021 Library Journal Mover and Shaker, and the 2020 Louisiana Librarian of the Year. She presents nationally and internationally on the importance of certified school librarians, book joy, and why every child deserves to see themselves reflected in the books on library shelves. Amanda has received intellectual freedom awards from the American Library Association, American Association of School Librarians, and Louisiana Library Association. She is the Executive Director of the Livingston Parish Library Alliance, and a co-founding member of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. She lives in Louisiana with her husband, daughter, and their cat.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by racial hierarchy, and justified through white supremacist logics. Now, in the twenty-first century, the biotech industry is the new capitalist whose race-based exploitation engages not only labor but racialized consumption. This arrangement is upheld through US drug policy, which over the past century has created a split legal system—one punitive system that criminalizes drug use common among Black, Brown, and lower-income communities and another system characterized by compassion and care that medicalizes, and thus legalizes, drug use targeted to middle-class White people.

In the award-winning book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America (U California Press, 2023), a trio of authors—Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg—explain how this arrangement came to pass, what impacts it has, and what needs to be done. This remarkable book won the 2023 Rachel Carson Book Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and graduate students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Simin Fadaee, "Global Marxism: Decolonisation and Revolutionary Politics" (Manchester UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

For much of the twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today the legacy of Marxism is contested, with some seeing it as Eurocentric and irrelevant to the wider global struggle.

In Global Marxism: Decolonisation and Revolutionary Politics (Manchester UP, 2024) Simin Fadaee argues that Marxism remains a living tradition and the cornerstone of revolutionary theory and practice in the Global South. She explores the lives, ideas and legacies of a group of revolutionaries who played an exceptional role in contributing to counter-hegemonic change. Figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Ali Shariati and Subcomandante Marcos did not simply accept the version of Marxism that was given to them they adapted it to local conditions and contexts. In doing this they demonstrated that Marxism is not a rigid set of propositions but an evolving force whose transformative potential remains enormous.

This global Marxism has much to teach us in the never-ending task of grasping the changing historical conditions of capitalism and the complex world in which we live

Simin Fadaee is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements. She is the author of Social Movements in Iran: Environmentalism and Civil Society; editor of Southern Social Movements; and Co-editor of Marxism, Religion and Emancipatory Politics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alexander Guerrero, "Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Elections loom large in our everyday understanding of democracy. Yet we also acknowledge that our familiar electoral apparatus is questionable from a democratic point of view. Very few citizens have access to the kinds of resources that could enable them to stand for election; consequently, political candidates (thus officeholders) tend to come from elite social backgrounds. Moreover, elections involve campaigns, and campaigns almost always deploy various persuasion techniques, many of which are deceptive, manipulative, and downright toxic. Once elected, officials begin seeking re-election, which means that they must devote a great deal of attention to potential donors to their re-election campaigns. And on it goes. If by “democracy” one means “rule by the people,” it’s difficult to see how contemporary electoral practices empower us.

Notably, our fixation with elections as the sine qua non of democracy is relatively recent. Aristotle claimed that elections are fundamentally oligarchic, and that lotteries were a truly democratic way of filling public offices. In Lottocracy: Democracy without Elections (Oxford University Press, 2024), Alex Guerrero proposes a non-electoral version of democracy that relies on “single issue legislatures” composed of citizens chosen by lot.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laura C. Chávez-Moreno, "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2025), Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno uncovers the process through which schools implicitly and explicitly shape their students’ concept of race and the often unintentional consequences of this on educational equity. Dr.Chávez-Moreno sheds light on how the complex interactions among educational practices, policies, pedagogy, language, and societal ideas interplay to form, reinforce, and blur the boundaries of racialized groups, a dynamic which creates contradictions in classrooms and communities committed to antiracism.

In this provocative book, Dr. Chávez-Moreno urges readers to rethink race, to reconceptualize Latinx as a racialized group, and to pay attention to how schools construct Latinidad (a concept about Latinx experience and identity) in relation to Blackness, Indigeneity, Asianness, and Whiteness. The work explores, as an example, how Spanish-English bilingual education programs engage in race-making work. It also illuminates how schools can offer ambitious teachings to raise their students’ critical consciousness about race and racialization.

Ultimately, Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s groundbreaking work makes clear that understanding how our schools teach about racialized groups is crucial to understanding how our society thinks about race and offers solutions to racial inequities. The book invites educators and scholars to embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race so that teachers and students are prepared to interrogate racist ideas and act toward just outcomes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carrie N. Baker, "Abortion Pills: US History and Politics" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this compelling and informative interview, Carrie N. Baker discusses her newest book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Press, 2024). This book is the first comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States, and Baker examines the actions of scientists, policy-makers, pharmaceutical companies, pro-abortion rights activists and anti-abortion forces as the abortion pill was developed in France in 1980, and subsequently brought to market in the United States. She carefully investigates the fight for FDA approval of the abortion pill, and reproductive rights advocates’ work to expand access. She pays particular attention to the critical period of 2020-2024 when in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic telemedicine abortion became a possibility. Baker ends exploring attempts to restrict abortion pills and self-managed abortions in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision. In this thoroughly researched history, Baker draws on interviews with over 80 activists, abortion providers, researchers, and people who have used abortion pills to demonstrate the range of actors involved in efforts to expand access to abortion pills. In addition, she analyzes medical research, government records, legal cases, and the archives of several reproductive health organizations.

Abortion Pills: US History and Politics is available open-access starting December 3, 2024. Click the following link to see a PDF of the book

Carrie N. Baker holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University, a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory’s Institute of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Chair of American Studies and Professor of the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Smith College where, as a legal and social movement scholar, she teaches courses on gender, law and public policy; feminist social movements; and feminist public writing. In addition to publishing peer-reviewed academic scholarship, Baker also serves as a regular writer and contributing editor for Ms. Magazine, has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and hosts Feminist Futures, a radio program on WHMP 101.5 FM in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, and is an editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Corey Brettschneider, "The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It" (W. W. Norton, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In 2024, people around the world focus on an American president who calls for the imprisonment of critics, spreads the culture of white supremacy, and upends the law to commit crimes with impunity. Is Trump the first authoritarian to threaten American constitution democracy? Corey Brettschneider’s new book, The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It (W.W. Norton, 2024) argues that the United States has had previous authoritarian presidents who similarly threatened core democratic and rule of law values – and each was challenged by non-elected leaders Brettschneider terms “democratic constitutional constituencies.” John Adams waged war on the national press of the early republic, overseeing numerous prosecutions of his critics. In the lead-up to the Civil War, James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans. A decade later, Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents as he sought to guarantee a white supremacist republic after the Civil War. In the 1910s, Woodrow Wilson modernized, popularized, and nationalized Jim Crow laws. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts that flowed from his corrupt ideas about presidential power.

Using an impressive combination of primary documents, secondary sources, and new interviews, Brettschneider highlights how freedom to dissent, equal citizenship, and rule of law are central to democratic norms and the role that citizens play in pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of "We the People." He documents how Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Sadie Alexander, Daniel Ellsberg, and others we cannot easily name fought back against presidential abuses of power.

Dr. Corey Brettschneider is professor of Political Science at Brown University. His researches and teaches at the intersection of constitutional law and politics. His scholarly works include The Oath of Office (W.W. Norton, 2018) and he writes for outlets like the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. I’m delighted to welcome him to New Books in Political Science.

Mentioned:

Online access to the Nixon tapes from Nixon Library

Princeton Library archive on Woodrow Wilson lectures

Susan’s NBN interview with Judge Richard Gergel on Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge

Corey’s interview with Michael Kruse of Politico, “I’d Rather Have 10 Ken Starrs Than One Donald Trump”

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How Psychoanalytic Mechanisms of Defense Affected the 2024 Presidential Campaign and Election

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Even though this is not a political show, today we will be talking about the ways in which mechanisms of defense effected both parties in the 2024 campaign and the presidential election. It is too big and too germane to our society to ignore. If we did, we might be guilty of denial.

In this podcast the hist and co-host discuss the following question and how mechanism of defense were employed to ward off difficult thoughts and feelings; some too frightening to contemplate.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain, "How Government Built America" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How Government Built America (Cambridge UP, 2024) challenges growing, anti-government rhetoric by highlighting the role government has played in partnering with markets to build the United States. Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain explore how markets can harm and fail the country, and how the government has addressed these extremes by restoring essential values to benefit all citizens. Without denying that individualism and small government are part of the national DNA, the authors demonstrate how democracy and a people pursuing communal interests are equally important. In highly engaging prose, the authors describe how the government, despite the complexity of markets, remains engaged in promoting economic prosperity, protecting people, and providing an economic safety net. Each chapter focuses on a historical figure, from Lincoln to FDR to Trump, to illustrate how the government-market mix has evolved over time. By understanding this history, readers can turn the national conversation back to what combination of government and markets will best serve the country.

Sidney A. Shapiro holds the Fletcher Chair in Administrative Law at the Wake Forest University School of Law. He is the author of Administrative Competence: Reimagining Administrative Law (2020) and Achieving Democracy: The Future of Progressive Regulation (2014).

Joseph P. Tomain is Dean Emeritus and the Wilbert and Helen Ziegler Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. A highly respected professor and scholar, his teaching and research interests focus in the areas of energy law, land use, regulatory policy, and contracts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brett Bowden, "Now Is Not the Time: Inside Our Obsession with the Present" (Iff Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Human beings have an overwhelming tendency to overemphasize the significance of the present without considering context or historical perspective. For many, here and now is as good as it gets - we have steadily progressed from a savage past, and all we have to look forward to is the great unknown. But if our literature and cinema are anything to go by, many are convinced that the future will indeed be dystopian. At the same time, arguments abound that living in the moment is a key to happiness and success.

However, to privilege the present over the past or future, Brett Bowden argues in Now Is Not the Time: Inside Our Obsession with the Present (Iff Books, 2024), is to engage in tempocentrism. More than a mere preoccupation with the present, tempocentrism involves comparing and judging the past in relation to the present, with the tendency to assume that the present isn’t only materially and qualitatively different from the past but also superior to it, often morally so.

Yet tempocentrism, a mistaken belief in the unprecedented nature of events going on around us, brings with it a skewed perspective loaded with bias and prejudice. Requiring just as much ignorance and arrogance as Eurocentrism - tempocentrism implies that the present is somehow superior to the past because we live in it now. The point, however, is not to suggest that there is not something special about the present - there might well be - but now is not the time to decide whether it is more significant than previous moments, or those still to come. Depending on the issue or event in question, the time for that is later … possibly hundreds or thousands of years later.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Too Black and Rasul A. Mowatt, "Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits (Routledge, 2024) examines the dilution and commodification of Black Rage--conceived as a constructive response to the conquest of resources, land, and human beings--in a spatial and historical critique of the capitalist State. Interweaving academic criticism with journalistic essays, it presents a thoughtful challenge to popular narratives surrounding recent US events such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of George Floyd and other police killings, and cases of White vigilantism, arguing that the maintenance of capitalism increasingly requires the manufactured consent of the conquered. Essayist/performer Too Black and geographer Rasul A. Mowatt assert Black Rage as a threat to the flow of capital, which must therefore be conquered by laundering, defined as a process of: - Incubation via the State, which places rage in circulation by setting both the oppressive conditions for its expression and seeding contradictions for it to be cleaned. - Labour, which sets mass uprisings in motion, layers the narcissistic rage of the Black elite over the illegal, militant rage of the masses to conceal class interests and collapse labour into capital. - Commodification, in which the now-laundered Black Rage is integrated within the State, ready to be withdrawn as a labour-crushed commodity to be bought, sold, or repressed by White capital. Entwining histories of Black resistance throughout the diaspora, State building under capitalism, cities as sites of laundering, and the world making of empire, Laundering Black Rage also lays the groundwork for upending the process through an anti-colonial struggle of reverse-laundering conquest. Relevant to studies of race and culture, history, politics, and the built environment, this pathbreaking work is essential reading for scholars and activists engaged at the intersection of critiquing capitalism and combating systemic racism"--

Too Black is a low-wage worker, poet, organizer, and filmmaker. As a poet, Too Black has headlined the historic Nuyorican Poets Café, Princeton University, and Johannesburg Theater in South Africa. His words have appeared in publications such as Black Agenda Report, Left Voice, Indianapolis Recorder, and Hood Communist. He is also the co-director of the award-winning documentary The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up.

Rasul A. Mowatt is a son of Chicago and a subject of empire, while dwelling within notions of statelessness, settler colonial mentality, and anti-capitalism. Rasul also functions in the State as a Department Head in the College of Natural Resources, as an Interim Department Head in the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, and as an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. He is the author of the book The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence: The City and State Between Us.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are looking for in a steady partner, they’ll often rely on superficial norms of attractiveness rooted in whiteness and anti-Blackness.

Connecting the past to the present, in The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Beacon Press, 2024) sociologist Dr. Sabrina Strings argues that following the Civil Rights movement and the integration of women during the Second Wave Feminist movement, men aimed to hold on to their power by withholding love and commitment, a basic tenet of white supremacy and male domination, that served to manipulate all women. From pornography to hip hop, women—especially Black and “insufficiently white” women—were presented as gold diggers, props for masturbation, and side-pieces.

Using historical research, personal stories, and critical analysis, Dr. Strings argues that the result is fuccboism, the latest incarnation of toxic masculinity. This work shows that men are not innately “toxic.” Nor do they hate love, commitment, or sex. Instead, men across race have been working a new code to effectively deny loving partnerships to women who are not pliant, slim, and white as a new mode of male domination.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Conversation: Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Dr. Ismail Patel sits down with Prof. Nazia Kazi to discuss her book “Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics”

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel S. Goldberg, "Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Football is the national game in the United States – and many families and friends bond over their love of the sport. While few people play professional football, many participate in tackle football as children and adolescents. In the last decades, more attention has been paid to the dangers of playing tackle football, including traumatic brain injury and the degenerative brain disease, CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). As more former players donated their brains, the rate of CTE surprised even those already concerned with traumatic brain injury. If the risks are so great, why do more than two million American children under the age of 18 continue to play tackle football? Is it the opportunity to contribute to a team? Overcome adversity? Test personal limits?

In Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Dr. Daniel S. Goldberg asks readers to think about American tackle football as an industry – like the American tobacco industry – that sells a product that is dangerous to those who use it. Despite the clearly documented costs to society and individuals who play, the tackle football industry has successfully manufactured doubt about the health hazards. Goldstein argues that a basic familiarity with the history of regulated industries and their intersection with public health is needed both to understand the contemporary debates and to move forward with fair and equitable policy solutions. If the risks to people who play were better known to the public, the profitability and perhaps even the viability of American football would be at risk.

Goldberg draws on public health ethics, public health law, and the histories of occupational and public health to assess the limits of parental choice to expose their children to risks of injury. Goldberg recommends using public health laws to counter the manufacture of doubt – offering specific policy proposals to address the population health and ethical problems presented by tackle football.

Daniel S. Goldstein, JD, PhD is an associate professor at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is the director of Education at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities and director of the Public Health Ethics and Law Program.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Secret Life of Central Bankers

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

This is the final episode of Cited’s most recent season, Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise, a season that tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. They will back with a new season focussed on environmental politics in early 2025, so make sure you are subscribed to the podcast (Apple, Spotify, manual RSS).

The MAGA movement scores big wins by taking cheap shots at experts. Now, some worry that Donald Trump could try to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The typical centrist position is to defend the supposedly impartial, apolitical expertise of such figures. Yet, we know that is not exactly right either. Is there a better way to imagine a better bank?

In our first segment, we speak with Frances Coppala, author of The Case for People's Quantitative Easing. It’s something of a case study in Fed politics, revealing how their decisions post-Global Financial Crisis served the rich, and not working people.

Yet, saying that these experts are political does not mean we have to be hyper-partisan reactionary hacks. Instead, democratizing the bank could offer a better way forward. That's according to Annelise Riles, a professor of law and of anthropology, and author of the book Financial Citizenship: Experts, Publics, and the Politics of Central Banking. Riles is also host the Foreign Policy podcast Everyday Ambassador, which its new second season out now. What would democratizing the Fed look like, and would that really counter the powerful financial interests that have so thoroughly captured the institution?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million dollars? In America, your liberty--or even your life--may be forfeit not simply because of what you do, but where you do it. If the same man had run off with a lobster roll from a lunch counter in Maine it's unlikely that he'd be spending the rest of his life behind bars.

The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other industrial democracy in the world. We have more ex-prisoners than the entire population of Ireland, and more people with a felony record than the populations of Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and Liberia combined. Why did the United States become the world's biggest jailer? And, just as importantly, what has it done to us? What are the costs--socially, economically, and politically--of having the world's largest population of ex-prisoners? And what can we do about it?

In The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), Kevin B. Smith explains that the United States became the world's biggest jailer because politicians wanted to do something about a very real problem with violent crime. That effort was accelerated by a variety of partisan and socio-demographic trends that started to significantly reshape the political environment in the 1980s and 1990s. The force of those trends varied from state to state, but ultimately led to not just historically unprecedented levels of incarceration, but equally unprecedented numbers of ex-prisoners. Serving time behind bars is now a normalized social experience--it affects a majority of Americans directly or indirectly. There is a clear price, the jailer's reckoning, to be paid for this. As Smith shows, it is a society with declining levels of civic cohesion, reduced economic prospects, and less political engagement. Mass incarceration turns out to be something of a hidden bomb, a social explosion that inflicts enormous civic collateral damage on the entire country, and we must all do something about it.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jennifer Denbow, "Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor.

By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Herbert Hoover gave us Woody Guthrie (with David Cunningham)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the final episode of What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 election and discussing the coming four years. David Cunningham, chair of Sociology at Washington University in St Louis, is author of Klansville, USA (Oxford UP, 2014) and There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (U California Press, 2005). His ongoing research includes the recent wave of conflicts around Confederate monuments and other sites of contested memory.

David's vision of what has changed in 2024 relates to an extended analogy to the election of 1972, when the avowedly racist George ("Segregation....forever") Wallace almost rode right-wing fury to victory.

Notes of hope? Well, David has faith in extant political institutions and even bureaucracy (long live the deep state) to blunt the force of Trump's onslaught; movement politics of the left may also prove capable, as they were in the 1930's of rising up in response to a ferocious successful mobilization on the right.

You can also listen to earlier conversations with Vincent Brown and Mark Blyth.

Listen and Read here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ronald Reagan Gave Us Punk Rock (with Vincent Brown)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 election and discussing the coming four years. In this episode, Vincent Brown (History professor at Harvard) last spoke with us about his own work on Caribbean slave revolts; his many other well-known projects include the recent PBS series The Bigger Picture.

What exactly happened and will happen? Well, Vince has sympathy for Bernie Sanders Boston Globe op-ed about the Democrat's neglect of working-class and Gabriel Wynant's "Exit Right" abut the need to remake left-wing politics. He also takes seriously Thomas Piketty's theory of the rise of "Brahmin Left". That's a topic explored in the Recall This Book series on the Brahmin left ( Jan-Werner Muller, Matthew Karp and Thomas Piketty).

Any hopeful note to end on? Well, bad government breeds righteous opposition. From Ronald Reagan we got...Minor Threat and the Bad Brains.

Tune in tomorrow to hear John speak with David Cunningham; the previous conversation, already up on New Books Network, was with Mark Blyth.

Listen and Read here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling, "Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine" (Basilian Media, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

All We All Cyborgs Now? (Basilian Media, 2024) is a series of 32 short essay-length reflections on "Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine." Now is an excellent time to be thinking about our relationship with technologies, digital and non-digital alike. Written from a Christian perspective, this book engages prior works on technology, and offers its own useful perspective on key problems of the technological moment in which we find ourselves.

Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert B. Talisse, "Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

An internet search of the phrase "this is what democracy looks like" returns thousands of images of people assembled in public for the purpose of collective action. But is group collaboration truly the defining feature of effective democracy?

In Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance (Oxford UP, 2024), Robert B. Talisse suggests that while group action is essential to democracy, action without reflection can present insidious challenges, as individuals' perspectives can be distorted by group dynamics. The culprit is a cognitive dynamic called belief polarization. As we interact with our political allies, we are exposed to forces that render us more radical in our beliefs and increasingly hostile to those who do not share them. What's more, the social environments we inhabit in our day-to-day lives are sorted along partisan lines. We are surrounded by triggers of political extremity and animosity. Thus, our ordinary activities encourage the attitude that democracy is possible only when everyone agrees--a profoundly antidemocratic stance.

Drawing on extensive research about polarization and partisanship, Talisse argues that certain core democratic capacities can be cultivated only at a distance from the political fray. If we are to meet the responsibilities of democratic citizenship, we must occasionally step away from our allies and opponents alike. We can perform this self-work only in secluded settings where we can engage in civic reflection that is not prepackaged in the idiom of our political divides, allowing us to contemplate political circumstances that are not our own.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Erica Benner, "Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power" (Penguin, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Democracy is a living, breathing thing and Dr. Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about the role ordinary citizens play in keeping it alive: from her childhood in post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to working in post-communist Poland, with its sudden gaps of wealth and security. Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power (Penguin, 2024) draws on her experiences and the deep history of self-ruling peoples – going back to ancient Greece, the French revolution and Renaissance Florence – to rethink some of the toughest questions that we face today.

What do democratic ideals of equality mean in a world obsessed with competition, wealth, and greatness? How can we hold the powerful to account? Can we find enough common ground to keep sharing democratic power in the future? Challenging well-worn myths of heroic triumph over tyranny, Dr. Benner reveals the inescapable vulnerabilities of people power, inviting us to consider why democracy is worth fighting for and the role each of us must play.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Serene Khader, "Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop" (Beacon Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop (Beacon Press, 2024), political philosopher Serene Khader advocates for another feminism—one that doesn’t overwhelmingly serve white, affluent #girlbosses. With empathy, passion, and wit, Khader invites the reader to join her as she excavates the movement’s history and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future.

A feminist myth buster, Khader begins by deconstructing “faux feminisms.” Thought to be the pillars of good feminism, they may appeal to many but, in truth, leave most women behind. Khader identifies these traps that white feminism lays for us all, asking readers to think critically about:

–The Freedom Myth: The overarching misconception that feminism is about personal freedom rather than collective equality.

–The Individualism Myth: The pervasive idea that feminism aims to free individual women from social expectations.

–The Culture Myth: The harmful misconception that “other” cultures restrict women’s liberation.

–The Restriction Myth: The flawed belief that feminism is a fight against social restrictions.

–The Judgment Myth: The fallacy of celebrating women’s choices without first interrogating the privileges afforded or denied to the women.

In later chapters, Khader draws on global and intersectional feminist lessons of the past and present to imagine feminism’s future. She pays particular attention to women of color, especially those in the Global South. Khader recounts their cultural and political stories of building a more inclusive framework in their societies. These are the women, she argues, from whom today’s feminists can learn.

Khader’s critical inquiry begets a new vision of feminism: one that tackles inequality at the societal, not individual, level and is ultimately rooted in community.

Serene Khader is Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College and Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Emily K. Crandall is a Doctoral Lecturer in Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College. She holds a PhD in Political Theory from the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

An Existential Fight between Green and Carbon Assets (with Mark Blyth)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 election and discussing the coming four years. Mark Blyth (whose planned February 2020 appearance was scrubbed by the pandemic) is an international economist from Brown University, whose many books for both scholars and a popular audience include Great Transformations (2002), Angrynomics (2020; with Eric Lonergan) and (with Nicolo Fraccaroli) Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers (New York: Norton 2025).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carrie J. Preston, "Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this incisive critique of the ways performances of allyship can further entrench white privilege, author Carrie J. Preston analyses her own complicit participation and that of other audience members and theater professionals, deftly examining the prevailing framework through which white liberals participate in antiracist theater and institutional “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives.

Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice (Oxford UP, 2024) addresses immersive, documentary, site-specific, experimental, street, and popular theatre in chapters on Jean Genet’s The Blacks, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon, George C. Wolfe’s Shuffle Along, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field, and Claudia Rankine’s The White Card. Far from abandoning the work to dismantle institutionalized racism, Preston seeks to reveal the contradictions and complicities at the heart of allyship as a crucial step toward full and radical participation in antiracist efforts.

In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy interviews Carrie J. Preston about the intersections of theater, racial justice, and social activism, the concept of “complicit participation,” and allyship.

Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer based in Boston. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Bernards, "Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism" (Pluto Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Since the global financial crisis that began in 2008, the role of the financial sector in contemporary capitalism has come under increasing scrutiny. In the global North, the expansion of the financial sector over the last 40 years has paralleled a decline in manufacturing employment and an increase in personal indebtedness, giving rise to the perception that speculation and usury have come to replace production as the engine of economic growth. In the global South, financial liberalization has exacerbated long-standing patterns of boom-and-bust cycles, and the growth of the financial sector has caused anxieties that speculative investments in natural resource extraction, urban real estate, and rural farm land are dispossessing and displacing people rather than improving human development. Overall, the growth of the financial sector has created the perception that we’re entering a new phase in capitalism’s history in which speculation and rent-seeking have displaced production as the engines of economic growth.

My guest today, the political economist Nick Bernards, challenges this narrative. In his new book, Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2024), Bernards argues that we need to re-center labor in narratives about the expansion of finance, that speculation and the subsumption of nature are always central to capitalism, and that major private-sector financial institutions have actually been reluctant to invest in major development projects in the global south. The main problem with the growth of finance is that it makes more exploitation, displacement, and environmental damage – in short, more capitalism – possible.

Nick Bernards is Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. He is the author of A Critical History of Poverty Finance (Pluto, 2022) and The Global Governance of Precarity (Routledge, 2018).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Saadia Yacoob, "Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Saadia Yacoob’s excellent new book, Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law (U of California Press 2024), makes a compelling argument about gender and Islamic law that has been shockingly overlooked: Legal personhood in Islamic law is intersectional and relational, and gender is not a binary. While Muslims commonly treat gender as a fixed, stand-alone category in Islam that fundamentally shapes an individual’s legal status, Yacoob shows that that legal status in Islamic law was not determined by fixed categories of male or female but by a complex web of social hierarchies, including class, age, freedom, enslavement, social status, and lineage. She challenges the conventional binary understanding of gender by drawing on a rich array of historical, early Hanafi texts from the ninth to twelfth centuries. With insightful coverage of topics such as marriage, slavery, and sexual ethics, Yacoob finds that the categories of man and woman are unstable and conditional in Islamic law. In fact, she shows, the person’s legal and social status determined their role in society and not just their role but also how they were punished and treated in the law. Further, she argues that the category gender “did not exist as a group that had shared interests or a shared social position that led to a shared legal personhood as men or women” (p. 92).

In our interview today, Yacoob describes the origins of the book and its main arguments and findings and explains what she means by “beyond the binary” and “legal personhood” in the title of the book. We also discuss the specific chapters and some of the major themes that show up in each chapter, such as illicit sex and its consequences depending on one’s legal personhood, how a “child” was understood in her sources, what the terms “emphasized femininity” and “hegemonic masculinity” mean. Yacoob also explains what scholars miss by using only “gender” as an analytical category for studying power relations in Islamic law. We end with some of the practical implications of the arguments and findings of this book for both academics and lay Muslims, such as how we can use Islamic law itself to build our critiques of where we are today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom Theuns, "Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy and the Future of the EU" (Hurst, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The European Union has a big problem—a potentially fatal one. How should it deal with a member state or states that reject democracy and the rule of law?

So far, not even Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has turned full-blown authoritarian. However, his 14 unbroken years of “illiberal democracy”, his constitution rewriting, creeping media control, challenges to judicial independence, and calls for popular resistance against the EU are becoming less easy to ignore or accommodate.

Yet, the EU’s tools to address democratic backsliding are blunt and its institutions are reluctant to use them. Above all, while a member state can leave the union, the union itself has no power to expel a club member that breaks its core democratic rules.

In Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy and the Future of the EU (Hurst, 2024), Tom Theuns looks back at the history of this design fault and how to put it right. He writes: "EU member states cannot both permit a frankly autocratic state to continue to be a member state of the Union and at the same tie pretend to be committed to democracy"

Tom Theuns is a Senior Assistant Professor of Political Theory and European Politics at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science and an Associate Researcher at Sciences Po in Paris.

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes and podcasts at twenty4two on Substack.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Whitney Kemble, "Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020" (Library Juice Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020 (Library Juice Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive and critical history of controversial events at Canadian public libraries, and an examination of the real-world impacts of neutrality policies in Canadian public library space use.

What events at public libraries in Canada have created controversies and prompted protests? What were the issues at stake? What kinds of outcry or protest occurred? Did politicians get involved? Did the events happen, or did they get cancelled, and why? What kinds of impacts or outcomes resulted? This book answers these questions and brings the Canadian historical context into the ongoing conversations that are critiquing the concept of neutrality in libraries. It considers relevant librarian perspectives alongside critical theories to interrogate the myth of library neutrality, and to seek positive and productive ways for libraries to engage with and serve their communities that honour library values and foster inclusivity, care, safety, and social justice.

Whitney Kemble is the Liaison Librarian for Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her interests include critical librarianship, social justice in libraries, abolition, fat liberation, and privacy rights and surveillance.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Disappearance and Return of Inequality Studies in Economics

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

This is episode three Cited Podcast’s new season, the Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise. This season tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page.

For much of the 20th century, few economists studied inequality. “Watching the study of inequality was like watching the grass grow,” is the way inequality scholar James K. Galbraith put it to us. Yet, the inequality studies grass is growing today–really, it’s something of a lush jungle. Arguably, the return of inequality studies is biggest change that has happened in economics over the last decade or so. Why did it return? Just as importantly, how could it have possibly disappeared? On this episode, we survey the broad political and intellectual history of inequality studies in economics.

First, economist Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War, introduces us to a few of the reasons why inequality was marginalized, including the mathematization of the economic mainstream. In short, we sidelined the political in political economy. Then, political theorist Michael Thompson, author of The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America, introduces us to the work of Frank Knight and other market-friendly economists who provided ideological justification for widening inequality. Finally, inequality scholar Poornima Paidipaty, speaks to us about the return of inequality studies, particularly through the landmark work of Thomas Piketty. Yet, Paidipaty and her co-author Pedro Ramos Pinto highlight some of the limits of Picketty’s vision in their article “Revisiting the “Great Levelling”: The limits of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology for understanding the rise of late 20th century inequality.”

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, "What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman's book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice (St. Martin's Press, 2024) presents a modern argument, grounded in philosophy and cultural criticism, about childbearing ambivalence and how to overcome it.

Becoming a parent, once the expected outcome of adulthood, is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life. We seek self-fulfillment; we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the home; and we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of climate change. Weighing the pros and cons of having children, Millennials and Zoomers are finding it increasingly difficult to judge in its favor.

With lucid argument and passionate prose, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman offer the guidance necessary to move beyond uncertainty. The decision whether or not to have children, they argue, is not just a women’s issue but a basic human one. And at a time when climate change worries threaten the very legitimacy of human reproduction, Berg and Wiseman conclude that neither our personal nor collective failures ought to prevent us from embracing the fundamental goodness of human life—not only in the present but, in choosing to have children, in the future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Elia, "The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery" (Yale UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery (Yale UP, 2024) offers a bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery.

Over the last two decades, scholars have made a striking return to the resources of the Augustinian tradition to theorize citizenship, virtue, and the place of religion in public life. However, these scholars have not sufficiently attended to Augustine’s embrace of the position of the Christian slaveholder. To confront a racialized world, the modern Augustinian tradition of political thought must reckon with its own entanglements with the afterlife of the white Christian master.

Drawing Augustine’s politics and the resources of modern Black thought into extended dialogue, Matthew Elia develops a critical analysis of the enduring problem of the Christian master, even as he presses toward an alternative interpretation of key concepts of ethical life—agency, virtue, temporality—against and beyond the framework of mastery. Amid democratic crises and racial injustice on multiple fronts, the book breathes fresh life into conversations on religion and the public square by showing how ancient and contemporary sources at once clash and converge in surprising ways. It imaginatively carves a path forward for the enduring humanities inquiry into the nature of our common life and the perennial problem of social and political domination.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Matt Elia is Assistant Professor of Theology, Race, and Environment at Saint Louis University

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Parker Palmer on the Israel-Gaza War

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In times of profound crisis, when violence and hatred seem to dominate our world, we often search for voices that can help us navigate through the darkness while holding onto our humanity. Today's conversation with Parker Palmer, one of America's most respected Quaker elders and thought leaders, explores the complex landscape of faith, hope, and healing in the context of the Israel-Gaza war.

As an Israeli educator now living in America, I sit down with Parker to explore not only the devastating impact of the conflict on both Israelis and Palestinians, but also how this crisis has become a mirror reflecting deep tensions within American society. Through our dialogue, we examine what it means to maintain faith in the possibility of change when reality seems to offer no hope, and how the wisdom of touch and bodily connection might offer pathways to healing that weapons never could."

About Parker Palmer:

"Parker J. Palmer is a world-renowned writer, speaker, activist, and founder of the Center for Courage & Renewal. For over five decades, his work has focused on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. His books, including 'The Courage to Teach,' 'Let Your Life Speak,' and 'Healing the Heart of Democracy,' have inspired millions worldwide. As a Quaker elder, Palmer brings a unique perspective that combines contemplative wisdom with practical engagement in social justice, making him a vital voice in conversations about faith, community, and social healing."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Todd Stern, "Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From the U.S. lead negotiator on climate change, an inside account of the seven-year negotiation that culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015—and where the international climate effort needs to go from here. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult and hopeful achievements of the twenty-first century: 195 nations finally agreed, after 20 years of trying, to establish an ambitious, operational regime to address one of the greatest civilizational challenges of our time.

In Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next (MIT Press, 2024), Todd Stern, the chief US negotiator on climate change, provides an engaging account from inside the rooms where it happened: the full, charged, seven-year story of how the Paris Agreement came to be, following an arc from Copenhagen, to Durban, to the secret U.S.-China climate deal in 2014, to Paris itself. With a storyteller’s gift for character, suspense, and detail, Stern crafts a high-stakes narrative that illuminates the strategy, policy, politics, and diplomacy that made Paris possible. Introducing readers to a vivid cast of characters, including Xie Zenhua, Vice Minister of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Bo Lidegaard, chief strategist for Denmark’s Prime Minster, and Indian minister Jairam Ramesh, Stern, who worked alongside President Barack Obama and Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, depicts the pitfalls and challenges overcome, the shifting alliances, the last-minute maneuvering, and the ultimate historic success. The book concludes with a final chapter that describes key developments since 2015 and the author’s reflections on what needs to be done going forward to contain the climate threat. A unique peek behind the curtain of one of the most important international agreements of our time, Landing the Paris Climate Agreement is a vital and fascinating read for anyone who cares about the future of our one shared home.

Todd Stern is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a nonresident distinguished fellow at the Asia Society, concentrating on climate change. He served from January 2009 until April 2016 as the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the Department of State, where he was President Barack Obama's chief climate negotiator.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Rowell, "The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music" (Melville House, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A veteran music journalist argues that the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms is decimating the musical landscape, with dire consequences for the future of our culture ...

In The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music (Melville House, 2024), former Washington Post writer and editor David Rowell lays out how commercial and cultural forces have laid waste to the cultural ecosystems that have produced decades of great American music. From the scorched-earth demonetizing of artist revenue accomplished by Spotify and its ilk to the rise of dead artists "touring" via hologram, Rowell examines how a perfect storm of conditions have drained our shared musical landscape of vitality.

Combining personal memoir, intimate on-the-ground reporting, industry research, and cultural criticism, Rowell's book is a powerful indictment of a music culture gone awry, driven by conformity and subverted by the ways the internet and media influence what we listen to and how we listen to it.

David Rowell grew up in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For nearly 25 years he was an editor at The Washington Post Magazine and has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University. He is currently a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. His previous books include the novel The Train of Small Mercies, and Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreak in Music Making. He lives just outside of Chapel Hill.

David Rowell’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mara Kardas-Nelson, "We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance" (Metropolitan Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this deeply researched and compelling narrative, journalist Mara Kardas-Nelson examines the complex history and impact of microfinance - the practice of giving small loans to poor people, particularly women, that was once hailed as a revolutionary solution to global poverty. Through intimate portraits of borrowers in Sierra Leone and extensive interviews with key figures in the microfinance movement, Kardas-Nelson reveals how an idea that began with noble intentions became a multi-billion dollar industry with sometimes devastating consequences for the very people it aimed to help.

We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance (Metropolitan Books, 2024) weaves together two parallel narratives: the stories of women in Sierra Leone struggling with high-interest microloans while trying to support their families, and the history of how microfinance evolved from a small experiment into a global phenomenon championed by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Muhammad Yunus. Through careful reporting and historical analysis, Kardas-Nelson explores how problematic ideologies about poverty, entrepreneurship, and individual responsibility shaped the development of microfinance programs, often overlooking local economic realities and existing informal lending practices.

What makes this book particularly valuable is how it challenges conventional narratives about microfinance without dismissing the real needs that drive people to seek these loans. Through detailed portraits of women in Sierra Leone, Kardas-Nelson shows how borrowers navigate a complex web of debt, social obligations, and economic pressures. The author raises important questions about whether encouraging poor people to take on high-interest debt is truly the best way to address poverty, while also examining alternative approaches like direct cash transfers and comprehensive social services.

This timely investigation offers crucial insights for anyone interested in international development, poverty alleviation, and the often unintended consequences of well-meaning interventions in the lives of the world's poor. Through meticulous reporting and thoughtful analysis, Kardas-Nelson challenges readers to think more critically about how we approach poverty alleviation and what truly constitutes meaningful economic development.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The essay "The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7" (Mosaic Magazine) by Shany Mor, dated October 7, 2024, examines the intellectual and policy failures leading up to the October 7 attack on Israel. Mor critiques several conceptual frameworks that have guided Israeli and international policy, particularly in dealing with Gaza and Hamas. These failed ideas include:

1. Netanyahu’s Leadership - Mor argues that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-standing skepticism, indecision, and focus on messaging over strategic action contributed to the failure. His belief that Israel could contain Hamas while ignoring broader strategic decisions proved disastrous.

2. Religious Settler Ideology -The right-wing settler movement has, according to Mor, distorted Israeli policy for years. This ideological shift, prioritizing the West Bank settlement agenda over national security interests, has resulted in misguided policies that left Gaza's threat underestimated and unaddressed.

3. Peace Processors’ Delusion -The international peace processors, particularly in Western liberal circles, have perpetuated unrealistic frameworks for Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. Mor critiques their belief that diplomacy and incremental concessions could resolve deep-seated ideological conflicts with groups like Hamas, which remain fundamentally opposed to Israel’s existence.

4. The Role of the International Community - Global organizations, including the United Nations and humanitarian NGOs, have indirectly supported the hostile status quo by empowering non-state actors like Hamas. Mor criticizes these bodies for exacerbating rather than mitigating conflict, enabling militias to exercise power without responsibility.

The essay argues that these failed concepts need to be dismantled for Israel and the international community to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to the tragic events of October 7 and to establish a more secure and realistic policy moving forward.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Ferrence, "I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay" (West Virginia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Matthew Ferrence about his book I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay (West Virginia UP, 2024).

When a progressive college professor runs for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in a deeply conservative rural district, he loses. That’s no surprise. But the story of how Ferrence loses and, more importantly, how American political narratives refuse to recognize the existence and value of nonconservative rural Americans offers insight into the political morass of our nation.

In essays focused on showing goats at the county fair, planting native grasses in the front lawn, the political power of poetry, and getting wiped out in an election, Ferrence offers a counter-narrative to stereotypes of monolithic rural American voters and emphasizes the way stories told about rural America are a source for the bitter divide between Red America and Blue America.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning, "Beginning to End the Climate Crisis: A History of Our Future" (Brandeis UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

"Climate change is the biggest crisis of humankind. We can’t watch other people drive our future right against the wall.”

This is a quote by Luisa Neubauer – the most famous German climate activist. As global climate change forecasts become more drastic and fear is spreading, young activists, like Luisa and Alexander, are taking the floor. Both are young, full of courage and zest for action, they want to infect us with their strength to oppose climate change and to take responsibility for the future of our planet. What does the future hold? When it comes to the climate, the predictions are pretty precise by now. And just as frightening.

In this book, Luisa Neubauer, the best-known German climate activist, and the sociologist Alexander Repenning create the history of our future. For humankind is at a crossroads. If we don’t change course now, we’ll eliminate ourselves. Politicians, entrepreneurs, citizens, everyone must take action. But how? One thing is undisputed: There is no planet B. Everyone must inform and organize oneself to save the future. Neubauer and Repenning present solutions that are ready to be implemented and must finally be put into practice. But they also demonstrate the attitude with which we must deal with this exceptional situation: undaunted but level-headed. And unyielding towards those who determine our future. Because the last chance for a positive end to the climate crisis is NOW.

Luisa Neubauer became known through the Fridays for Future movement in Germany. She is one of the main organizers of the weekly large demonstrations and has been committed to climate protection since before FFF. She is also a member of the Alliance 90/The Greens party the Green Youth.

Alexander Repenning a sociologist who has supported the FFF movement from the beginning. He is also involved in other organizations, such as the Right Livelihood Foundation. He is committed to bringing science and politics back into harmony.

Cody Bio: Cody Skahan is a graduate of the MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow, and current PhD student at the University of Oxford as a recipient of a Grand Union ESRC doctoral training partnership. His work focuses on the interactions of youth, Indigenous Peoples, and others in the Arctic in regard to environmentalism, particularly in consideration to their diverse and interrelated sociotechnical imaginaries. Cody co-hosts a social theory and anthropology podcast with two of his friends called Un/livable Cultures available wherever you get podcasts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Wisdom of Our Ancestors

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Based on The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), this week’s conversation with authors Dr. Grahm McAleer and Dr. Alexander Rosenthal-Publu focus on the enduring relevance of classical and Enlightenment-era thought for modern political and ethical debates. The book explores into how the traditional wisdom of the west still provides insight into contemporary societal challenges.

We discuss the ways in which modern liberalism has moved away from these ideals and how a return to the wisdom of our ancestors might help address current social and political fractures. They examined the balance between individual rights and collective duty, a key theme in both ancient and Enlightenment thought, and how those ideas rely inherently on an understanding of humanism.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greg Epstein, "Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Technology has surpassed religion as the central focus of our lives, from our dependence on smartphones to the way that tech has infused almost every aspect of our lives including our homes, our relationships, and even our bodies. Beyond these practical matters, Tech has become a religion with multiple sects who follow their own beliefs, practices, hierarchies, and visions of heaven and hell. There are zealous prophets and humble servants, messiahs and visions of a coming apocalypse.

In Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation (MIT Press, 2024), Harvard and MIT’s humanist chaplain Greg Epstein approaches Tech with the perspective of a critical thinker who is fascinated by technical innovation and also questions the worth of those advancements in human terms. He places the current faith in Tech in historical and personal context by examining the skeptics, mystics, heretics, and whistleblowers who embody the reform mindset he believes we desperately need.

Epstein argues for demanding that technology serve the development of human lives that are worth living rather than the extreme "up and to the right" transactional approach that is often rewarded in our current age of capitalism.

In this age of global technology worship, Greg Epstein presents the case for taking an agnostic view, one that can both appreciate the benefits of Tech and also remain skeptical about some of the more outlandish claims and seductive promises.

Author recommended reading:

Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein
Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

Hosted by Meghan Cochran

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark W. Geiger, "Floor Rules: Insider Culture in Financial Markets" (Yale UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Are financial markets lawless and irrational? It may seem that way from the outside, but for market insiders there are multiples sets of rules that they break at their peril.

Official rules set by law or by the exchanges exist alongside unofficial rules, or floor rules. Between these, it is the floor rules -- the norms followed by other insiders -- that matter most. Breaking an official rule might lead to a fine or even jail. Breaking floor rules can lead to being ostracized from markets as well as social and financial ruin.

In Floor Rules: Insider Culture in Financial Markets (Yale UP, 2024), Mark W. Geiger tells compelling stories of market disturbances in which insider rules played a key role. He examines the norms, customs, values, and operating modes of insiders at the center of financial markets that trade money, stocks, bonds, futures, and other financial derivatives. These core insiders are a relatively small group who govern the markets.

The book tells the riveting story of Benjamin Hutchinson, who made national news for his dramatic 1888 wheat market corner in Chicago, in which he outsmarted four powerful traders who had joined to force him out of the market, survived a life-threatening physical assault on the trading floor, and almost brought down the Chicago wheat market.

It also unpacks the LIBOR scandal of 2008 in which bankers in major international firms manipulated interbank loan rates to inflate their own profits at the expense of investors and at tremendous risk to the industry.

Geiger analyzes the cultural history of market trading, describes the role of insiders, and suggests where this peculiar, ingrown culture is heading in an era of technological change.

The book releases on October 29, the 95th anniversary of the Black Tuesday crash of 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression.

Related resources:

Mark Geiger's personal website and portfolio of generative AI artwork

Author recommended reading:

Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart
Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller

Hosted by Meghan Cochran

NOTE: Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress should have been pronounced with a hard "g" as in kloo-ghee.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Simon Kuznets and the Invention of the Economy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Economics sometimes feels like a physics–so sturdy, so objective, and so immutable. Yet, behind every clean number or eye-popping graph, there is usually a rather messy story, a story shaped by values, interests, ideologies, and petty bureaucratic politics. In Cited Podcast’s new mini-series, the Use and Abuse of Economic Expertise, we tell the hidden stories of the economic ideas that shape our world. For future episodes of our series, and a full list of credits, visit our series page.

On episode one, we begin at the beginning: the invention of the modern economy, or at least the idea of the economy. It starts with one measure: the GDP, or gross domestic product. It’s a measure that comes to define what we mean by ‘the economy.’ Before GDP, we did not really speak in those terms. Cited producer Alec Opperman talks to sociologist Dan Hirshman, who brings the story of the man who pioneered the GDP, Simon Kuznets. Yet, the GDP was not the measure the Kuznets hoped it would be. It’s a story that reveals the surprisingly contentious politics of counting things up.

Plus, what about alternatives to GDP? The Genuine Progress Indicator, the Human Development Index, the Green GDP, and so on. These measures are said to be more progressive, as they often capture things we value (like, care work for instance), and subtracting out things we could use less off (like, environmental degradation). Scholars and policy wonks have been raging about these types of measures for decades, but they have not taken off. Why? Economic historian Dirk Philipsen, author of The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do About It (Princeton UP, 2017), talks to Alec about why a good number alone is never enough to change the world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kostas Kampourakis, "Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essentialism among some groups, or the idea that our biology ties us to particular ethnic identities. This can boost a sense of cultural pride and prosocial behaviors among communities that are perceived to be similar. In the worst-case scenarios, however, this phenomenon can contribute to deeper social woes like misinformation, anti-science agendas, and even social hatred among those who believe in racial superiority.

Using research from both the social sciences and the genetics literature as support, Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities (Oxford University Press, 2023) establishes realistic expectations about what we can learn from our DNA as a foundation for examining the psychological impact of ancestry testing, including the differences between how this information is perceived versus its reality. With this book, Dr. Kampourakis flexes his muscles as an esteemed interdisciplinary science educator and author to challenge these traditional social constructs, using the current genetic testing science as a myth busting tool.

Kampourakis argues that DNA ancestry testing cannot reveal a person's true ethnic identity because ethnic groups are socially and culturally constructed. In 10 accessible chapters, he explains the assumptions underlying the scientific study of ancestry, and the resulting paradoxes that are often overlooked. What the study of human DNA mostly shows is that human DNA variation is continuous, and it is not possible to clearly delimit ethnic groups based on DNA data. As a result, we all are members of a huge, extended family, and not of genetically distinct ethnic groups. What ancestry tests can provide are probabilistic estimations of similarities between the test-takers and particular reference populations. This does not devalue the results of these tests, however, because they can indeed provide some valuable information to people who may not know much about their ancestors. In fact, what the tests are very good at doing is finding close relatives, and this is perhaps why the whole enterprise should be rebranded as family, not ancestry, testing. Ultimately, this book reveals that genetic essentialism, biological ethnic identities, racial superiority, and similar social constructs are scientifically unsupported

Kostas Kampourakis is the author and editor of several books about evolution, genetics, philosophy and history of science, as well as the editor of the Cambridge University Press book series Understanding Life. He teaches biology and science education courses at the University of Geneva

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva, "The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game" (UNC Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (UNC Press, 2024), Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva offer an existential challenge to one of America's favorite pastimes: college football. Drawing on twenty-five in-depth interviews with former players from some of the country's most prominent college football teams, Kalman-Lamb and Silva explore how football is both predicated on a foundation of coercion and suffused with racialized harm and exploitation. Through the stories of those who lived it, the authors examine the ways in which college football must be understood as a site of harm, revealing how players are systematically denied the economic value they produce for universities and offered only a devalued education in return.

By illuminating the plantation dynamics that make college football a particularly racialized form of exploitation, the book makes legible the forms of physical sacrifice that are required, the ultimate cost in health and well-being, and the coercion that drives players into the sport and compels them to endure such abusive conditions.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew deWaard, "Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary to popular belief, the reason is not audiences or marketing, but Wall Street. In this book, Andrew deWaard shows how the financial sector is dismantling the creative capacity of cultural industries by upwardly redistributing wealth, consolidating corporate media, harming creative labor, and restricting our collective media culture. Moreover, financialization is transforming the very character of our mediascapes for branded transactions. Our media are increasingly shaped by the profit-extraction techniques of hedge funds, asset managers, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and derivatives traders. Illustrated with examples drawn from popular culture, Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture (University of California Press, 2024) offers readers the critical financial literacy necessary to understand the destructive financialization of film, television, and popular music—and provides a plan to reverse this dire threat to culture.

A free digital version of this title is available here.

Andrew deWaard is Assistant Professor of Media and Popular Culture at the University of California, San Diego, and coauthor of The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh: Indie Sex, Corporate Lies, and Digital Videotape.

Peter C. Kunze is assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nathan J. Murphy, "The Ideas That Rule Us: How Other People's Ideas Rule our Lives and How to Change it" (Prepolitica, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Ideas That Rule Us: How Other People's Ideas Rule Our Lives and How to Change it (Prepolitica, 2024), political theory researcher, author, and entrepreneur Nathan J. Murphy takes an eye-opening, multi-disciplinary deep dive into how others’ ideologies, perceived societal norms, and pop culture influences shape our lives, through our decision-making, political affiliations, and consumer spending.

Murphy deftly weaves over four years of political, cognitive, and sociological research into a very relatable and practical discussion about the fascinating origins of the many influential ideas and ideologies that rule our lives. He also examines the undeniable bond between the abstract and the emotional—a relationship that plays a dominant role in the human condition… and the quality of our lived experience.

Recommended by Kirkus Reviews, which calls it, "A well-researched, thought-provoking reconsideration of society’s sacred cows."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matilde Masso, "Contested Money: Towards a New Social Contract" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Discussing money is always accompanied by controversy as well as enchantment. Debating what money is and how it performs its main functions in the contemporary economy is fundamental to understanding the social consequences of money transformation associated with the digital revolution. This book explores the links between the current and prospective properties of money, its production, and its relationship to the concepts of value, the common good, and innovation.

Contested Money: Towards a New Social Contract (Routledge, 2023) opens a debate on the role that money could play in a different paradigm based on a renewed conception of monetary properties and functions that are capable of having a positive impact on social and individual welfare. Massó outlines the fundamentals of this monetary model, which would operate as a parallel currency, where the processes of monetary and value creation are connected in a new deal between the citizen and the state, grounded on an approach of reciprocal rights and responsibilities.

This book will appeal to scholars, students, and, more broadly, readers interested in a contemporary understanding of what money is, how it is being transformed, and the role that it can play in redefining the twenty-first-century social contract.

Matilde Massó is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña (UDC). Her main research interests focus on the transformations of money, the role of culture and emotions in economic processes, and how technological innovation is shaping a new conception of the economy concerning theories of justice. She has extensive experience leading research projects in economic sociology, particularly in financialization studies, the sociology of money, and financial innovation. Her recent publications include Contested Money (Routledge, 2024) and Why Money Matters? (Journal of Economic Issues, 2023). Additionally, she was awarded a Marie Curie IF Action in 2016.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In early June 2020, Christina Gessler and Zerlina Maxwell met remotely to discuss Maxwell’s soon-to-be-released book. This episode is an encore presentation of that discussion. As we watch the race to the 2024 United States presidential election, we revisit this conversation from four years ago to reconsider lessons learned and those ignored in the race to the 2020 presidential election.

Today’s book is: The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide (Legacy Lit, 2020), by Zerlina Maxwell, which examines the past and present problems of the Left. After working on presidential campaigns for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Maxwell gained first-hand knowledge of what liberals have and have not been doing right over the past few elections. Ultimately, these errors worked in President Donald Trump's favor in 2016; he ran a campaign on white identity politics, successfully tapping into white male angst and resistance. In 2020, after the Democratic Party's most historically diverse pool of presidential candidates dwindled down to Joe Biden, once again an older white man, Maxwell asked: what now, liberals? Fueled by Maxwell's trademark wit and candor, The End of White Politics dismantles the problems of the Left, challenging everyone from young "Bernie Bros" to power players in the "Billionaire Boys' Club." Whether tackling the white privilege that enabled Mayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential run, the controversial #HashtagActivism of the Millennial generation, the massive individual donations that sway politicians toward maintaining the status quo of income inequality, or the lingering racism that debilitated some Democratic presidential contenders and cut their promising campaigns short, Maxwell pulls no punches in her critique. Underlying all of these individual issues, Maxwell argues, is the "liberal-minded" party's struggle to engage women and communities of color, and its preoccupation with catering to the white, male working class that threatens to be its most lethal shortfall.

Our guest is: Zerlina Maxwell, the host of Mornings with Zerlina on Sirius XM, and the Director of Progressive Programming for SiriusXM. She was the Director of Progressive Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and acted as a campaign spokesperson for the Presidential Debates. She writes for a variety of national media outlets, is a frequent college campus speaker, and is the author of The End Of White Politics: How To Heal Our Liberal Divide. She has a law degree from Rutgers Law School Newark and a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

S4E11 Religion and Republic: A Conversation with Miles Smith

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In our latest podcast episode, we sat down with historian Miles Smith, who teaches at Hillsdale College, to discuss his new book, Religion and Republic: Christian American from the Founding to the Civil War (Davenant Press, 2024). In this insightful conversation, we explored the book's themes, which examine the complex relationship between religion and politics in shaping the American republic. Smith delves into how religious beliefs influenced the political ideologies and actions of early American leaders and how these ideas continue to resonate in today's society.

During the interview, we touched on the impact of religious thought on the founding principles of the United States, the interplay between church and state, and the lasting influence of these dynamics on American political culture. Smith's depth of knowledge and engaging storytelling provided a fresh perspective on the nation's history, offering listeners a thought-provoking look at the intersections of faith and governance.

Miles Smith is a respected historian specializing in American intellectual and religious history, with a focus on how these elements shaped political identities. Currently a faculty member at Hillsdale College, his work is widely recognized for its clarity and thoughtfulness, making Religion and Republic a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the roots of American political thought.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

René Boer, "Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives" (Valiz, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In cities across the world, a new urban condition is spreading rapidly: an ever-increasing push toward efficiency, sanitization, surveillance and the active eradication of any aberration, friction or alternative. From Dubai, Hong Kong and London to Amsterdam and Cairo, the smooth city, with its gated communities and theme-park zones, insidiously transforms urban life into seamless "experience." While the demand for safe, clean and well-functioning urban environments is understandable, the ascent of the smooth city corrodes the democratic and emancipatory potential of cities, leaving little space for the experimental and the non-normative.

In Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives (Valiz, 2023), René Boer investigates the origins, characteristics and consequences of "smoothness" and points toward possible alternatives.

René Boer is a critic, curator and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, art, design and heritage. Based in Amsterdam, he is a founding partner of Loom: Weaving New Worlds and an editor at Failed Architecture.

This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo, a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor to the City of Chicago.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Steven Levitsky, "Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn, and Forge a Democracy for All" (Crown, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?

With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.

In Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn, and Forge a Democracy for All (Crown, 2024), Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to reform our politics. It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era. And now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial democracy or cease to be a democracy at all.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adam Greenfield, "Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024), Adam Greenfield presents a compelling vision for collective resilience in an age of perpetual crisis. As we grapple with what Greenfield terms the "Long Emergency"—an era marked by cascading disasters from pandemics to climate-driven catastrophes—this timely book explores how we might reclaim agency and foster community in the face of overwhelming challenges.

Greenfield's central argument is both radical and deeply pragmatic: by synthesizing diverse tactics of mutual aid and community organizing, we can construct a coherent way of life that not only helps us survive but potentially thrive amidst upheaval. Drawing inspiration from a rich tapestry of historical and contemporary examples, he illustrates how grassroots networks of care and solidarity can serve as powerful bulwarks against despair and disempowerment.

The author takes readers on a journey through various models of collective action and self-organization. He examines the Black Panthers' survival programs and the remarkable effectiveness of Occupy Sandy's disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Greenfield also highlights the crucial role played by neighborhood-based mutual aid groups during the COVID-19 lockdowns, demonstrating how local initiatives can fill gaps left by institutional failures.

However, Greenfield's vision extends beyond ad hoc responses to specific crises. He invites readers to consider larger-scale experiments in participatory democracy and communal living, such as the municipalist movements in Spain and the autonomous region of Rojava in Syria. These examples serve as proof of concept for alternative forms of social and political organization that prioritize collective well-being and ecological sustainability.

Lifehouse is both a manifesto and a call to action. It is an invitation to rediscover and nurture our individual and collective capacities that have long been suppressed under late capitalism. Greenfield argues that by building robust networks of mutual support and reimagining local power structures, we can create resilient communities capable of weathering the storms ahead.

This book arrives at a critical juncture as the effects of climate change become increasingly apparent and traditional institutions struggle to address mounting global challenges. Greenfield's work offers not just a critique of the current system but a roadmap for creating meaningful alternatives rooted in solidarity and shared purpose.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah M. Stitzlein, "Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Democracy is struggling in an age of populism and post-truth. In a world swirling with competing political groups stating conflicting facts, citizens are left unsure whom to trust and which facts are true. The role of honesty in civic life is in jeopardy. When we lose sight of the importance of honesty, it hampers our ability to solve pressing problems. Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens (Oxford University Press, 2024) asserts that to better enable young citizens to successfully engage in civic inquiry, the role of honesty must be foregrounded within education.

The book posits that honesty is a key component of a well-functioning democracy. Building upon this foundation, Sarah M. Stitzlein defines what honesty is, how it is connected to truth, and why both are important to and at risk in democracies today. Furthermore, the chapters offer guidance on how honesty and truth should be taught in schools. Situated within the philosophical perspective of pragmatism, the book examines the relationships between honesty, truth, trust, and healthy democratic living and provides recommendations for improving citizenship education and our ability to engage in civic reasoning.

Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era offers an improved path forward within our schools by detailing how to cultivate habits of truth-seeking and truth-telling. Such honesty will better enable citizens to navigate our difficult political moment and increase the likelihood that citizens can craft long-term solutions for democratic life together.

Sarah M. Stitzlein is Professor of Education and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. Her research explores issues of political agency, educating for democracy, youth civic engagement, and equity in schools. She is the author of Learning How to Hope and American Public Education and the Responsibility of its Citizens, and co-editor of the journal Democracy & Education.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Keith E. Whittington, "You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms" (Polity Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities.

In You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms (Polity Press, 2024), Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Social Contract in the Ruins: A Conversation with Dr. Paul DeHart

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the latest episode of Madison’s Notes, we sit down with Dr. Paul DeHart, professor of Political Science at Texas State University and author of The Social Contract in the Ruins: Natural Law and Government by Consent (University of Missouri Press, 2024). In this illuminating discussion, Dr. DeHart challenges the prevailing belief that social contract theory and classical natural law are fundamentally incompatible. His book offers a bold argument: political authority and obligation cannot be grounded solely in human agreement but must rest on a deeper, antecedent moral foundation—one that is uncreated and independent of human or divine will. Without this objective moral good, even the widely accepted principle of government by consent loses its coherence.

Throughout the episode, Dr. DeHart explores key philosophical questions surrounding political legitimacy and the moral underpinnings of authority. We dive into why modern approaches to grounding political authority through consent alone are self-defeating and how classical natural law is essential to upholding the principles that guide just governance.

Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the intersection between political theory, philosophy, and morality, as well as the relevance of these ideas in today's political landscape. Whether you're a scholar of political philosophy or simply curious about the foundations of political authority, this episode is packed with rich insights and thoughtful discussion.

Dr. Dehart’s other works:

Uncovering the Constitution's Moral Design

Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marietje Schaake, "The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality--where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world--is terrible news for democracies and citizens.

In The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (Princeton UP, 2024), Marietje Schaake offers a behind-the-scenes account of how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. She takes us beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians to show how technologies--from social media to artificial intelligence--have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies. To reverse this existential power imbalance, Schaake outlines game-changing solutions to empower elected officials and citizens alike. Democratic leaders can--and must--resist the influence of corporate lobbying and reinvent themselves as dynamic, flexible guardians of our digital world.

Drawing on her experiences in the halls of the European Parliament and among Silicon Valley insiders, Schaake offers a frightening look at our modern tech-obsessed world--and a clear-eyed view of how democracies can build a better future before it is too late.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Cutrone, "Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory 2006-2024" (Sublation Media, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism's own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then, in ever more obscure ways.

Chris Cutrone's Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory 2006-2024 (Sublation Media, 2024) span the time of the Millennial Left's abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone's participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large--but was abandoned. Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism's accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist "message in a bottle" cast adrift by hisotry yet be received?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wes Marshall, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System" (Island Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse in recent years, yet we continue to accept these deaths as part of doing business. There has been no examination of why we engineer roads that are literally killing us.

In Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System (Island Press, 2024), civil engineering professor Dr. Wes Marshall shines a spotlight on how little science there is behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. While traffic engineers are not trying to cause deliberate harm to anyone, he explains, they are guilty of creating a transportation system whose designs remain largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.

Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, Killed by a Traffic Engineer shows how traffic engineering “research” is outdated and unexamined (at its best) and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety, quality of life, equality, and planetary health. Dr. Marshall examines our need for speed and how traffic engineers disconnected it from safety, the focus on capacity and how it influences design, blaming human error, relying on faulty data, how liability drives reporting, measuring road safety outcomes, and the education (and reeducation) of traffic engineers.

Killed by a Traffic Engineer is ultimately hopeful about what is possible once we shift our thinking and demand streets engineered for the safety of people, both outside and inside of cars. It will make you look at your city and streets—and traffic engineers— in a new light and inspire you to take action.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eunsong Kim, "The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property (Duke University Press, 2024), Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. Investigating historical legal and property claims, she argues that regimes of expropriation—rather than merit or good taste—are responsible for popular ideas of formal innovation and artistic genius. In doing so, she details how Marcel Duchamp’s canonization has more to do with his patron’s donations to museums than it does the quality of Duchamp’s work, and she uncovers the racialized and financialized logic behind the Archive of New Poetry’s collecting practices. Ranging from the conception of philanthropy devised by the robber barons of the late nineteenth century to ongoing digitization projects, Kim provides a new history of contemporary art that accounts for the complicated entanglement of race, capital, and labor behind storied art institutions and artists. Drawing on history, theory, and economics, Kim challenges received notions of artistic success and talent and calls for a new vision of art beyond the cultural institution.

Eunsong Kim is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”—the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immense quantities of lithium lurking beneath the surface have led to predictions that the region could provide a third of global demand. But who will benefit from the development of this precious resource?

A work of stunning analysis and reporting, Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future (The New Press, 2024) shows that the questions raised by Lithium Valley lie at the heart of the “green transition.” Weaving together movement politics, federal policy, and autoworker struggles, noted experts Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor stress that getting the lithium out from under the earth is just a first step: the real question is whether the region and the nation will get out from under the environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and racial injustice that have been as much a part of the landscape as the Salton Sea itself. What happens in Lithium Valley, the authors argue, will not stay there. This tiny patch of California is a microcosm of the broad climate challenges we face; understanding Lithium Valley today is the key to grasping the future of our economy and our planet.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

S4E9 The Fragility of China: A Conversation with Dennis Unkovic

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of Madison's Notes, we sit down with Dennis Unkovic to discuss his latest book, The Fragility of China (Encounter Books, 2024). Unkovic delves into the complex forces shaping China's political, economic, and social landscape. From the country's rising internal challenges to its evolving role on the global stage, Unkovic offers a nuanced perspective on why China's future may be more uncertain than it appears. He unpacks the key themes of his book, including economic instability, demographic shifts, and geopolitical tensions, while offering insights into what these trends mean for the rest of the world.

Dennis Unkovic is an international attorney with decades of experience advising global businesses on trade, investment, and international relations. He is a prolific author and speaker, known for his expertise in U.S.-Asia relations. In addition to The Fragility of China, Unkovic has authored several books and articles on global trade and economic issues.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan Turley, "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage" (Simon and Schuster, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

“It’s a free country.” Many of us recall saying that as children as we learned that we were American citizens who were endowed with certain rights—such as free speech. We would use those words when we wanted to assert our own rights when we were being bullied or chastised. We would use them to let others know that even if we did not agree with what they were saying or doing, they were within their rights to express certain opinions or to do certain things.

How many American adults feel as confident now about expressing our views in public settings as we did when we were children or young adults?

In his authoritative but general-reader-friendly new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage legal scholar and public intellectual Jonathan Turley argues that many Americans nowadays are “speech phobic” and employ terms such as “hate speech” to shut down legitimate discussion of such topics as immigration, government policies during the height of the Covid pandemic and transgenderism. He maintains that free expression is imperative for human flourishing and that stifling it can lead to a spiral of frustration boiling up to rage, which is then repressed by expressions of state rage such as the Palmer Raids and the excesses of McCarthyism.

Turley walks us through the history of free speech in America and across today’s minefields of topics that can get even average people cancelled—and what forms “canceling” can take.

In approachable, fairly short chapters Professor Turley reminds us of how quickly some of the heroes of the American Revolution and champions of liberty devolved into semi-tyrants. His treatment of John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts (the latter of which rendered it a crime to, “print, utter, or publish...any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government) is particularly eye-opening and provides crucial background as the reader proceeds through the book. The concept of sedition is a major focus of the book and alerts us as citizens that it is not a matter confined to centuries ago, but a matter very much in the forefront of the American legal and political landscape in the wake what happened in Washington DC in January 2021.

Indeed, what we should call what those events is another fascinating focus of the book. Turley argues forcefully and persuasively that January 6 was not an insurrection but a protest that became a riot. This was a brave stance to take given that, as he points out in the book, anyone who argued that January 6 was anything but an insurrection was in danger of being labeled a sympathizer or an apologist for the rioters.

Turley’s book has become even more of a crucial read in the wake of the anti-Israel protests on college campuses in the spring of 2024. Ditto some shockingly anti-free-speech comments recently by supposedly mainstream Democrats such as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

We will touch on the status of free speech as an issue in the 2024 presidential election and how free speech has been impacted by the Biden-Harris administration. The topic of censorship came up, for example, in the 2024 vice-presidential debate and we will get Professor Turley’s take on that.

Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, "Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians" (NYU Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What threatens American democracy and the rule of law? In her new book, Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians (NYU Press, 2024),

legal scholar and campaign spending expert Ciara Torres-Spelliscy argues that the USA’s privately-funded campaign finance system – combined with corporate greed and antidemocratic strains in the modern Republican Party – endangers American democracy. As she sees it, unseen political actors and untraceable dark money influence our elections, while anti-democratic rhetoric threatens a tilt towards authoritarianism.

Drawing on key Supreme Court cases such as Citizens United, Professor Torres-Spelliscy explores how corporations have undermined democratic norms, practices, and laws. From bankrolling regressive politicians to funding ghost candidates with dark money, the book exposes how corporations subvert the will of the American people – yet courts struggle to hold corporate interests and corrupt politicians accountable. If American democracy is going to survive in the long term, then the deep pockets of the largest corporations cannot be allowed to join focus with the anti-democratic fringe. Professor Torres-Spelliscy fears a repeat of the January 6th insurrection – but with expansive corporate sponsorship.

Professor Torres Spelliscy outlines the ways in which Corporate forces might be held accountable by the courts, their shareholders, and citizens themselves. Along with other reforms, she proposes a democracy litmus test that requires loyalty to democracy in politics and the economy.

The end of the podcast features her insights on how oil interests crypto “techno bros” have invested in the outcome of the November 2024 election.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a Professor of Law at Stetson Law. She is also a Brennan Center Fellow at NYU Law School who has testified before Congress as an expert on campaign finance and has helped draft Supreme Court briefs. Previously, she authored Corporate Citizen (Carolina 2016) and Political Brands (Elgar 2019). She has recently written about public financing and the Eric Adams indictments and crypto spending in the 2024 election.

Mentioned in the podcast:

Judd Legum's work on corporate PACs in his Substack, Popular Information
Photo with Barack Obama for which Jho Low paid $20 million can be seen here
Example of 2022 media attempts to identify “sedition caucus” and election deniers for voters

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alan F. Blackwell, "Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs and drudgery, leaving humans to a life of leisure. This hasn’t happened. Instead, humans are still doing boring jobs, and even worse, AI researchers have built technology that is creative, self-aware, and emotional—doing the tasks humans were supposed to enjoy. How did we get here?

In Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI (MIT Press, 2024), Alan Blackwell argues that there is a fundamental flaw in the research agenda of AI. What humanity needs, Blackwell argues, is better ways to tell computers what we want them to do, with new and better programming languages: More Open Representations, Access to Learning, and Control Over Digital Expression, in other words, MORAL CODE. Blackwell draws on his deep experiences as a programming language designer—which he has been doing since 1983—to unpack fundamental principles of interaction design and explain their technical relationship to ideas of creativity and fairness. Taking aim at software that constrains our conversations with strict word counts or infantilizes human interaction with likes and emojis, Blackwell shows how to design software that is better—not more efficient or more profitable, but better for society and better for all people. Covering recent research and the latest smart tools, Blackwell offers rich design principles for a better kind of software—and a better kind of world.

Alan F. Blackwell is Professor of Interdisciplinary Design in the Cambridge University department of Computer Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of Darwin College Cambridge, cofounder with David Good of the Crucible Network for Research in Interdisciplinary Design, and with David and Lara Allen the Global Challenges strategic research initiative of the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marco Bastos, "Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation" (Bristol UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dissecting 45 million tweets from the period that followed the Brexit referendum, Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Marco Bastos presents an extensive analysis of social media manipulation.

The book examines emerging changes in partisan politics, nationalist and populist values, as well as broader societal changes that are feeding into polarisation and echo-chamber communication. It pulls the curtain back on the techniques employed to interfere with, and potentially distort, the public discussion. Making complex data accessible to non-technical audiences, this unique post-mortem of the Brexit referendum contributes to our understanding of social media disinformation in the UK and beyond.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael J. Thompson, "Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

In Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge, 2024), Michael J. Thompson reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality.

Thompson argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management, leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. In the first half of the book, Thompson demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. In the second part of the book, he constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drive toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is at the intersection of built-environment, experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research on the negotiation of identity and place for residents at the neighborhood level. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jon Michaels and David Noll, "Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy" (Atria/One Signal, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Law professors Jon Michaels and David Noll use their expertise to expose how state-supported forms of vigilantism are being deployed by MAGA Republicans and Christian nationalists to roll back civil, political, and privacy rights and subvert American democracy. Beyond identifying the dangers of vigilantism, Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy (Atria/One Signal, 2024) functions as a call to arms with a playbook for a democratic response.

Michaels and Noll look back in time to make sense of today's American politics. They demonstrate how Christian nationalists have previously used state-supported forms of vigilantism when their power and privilege have been challenged. The book examines the early republic, abolitionism, and Reconstruction.

Since the failed coup by supporters of Former president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, Michaels and Noll document how overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism – using wide ranging methods including book bans, anti-abortion bounties, and attacks on government proceedings, especially elections. Michaels and Noll see the US at a critical inflection point in which state-sponsored vigilantism is openly supported by GOP candidates for president and vice-president, Project 2025, and wider networks, Michaels and Noll move beyond analysis to action: 19 model laws to pass. The supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to create a plan to fight radicalism and vigilantism and secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution.

Jon Michaels is a professor of law at UCLA Law, where he teaches and writes about constitutional law, public administration, and national security. He has written numerous articles in law reviews including Yale, University of Chicago, and Harvard and also public facing work in venues like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Foreign Affairs.

David Noll is a law professor at Rutgers Law School. He teaches and writes on courts, administrative law, and legal movements. He publishes scholarly work in law reviews such as California, Cornell, Michigan and NYU and translates for wider audiences in places like the New York Times, Politico, and Slate.

Mentioned in the podcast:

By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (Norton) by Margaret A. Burnham
Let them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality (Liveright) by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson
Hannah Nathanson at the Washington Post who was part of a team of journalists awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol
Previous interviews with scholars addressing the breakdown of American democracy: Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman) Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic (Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King); How Democracies Die (Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt); The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (David M. Driesen and A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People (Kevin J. McMahon)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gerald Sim, "Screening Big Data: Films That Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big data and the algorithmic systems that structure our digitally mediated lives.

From star-powered blockbusters to civic-minded documentaries positioned to facilitate weighty debates about artificial intelligence, these texts frame our discourse and mediate our relationship to technology. Above all, they impact society’s abilities to regulate AI and navigate big tech’s political and economic manoeuvres to achieve market dominance and regulatory capture.

Foregrounding data politics with close readings of key films like Moneyball, Minority Report, The Social Dilemma, and Coded Bias, in Screening Big Data by Dr. Gerald Sim reveals compelling ways in which films and tech industry–adjacent media define apprehension of AI. With the mid-2010s techlash in danger of fizzling out, Screening Big Data explores the relationship between this resistance and cultural infrastructure while highlighting the urgent need to refocus attention onto how technocentric media occupy the public imagination.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Tribalism to Common Humanity: A Conversation with Dr. John Ellis

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

For most of recorded history, neighboring countries, tribes, and peoples everywhere in the world regarded each other with apprehension—when not outright fear and loathing. Tribal or racial attitudes were virtually universal, no one group being much better or worse in this respect than any other—and for good reason given the conditions of life before the modern era. But in the last 500 years, relations between different peoples have undergone a slow but profound change.

In our episode, explore Dr. Ellis’ upcoming publication, A Short History of Relations Between People: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism. Join us as we explore how a confluence of discoveries, inventions, explorations, as well as social and political changes gave birth to a new attitude, one expressed succinctly in the Latin phrase: gens una sumus—we are all one people. This sentiment has by now become a modern orthodoxy. Ellis tells the story of how the transition happened, setting out the crucial stages in its progress as well as the key events that moved it forward, and identifying the individuals and groups that brought about the eventual dominance of this new outlook.

John M. Ellis is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He taught at universities in England, Wales, and Canada before joining UCSC in 1966, serving as dean of the Graduate Division in 1977–86.

A Short History of Relations Between People: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism is available on October 15th, 2024 and available wherever books are sold.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jerome E. Copulsky, "American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order" (Yale UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A question has long hung over the the United States regarding the proper role of religion in public life. Those who long for a Christian America claim that the Founders intended a nation with political values and institutions shaped by Christianity. Secularists argue that those same Founders designed an enlightened republic where church and state should be kept separate.

American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order (Yale UP, 2024), Jerome E. Copulsky examines the Americans who rejected the secularism of American society, predicted the collapse of the nation, and hoped to develop a new and decidedly Christian commonwealth.

By reviewing extreme religious dissent from colonial times through the current age, Copulsky shows how these thinkers opposed the American orthodoxy of pluralist democracy on theological grounds. Their views are diametrically opposed to the idea of America as a place where multiple sects and creeds peacefully coexist. Each chapter explains a different strain of heresy, beginning with loyal Anglicans who opposed the American Revolution and ending with current National Conservatives who embrace illiberal populism in an effort to enact their vision of a Christian America.

Author recommended reading:

The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy by Matthew D. Taylor

Hosted by Meghan Cochran

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan Maskit, "Bicycle" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. In Bicycle (Bloomsbury, 2024) Dr. Jonathan Maskit takes us on an interdisciplinary ride to see what makes the bicycle a magical machine that could yet make the world a safer, greener, and more just place.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Free Speech 70: Michael S. Roth on the Rise of Student Protests, the Fall of Some College Presidents, and Why Liberal Education Matters

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The campus protests over conflict in Israel and Gaza have engulfed universities, and led to the resignation of several university presidents. In this podcast, recorded live at the New York Institute of the Humanities, Michael S. Roth, the long-time President of Wesleyan College, explains how he navigates sharp disagreements on campus, what he means by “safe enough spaces,” and how to understand what is happening on campus in relation to our democracy.

Michael S. Roth is the 16th president of Wesleyan University, since 2007. Formerly president of California College of the Arts (CCA), Roth is known as a historian, curator, author and public advocate for liberal education. His many books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (Yale University Press, 2014); Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness (Yale University Press, 2019); and The Student: A Short History (Yale University Press, 2023). This conversation was recorded with a live audience at the New York Institute for the Humanities, which is directed by Eric Banks and hosted by the New York Public Library. I want to thank Eric Banks for the invitation to speak with President Roth, and the fellows of the New York Institute for a lively discussion included here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ian Williams, "Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy (Birlinn, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world’s most populous nation – nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the Middle Kingdom.

Ian Williams, a long-standing reporter on China, has a new argument in Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy (Birlinn, 2024).

Rules and agreements mean little. Markets are distorted, statistics fabricated, foreign industrial secrets and technology systematically stolen. Companies and entrepreneurs, at home and abroad, are bullied – often with the collusion of the victims themselves. The Party is in every boardroom and lab, with businesses thriving or dying at its will.

All this is part of realising President Xi Jinping’s ambition of China becoming the world’s pre-eminent economic, technological and military power.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeff Schuhrke, "Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad.

Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade (Verso, 2024) tells the shocking story of the AFL-CIO's global anticommunist crusade--and its devastating consequences for workers around the world.

Unions have the power not only to secure pay raises and employee benefits but to bring economies to a screeching halt and overthrow governments. Recognizing this, in the late twentieth century, the US government sought to control labor movements abroad as part of the Cold War contest for worldwide supremacy. In this work, Washington found an enthusiastic partner in the AFL-CIO's anticommunist officials, who, in a shocking betrayal, for decades expended their energies to block revolutionary ideologies and militant class consciousness from taking hold in the workers' movements of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian, journalist, union activist, and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to In These Times and Jacobin, and his scholarship has been published in Diplomatic History and Labor: Studies in Working-Class History.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David L. Swartz, "The Academic Trumpists: Radicals Against Liberal Diversity" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Remember the bleach drinking episode? Remember ‘alternative facts’? Remember ‘I have the best words’? These elements of the Trump presidency spoke to a fundamental part of his politics: truth and science were not prime among his considerations. Given this, one may assume that academics would have been especially unlikely to be drawn to the Trump presidency.

Yet, in his fascinating book The Academic Trumpists: Radicals against Liberal Democracy (Routledge, 2024), David Swartz outlines a group of public intellectuals who supported, and largely continue to support, Trump. These 109 Academic Trumpists are not marginal to American academia but rather can be found in middle to high-ranking schools and sometimes have backgrounds in elite institutions. Swartz demonstrates however how they cluster in particular disciplines and institutions and make use of a significant network of populist conservative thinktanks. By comparing these Trumpists with 89 conservative professors who are anti-Trump, Swartz is able to show the distinctive political positions the Trumpists adopt, especially concerning ‘liberal’ campus culture and the appeal of Trump as a ‘wrecking ball’. This populist politics and their distinct networks differ them from their conservative peers who see Trump as a threat and fundamentally not conservative.

In our conversation we discuss who these academic Trumpists are, the details of their positioning and why, despite everything, they continue to support Trump. We also consider what possibility there maybe for an allegiance between liberal and anti-Trump conservative professors in the US.

Your host Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow with research interests in social theory and the history of sociology. He is the author of a number of books, including G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew W. Kahrl, "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of inequitable and predatory tax laws in the United States. He examines the structural traps within America’s tax system that have forced Black Americans to pay more for less despite being taxpayers with fewer resources compared to white taxpayers. Kahrl exposes these practices, From Reconstruction up to the present, Kahrl exposes these practices to describe how discrimination continues to take new forms, even as people continue to fight for their rights, their assets, and their power.

Dr. N’Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies at Brown University. Find him on Twitter at DrNKosiOates.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily M. Bender on AI Hype

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David M. Driesen, "The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power" (Stanford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States.

In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court’s reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin’s concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024.

Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews.

From the podcast:

David’s piece on major questions doctrine
David’s editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants

Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

William Cooper, "How America Works and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System" (Ad Lib, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Twenty-first-century America isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. William Cooper's How America Works and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the Us Political System (Ad Lib, 2024) explains why.

Americans in the twenty-first century are becoming increasingly untethered from both reality and the essential principles and traditions that have shaped the nation’s historic success. A big part of why America isn’t working is because far too many Americans neither know nor care how it’s supposed to work.

Cooper explains key aspects of recent US political history to give the background to dangerous developments, including how political groups have reshaped since the 1964 Civil Rights Act; the rise of Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party; the profound impact of the internet and social media; and the threats posed to the electoral system by the growth of extreme polarization and growing irrationality.

Cooper shows how these recent developments have their roots in the deeper past, with the establishment of the political system in the first place and all the knocks and tweaks to it along the way. He also reveals how, as a result of increasing politicization, the US Supreme Court is now exacerbating polarization instead of acting as an effective check on executive power.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, "The Spectre of State Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial crisis. China’s state-owned companies and international financial institutions have made headlines for their growing influence in the world economy. State-backed investment vehicles based in the Gulf states have made high-profile investments in global real estate markets and professional sports, while their state-owned firms have become world leaders in the logistics and natural resource sectors. Governments around the world – including in the heartlands of advanced capitalism – have promoted the interests of ‘national champion’ companies in strategic economic sectors, bailed out financial institutions by taking toxic assets off of their balance sheets, and implemented industrial policies with the aim of moving into the most profitable segments of global value chains.

What accounts for this renewed prominence of states in global capitalism? Does the increased activism of states mark the end of neoliberal hegemony? And how do contemporary state-led economic initiatives compare to the heyday of Keynesian and developmentalist policy agendas in the decades immediately following World War II?

The book that we are discussing today, The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford UP, 2024) by Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon, marks the culmination of a highly productive research project that the authors have led on the compulsions and constraints that shape the ‘new’ state capitalism. The book aims to challenge narratives that pathologize state capitalism as an authoritarian deviation from the ‘normal’ course of free market capitalism while also showing how new forms of state activism depart from earlier models of state-led development.

Ilias Alami is a University assistant professor in the political economy of development at Cambrdige University. His previous book is Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets (2019). Adam Dixon holds the Adam Smith Chair in Sustainable Capitalism at Heriot Watt University’s Ediburgh Business School. He is the author of several books, most recently Sovereign Wealth Funds: Between States and Markets (2022).

This book is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, "Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism" (Melville House, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Antisemitism is on the rise today. From synagogue shootings by white nationalists, to right-wing politicians and media figures pushing George Soros conspiracy theories, it’s clear that exclusionary nationalist movements are growing. By spreading division and fear, they put Jews, along with other marginalized groups and multiracial democracy itself, at risk.

And since the outbreak of war in Gaza, debates around antisemitism have become more polarized and high-stakes than ever. How can we stand in solidarity with Palestinians seeking justice, while also avoiding antisemitism — and resisting those who seek to conflate the two? How do we forge the coalitions across communities that we need, in order to overcome the politics of division and fear?

In Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism (Melville House, 2024), Shane Burley and Ben Lorber help us break the current impasse to understand how antisemitism works, what’s missing in contemporary debates, and how to build true safety through solidarity, for Jews and all people.

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. Ben Lorber is a Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank that monitors far-right movements. He tweets at @BenLorber8.

Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aideen O’Shaughnessy, "Embodying Irish Abortion Reform: Bodies, Emotions, and Feminist Activism" (Bristol UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Aideen O'Shaughnessy is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Lincoln. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Gender Studies Research from Utrecht University and a BA in Sociology and French at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses on gender, health, and social movements and she is particularly interested in the study of reproductive health, rights, and justice. She has published widely in journals including Body and Society, the European Journal of Women's Studies, and the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Embodying Irish Abortion Reform: Bodies, Emotions, and Feminist Activism (Bristol UP, 2024) explores the lived, embodied and affective experiences of reproductive rights activists living under, and mobilizing against, Ireland’s constitutional abortion ban.

Through qualitative research and in-depth interviews with activists, the author exposes the subtle influence of the 8th Amendment on Irish women and their (reproductive) bodies, whether or not they have ever attempted to access a clandestine abortion.

It explains how the everyday embodied practices, bodily labours and affective experiences of women and gestating people were shaped by the 8th amendment and through the need to ‘prepare’ for crisis pregnancies. In addition, it reveals the integral role of women’s bodies and emotions in changing the political and social landscape in Ireland, through the historical transformation of the country’s abortion laws.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks a frequently encountered claim and answers common questions. Presenting the latest findings and decades of interdisciplinary research in an accessible way, Dr. Castañeda and Carina Cione emphasize the expert consensus that immigration is vital to the United States and many other countries around the world. Featuring original insights from research conducted in El Paso, Texas, Immigration Realities considers a wide range of places, ethnic groups, and historical eras. It provides the key data and context to understand how immigration affects economies, crime rates, and social welfare systems, and it sheds light on contentious issues such as the safety of the U.S.-Mexico border and the consequences of Brexit. This book is an indispensable guide for all readers who want to counter false claims about immigration and are interested in what the research shows.

Our guest is: Dr. Ernesto Castañeda, who is the director of the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University. His books include A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona (2018); Building Walls: Excluding Latin People in the United States (2019); and Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration (2024).

The Immigration Realities co-author is: Carina Cione, who is a sociologist and writer based out of Baltimore. Their work has been featured by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Trauma Care, El Paso News, and American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies Working Paper Series.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seth J. Frantzman, "The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza" (Wicked Son, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A harrowing account on the frontlines of the war between Israel and Hamas, The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza (Wicked Son, 2024) War tells the story of how Hamas surprised Israel with its deadly attack, killing more than 1,000 people and kidnapping more than 250. With unparalleled access to the Israeli soldiers and units that faced the Hamas onslaught and their epic battle to defeat the terror group in Gaza, this is the story of the men and women who faced one of the world’s worst terror attacks and brought justice to its victims. It is also the story of how Hamas—backed by anti-Western and anti-Semitic forces around the globe—masterminded its attack and aspired to fire the first shot in a war to upset the US-led world order. The war against the terrorist group will determine the future of the Middle East.

From the battlegrounds in Gaza and the IDF strike cells using the latest in artificial intelligence, to the Israeli communities devastated by the fighting and trips to Israel’s frontlines against Hezbollah, this is the gripping story of how Israel suffered a surprise attack and recovered. The October 7 War is based on the author’s fifteen years of experience covering wars in Gaza, defense technology, and the rise of Iranian-backed terror in the Middle East.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Danny Sriskandarajah, "Power to the People: Use Your Voice, Change the World" (Headline Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Power to the People: Use Your Voice, Change the World (Headline Press, 2024) is Danny Sriskandarajah‘s radical manifesto for change designed to inspire citizen action around the world. The book presents a blueprint for how we, as individuals, can make a difference through greater community engagement and how we can deliver a society that works for the many and not the few. He speaks to voter apathy and a growing sense that elections no longer matter, with politicians and institutions too focused on short-term issues to grapple with complex global problems such as climate change, rising inequality, and digital disruption. Yet the book is also filled with inspiring real-life examples of citizen power in action, ranging from a volunteer-run repair café in Danny's local suburb to Avaaz's successful campaigns to tackle endemic corruption in Brazil.

From public ownership of social media spaces to democratizing share ownership and from re-energizing co-operatives to creating a people's chamber at the United Nations, this campaigning book has a mission to make us reclaim our power as citizens of the world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kevin J. McMahon, "A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Many scholars and members of the press have argued that John Roberts’ Supreme Court is exceptional. While some emphasize the approach to interpreting the Constitution or the justices conservative ideology, Dr. Kevin J. McMahon suggests that the key issue is democratic legitimacy. Historically, the Supreme Court has always had some “democracy gap” – democratically elected presidents appoint justices that serve for life. As presidents select justices, they attempt to move the Supreme Court in their desired ideological direction while “simultaneously advancing their electoral interests and managing their governing coalition.” Despite these forces, Dr. McMahon argues that past Supreme Courts were still closer to democratic principles. Today’s court is exceptional because the “democracy gap” is severe.

A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People (U Chicago Press, 2024) draws on historical and contemporary data to reveal how the long arc of court battles (from FDR to Donald Trump) created this democracy gap. McMahon highlights changes to the politics of nominating and confirming justices, the changes in who is even considered to be in the pool to be a Supreme Court justice, and the increased salience of the Court in elections.

Dr. Kevin J. McMahon (he/him) is the John R. Reitemeyer [RightMeyer]Professor of Political Science at Trinity College, and the author of two award-winning books, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race and Nixon’s Court, both published by The University of Chicago Press. Together with A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other, the three books form a trilogy that interrogates whether 100 years of presidential efforts to shape the high court affect the supreme court’s democratic legitimacy.

Dr. McMahon also writes public facing essays in outlets such as US News & World Report and The Conversation. For example, The Presidential Immunity Case & American Democracy, President Biden & the Courage it Takes to Call it Quits, Conservative Justices Polarized on the State of American Politics, and Calls for a Supreme Court Justice to Retire.

Susan mentioned a stark New York Times graphic of how 6 senators (CA, NY, TX) represent the same number of voters as 62 senators. 2022 data (but less dramatically presented) is here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Schofield, "Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

'Wicked Problems' are those problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, present and future, which are hard (if not impossible) to resolve and for which bold, creative, and messy solutions are typically required. The adjective 'wicked' describes the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed solutions often turn out to be worse than the symptoms.

Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. John Schofield is a wide-ranging and innovative book that encourages readers to think about archaeology in an entirely new way, as fresh, relevant, and future-oriented. It examines some of the novel ways that archaeology (alongside cultural heritage practice) can contribute to resolving some of the world's most wicked problems, or global challenges as they are sometimes known. With chapters covering climate change, environmental pollution, health and wellbeing, social injustice, and conflict, the book uses many and diverse examples to explain how, through studying the past and present through an archaeological lens, in ways that are creative, ambitious, and both inter- and transdisciplinary, significant 'small wins' can be achieved. Through these small wins, archaeologists can help to mitigate some of those most pressing of wicked problems, contributing therefore to a safer, healthier, and more stable world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Celebrating Constitution Day Pt. 1: A Conversation with Cass R. Sunstein

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Join us for an in-depth exploration of Professor Cass Sunstein's latest work, Campus Free Speech (Harvard University Press, September 2024).

Together, we'll examine the book’s intriguing take on free speech in academic spaces and the broader implications for constitutional interpretation. Professor Sunstein also delves into the exercise of administrative power, with timely discussions on COVID-era authority and the Supreme Court's decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Gain unique insights from Sunstein on how the Constitution remains a guiding force for the American public in navigating modern challenges.

Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.

Professor Sunstein is author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), #Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), and Too Much Information (2020). He is now working on a variety of projects involving the regulatory state, “sludge” (defined to include paperwork and similar burdens), fake news, and freedom of speech.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Josh Cowen, "The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

School vouchers are often framed as a way to help students and families by providing choice, but evidence shows that vouchers have a negative impact on educational outcomes.

In The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers (Harvard Education Press, 2024), Josh Cowen describes voucher programs as the product of decades of work by influential conservatives and wealthy activists to support a vision of America where education is privatized and removed from the public sphere.

Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, Cowen cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poor academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family's income.

The books traces the history of vouchers from it's initial proposal as part of conservative economic policy through its adoption as a method for families to resist school desegregation. Since then, the issue of education "freedom" has been a part of an ongoing culture war waged through policymaking, legislation, and litigation.

Cowen describes the advocacy network that funds research and promotion of vouchers as a way to attain ideological goals related to conservative social policy, not educational outcomes.

Red Chidgey and Joanne Garde-Hansen, "Museums, Archives and Protest Memory" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Museums, Archives and Protest Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), Red Chidgey and Joanne Garde-Hansen address the emergence of ‘protest memory’ as a powerful contemporary shaper of ideas and practices in culture, media and heritage domains. Directly focused on the role of museum and archive practitioners in protest memory curation, they make a compelling contribution to our understanding of how social movements and activist experiences are publicly remembered and activated for social and environmental justice.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability institutions and early twentieth-century eugenicist ideology, demonstrating how the legacy of those ideas continues to shape incarceration and detention today. Whatcott focuses on California, examining records from state institutions and reform organizations, newspapers, and state hospital museum exhibits. They reveal that state confinement, coercive treatment, care neglect, and forced sterilization were done out of the belief that the perceived unfitness of disabled, mad, and neurodivergent people was hereditary and thus posed a biological threat—a so-called menace to the future.

Whatcott uncovers a history of disabled resistance to these institutions that predates disability rights movements, builds a genealogy of resistance, and tells a history of eugenics from below. Theorizing how what they call “carceral eugenics” informed state treatment of disabled, mad, and neurodivergent people a century ago, Whatcott shows not only how that same logic still exists in secure treatment facilities, state prisons, and immigration detention centers, but also why it must continue to be resisted.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oren Kroll-Zeldin, "Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine" (NYU Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine (NYU Press, 2024) digs into the experiences of young Jewish Americans who engage with the Palestine solidarity movement and challenge the staunch pro-Israel stance of mainstream Jewish American institutions. The book explores how these activists address Israeli government policies of occupation and apartheid, and seek to transform American Jewish institutional support for Israel.

Author Oren Kroll-Zeldin identifies three key social movement strategies employed by these activists: targeting mainstream Jewish American institutions, participating in co-resistance efforts in Palestine/Israel, and engaging in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns. He argues that these young people perceive their commitment to ending the occupation and Israeli apartheid as a Jewish value, deeply rooted in the changing dynamics of Jewish life in the twenty-first century. By associating social justice activism with Jewish traditions and values, these activists establish a connection between their Jewishness and their pursuit of justice for Palestinians.

In a time of internal Jewish tensions and uncertainty about peace prospects between Palestine and Israel, the book provides hope that the efforts of these young Jews in the United States are pushing the political pendulum in a new direction, potentially leading to a more balanced and nuanced conversation.

Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting lecturer at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Twitter and IG: @robbyref Website: www.robertomazza.org

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

S4E4 In Defense of Bad Science and the Philosophy of Being

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What role does science play in shaping our laws? How do we distinguish between good science and bad science? Where does science hit its limits due to our human nature? And how do we separate orthodox belief from true knowledge? These are just some of the thought-provoking questions we'll explore in our upcoming philosophical conversation on science and human existence.

Join us as we dive into these topics with Dr. William Allen, a distinguished scholar renowned for his expertise in political philosophy and the philosophy of science. Dr. Allen has been a long-standing participant at The Conference on Science, Statistics, and Public Policy, bringing with him a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Dr. Allen's illustrious career includes serving as the dean of James Madison College and as a professor of political science at Michigan State University. He has also held academic positions at Villanova University, Ashland University, and Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. His academic journey began with a Ph.D. in government from the prestigious Claremont Graduate University.

Beyond academia, Dr. Allen has made significant contributions as a former member and chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is a recipient of the Kellogg National Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and has served on the National Council on the Humanities. His published works include critically acclaimed books like George Washington: America’s First Progressive and Rethinking Uncle Tom: The Political Philosophy of H. B. Stowe. Dr. Allen has also edited influential collections such as George Washington: A Collection and The Essential Antifederalist, alongside numerous scholarly articles on political philosophy and American political thought.

Don't miss this opportunity to engage with one of the foremost thinkers of our time as we navigate the intersection of science, truth, and human existence.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cary Nelson, "Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Completed shortly before Hamas carried out its barbaric October massacre, Cary Nelson's Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles (Academic Studies Press, 2024) takes up issues that have consequently gained new urgency in the academy worldwide.

It is the first book to ask what impact antisemitism has had on the fundamental principles the academy relies on for its identity—academic freedom, free speech rights, standards for hiring or firing faculty members and administrators, and the ethics of academic conduct and debate.

Antisemitic hatred is spreading at a fever pitch. What steps can counter it? What damage to students is done when departments embrace anti-Zionism? Should faculty members face consequences for promoting antisemitism on social media? Should universities make a new push to adopt the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations are vested with human rights, and government agencies and corporations use computers to monitor our private lives. In The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent (Pluto Press, 2022), David H. Price pulls back the curtain to reveal how the FBI and other government agencies have always functioned as the secret police of American capitalism up to today, where they luxuriate in a near-limitless NSA surveillance of all.

Price looks through a roster of campaigns by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and corporations to understand how we got here. Starting with J. Edgar Hoover and the early FBI's alignment with business, his access to 15,000 pages of never-before-seen FBI files shines a light on the surveillance of Edward Said, Andre Gunder Frank and Alexander Cockburn, Native American communists, and progressive factory owners.

Price uncovers patterns of FBI monitoring and harassing of activists and public figures, providing the vital means for us to understand how these new frightening surveillance operations are weaponized by powerful governmental agencies that remain largely shrouded in secrecy.

David H. Price is Professor of Anthropology at Saint Martin’s University’s Department of Society and Social Justice. He is the author of a number of books on the FBI and CIA, and has written articles for The Nation, Monthly Review, CounterPunch, Guardian and Le Monde. His work has been translated into five languages.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andy Clarno et al., "Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequity, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to police the poor and suppress struggles for social justice. Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the role of local law enforcement, federal immigration authorities, and national security agencies in upholding the city’s highly unequal social order.

Collaboratively authored by the Policing in Chicago Research Group (PCRG), Imperial Policing was developed in dialogue with movements on the front lines of struggles against racist policing in Black, Latinx, and Arab/Muslim communities. The members of PCRG are Andy Clarno, Enrique Alvear Moreno, Janaé Bonsu-Love, Lydia Dana, Michael De Anda Muñiz, Ilā Ravichandran, and Haley Volpintesta. Imperial Policing analyzes the connections between three police “wars”—on crime, terror, and immigrants—focusing on the weaponization of data and the coordination between local and national agencies to suppress communities of color and undermine social movements. Topics include high-tech, data-based tools of policing; the racialized archetypes that ground the police wars; the manufacturing of criminals and terrorists; the subversion of sanctuary city protections; and abolitionist responses to policing, such as the Erase the Database campaign.

Andy Clarno is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies and coordinator of the Policing in Chicago Research Group at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research examines racism, capitalism, colonialism, and empire in the early 21st century, with a focus on racialized policing and struggles for social justice in contexts of extreme inequality.

Michael De Anda Muñiz is an Assistant Professor in the Latina/Latino Studies Department at San Francisco State University. His research interests include culture, art, community engagement, space, and resistance.

Ilā Ravichandran is an assistant professor of legal studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Dr. Ravichandran’s research interests include science, knowledge, technology, biopolitics, policing, surveillance, counterinsurgency, state, queerness & Black studies.

Timi Koyejo is a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor for the City of Chicago.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan Gienapp, "Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique" (Yale UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The legal theory of constitutional originalism has attracted increasing attention in recent years as the US Supreme Court has tilted with the weight of justices who self-describe as originalists.

In Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique (Yale UP, 2024), Jonathan Gienapp examines the theory and describes how it falls short of achieving the interpretive authority that it claims.

Gienapp asserts that we need to reconstruct 18th century legal arguments as they were originally understood before judging them, while originalists reject historical understanding in favor of a more pliable textualist approach that allows them to impose their modern legal perspectives onto the past.

This "have your cake and eat it too" methodology allows originalists to claim the authority of the Founders while simultaneously discounting anything that those same Founders may have said, done, or understood that doesn't appear among the approximately 7500 words of the Constitution itself.

This book speaks directly to originalists with a challenge to make a fundamental choice between recognizing how our modern constitutional practices distort the original constitution and embrace them for the modern fiction that they are, or recover the original Constitution that the Founders actually knew.

Author recommended reading:

The Interbellum Consitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (Yale UP, 2024) by Alison L. LaCroix

Related resources:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
Edwin Meese speech to the American Bar Association in 1985
Constitutional Faith by Sanford Levinson

New Books Network interview with Jonathan Gienapp, when Derek Litvak spoke with him in 2019 about The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (Harvard UP 2018).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karyne E. Messina, "The Power of Community: A 45 Day Action Plan to Stop Trump from Turning Our Democracy into His Autocracy" (PI Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

An Amazon # 1 top release Kindle book during its debut, The Power of Community: A 45 Day Action Plan to Stop Trump from Turning Our Democracy into His Autocracy (PI Press, 2024) by psychoanalyst Dr. Karyne Messina, is a comprehensive guide designed to enhance public understanding of democratic processes and individual participation using psychoanalytic insights. The book provides a daily plan filled with reflective exercises and action-oriented tasks to empower readers to actively protect and participate in their democracy, especially considering modern political challenges and threats.

We the people have the power to preserve our democracy, and this book provides the solutions anyone willing to put in the time to do it. From writing social media posts to volunteering at the polls, The Power of Community explains what's at stake and how we can all do our part.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Susan Greenhalgh, "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (U Chicago Press, 2024) takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powerful companies and allied academic scientists mould research to meet industry needs. The 1990s were tough times for the soda industry. In the United States, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics pointed to sugary soda as a main culprit and advocated for soda taxes that might decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages—and threaten the revenues of the giant soda companies.

Soda Science tells the story of how industry leader Coca-Cola mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity, a view few experts accept. Anthropologist and science studies specialist Susan Greenhalgh discovers a hidden world of science-making—with distinctive organizations, social networks, knowledge-making practices, and ethical claims—dedicated to creating industry-friendly science and keeping it under wraps. By tracing the birth, maturation, death, and afterlife of the science they made, Greenhalgh shows how corporate science has managed to gain such a hold over our lives. Spanning twenty years, her investigation takes her from the US, where the science was made, to China, a key market for sugary soda. In the US, soda science was a critical force in the making of today’s society of step-counting, fitness-tracking, weight-obsessed citizens. In China, this distorted science has left its mark not just on national obesity policies but on the apparatus for managing chronic disease generally.

By following the scientists and their ambitious schemes to make the world safe for Coke, Greenhalgh offers an account that is more global—and yet more human—than the story that dominates public understanding today. Coke’s research isn’t fake science, Greenhalgh argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim. Her gripping book raises crucial questions about conflicts of interest in scientific research, the funding behind familiar messages about health, and the cunning ways giant corporations come to shape our diets, lifestyles, and health to their own needs.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Radio Reorient Season 11: A Wrap Up and Round Up

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this final episode of Season 11, the Radio ReOrient team - Hizer Mir, Claudia Radiven, Saeed Khan, Chella Ward and Salman Sayyid - look back over our discussions this season. We put these into the context in which the conversations took place: the context of the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, of global Islamophobia, of campus movements and protests for decolonial liberation… and much more. We reflect on the value of the literary, which has been a thread throughout this season, for imagining beyond islamophobia and share some secret sneak peaks of what to expect next season! We will be back soon and look forward to catching up with you then, listeners old and new. But for now: let’s listen in!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bhaskar Sunkara, "The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality" (Basic Books, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (Basic Books, 2020), Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. With the stunning popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are embracing the class politics of socialism. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system in America look like? The editor of Jacobin magazine, Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing, and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.

Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Human Advantage: A Conversation with Jay Richards

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we explore the insights of Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines (Forum, 2019). Richards wrote this book during a time when automation and technology were beginning to redefine the boundaries of human work and creativity. His core argument is that, despite the rise of machines, there are certain uniquely human qualities—such as creativity, moral judgment, and entrepreneurial spirit—that cannot be replicated by technology. These traits, he suggests, are what give us a distinct edge in the face of automation.

As we look at today's world, where artificial intelligence and machine learning have advanced at an unprecedented pace, we must ask: Do Richards' ideas still hold true? In an era where AI can perform tasks once thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, from creative endeavors to complex decision-making, is there still a clear-cut human advantage? Richards' book offers a lens through which to examine these questions, urging us to consider how we can harness our inherent strengths to adapt and thrive in this new landscape.

In our conversation, we dive deep into these questions, exploring the relevance of The Human Advantage in today's rapidly evolving technological environment. How can we, as individuals and as a society, ensure that we maintain and even enhance our human edge? What role do creativity, ethics, and entrepreneurship play in a world increasingly driven by algorithms and automation? This episode offers valuable insights for anyone grappling with the implications of modern technology on our work, lives, and future.

Jay Richards is an American analytical philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. He is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hope Bohanec, "The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs" (Lantern Publishing, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

As consumers become increasingly aware of the animal agriculture industry’s cruelty and environmental devastation, clever industry marketers are adapting with alternative “humane” and “sustainable” labeling and marketing campaigns. In the absence of accurate information, it has never been more important to educate consumers on the realities behind the industry lies, and people are hungry for the truth.

The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs (Lantern Publishing & Media, 2023) features a range of engaging and thought-provoking essays from eighteen notable experts who are at the forefront of this marketing and societal shift, chronicling every aspect with in-depth analyses and intellectual rigor. Among other timely topics, the book explores how the humane hoax intersects with feminism and environmentalism, how it is represented in the media, and the affects it has on human and non-human communities alike. The Humane Hoax will leave the reader questioning everything that they have been conditioned to believe as consumers.

Hope Bohanec has been active in animal protection and environmental activism for thirty years and has published the book The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? She is the Executive Director of Compassionate Living and the host of the Hope for the Animals Podcast. Hope co-founded the Humane Hoax Project, the Ahimsa Living Project, and has organized numerous online and in-person events including the Humane Hoax Online Conference, the Humane Hoax Chicken Webinar, and the Sonoma County VegFest. Over the last three decades, Hope has worked for the national non-profits United Poultry Concerns and In Defense of Animals and has contributed chapters to two anthologies.

Kyle Johannsen is a Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Damaging Rationality: Exxon-Funded Legal Research and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This is part #3 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast mini-series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

In the last episode of the (ir)Rational Alaskans, Riki Ott, Linden O’Toole, and thousands of other Alaskan fishers won over $5 billion in punitive damages against Exxon for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In our finale, while Ott and O’Toole wait for their cheques, Exxon fights back with a legal and academic appeal. In that appeal, they marshal some of the most-respected scholars of our generation.

The (ir)Rational Alaskans is a partnership with Canada’s National Observer. You can also read about this story in Jacobin. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page.

Programming Note: This marks the end of our returning season, the Rationality Wars. We will back with another season shortly, sometime this fall. If you want to catch that season, make sure to stay subscribed to our podcast feed (Apple, Spotify, RSS). You can also stay updated by following us on X (@citedpodcast), and you can contact us directly at info [at] citedmedia.ca if you have any questions or any feedback. Finally, if you are impatient and just itching for more content, check out some of our other episodes, like: the other episodes in this season, if you joined up late; the episodes from last season, especially America's Chernobyl; or some of the highlights from our other podcast, Darts and Letters.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Claire Carter et al., "Contemporary Vulnerabilities: Reflections on Social Justice Methodologies" (U Alberta Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Contemporary Vulnerabilities: Reflections on Social Justice Methodologies (U Alberta Press, 2024) centres on critical reflections about vulnerable moments in research committed to social change. Exploring the many vulnerabilities within social science research, this interdisciplinary collection gathers critical stories, reflections, and analyses about innovative methodologies that engage with unconventional and unexpected spaces of research that scholars inhabit and share. The authors encourage us to collaborate within, reflect on, and confront the frictions of inquiry around social change. Towards an aim of contesting the dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies, the collection includes modes of storytelling and examples of knowledge gathering that are often excluded from academic texts in general and methodological texts in particular - such as queer, crip, and indigenous ways of being and knowing. Scholars and students across all disciplines will find provocation and recognition in this volume.

See the full Table of Contents here.

Claire Carter is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender, Religion, and Critical Studies at the University of Regina

Chelsea Temple Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University

Caitlin Janzen is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at York University and also works at the Postdoc Office of the University of Calgary.

Tatiana Klepikova is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg, where she leads a research group on queer literatures and cultures under socialism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Allen, “The Political Class: Why It Matters Who Our Politicians Are” (Oxford UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Who is in charge? In The Political Class: Why It Matters Who Our Politicians Are (Oxford University Press, 2018), Peter Allen, a Reader in Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, explores the rise of a specific type of political leader and what this means for our politics. The book works through debates over the existence of a political class, arguing this ‘class’ is homogenised along lines of characteristics, attitudes, and behaviours, and carefully analysing potential defences of the political class. However, in presenting the intrinsic case, as well as an extensive and detailed range of other cases, against the political class the book presents a powerful critique of how politics is currently organised. Concluding with a range of practical suggestions for change, including quotas, randomised selection of representative, and changes to how politics is organised, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with who is in charge of society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Raj Jayadev, "Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration" (New Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Over two million Americans are currently in prison or jail. Another 4.5 million are on probation or parole. And nearly one in two Americans have a family member who is or has been incarcerated. Writing for those new to activism as well as seasoned organizers, celebrated criminal justice activist Raj Jayadev introduces readers to the groundbreaking idea of participatory defense, a community organizing model for families and communities aimed at bettering the outcome of cases involving their loved ones and transforming the landscape of power in the courts. Participatory defense has led to acquittals, dismissed and reduced charges, prison terms changed to rehabilitation programs, and life sentences taken off the table.

Drawing on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community intervention, Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration (New Press, 2023) features stories from across the country, highlighting the most effective strategies of this groundbreaking approach, including how to get loved ones released from bail hearings, arraignments, and post-conviction; how to take on deportation cases; how to prevent youth from being transferred to adult court, and more. A radical new argument for the era of mass incarceration, Protect Your People shows that real change is possible when people step into America's courtrooms and get involved.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Archer, "Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability" (NYU Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In recent years, companies have felt the pressure to be transparent about their environmental impact. Large documents containing summaries of yearly emissions rates, carbon output, and utilized resources are shared on companies’ social media pages, websites, and employee briefings in a bid for public confidence in corporate responsibility.

And yet, Matthew Archer argues, these metrics are often just hollow symbols. Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability (New York University Press, 2024) contends with the world of big banks and multinational corporations, where sustainability begins and ends with measuring and reporting. Drawing on five years of research among sustainability professionals in the US and Europe, Unsustainable shows how this depoliticizing tendency to frame sustainability as a technical issue enhances and obscures corporate power while doing little, if anything, to address the root causes of the climate crisis and issues of social inequality. Through this obsession with metrics and indicators, the adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure transforms into a belief that once you’ve measured social and environmental impacts, the market will simply manage them for you.

The book draws on diverse sources of evidence―ethnographic fieldwork among a wide array of sustainability professionals, interviews with private bankers, and apocalyptic science fiction―and features analyses of name-brand companies including Volkswagen, Unilever, and Nestlé. Making the case for the limits of measuring and reporting, Archer seeks to mobilize alternative approaches. Through an intersectional lens incorporating Black and Indigenous theories of knowledge, power and value, he offers a vision of sustainability that aims to be more effective and more socially and ecologically just.

Robin Steiner is an economic anthropologist based in Miami, FL. His published work explores economic development, labor, and citizenship in Oman and the Arab Gulf. He teaches in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. Robin can be reached at rsteiner@fiu.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

12 Angry Alaskans: Re-Examining the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Case

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This is part #2 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Last episode, the spill devastates Cordova, Alaska. In this second part, 12 Angry Alaskans, a jury of ordinary Alaskans picks up our story. They muddle through the most devastating, and most complicated, environmental disaster in US history. How would they decide the case?

Subscribe today to ensure you do not miss our finale, Damaging Rationality, which examines the forgotten academic story behind Exxon’s legal appeals. You can also listen to a trailer today. The (ir)Rational Alaskans is a partnership with Canada’s National Observer. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Decoloniality

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This episode is the third one this series where we look back over the first principles of the ReOrient project. In previous episodes we have discussed post-orientalism and post-positivism, here we turn to decoloniality. Discussions of decoloniality have become increasingly mainstream since the ‘Decolonise the Curriculum’ and ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movements, and calls to decolonise are often heard on pro-Palestine marches around the world. But what is the relationship between the decolonial and the Islamicate? And how do we ensure that as it is mainstreamed, decolonial thought does not lose its meaning? To find out, let’s listen in.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Schuyler Bailar didn’t set out to be an activist, but his very public transition to the Harvard men’s swim team put him in the spotlight. His choice to be open about his journey and share his experience has evolved into tireless advocacy for inclusion and collective liberation.

Today’s book is: He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why it Matters (Hachette, 2023), by Schuyler Bailar, which gives readers the essential language and context of gender, paving the way for understanding, acceptance and connection. He/She/They compassionately addresses fundamental topics, from why being transgender is not a choice and why pronouns are important, to complex issues including how gender-affirming healthcare can be lifesaving. With a narrative rooted in science and history, Schuyler helps restore common sense and humanity to a discussion that continues to be divisively and deceptively politicized. In chapters both myth-busting and affirming, compassionate and fierce, Schulyer offers readers an urgent and lifesaving book to change the conversation about gender.

Our guest is: Schuyler Bailar (he/him), who is an educator, author, and advocate. He is the first transgender athlete to compete in any sport on an NCAA Division 1 men’s team, and has earned numerous honors including the Harvard Varsity Director’s Award. He is one of the top LGBTQ+ educators and advocates, a leading DEI speaker and advisor, the creator of the LaneChanger.com gender literacy online learning series, and the author of the award-winning book He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why it Matters. Schuyler holds a degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology from Harvard, and works in four research labs focusing in clinical psychology and public health.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? Find them all here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Policing and White Power with Daniel Kryder and David Cunningham (JP, EF)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This June 2020 episode, originally part of a Global Policing series, was Recall this Book's first exploration of police brutality, systemic and personal racism and Black Lives Matter. Elizabeth and John were lucky to be joined by Daniel Kryder and David Cunningham, two scholars who have worked on these questions for decades.

Many of the mechanisms that create an oppressed and subordinated American community of color can seem subtle and indirect, despite the insidious ways they pervade housing law (The Color of Law), education (Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together, Savage Inequalities) and the carceral state (The Condemnation of Blackness, The New Jim Crow, Locking Up Our Own).

Although there is plenty of subtle racism in policing as well, there can be a brutally frontal quality to white-power policing: just look at the racial disparity in the stubbornly astronomically number of fatal shootings by police. David and Daniel ask how much of the current system of racial and class disparity can be traced back to slavery or to subsequent 19th century racial logic, and howw much arises from the confluence of other forces.

The conversation notes the widespread white participation in 2020 protests–did we ever expect to hear Mitt Romney chanting “Black Lives Matter”?– and what this might suggest about the possibilities for actual change. It also touches on the roles of the media and institutions such as police unions and the erosion of federal oversight of local police departments.

Mentioned in this episode:

Klansville, USA (cf. the PBS show of the same name that drew heavily on the book; and an interview David did on the topic of today’s Klan)
Kerner Commission Report (1968)
Ethical Society of Police (cf. this compelling local post-Ferguson PBS documentary that speaks with St. Louis African-American police officers)

Recallable Books

Walter Johnson, “The Broken Heart of America” (2020)
James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time” (1963)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me” (2015)

Listen and Read Here:

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is Islamophobia Racism?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

An interview with Salman Sayyid in which he addresses some of the criticisms of the recent definition of Islamophobia as “a type of racism that targets Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

To read more about the incident of Islamophobia mentioned in this podcast, please visit this link.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Miguel Montalva Barba, "White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space" (Policy Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space (Policy Press, 2024) examines the connections between race, place, and space, and sheds light on how they contribute and maintain racial hierarchies.

Dr. Miguel Montalva Barba focuses on the White residents of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, which, according to the Cooks Political Report Partisan Voting Index, is the most liberal district in the state and 15th in the United States of America. The book uses settler colonialism and critical race theory to explore how self-identified progressive White residents perceive their gentrifying neighborhood and how they make sense of their positionality.

Using the extended case method, as well as in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis and visual/media analysis, the author reveals how systemic racialized inequality persists even in a politically progressive borough.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Craig Gent, "Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Across the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers are instructed, tracked and monitored by increasingly dystopian management technologies.

In Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work (Verso, 2024), Craig Gent takes us into workplaces where algorithms rule to excavate the politics behind the newest form of managerial power. Combining worker testimony and original research on companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Deliveroo, the cutting edge of algorithmic management technology, this book reveals the sometimes unexpected effects these new techniques have on work, workers and managers. Gent advances an alternative politics of resistance in the face of digital control.

Louisa Hann attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester in 2021, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Benjamin C. Waterhouse on "One Day I'll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America"

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Waterhouse, full-as-full-can- be Professor of History at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about his book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion that Conquered America (Norton, 2024). The book examines how the ideal of self-employment became so prominent in the United States after the 1970s, and how the idea has had damaging consequences for many groups, who often are attracted to working for themselves not because it is so great but because they have so few other good options. Vinsel and Waterhouse also roast entrepreneurship, small businesses, and other golden calves. They end by discussing a new collaborative project, a forthcoming podcast on the political, cultural, and economic history of the United States in the 1990s.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aimee Louise Middlemiss, "Invisible Labours: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events are positioned as less ‘real’ or significant when the foetal being does not, or will not, survive. Invisible Labour: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England (Berghahn, 2024) by Dr. Aimee Louise Middlemiss describes the reproductive politics of this category of pregnancy loss in England. It shows how second trimester pregnancy loss produces specific medical and social experiences, revealing an underlying teleological ontology of pregnancy. Some women then understand their pregnancy through kinship with the unborn baby.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Kahneman’s Forgotten Legacy: Investigating Exxon-Funded Psychological Research

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

After the unprecedented Exxon Valdez oil spill, a jury of ordinary Alaskans decided that Exxon had to be punished. However, Exxon fought back against their punishment. They did so, in-part, by supporting research that suggested jurors are irrational. This work came from an esteemed group of psychologists, behavioural economists, and legal theorists–including Daniel Kahneman, and Cass Sunstein.

In this three-part series in partnership with Canada’s National Observer, Cited Podcast investigates the forgotten legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the research that followed. This first part, an Alaskan Nightmare, covers the spill and its immediate effects. Subsequent episodes will run weekly. Subscribe today to ensure you do not miss part #2, 12 Angry Alaskans, and part #3, Damaging Rationality.

This is episode five of Cited Podcast’s returning season, the Rationality Wars. This season tells stories of political and scholarly battles to define rationality and irrationality. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neoliberalism and the University, Part 2

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

Today, our hosts, Anjali DasSarma and Sim Gill, present the second episode in a two-part series on neoliberalism and the state of the university as a deeply powerful structure, along with two incredible scholars: Professor Natalie Fenton and Professor Alison Hearn.

In this episode, we delve into the intricate mechanisms of capitalism, unpacking how metrics, the pressure to "publish or perish," and intellectual extraction shape the academic landscape. From the commodification of knowledge to the erosion of job security, we'll shine a light on some of the systemic forces at play in higher education. We also unpack the rhetoric surrounding Elon Musk and his impact on the age of artificial intelligence, to consider how AI tools like ChatGPT are shifting debates about teaching and student evaluation methods.

Amidst these challenges, we'll also uncover the power of the ideological project of hope. Join us as we engage in a thought-provoking discussion on information, communication, and knowledge production.

In this episode you will hear about:

AI and job security
How metrics, “publishing or perishing,” and intellectual extraction function under capitalism
What the ideological project of hope offers us
Community organizing, resistance, and learning

Guest Biographies:

Natalie Fenton: Natalie is a Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths University.

Alison Hearn: Alison is a professor in the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

Host Biographies:

Anjali DasSarma: Anjali DasSarma is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sim Gill: Sim Gill is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) and the Center on Digital Culture and Society.

Credits

Interview by: Anjali DasSarma and Sim Gill Produced by: Eszter Zimanyi
Edited by: Anjali DasSarma and Matt Parker
Sound Mixing by: Matt Parker
Music by: Zoe Zhao Blog post written by: Anjali DasSarma and Sim Gill

Keywords: neoliberalism, higher education, artificial intelligence, community organizing

This episode was recorded on November 15th, 2023 at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas A. Kerns and Kathleen Dean Moore, "Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change" (Oregon State UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Bringing together philosophy, jurisprudence, and a deep concern for the environment, Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change offers an inspiring and generative way of thinking about the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. In particular, Thomas Kearns and Kathleen Dean Moore provide readers with insight into the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal as well as the wide-ranging and deeply-felt impacts of fracking, interspersing legal analysis, excerpts of Tribunal testimony, and reflections by climate writers like Winona LaDuke, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Sandra Steingraber. The book's structure even creatively mirrors that of the Tribunal, offering a collage of insight to any reader interested in human rights and environmental issues—it is a work of deep dedication to thinking critically and deeply about how to face not only the environmental degradation caused by fracking, but also other kinds of harms caused by resource extraction and corporate interests. Rather than slip into climate nihilism, Bearing Witness seeks to name, investigate, and claim rights around environmental harms felt by humans and non-humans alike.

In the face of the increasing, globally-felt impacts of climate change, Kearns and Dean Moore provide us with a human-rights centered framework for engaging with and addressing some of the most pressing questions of our time.

Thomas A. Kearns is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at North Seattle College, and is Director of Environment and Human Rights Advisory. In 2015, he helped draft the international Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change, and in 2018, co-organized the International Tribunal on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change, which forms much of the basis for this book. His work is currently centred around facilitating youth climate courts.

Kathleen Dean Moore is a Distinguished Philosophy Professor Emerita at Oregon State University, and longstanding public advocate for climate justice and ecological thriving. Her concern for climate catastrophe led her to leave her academic position to speak and write on environmental crises. Her numerous books and essays—many award-winning—focus on environmental ethics and climate crises, and she has published widely in academic and non-academic fora alike.

Rine Vieth is an incoming FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Laval. Interested in how people experience state legal regimes, their research centres around questions of law, migration, gender, and religion.

Further reading and works discussed in this episode:

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights, Fracking, and Climate Change
Film by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University, Bedrock Rights: A New Foundation for Global Action Against Fracking and Climate Change
Kathleen Dean Moore and Bob Haverluck, Take Heart (OSU Press)
Youth Climate Courts website

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily Cousens, "Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Why do "second wave" and "trans feminism" rarely get considered together? Challenging the idea that trans feminism is antagonistic to, or arrived after, second wave feminism, Emily Cousens re-orients trans epistemologies as crucial sites of second wave feminist theorising. By revisiting the contributions of trans individuals writing in underground print publications, as well as the more well-known arguments of Andrea Dworkin, Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) demonstrates that valuable yet overlooked trans feminist philosophies of sex and gender were present throughout the US second wave. It argues that not only were these trans feminist epistemologies an important component of second wave feminism's knowledge production, but that this period has an unacknowledged trans feminist legacy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jason Blakely, "Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life" (Agenda Publishing, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his new book Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life (Agenda Publishing, 2023), this may not be because we are like travellers guided by old maps of the political world but because we make the mistake of thinking that our maps are the worlds in which we live and act politically. When we read them as if they are reality, rather than a representation of it, we get lost.

If you like this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science then you might also be interested in others in the series, including Jason and Mark Bevir talking about their Interpretive Social Science, and James C. Scott, who passed away shortly before this episode was recorded, discussing his Against the Grain.

Jason recommends Charles Taylor’s sequel to The Language Animal, Cosmic Connections, and Jon Fosse’s novelistic exploration of the human condition, Septology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Race, Gender, and the 2024 Presidential Election Cycle

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. The path to this nomination and the generation election has been a bit unusual—with President Joe Biden deciding not to pursue re-election but doing so after the primary season has concluded. Thus, there is a rather condensed election season, and Vice President Kamala Harris has worked to bring the Democratic Party together after she received President Biden’s endorsement after he withdrew from the race. Given the changing dynamics of the presidential race, we also find ourselves with an unexpected choice for the presidency, Kamala Harris, a former attorney general for California, a senator from California, a former prosecutor, and now the vice president of the United States. Harris is also bi-racial, of South Asian and Black heritage, and she will be the second woman nominated as the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in the United States.

I invited three experts on presidential politics, gender, and race in American politics to join me to discuss Kamala Harris’s historic and unique run for the presidency. Mary McHugh, Executive Director of Civic and Community Engagement, Stevens Service Learning Center at Merrimack College and member of the Political Science Department at Merrimack, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, Deputy Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science SEA Change Program, and professor of political science at Purdue University, and Linda Beail, Professor of Political Science at Point Loma Nazarene University and co-author of the 2012 book, Framing Sarah Palin: Pit Bulls, Puritans, and Politics, all joined the conversation to think about the presidential race, Kamala Harris, race, gender, masculinity, and partisan politics. We cover a lot of ground, including the presentation of masculinity at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, how TikTok and viral memes may influence younger voters, and how Kamala Harris is trying to frame herself and how others are trying to frame her in the course of the abbreviated election cycle. We examine historical contexts for women ascending to office, and how that might be a component of the shifting candidates and how Americans think about elections. We also dive into some of the controversial comments about “crazy cat ladies” and concepts of motherhood, politics, and racial and gendered double binds.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Douglas Greene, "The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade's Revenge" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Returning to the New Books Network is Doug Greene, here to discuss his book The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky (Routledge, 2024). Split into three main parts, the book first surveys Kautsky’s own life and thought, starting with his early interest in socialist politics and turn towards Marxism, followed by a slow but steady turn away from revolution and towards reform, believing parliamentary procedures were the best road to social transformation. The second part looks at the works of Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, all of whom offer critical responses to Kautsky’s reformism, and the reassertion of the importance of revolutionary thought to any Marxist project. The third and final part looks at the contemporary works of Lars Lih, Eric Blanc and Mike Macnair and their attempts to make Kautsky’s reformist practice the central pillar of the contemporary left. Throughout, Greene argues that the real lesson Kautsky offers is the dead-end of reformism to any revolutionary project.

Some other relevant readings on this topic include

Douglas Greene is a historian in Boston. He is also the author of the books A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism and Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union. His writing has appeared in a number of outlets.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laura Beers. "Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century" (Norton, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Is Orwell still relevant today?

In Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century (Norton, 2024), Laura Beers, a Professor of History at American University examines the life and writing of Orwell to offer lessons for contemporary politics and society. The book examines the influences that shaped Eric Blair’s nom de plume, as well as showing how his ideas offer vital insights for the project of equality and social justice today. The book is even handed in its analysis, placing Orwell as a writer and thinker of his time and place, as much as he is relevant today. Moreover, the book offers an important critical perspective on his views about gender and feminism, reminding the reader of the importance of a nuanced perspective even for this hugely significant figure. A fascinating read as well as a vital political intervention, the book will be essential reading across humanities, social science and for anyone interested in politics too.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neoliberalism and the University, Part 1

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today, our hosts, Anjali DasSarma and Sim Gill, present the first of two episodes on neoliberalism and the state of the university as a deeply powerful structure, along with two incredible scholars: Professor Natalie Fenton and Professor Alison Hearn.

In this episode, we explore the complex realm of neoliberalism and its profound impact on education systems in the UK, Canada, and the US. Join us as we unpack how neoliberal ideologies have transformed the very essence of the student experience.

Neoliberal policies have reshaped the landscape of education, redefining relationships between students, faculty, and institutions. But what does this actually mean for the individuals learning and working within these institutions?

Join us for an exciting conversation as we explore the complex and pressing issues shaping our academic worlds today.

In this episode you will hear about:

How Fenton and Hearn define and understand the university within neoliberalism
The material working conditions of faculty, students, and other laborers across UK, Canadian, and US contexts
Unionizing and what it means to work as a collective
The Research Excellence Framework and Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario
Capitalism and the university as a corporation

Guest Biographies:

Natalie Fenton: Natalie is a Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths University.

Alison Hearn: Alison is a professor in the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

Host Biographies:

Anjali DasSarma: Anjali DasSarma is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Credits

Interview by: Anjali DasSarma and Sim Gill

Produced by: Eszter Zimanyi

Edited by: Anjali DasSarma and Matt Parker

Sound Mixing by: Matt Parker

Music by: Zoe Zhao

Blog post written by: Anjali DasSarma and Sim Gill

Keywords: neoliberalism, higher education, labor rights

This episode was recorded on November 15th, 2023 at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane (JP, Eugene Sheppard)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the black nationalist, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the Jews was liberalism.

Shaul Magid, Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and Rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue, is a celebrated and brilliant scholar of radical and dissident Judaism in America. He joins John and his Brandeis colleague Eugene Sheppard to discuss his book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2024) on Jewish Defense League Founder and the surprising American origins of Jewish radicalism not of the left but of the right.

The conversation starts with Magid recounting a call from celebrated leftist radical Arthur Waskow to make the case that all American Jewish radicalism is of the left. Magid sees it differently: Although the radically right Meir Kahane went on to fame and influence in Israel, both through his party Kach (meaning Thus!) and through successor parties that heightened ultra-nationalism, he loved baseball, and grew up thinking about how to strengthen Jewish identity within a late 1960's America defined by "race wars and culture wars of 1967/68. " Long before his semi-successsful transplantation to Israel, he was the founder of the Jewish Defense League, which absorbed black nationalism (he even wrote a piece called "The Jewish Panthers") and tried to flip it into a model for mobilized Jewish ethnic sectarianism.

John asks Shaul about Kahane's claim not to hate Arabs but to love Jews--Shaul believes he actually hated both. Kahane's misunderstanding of the Israeli Black Panthers (a group of Jewish radicals from Middle Eastern and North African origins, inspired by the American Black Panther revolutionary movement) is symptomatic of his failure to grasp the complexity of political currents in Israel. Golda Meir was able to adapt to Israeli political currents when she emigrated from America; Kahane not so much.

Nonetheless, by the late 1970's a home-grown neo-Kahanism waxes in Israel, with a majoritarian arrogance unlike Kahane's perennially minoritarian view. He may not have fully broken through to the mainstream, but when he was assassinated in 1990 his funeral (at the time when his party Kach was still banned, when a solution to Jewish-Arab coexistence still seemed within reach) was still the largest any Israeli had ever had.

Does liberalism, and liberal Zionism in the 1990s succeed? Magid says it had its moment in the 1990s--it tepidly opposed settlers, endorsed Oslo. But the reality of the 2020's has no space for that liberal two-statism. What we have now, which is distinct from Kahane's older (right) radicalism is outright Jewish conservatism, driven by the potent impact of Orthodoxy.

About October 7, Kahane would have said "I told you so." Kahane’s recurrent refrain was that, no matter what naïve liberals might hope, Palestinian nationalism would not be bartered away for the goods of electricity or a washing machine. And yet Magid sees this current moment as an unexpected boon in some ways for the Jewish radical left. The journal Jewish Currents and Jewish Voices for Peace have found a new argument for turning away from liberal Zionism to a new form of unapologetic diasporism.

Listen to and Read the episode here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bernard E. Harcourt. "Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, unable to address pressing problems such as climate change. There is, however, another path—cooperation democracy. From consumer co-ops to credit unions, worker cooperatives to insurance mutuals, nonprofits to mutual aid, countless examples prove that people working together can extend the ideals of participatory democracy and sustainability into every aspect of their lives. These forms of cooperation do not depend on electoral politics. Instead, they harness the longstanding practices and values of cooperatives: self-determination, democratic participation, equity, solidarity, and respect for the environment.

Bernard E. Harcourt develops a transformative theory and practice that builds on worldwide models of successful cooperation. He identifies the most promising forms of cooperative initiatives and then distills their lessons into an integrated framework: Coöperism. This is a political theory grounded on recognition of our interdependence. It is an economic theory that can ensure equitable distribution of wealth. Finally, it is a social theory that replaces the punishment paradigm with a cooperation paradigm.

A creative work of normative critical theory, Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory (Columbia UP, 2023) provides a positive vision for addressing our most urgent challenges today. Harcourt shows that by drawing on the core values of cooperation and the power of people working together, a new world of cooperation democracy is within our grasp.

Bernard E. Harcourt is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University and a chaired professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. An editor of Michel Foucault’s work in French and English, Harcourt is the author of several books, including Critique and Praxis (Columbia, 2020). He is a social-justice litigator and the recipient of the 2019 Norman Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award from the New York City Bar Association for his longtime representation of death row prisoners.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Musa al-Gharbi, "We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How a new "woke" elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status--without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged.

Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite (Princeton UP, 2024), Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is “wokeness” and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.

We Have Never Been Woke details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite—and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality. Al-Gharbi’s point is not to accuse symbolic capitalists of hypocrisy or cynicism. Rather, he examines how their genuine beliefs prevent them from recognizing how they contribute to social problems—or how their actions regularly provoke backlash against the social justice causes they champion.

A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite’s self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Changing Dynamics in the Presidential Race, 2024

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Republican Party held its nominating convention a week ago in Milwaukee, formally nominating former President Donald Trump as the standard-bearer for the GOP, and also his vice-presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH). Just before the convention kicked off, Trump was the target of an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The GOP convention was unique in having the former president there over all days of the event. But since the convention concluded, President Joe Biden has announced that he will not be standing for re-election, and immediately endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to become the Democratic nominee for president. As we are taping this podcast on Wednesday, July 24th, Vice President Kamala Harris looks like the presumptive Democratic nominee, about 4 weeks before the Democratic convention. It has been a head spinning two weeks of politics in the United States and the dynamics and focus of the presidential race has shifted dramatically.

To take stock of where the race stands about 100 days out, we have two experts on the presidency. Dr. Meena Bose is the Executive Dean for Public Policy and Public Service Programs at the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs and director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, both at Hofstra University. Dr. Daniel E. Ponder is the L.E. Meador Professor of Political Science and Director of the Meador Center for Politics and Citizenship at Drury University. Meena and Dan are the co-editors OF a new De Gruyter Series in Presidential Politics, Leadership, and Policy Making. The first volume is Evaluating the Obama Presidency: From Transformational Goals to Governing Realities (De Gruyter, 2024) edited by Meena Bose and Paul Fritz. It includes a chapter on presidential leverage and Obama’s decision making on Syria by Dan Ponder and Jeff VanDenBerg.

Previously, Meena joined the podcast to discuss her book Executive Policymaking: The Role of the OMB in the Presidency (co-authored with Andrew Rudalevige) and Dan also chatted with Lilly about his book Presidential Leverage: Presidents, Approval, and the American State. They are also veterans of Postscript, having come on the show in the past few weeks to discuss the state of the presidential election and consider it in historical and institutional context.

We spend this conversation talking about the changing dynamics in the presidential field, and the decisions made by President Biden to step aside. We go over the conventions, discussing the recent Republican convention and what the Democratic convention may be like in a few weeks’ time. We talk about issues that may define the race or are defining the race, including the economy, immigration, and reproductive rights. We also, as good political scientists, discuss the prospective options for the vice-presidential selection that Vice President Harris will have to make over the next few weeks.

During the podcast, we mentioned:

Julia Azari’s Substack post at Good Politics/Bad Politics on Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign kickoff event in West Allis, WI on Tuesday, July 23.
The Daily’s episode focusing on the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
Susan Liebell’s piece in The Medium from April on Vice President Kamala Harris and Reproductive Rights.
Bret Stephen’s op-ed at the New York Times titled “Democrats Deserved a Contest, Not a Coronation.”

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anne Applebaum, "Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World" (Doubleday Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

"Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead". So writes Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World (Double Day Books, 2024).

Applebaum's new book develops the themes she rehearsed in Twilight of Democracy (2020), an analysis of the rise of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and national conservatism in the UK and the US. Ranging across the club of authoritarians but with an inevitable focus on China and Russia, Autocracy Inc. examines autocrats' growing sophistication and coordination and how they have been enabled by the naivety (and greed) of business and politicians in liberal democracies. "The vehicles of disruption can be right-wing, left-wing, separatist or nationalist - even taking the form of medical conspiracies or moral panic," she writes. "Only the purpose never changes: Autocracy Inc. hopes to rewrite the rules of the international system itself".

Anne Applebaum is an American-Polish historian and staff writer for The Atlantic. Apart from Twilight of Democracy, she has written three histories - Gulag: A History (2003), Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (2012), and Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine (2017).

*The author's book recommendations were The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, 50th Anniversary edition 2017) and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (OUP, 2016 - translated by Rosamund Bartlett).

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes and podcasts at twenty4two on Substack.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, "Fascism in America: Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Has fascism arrived in America?

In Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge UP, 2023), Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered experts to survey the history of fascism in the United States. Although the US established a staunch anti-fascist reputation by defeating the Axis powers in World War II, the unsettling truth is that fascist ideas have long been present within American society. Since the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, scholars have debated whether Trumpism should be seen as an outgrowth of American conservatism or of a darker – and potentially fascist – tradition. Fascism in America contributes to this debate by examining the activities of interwar right-wing groups like the Silver Shirts, the KKK, and the America First movement, as well as the post-war rise of Black antifascism and white vigilantism, the representation of American Nazis in popular culture, and policy options for combating right-wing extremism.

Gavriel David Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History in New York City and Professor of History at Fairfield University. His areas of academic specialization include the history of Nazi Germany, memory studies, and counterfactual history.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Breanne Fahs, "Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution" (Verso, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution (Verso, 2020), Breanne Fahs has curated a comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos from the nineteenth century to today. Fahs collected over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, calling on feminists to act, be defiant and show their rage. This thought-provoking and timely collection includes not only popular manifestos often taught in women and gender studies courses, but also introduces readers to works from feminist activists who are often placed on the margins. The eight sections of the book cover manifestos from a wide range of feminist activist spectrums: queer/trans, anticapitalist/anarchist, angry/violent, indigenous/women of color, sex/body, hacker/cyborg, trashy/punk, and witchy/bitchy. Fahs has put together a collection that has something for everyone and that is a must-need on every feminist bookshelf.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English at Western Illinois University. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. She is the author of Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics (Peter Lang, 2018). You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lucia Hulsether, "Capitalist Humanitarianism" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The struggle against neoliberal order has gained momentum over the last five decades – to the point that economic elites have not only adapted to the Left's critiques but incorporated them for capitalist expansion. Venture funds expose their ties to slavery and pledge to invest in racial equity. Banks pitch microloans as a path to indigenous self-determination. Fair-trade brands narrate consumption as an act of feminist solidarity with women artisans in the global South.

In Capitalist Humanitarianism (Duke UP, 2023), Lucia Hulsether examines these projects and the contexts of their emergence. Blending historical and ethnographic styles, and traversing intimate and global scales, Hulsether tracks how neoliberal self-critique creates new institutional hegemonies that, in turn, reproduce racial and neocolonial dispossession. From the archives of Christian fair traders to luxury social entrepreneurship conferences, from US finance offices to Guatemalan towns flooded with their loan products, from service economy desperation to the internal contradictions of social movements, Hulsether argues that capitalist humanitarian projects are fueled as much by a profit motive as by a hope that racial capitalism can redeem the losses that accumulate in its wake.

Lucia Hulsether is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College.

This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ujju Aggarwal, "Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What do universal rights to public goods like education mean when codified as individual, private choices? Is the “problem” of school choice actually not about better choices for all but, rather, about the competition and exclusion that choice engenders—guaranteeing a system of winners and losers? Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education (U Minnesota Press, 2024) addresses such questions through a compelling ethnography that illuminates how one path of neoliberal restructuring in the United States emerged in tandem with, and in response to, the Civil Rights movement.

Drawing on ethnographic research in one New York City school district, Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007–2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy, positioned as “saving public schools,” mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, thereby solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private—where contingency was anticipated and rights for some were marked by intensified precarity for poor and working-class Black and Latinx families. As Unsettling Choice shows, these struggles over public schools—one of the last remaining universal public goods in the United States—were entrapped within neoliberal regimes that exceeded privatization and ensured exclusion even as they were couched in language of equity, diversity, care, and rights. And yet this richly detailed and engaging book also tracks an architecture of expansive rights, care, and belonging built among poor and working-class parents at a Head Start center, whose critique of choice helps us understand how we might struggle for—and reimagine—justice, and a public that remains to be won.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matt Stoller, "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" (Simon & Schuster, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time in eighty years, as the outcome of the 2016 election shook our faith in democratic institutions. It has brought to the fore dangerous forces that many modern Americans never even knew existed. Today's bitter recriminations and panic represent more than just fear of the future, they reflect a basic confusion about what is happening and the historical backstory that brought us to this moment.

The true effects of populism, a shrinking middle class, and concentrated financial wealth are only just beginning to manifest themselves under the current administrations. The lessons of Stoller's study will only grow more relevant as time passes. "An engaging call to arms," (Kirkus Reviews) Stoller illustrates here in rich detail how we arrived at this tenuous moment, and the steps we must take to create a new democracy.

Matt Stoller is the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Krista E. Hughes et al., "Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World" (Penn State UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Operating on the premise that our failure to recognize our interconnected relationship to the rest of the cosmos is the origin of planetary peril, Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World (Penn State University Press, 2019) presents academic, activist, and artistic perspectives on how to inspire reflection and motivate action in order to construct alternative frameworks and establish novel solidarities for the sake of our planetary home.

The selections in this volume explore ecologies of interdependence as a frame for religious, theological, and philosophical analysis and practice. Contributors examine questions of justice, climate change, race, class, gender, and coloniality and discuss alternative ways of engaging the world in all its biodiversity. Each essay, poem, reflection, and piece of art contributes to and reflects upon how to live out entangled differences toward positive global change.

Constructive and practical, global and local, communal and personal, Ecological Solidarities is an innovative contribution to the discourses on relational and liberative thought and practice in religion, philosophy, and theology. It will be welcomed by scholars of World Christianity and theology as well as seminary students, activists, and laity interested in issues of justice and ecology.

Krista E. Hughes is Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the Muller Center at Newberry College.
Dhawn B. Martin is Executive Director of the Source of Light Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Elaine Padilla is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Latinx/Latin American Studies at the University of La Verne. She is the author of Divine Enjoyment: A Theology of Passion and Exuberance and coeditor of three volumes in the series Christianities of the World.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hamilton Nolan, "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor" (Hachette Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Inequality is America's biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix it. Organized labor has been in decline for decades. Yet it sits today at a moment of enormous opportunity. In the wake of the pandemic, a highly visible wave of strikes and new organizing campaigns have driven the popularity of unions to historic highs. The simmering battle inside of the labor movement over how to tap into its revolutionary potential--or allow it to be squandered--will determine the economic and social course of American life for years to come.

In chapters that span the country, Nolan shows readers the actual places where labor and politics meld. He highlights how organized labor can and does wield power effectively: a union that dominates Las Vegas and is trying to scale nationally; a successful decades-long campaign to organize California's child care workers; the human face of a surprising strike of factory workers trying to preserve their pathway to the middle class. Throughout, Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the fiery and charismatic head of the flight attendants' union, as she struggles with how (and whether) to assert herself as a national leader, to try to fix what is broken. The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor (Hachette Books, 2024) draws the line from forgotten workplaces in rural West Virginia to Washington's halls of power, and shows how labor solidarity can utterly transform American politics--if it can first transform itself.

A labor journalist for more than a decade, Nolan helped unionize his own industry. The Hammer is a urgent on-the-ground excavation of the past, present, and future of the American labor movement.

Hamilton Nolan is a labor journalist who writes regularly for In These Times magazine and The Guardian. He has written about labor, politics, and class war for The New York Times, the Washington Post, Gawker, Splinter, and other publications. He was the longest-serving writer in Gawker’s history, and was a leader in unionizing Gawker Media in 2015. Hamilton is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America, East.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seth A. Berkowitz, "Equal Care: Health Equity, Social Democracy, and the Egalitarian State" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Health inequity is one of the defining problems of our time. But current efforts to address the problem focus on mitigating the harms of injustice rather than confronting injustice itself. In Equal Care: Health Equity, Social Democracy, and the Egalitarian State (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Seth A. Berkowitz, MD, MPH, offers an innovative vision for the future of health equity by examining the social mechanisms that link injustice to poor health. He also presents practical policies designed to create a system of social relations that ensures equal care for everyone.

As Berkowitz illustrates, the project of social democracy works to improve health by bringing relationships of equality to the sites of human cooperation: in civil society, in political processes, and in economic activities. This book synthesizes three elements necessary for such a project—normative justification, mechanistic knowledge, and technical proficiency—into a practical vision of how to create health equity. Drawing from the fields of medicine, social epidemiology, sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, and more, Berkowitz makes clear that health inequity is social failure embodied, and the only true cures are political.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mahjabeen Dhala, "Feminist Theology and Social Justice in Islam: A Study on the Sermon of Fatima" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, has an interesting legacy, one that is often shaped by sectarian differences and tensions. The sermon of Fatima, which is the focus of Mahjabeen Dhala's Feminist Theology and Sociology of Islam: A Study of the Sermon of Fatima (Cambridge University Press, 2024), though itself riddled with questions of authenticity, is a compelling incident which brings to light various possibilities of analysis and insights. The issue of fadak or inheritance, which prompts Fatima to take a public stance against the male leaders of the community, such as Abu Bakr, after the passing of her father, results in a rich sermon that has theological and social justice implications, as Dhala highlights. In Dhala's reading of the sermon by Fatima and her response to an injustice experienced by her and her family, Fatima is seen as a theologian and a social activist. Moreover, this study also sheds on light of an example of pre-modern history of Muslim woman’s resistance. This book will be of interest to those who think about gender and Islam, social justice, theology, feminism and much more.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carl Öhman, "The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A short, thought-provoking book about what happens to our online identities after we die.

These days, so much of our lives takes place online—but what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails that we leave behind, our identities can now be reconstructed after our death. In fact, AI technology is already enabling us to “interact” with the departed. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. In this thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman explores the increasingly urgent question of what we should do with all this data and whether our digital afterlives are really our own—and if not, who should have the right to decide what happens to our data.

The stakes could hardly be higher. In the next thirty years alone, about two billion people will die. Those of us who remain will inherit the digital remains of an entire generation of humanity—the first digital citizens. Whoever ends up controlling these archives will also effectively control future access to our collective digital past, and this power will have vast political consequences. The fate of our digital remains should be of concern to everyone—past, present, and future. Rising to these challenges, Öhman explains, will require a collective reshaping of our economic and technical systems to reflect more than just the monetary value of digital remains.

As we stand before a period of deep civilizational change, The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care (U Chicago Press, 2024) will be an essential guide to understanding why and how we as a human race must gain control of our collective digital past—before it is too late.

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student and law student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mónica A. Jiménez, "Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico" (UNC Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Myths about the powers held by the United States are often supported by the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which derives its logic from the interpretation of a document that the US itself developed. Therefore, when pressure is placed on a specific legal precedent, the shallowness of its validity is revealed. Dr. Mónica A. Jiménez accomplishes this kind of scholarly work in her recently published book Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico (University of North Carolina Press, 2024). By tracing the legal logic of what continues to animate the colonial dynamics between the United States and Puerto Rico, Jiménez offers a “genealogy of racial exclusion in law” (36) that both folds time and space to make clear how late-19th century Supreme Court logics and opinions continue to subjugate the land and people of Puerto Rico to colonial violence.

Split into two sections, the first half of the book details the key case Downes v. Bidwell (1901), while the second half explores how the legal ramifications of Downes continued to haunt the archipelago. The first chapter focuses on the development of Downes and its outcome, which argued that territories of the United States were not allowed to access certain provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The ambiguous legal foundation for this decision was established in 1900 after Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States when the US Supreme Court established the territorial incorporation doctrine, effectively creating the legal category of “unincorporated territory." Chapter two probes the white supremacist U.S. legal landscape to offer a “genealogy of racial exclusion in law” (36) that shows the reader how U.S. settler colonialism and empire-making are dependent on the reuse and recycling of legal precedents and tactics that disenfranchised and dispossessed racially marginalized communities. By excavating the legal opinions handed down during the Marshal Trilolgy and Dred Scott v. Sandford – a collection of Supreme Court cases that defined 19th-century legal policy for Native Americans and African Americans, respectively – Jiménez makes clear that “It is not a coincidence that the most shameful cases in the United States’ legal history of race should serve as direct precedents to a decision that continues to serve as the basis for Puerto Rico’s exclusion more than one hundred years after it was handed down” (9).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Maya Wind, "Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Israeli universities have long enjoyed a reputation as liberal bastions of freedom and democracy. Drawing on extensive research and making Hebrew sources accessible to the international community, Maya Wind shatters this myth by documenting how Israeli universities are directly complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights.

In Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (Verso, 2024) shows, Wind argues that Israeli universities serve as pillars of Israel's system of oppression against Palestinians. Academic disciplines, degree programs, campus infrastructure, and research laboratories all service Israeli occupation and apartheid, while universities violate the rights of Palestinians to education, stifle critical scholarship, and violently repress student dissent. Towers of Ivory and Steel is a powerful exposé of Israeli academia’s ongoing and active complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial project.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wendy Matsumura, "Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire (Duke UP, 2024) Wendy Matsumura interrogates the erasure of colonial violence at the heart of Japanese nation-state formation. She critiques Japan studies’ role in this effacement and contends that the field must engage with anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity as the grounds on which to understand imperialism, colonialism, fascism, and other forces that shape national consciousness. Drawing on Black radical thinkers’ critique of the erasure of the Middle Passage in universalizing theories of modernity’s imbrication with fascism, Matsumura traces the consequences of the Japanese empire’s categorization of people as human and less-than-human as manifested in the 1920s and 1930s, and the struggles of racialized and colonized people against imperialist violence. She treats the archives safeguarded by racialized, colonized women throughout the empire as traces of these struggles, including the work they performed to keep certain stories out of view. Matsumura demonstrates that tracing colonial sensibility and struggle is central to grappling with their enduring consequences for the present.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Watching the footage of the January 6 insurrection, Professor Bradley Onishi wondered: If I hadn't left evangelicalism, would I have been there?

Today’s book is: Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next (Broadleaf Books, 2023), by Dr. Bradley Onishi, which unpacks recent U.S. history to show how the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war. Religion scholar and former insider Bradley Onishi maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots. Combining his own experiences in the youth groups and prayer meetings of the 1990s with an immersive look at the steady blending of White grievance politics with evangelicalism, Dr. Onishi crafts an engrossing account of the years-long campaign of White Christian nationalism that led to January 6. How did the rise of what Onishi calls the New Religious Right, between 1960 and 2015, give birth to violent White Christian nationalism during the Trump presidency and beyond? What propelled some of the most conservative religious communities in the country—communities of which Dr. Onishi was once a part—to ignite a cold civil war? Through chapters on White supremacy and segregationist theologies, conspiracy theories, the Christian-school movement, purity culture, and the right-wing media ecosystem, Professor Onishi pulls back the curtain on a subculture.

Our guest is: Dr. Brad Onishi, who is a scholar of religion and cohost of the Straight White American Jesus podcast. His writing has been published in the New York Times, LA Review of Books, and Religion & Politics, among other outlets. He holds degrees from Azusa Pacific University, Oxford University, and L'institut catholique de Paris, and received his PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara. A TEDx speaker and the author, editor, or translator of four previous books, Dr. Onishi teaches at the University of San Francisco. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and daughter.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell (and why) and what happens to those we never tell.

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us here again to learn from even more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kellie Carter Jackson, "We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance" (Seal Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press, 2024), historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.

The dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force—from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt—has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. But violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away.

Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

Omari Averette-Phillips is a doctoral student in the Department of History at UC Davis. He can be reached at omariaverette@gmail.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Premal Dharia et al., "Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change" (FSG Originals, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In recent years, a searching national conversation has called attention to the social and racial injustices that define America’s criminal system. The incarceration of vast numbers of people, and the punitive treatment of African Americans in particular, are targets of widespread criticism. But despite the election of progressive prosecutors in several cities and the passage of reform legislation at the local, state, and federal levels, the system remains very much intact. How can the damage and depredations of the carceral state be undone?

In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates —Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo—provide us with tools to move from despair and critique to hope and action. Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change (FSG Originals, 2024) surveys new approaches to confronting the carceral state in all its guises, exploring ways that police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, prisons, and even life after prison can be radically reconceived. The book captures debates about the comparative merits of reforming or abolishing prisons and police forces, and introduces a host of bold but practical interventions. The contributors range from noted figures such as Angela Davis, Clint Smith, and Larry Krasner to local organizers, judges, and people currently or formerly incarcerated. The result is an invaluable guide for students, activists, and anyone who wishes to understand mass incarceration—and hasten its end.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jessie Abrahams, "Schooling Inequality: Aspirations, Opportunities and the Reproduction of Social Class" (Bristol UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely to enter university than their advantaged counterparts.

Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrasting secondary schools in England, including interviews with children from three year groups and careers advisors, Schooling Inequality: Aspirations, Opportunities and the Reproduction of Social Class (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jessie Abrahams explores the aspirations, opportunities and experiences of young people from different social-class backgrounds against a backdrop of continuing inequalities in education.

By focusing both on the stories of young people and the schools themselves, the book sheds light on the institutional structures and practices that render young people more, or less, able to pursue their aspirations.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dmitri Alperovitch, "World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century" (PublicAffairs, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In his book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century (PublicAffairs, 2024), Dmitri Alperovitch (with Garrett M. Graff) argues that the United States is in a “Cold War II” with China, and lays out a set of policy recommendations for how the US can win this new Cold War.

Alperovitch is currently the Founder and Executive Chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank focused on “advancing American prosperity and global leadership in the 21st century and beyond.” Before moving into the think tank world, Alperovitch was the CTO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, a multi-billion dollar cybersecurity company that gained public attention for investigating the 2016 DNC email leaks and 2014’s North Korean hack of Sony Pictures.

Through his work at CrowdStrike and McAfee before that, Alperovitch was involved in investigating numerous Chinese cyber-intrusions into US and global institutions, for instance Operation Aurora and Operation Shady RAT. Alperovitch’s cybersecurity expertise has also led him to advise numerous US government institutions including the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.

Drawing from his experiences across the private and public sectors, Alperovitch injects World on the Brink with incisive analyses and historical precedents that should spark the interest of those who follow US-China competition.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Samira Mehta, "The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging" (Beacon Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging (Beacon Press, 2023) is an unflinching look at the challenges and misunderstandings mixed-race people face in family spaces and intimate relationships across their varying cultural backgrounds.

In this emotionally powerful and intellectually provocative blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, scholar and essayist Samira Mehta reflects on many facets of being multiracial.

Born to a white American and a South Asian immigrant, Mehta grew up feeling more comfortable with her mother’s family than her father’s—they never carried on conversations in languages she couldn’t understand or blamed her for finding the food was too spicy. In adulthood, she realized that some of her Indian family’s assumptions about the world had become an indelible part of her—and that her well-intentioned parents had not known how to prepare her for a world that would see her as a person of color.

Popular belief assumes that mixedness gives you the ability to feel at home in more than one culture, but the flipside shows you can feel just as alienated in those spaces. In 7 essays that dissect her own experiences with a frankness tempered by generosity, Mehta confronts questions about:

authenticity and belonging;
conscious and unconscious cultural inheritance;
appropriate mentorship;
the racism of people who love you.

The Racism of People Who Love You invites people of mixed race into the conversation on race in America and the melding of found and inherited cultures of hybrid identity.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Susskind, "Growth: A History and a Reckoning" (Harvard UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Daniel Susskind examines the brief and powerful history of economic growth and puts it into perspective with human prosperity in Growth: A History and a Reckoning (Harvard UP, 2024).

Susskind acknowledges the tremendous benefits of economic growth, which he credits with freeing billions of people from poverty and allowing us to live longer and healthier lives. He also recognizes the real and substantial costs of our relentless pursuit of growth at the expense of other considerations and moral challenges.

Responding to the degrowth movement, Susskind counters the assumption that simply reducing growth will lead to better outcomes.

In particular, Susskind points out that our key measure of growth, GDP, is one imperfect metric that is neither intended nor effective as a proxy for well-being. He recommends a more balanced "dashboard" approach that includes GDP along with other success measures.

Reducing our myopic focus on GDP does not mean less growth. Susskind presents an alternate approach, arguing that we should continue to pursue growth through the creative application of new ideas that allow us to use our finite natural resources more effectively and efficiently.

Ideas, he points out, are not a scarce asset but an infinite one; by shifting to focus on new ways of thinking and working Susskind shows how we can continue to pursue the benefits of growth while mitigating the high costs.

Book referenced:

GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle

Jason Hannan, "Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

We commonly think of trolls as anonymous online pranksters who hide behind clever avatars and screen names. In Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford UP, 2024), Jason Hannan reveals how the trolls have emerged from the cave and now walk in the clear light of day. Once limited to the darker corners of the internet, trolls have since gone mainstream, invading our politics and eroding our civic culture. Trolls are changing the norms of democratic politics and shaping how we communicate in the public sphere. Adding a twist to Neil Postman's classic thesis, this book argues that we are not so much amusing as trolling ourselves to death. But how did this come to be? Is this transformation attributable solely to digital technology? Or are there deeper political, economic, and cultural roots?

This book moves beyond the familiar picture of trolls by recasting trolling in a broader historical light. It shows how trolling is the logical expression of widespread alienation, cynicism, and paranoia deeply rooted in a culture of possessive individualism. Drawing from Postman, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt, this book explores the disturbing rise of political unreason in the form of mass trolling. It explains the proliferation of disinformation, conspiracy theory, "cancel culture," and public shaming. Taking inspiration from G. F. W. Hegel, Paulo F reire, and bell hooks, this book makes a case for building a spirit of trust to counter the culture of mass distrust that feeds the epidemic of political trolling.

Dr. Jason Hannan is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2023) and the editor of Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial (Sydney University Press, 2020). His current book project is Reactionary Speech: Conservatism and the Rhetoric of Denial.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kehbuma Langmia, "Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga" (Anthem Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does that really imply? All other ancestries on planet earth have been coerced to believe that conformity to Euro-American lifestyle is the way to become 'civilized' on planet earth.

But the term civilization owes its genesis to the African cultural and educational achievements in Egypt. Consequently, Black ancestry, the first human specie on planet earth, should lead humankind to cultural and epistemological supremacy--but that has always been met with skepticism. This book examines this debate, especially between the Black and the White ancestry. There appears to be a pejorative connotation associated with the term Black. It has been 'inferiorized' because of the stain of slavery, servitude and brutal murders suffered by those from the continent of Africa that are overwhelmingly Black. Dr. Kehbuma Langmia offers “counter arguments on ‘inferiority’ and ‘superiority’ designations” (p. 181) that have been applied to particular groups and have prevented the unity of the entire human "race."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alexandre Lefebvre, "Liberalism as a Way of Life" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In political philosophy, “liberalism” is not the name of a particular social platform. Rather, it refers to a framework for thinking about politics. It is the way of thinking according to which the state, its laws, and its institutions all stand in need of justification, and that the justification of the state must be addressed to those who live within its territory. In this way, liberalism as a philosophical stance affirms the moral equality of persons and prioritizes the liberty of each, “taken one by one,” as it were. The idea of liberalism as a way of life thus may seem curious. According to many traditional liberal thinkers, liberalism is distinguished from other approaches by the denial that it is a “way of life.” On these views, a liberal political order establishes the conditions under which each individual can “seek their own good in their own way,” as John Stuart Mill put it.

In Liberalism as a Way of Life (Princeton University Press 2024), Alexandre Lefebvre argues that liberalism currently informs our cultural sensibilities. What’s more, he argues that liberalism is a worthwhile way of life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Felicia Arriaga, "Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America" (UNC Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many have dubbed "crimmigration." Southern border enforcement still monopolizes the national immigration debate, but immigration enforcement has become common within the United States as well. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations are a major part of American immigration enforcement, Felicia Arriaga maintains that ICE relies on an already well-established system--the use of local law enforcement and local governments to identify, incarcerate, and deport undocumented immigrants.

In Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America (UNC Press, 2023), Arriaga contends that the long-term partnership between local sheriffs and immigration law enforcement in places like North Carolina has created a form of racialized social control of the Latinx community. Arriaga uses data from five county sheriff's offices and their governing bodies to trace the creation and subsequent normalization of ICE and local law enforcement partnerships. Arriaga argues that the methods used by these partnerships to control immigration are employed throughout the United States, but they have been particularly visible in North Carolina, where the Latinx population increased by 111 percent between 2000 and 2010. Arriaga's evidence also reveals how Latinx communities are resisting and adapting to these systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amy Schiller, "The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It" (Melville House, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Amy Schiller, who spent a number of years working in both political and major gift fundraising, has a new book detailing some of the fundamental problems currently afflicting American philanthropy and how to correct some of these problems. Schiller, a political theorist currently at Dartmouth College’s Society of Fellows, brings two important perspectives to her research in The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It (Melville House, 2023)—combining her experience in the philanthropic world with her training and expertise in political theory, especially democratic theory. The Price of Humanity also provides the reader with a vital history of philanthropy and giving, especially in the West, and how thinking about the role of supporting others as part of the common good has shifted over the course of more than two millennia. Schiller makes an important point about how St. Augustine, in his teachings on donations and giving, shifted the framing and understanding of giving from a community-based common good to a global approach to donating, tying the act of giving to individual salvation. This approach not only highlighted suffering and need and stratified those who give from those who are in need, but it also disconnected the philanthropic experience from the immediate community while objectifying those who are in poverty or generally in need.

The Price of Humanity doesn’t dwell in the past but provides this important lens that continues to apply to our contemporary thinking about giving. This more disconnected approach is also overlaid, in our current environment, with the demand that non-profits and philanthropies product quantifiable goods: how many cases of malaria have been eradicated, how much food has been provided to those experiencing scarcity, how are the dollars donated spent and by whom and in what ways? Thus, in so many ways, philanthropic organizations have to report out their successes in the same ways that private corporations need to detail their fiscal health to their boards of directors and shareholders. All of these approaches tend to disconnect the act of giving from the world in which we live, according to Schiller, and this disconnection makes the reason for giving much more attenuated, distancing us from each other, our communities, and the real role of the common good. Instead of linking individuals together in our shared love for one another and humanity as a whole—which is actually what the word philanthropy means in the original Greek—we live in a philanthropic world that separates and isolates. The Price of Humanity spotlights different approaches to giving, with discussions of the Gates Foundation, Effective Altruism, Robber Barons and the Gilded Age, and other forms of the business of giving. Schiller also focuses on modern examples of philanthropy as the common good, which brings it into the realm of democratic theory, as a means to provide the flourishing of humanity, not merely fulfilling the desperate needs of individuals. This is a fascinating and valuable interrogation of the idea of giving to others, and how we need to reconsider our thinking about the act of giving itself and the role that this act plays in our community and in our democracy.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jennifer C. Berkshire and Jack Schneider, "The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual" (The New Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A perfectly timed book for the educational resistance—those of us who believe in public schools Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations of public education. What’s behind these efforts? Why are our schools suddenly so vulnerable? And how can the millions of Americans who love their public schools fight back?

In this concise, hard-hitting guide, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider answer these questions and chart a way forward. The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual (The New Press, 2024) explains the sudden obsession with race and gender in schools, as well as the ascendancy of book-banning efforts. It offers a clear analysis of school vouchers and the impact they’ll have on school finances. It deciphers the movement for “parents’ rights,” explaining the rights that students and taxpayers also have. And it reveals how the ostensible pursuit of “religious freedom” opens the door to discrimination against vulnerable children. Berkshire and Schneider outline the core issues driving the education wars, offering essential information about issues, actors, and potential outcomes. In so doing, they lay out what is at stake for parents, teachers, and students and provide a road map for ensuring that public education survives this present assault. A book that will enrage and enlighten the millions of citizens who believe in their public schools, here is a long-overdue handbook and guide to action.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Unpacking the 2024 U.S. Presidential Debate, Conventions, and Polling

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The first presidential debate will be held on June 27th, 2024 and the Republicans are heading to Milwaukee (a city Donald Trump recently called “horrible” and crime-ridden). Lilly Goren and Susan Liebell had a wide ranging discussion including analysis of the upcoming debate, summer conventions, party platforms, and polling with three experts.

Dr. Julia Azari is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University and a prolific media commentator on politics. Her scholarship focuses on the American presidency, political parties, political communication and American political development. Her most recent public facing pieces on are “Making sense of the 2024 election:When nothing seems to make sense, social science can still help” and “Checking in on Biden and Political Time.” Dr. Jonathan Bernstein is a political scientist who focuses on US politics, Political Parties, Congress the Presidency, Elections, and Democracy. He is now co-writing Good Politics/Bad Politics (a “plain newsletter about government and elections in the U.S.”) with Julia and David S. Bernstein. He recently wrote “How Debates Work. And all the things they don't - and shouldn't – do” and “Trump Acts Like an Idiot. Don’t Blame It on Age.” Dr. Seth Masket is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center on Politics at the University of Denver. He writes about political parties, American Politics, polarization, nominations, state legislatures, social networks, campaigns and elections. He can be found on Substack as Tusk and recently published “When debates are no longer automatic:Why Biden and Trump are debating and what they hope to get out of it” and “The Republican State Party Network: A deeper dive into party platforms, with some raised eyebrows at Michigan.“

During the podcast, we mentioned:

Julia Azari and Seth Masket’s June 27 live-blog of the first Presidential Debate will be at Arena. Follow them on social media for updates on what will be a GREAT conversation.
Nat Cohen, “If Everyone Voted, Would Biden Benefit? Not Anymore.” New York Times, 6/15/24 (on infrequent voters)
Seth Masket, “It's not just Texas State GOPs veer to the extremes on policy and democracy.” 6/7/24 (on extremism in state party platforms)
Erika Franklin Fowler, 6/19/24 Bluesky post on advertising when candidates are well-known
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025: The Presidential Transition Project available here and summarized on Jenn White with Todd Swillich on podcast 1A, “If You Can Keep It” (on conservative nationalist “platform” that is not authored by GOP).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andreas Fulda, "Germany and China: How Entanglement Undermines Freedom, Prosperity and Security" (Bloombury, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Germany and China: How Entanglement Undermines Freedom, Prosperity and Security (Bloomsbury, 2024) is a groundbreaking book, of which the findings have significant implications both for German-China relations and also in understanding the rising influence of autocratic China on liberal democracies globally. In today's interview, Associate Professor Andreas Fulda and I spoke about Germany's entanglement with China, and the extent of Germany's dependancies on China in terms of economics, technology, politics and academia. We spoke about the blind spots of policy makers and academics have, and the way that China policy is constructed and interpreted as a result. We also spoke about the implications for national security and German sovereignty, and the way that Germany entanglement with China is a warning sign for democratic states everywhere.

Dr Fulda is a political scientist and China scholar with a keen interest in the philosophy of science. You can listen to an interview about his previous book, The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong KongSharp Power and its Discontents (Routledge: 2019) here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Johanna Oksala, "Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology" (Northwestern UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Can capitalism be made ecologically sustainable? Can it be good for women? What theoretical approaches help us to grapple with these questions in ways that offer us strategies for how to proceed? Have we already become lost in some sort of gender essentialism to ask these questions together?

In Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Johanna Oksala brings the resources of ecofeminism and Marxist feminism to these questions, arguing that capitalism cannot be made sustainable, nor can it do without the expropriation of bodies that produce new laborers and consumers. By attending to the rise of biocapitalism, Oksala further develops analytic resources for diagnosing the fundamental problems of an economic system predicated on profit, consumer choice, and endless growth. She also gives us theoretical tools for discerning strategies that will help us create a world beyond capitalism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Postscript: Previewing the 2024 Presidential Race

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

States are holding primaries. The Democrats and Republicans will convene in July and August but it has already been decided that the presidential race will be a rematch. Former President Donald Trump will challenge President Joe Biden. To take stock of where the race stands five months out, we have two experts on the presidency. Dr. Meena Bose is the Executive Dean for Public Policy and Public Service Programs at the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs and director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, both at Hofstra University. Dr. Daniel E. Ponder is the L.E. Meador Professor of Political Science and Director of the Meador Center for Politics and Citizenship at Drury University. Meena and Dan are the co-editors of a new De Gruyter Series in Presidential Politics, Leadership, and Policy Making. The first volume is Evaluating the Obama Presidency: From Transformational Goals to Governing Realities (De Gruyter, 2024) edited by Meena Bose and Paul Fritz. It includes a chapter on presidential leverage and Obama’s decision making on Syria by Dan Ponder and Jeff VanDenBerg.

Previously, Meena joined the podcast to discuss her book Executive Policymaking: The Role of the OMB in the Presidency (co-authored with Andrew Rudalevige) and Dan also chatted with Lilly about his book Presidential Leverage: Presidents, Approval, and the American State. They are also veterans of Postscript and we are thrilled to welcome them back to talk about the 2024 presidential race.

During the podcast, we mentioned:

Frances Lee’s Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (U of Chicago, 2016)
Elaine Kamarck’s Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates (Brookings, 2016) and Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again (Brookings, 2016)
Ezra Klein’s New York Times opinion piece “The Democrats have a better option than Biden,” 21 February 2024
Ezra Klein’s interview with Elaine Kamarck, “Here’s How An Open Democratic Convention Would Work,” New York Times, 21 February 2024
Peter Baker’s “For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It,” New York Times, 2 March 2024
University of Chicago’s GenForward Poll (June 2024)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jessica Calarco, "Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net" (Portfolio, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How do unequal societies function? In Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net (Portfolio, 2024), Jesscia Calarco, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examines how America’s DIY society depends on the labour of mothers and excludes the sorts of social supports present in other countries. This dependence has hugely negative social and individual consequences, as demonstrated by the rich qualitiative and quantitative data examined in the book. Alongside the analysis of the problems and consequences of women’s role in the US, the book also thinks through solutions, demonstrating how much political discourse is far from the collective action that is likely to be effective for social change. An outstanding contribution to social science and contemporary politics, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary social inequalities.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nivedita Menon, "Secularism As Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we speak to Nivedita Menon about her new book, Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Duke University Press, 2024; Permanent Black, 2023).

Secularism as Misdirection is an ambitious and wide-ranging work, unravelling a term that is perhaps as contentious as it is ubiquitous in discourses of the Global South. Working across political theory, legal history, and religious thought, Menon reveals the dangers of secularism's false promise—likening it to a magic trick that draws "attention from where the trick is happening ... to objects that are made to appear more fascinating."

Nivedita Menon is Professor at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her previous books include Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and the landmark work, Seeing like a Feminist (Penguin/Zubaan, 2012). She has co-authored and edited several volumes, including Power and Contestation: India Since 1989 (2nd edition: Bloomsbury, 2013). In addition to her award-winning work as a scholar and translator, Menon is a prominent public intellectual, whose writing on issues such as academic freedom and feminist politics in India can be read at kafila.online, a vital independent blog that she helped found.

Arnav Adhikari is a doctoral candidate in English at Brown University, where he works on the aesthetics and politics of Cold War South Asia. His writing has appeared in Postcolonial Text and Global South Studies, amongst other venues.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s book is: More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2024), by Meredith Broussard. When technology reinforces inequality, it's not just a glitch—it's a signal that we need to redesign our systems to create a more equitable world. The word “glitch” implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery? What if they're coded into the system itself?

Meredith Broussard demonstrates in More Than a Glitch how neutrality in tech is a myth and why algorithms need to be held accountable. Broussard, a data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, masterfully synthesizes concepts from computer science and sociology. She explores a range of examples: from facial recognition technology trained only to recognize lighter skin tones, to mortgage-approval algorithms that encourage discriminatory lending, to the dangerous feedback loops that arise when medical diagnostic algorithms are trained on insufficiently diverse data. Even when such technologies are designed with good intentions, Broussard shows, fallible humans develop programs that can result in devastating consequences. Broussard argues that the solution isn't to make omnipresent tech more inclusive, but to root out the algorithms that target certain demographics as “other” to begin with. With sweeping implications for fields ranging from jurisprudence to medicine, the ground-breaking insights of More Than a Glitch are essential reading for anyone invested in building a more equitable future.

Our guest is: Meredith Broussard, who is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and the author of several books, including More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her academic research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting and ethical AI, with a particular interest in using data analysis for social good.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can help support the show by downloading, sharing, posting about, or assigning any of our 200+ episodes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can fathom. Escaping global warming hell, this revelatory book shows, requires a radical, mystical marriage of Christianity and biology that awakens a future beyond white male savagery.

In Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology (Columbia University Press, 2024) Dr. Timothy Morton argues that there is an unexpected yet profound relationship between religion and ecology that can guide a planet-scale response to the climate crisis. Spiritual and mystical feelings have a deep resonance with ecological thinking, and together they provide the resources environmentalism desperately needs in this time of climate emergency. Morton finds solutions in a radical revaluation of Christianity, furnishing ecological politics with a language of mercy and forgiveness that draws from Christian traditions without bringing along their baggage. They call for a global environmental movement that fuses ecology and mysticism and puts race and gender front and centre. This nonviolent resistance can stage an all-out assault on the ultimate Satanic mill: the concept of master and slave, manifesting today in white supremacy, patriarchy, and environmental destruction. Passionate, erudite, and playful, Hell takes readers on a full-colour journey into the contemporary underworld—and offers a surprising vision of salvation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What and Why are Political Beliefs? A Conversation with Oliver Traldi

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What are political beliefs and how do we form them? Oliver Traldi, a current John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the James Madison Program, discusses this and more in his recently-published his first book, Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2024), a textbook which aims to explain the reasons behind political beliefs and disagreements from a philosophical perspective. In this conversation, Oliver delves into the unique contributions of philosophy to the study of political beliefs, the sources of our political ideas, the impact of online discourse and technological advancements on political trust and polarization, the importance of developing personal heuristics for evaluating information, and the challenges of maintaining trust in institutions and experts.

Oliver Traldi received his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where he specialized in epistemology. After his You can read Oliver's essays and other writings here, and his textbook is available for free here.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (The New Press, 2020), Laura Gómez, a leading expert on race, law, and society, illuminates the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries, leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.

Pulling back the lens as the country approaches an unprecedented demographic shift (Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in a matter of decades), Gómez also reveals the nefarious roles the United States has played in Latin America—from military interventions and economic exploitation to political interference—that, taken together, have destabilized national economies to send migrants northward over the course of more than a century. It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of Latinos migrate from the places most impacted by this nation’s dirty deeds, leading Gómez to a bold call for reparations. In this audacious effort to reframe the often-confused and misrepresented discourse over the Latinx generation, Gómez provides essential context for today’s most pressing political and public debates—representation, voice, interpretation, and power—giving all of us a brilliant framework to engage cultural controversies, elections, current events, and more.

David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michele Goodwin, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the criminalization of all aspects of reproduction, pregnancy, abortion, birth, and motherhood in the United States. In her extensively researched monograph, Michele Goodwin recounts the horrific contemporary situation, which includes, for example, mothers giving birth shackled in leg irons, in solitary confinement, even in prison toilets, and in some states, women being coerced by the State into sterilization, in exchange for reduced sentences. She contextualises the modern day situation in America’s history of slavery and oppression, and also in relation to its place in the world. Goodwin shows how prosecutors abuse laws, and medical professionals are complicit in a system that disproportionally impacts the poor and women of color. However, Goodwin warns that these women are just the canaries in the coalmine. Not only is the United States the deadliest country in the developed world for pregnant women, but the severe lack of protections for reproductive rights and motherhood is compounding racial and indigent disparities.

Jane Richards is a doctoral candidate in Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include disability, equality, criminal law and civil disobedience. You can find her on twitter @JaneRichardsHK where she avidly follows the Hong Kong’s protests and its politics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jason Read, "The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Even as the rewards of work decline and its demands on us increase, many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery – working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle. People take pride in having a strong work ethic and demonstrate their passionate commitment to optimizing their time and resources on social media platforms like LinkedIn. But why do people fight to be exploited as if it were liberation?

My guest today, Jason Read, turns to the intersection of Marx and Spinoza to examine contemporary ideologies and the modern phenomena of work. His new book, The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work (Verso, 2024), argues for the transformation of our collective imagination and attachment to work.

Jason Read is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of The Production of Subjectivity, The Politics of Transindividuality, and The Micro-Politics of Capital.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We Should Not Take the UN For Granted: A Discussion with Abiodun Williams

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In times where conflicts around the globe are an everyday topic, the place of the United Nations in resolving these conflicts is constantly being questioned. In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey discusses this issue with Professor Abiodun Williams, Professor of the Practice of International Politics at Tufts University and former Director of Strategic Planning to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon. A leading analyst of the UN, Williams is also a past Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS).

The conversation is centered on the findings of Williams’ recent book, Kofi Annan and Global Leadership at the United Nations (Oxford University Press, 2024). As a former UN official himself, Williams offers an insider’s point of view on how to improve the UN's conflict prevention efforts, emphasizing the importance of strengthening the organization’s means of preventing conflicts and recruiting talented international civil servants.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emma Heaney, "Feminism Against Cisness" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The contributors to Feminism Against Cisness (Duke UP, 2024) showcase the future of feminist historical, theoretical, and political thought freed from the conceptual strictures of cisness: the fallacy that assigned sex determines sexed experience. The essays demonstrate that this fallacy hinges on the enforcement of white and bourgeois standards of gender comportment that naturalize brutalizing race and class hierarchies. It is, therefore, no accident that the social processes making cisness compulsory are also implicated in anti-Blackness, misogyny, Indigenous erasure, xenophobia, and bourgeois antipathy for working-class life. Working from trans historical archives and materialist trans feminist theories, this volume demonstrates the violent work that cis ideology has done and thinks toward a future for feminism beyond this ideology's counterrevolutionary pull.

Contributors. Cameron Awkward-Rich, Marquis Bey, Kay Gabriel, Jules Gill-Peterson, Emma Heaney, Margaux L. Kristjansson, Greta LaFleur, Grace Lavery, Durba Mitra, Beans Velocci, Joanna Wuest.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Robert Rank, "The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives.

In The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World around Us (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Mark Robert Rank draws from a wealth of evidence, including interviews and research, to explain how luck and chance play out and reveals how we can use these lessons to guide our personal lives and public policies.

The Random Factor traverses luck from macro to micro, from events like the Cuban Missile Crisis to our personal encounters and relationships. From his perspective as a scholar of poverty, Dr. Rank also delves into the class and race dynamics of chance, emphasizing the stark disparities it brings to light. This transformative book prompts a new understanding of the twists and turns in our daily lives and encourages readers to fully appreciate the surprising world of randomness in which we live.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ronald R. Sundstrom, "Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It is widely acknowledged that the United States is in the grip of an enduring housing crisis. It is less frequently recognized that this crisis amounts to more than there being an insufficient supply of adequate shelter. It rather is tied to a range of other forms of social and economic vulnerability – and many of these forms of vulnerability impede a citizen’s capacity to function as a full member of society. What’s more, the familiar terms we deploy in discussing the housing crisis – gentrification, integration, segregation, and so on – stand in need of philosophical clarification.

In Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction (Oxford UP, 2024), Ronald R. Sundstrom draws upon tools derived from moral philosophy, political theory, and urban studies to provide the beginning of a comprehensive analysis of justice in “social-spatial arrangements.” He proposes a liberal-egalitarian and reconstructive, yet pragmatic, approach to addressing the challenges posed by our country’s legacy of unjust housing policies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Benjamin A. Schupmann, "Democracy Despite Itself: Liberal Constitutionalism and Militant Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Seeking a second term as US president in November, Donald Trump joins a roster of politicians whose declared aim is to use legal means to bend democracy to their will and in their interests. The system withstood his first term. In Venezuela, Ecuador, Turkey, and Hungary, the systems didn’t, and they are undergoing stress tests in Israel, Slovakia, and Georgia.

In Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary, elections still happen and parliaments, courts, and media are intact but checks and balances have been steadily eroded as one party bids for sustained majority rule. Since the turn of the millennium, 80% of cases of democratic retreat have taken this form rather than through violence.

Worst of all, “illiberal democracy” is popular. Between 2016 and 2020, Trump added 11 million votes. In 2022, after 12 consecutive years in power, Hungary’s ruling party extended its support. Recent polls show that a third of Americans would prefer a strong unelected leader to a weak elected one while a fifth of French under-35s are indifferent to the prospect of an end to democracy.

In Democracy Despite Itself: Liberal Constitutionalism and Militant Democracy (OUP Press, 2024) Benjamin Schupmann addresses this democratic internal rot and how to defend against it. "Democratic cannibalism is a perennial problem,” he writes. “It is a question of when, not if, popular anti-democratic movements will erupt from within and try to use legal revolutionary methods to devour democracy. Democratic constitution should be designed to provide democrats with the means to defend it and themselves".

Benjamin Schupmann is an Assistant Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. He got his PhD at Columbia University and then taught at Duke Kunshan University and the National University of Singapore. Democracy Despite Itself is his second book. His first – Carl Schmitt's State and Constitutional Theory – was published in 2017.

*The author's book recommendations are Sovereignty Across Generations: Constituent Power and Political Liberalism by Alessandro Ferrara (OUP Oxford, 2023) and Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity by Hartmut Rosa (Columbia University Press, 2013).

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anne Kim, "Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor" (The New Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs such as the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, and affordable housing vouchers and subsidies. States and local governments spend tens of billions more.

Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the “corporate poverty complex,” a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor. From bail bondsmen to dialysis providers to towing companies, their business models depend on exploiting low-income Americans, and their political influence ensures a thriving set of industries where everyone profits except the poor, while U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.

In Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor (The New Press, 2024), veteran journalist Anne Kim investigates the multiple industries that infiltrate almost every aspect of the lives of the poor—health care, housing, criminal justice, and nutrition. She explains how these businesses are aided by public policies such as the wholesale privatization of government services and the political influence these industries wield over lawmakers and regulators. Supported by original investigative reporting on the lesser-known players profiting from the antipoverty industry, Poverty for Profit adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of how structural inequality and structural racism function today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tad Delay, "Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The age of denial is over, we are told. Yet emissions continue to rise while gimmicks, graft, and green-washing distract the public from the climate violence suffered by the vulnerable. Tad DeLay's Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change (Verso, 2024) draws on the latest climatology, the first shoots of an energy transition, critical theory, Earth’s paleoclimate history, and trends in border violence to answer the most pressing question of our age: Why do we continue to squander the short time we have left?

The symptoms suggest society’s inability to adjust is profound. Near Portland, militias incapable of accepting that the world is warming respond to a wildfire by hunting for imaginary left-wing arsonists. Europe erects nets in the Aegean Sea to capture migrants fleeing drought and war. An airline claims to be carbon neutral thanks to bogus cheap offsets. Drone strikes hit people living along the aridity line. Yes, Exxon knew as early as the 1970s, but the fundamental physics of carbon dioxide warming the Earth was already understood before the American Civil War.

Will capitalists ever voluntarily walk away from hundreds of trillions of dollars in fossil fuels unless they are forced to do so? And, if not, who will apply the necessary pressure?

Louisa Hann attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester in 2021, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan, "1/6, The Graphic Novel: What if the Attack on the U.S. Capitol had Succeeded?" (Sun Print Solutions, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What if the January 6, 2021 Insurrection had been successful? A tale of what was, what could have been, and what still could be?

1/6: The Graphic Novel (Sun Print Solutions, 2023) chillingly illustrates how close we came to authoritarian rule in America and the threats to our democracy that we still face. In the tradition of speculative fiction from George Orwell’s 1984 to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale to the Twilight Zone, it explores themes of autocracy, scapegoating, strategic disinformation, and more, all told through a compelling, character-driven story.

Drawing on real-life events, 1/6 travels the road that led from back-room meetings, white supremacist rallies, and the Four Seasons Landscaping parking lot to a violent attack on the Capitol that left several Americans dead and shook our nation to its core.

It then imagines a world in which the events of that day turned out very differently.

1/6 is for lovers of graphic novels, lovers of speculative fiction, lovers of politics, and lovers of our democracy. It’s a story that demands our attention and calls on us to take action…while we still can.

Issue #1 of the 4-Issue Series is available on Amazon, Issuu, and in a print edition.

Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Premilla Nadasen, "Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" (Haymarket Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 25 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

During the COVID pandemic, billions of dollars in relief aid was sent out to help us ride out the storm, although many people who struggled through it might scratch their heads at such a number, having seen little of it make any concrete impact in their own lives. This discrepancy is indicative of the underlying problem with the contemporary care economy, a series of federal and state programs, healthcare facilities and NGO’s, all trying to bend the needs of those under their care to the mechanisms and incentives laid out by capitalism. The result is a massive apparatus that regularly fails to fulfill its supposed intentions, leaving workers and those in need of help in precarious and often dangerous situations.

This apparatus is untangled and explained in clear detail by Premilla Nadasen in her book Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2023). Informed by both her work as a historian and as a political activist, she manages to untangle and explain why the massive apparatus regularly fails to fulfill its purpose. She also outlines offramps, forms of resistance that workers and activists have taken to develop alternative anticapitalist forms of care that might someday allow us to truly flourish together.

Premilla Nadasen is a professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the co-director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. She is also the author of Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States and Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 24 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

For 40 years, this classic text has taken the issue of economic inequality seriously and asked: Why are our prisons filled with the poor? Why aren't the tools of the criminal justice system being used to protect Americans from predatory business practices and to punish well-off people who cause widespread harm?

This new edition continues to engage readers in important exercises of critical thinking: Why has the U.S. relied so heavily on tough crime policies despite evidence of their limited effectiveness, and how much of the decline in crime rates can be attributed to them? Why does the U.S. have such a high crime rate compared to other developed nations, and what could we do about it? Are the morally blameworthy harms of the rich and poor equally translated into criminal laws that protect the public from harms on the streets and harms from the suites? How much class bias is present in the criminal justice system-both when the rich and poor engage in the same act, and when the rich use their leadership of corporations to perpetrate mass victimization?

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (Routledge, 2023) shows readers that much of what goes on in the criminal justice system violates citizens' sense of basic fairness. It presents extensive evidence from mainstream data that the criminal justice system does not function in the way it says it does nor in the way that readers believe it should.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

American Innovation, American Vitality: A Conversation with Chris Buskirk

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How can we restore America's frontier spirit, foster innovation, and stave off decay? Chris Buskirk sits down to discuss his new book America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay. Along the way, he delves into the history of innovation from Augustan Rome to the Scottish Enlightenment to Silicon Valley, whether America is an oligarchy or an aristocracy, how our education system can better support American needs, and more.

Chris Buskirk is the founder, editor, publisher of the magazine American Greatness, as well as a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. A serial entrepreneur, he is also the Founder & Chief Investment Officer of 1789 Capital.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sunaura Taylor, "Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A powerful analysis and call to action that reveals disability as one of the defining features of environmental devastation and resistance.

Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of a postwar Superfund site. Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert (U California Press, 2024) tells the story of this contamination and its ripple effects through the largely Mexican American community living above. Drawing on her own complex relationship to this long-ago injured landscape, Sunaura Taylor takes us with her to follow the site's disabled ecology—the networks of disability, both human and wild, that are created when ecosystems are corrupted and profoundly altered.

What Taylor finds is a story of entanglements that reach far beyond the Sonoran Desert. These stories tell of debilitating and sometimes life-ending injuries, but they also map out alternative modes of connection, solidarity, and resistance—an environmentalism of the injured. An original and deeply personal reflection on what disability means in an era of increasing multispecies disablement, Disabled Ecologies is a powerful call to reflect on the kinds of care, treatment, and assistance this age of disability requires.

A full transcript of the interview is available for accessibility.

Sunaura Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Society and Environment at the University of California, Berkeley. Taylor is a scholar and artist who works at the intersection of disability studies, environmental humanities, animal studies, environmental justice, feminist science studies, and art practice.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society" (Norton, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In his latest book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society (W. W. Norton, 2024), Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz rethinks the nature of freedom and its relationship to capitalism.

While many agree that freedom is good and we want more of it, we don’t agree about what it is, whose freedom we’re talking about, or what outcomes we desire.

Stiglitz asks the question: whose freedom are we talking about, and what happens when one person’s freedom means a loss of freedom for someone else?

Narratives of neoliberalism have been accepted as gospel despite decades of research showing that less regulation and more trust in the 'hidden hand' of free market economics do not produce greater prosperity or freedom for most individuals.

Stiglitz examines how unregulated markets reduce economic opportunities for majorities by prioritizing the freedom of corporations and wealthy individuals over that of individuals, resulting in the siphoning wealth from the many to ensure the freedom of the few, from property and intellectual rights to education and opportunity.

The Road to Freedom re-evaluates of what constitutes a good society and provides a roadmap to achieve it.

Recommended reading: The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mona Simion, "Resistance to Evidence" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

We have increasingly sophisticated ways of acquiring and communicating knowledge, but efforts to spread this knowledge often encounter resistance to evidence. The phenomenon of resistance to evidence, while subject to thorough investigation in social psychology, is acutely under-theorised in the philosophical literature.

Mona Simion's Resistance to Evidence (Cambridge UP, 2024) is concerned with positive epistemology: it argues that we have epistemic obligations to update and form beliefs on available and undefeated evidence. In turn, our resistance to easily available evidence is unpacked as an instance of epistemic malfunctioning. Simion develops a full positive, integrated epistemological picture in conjunction with novel accounts of evidence, defeat, norms of inquiry, permissible suspension, and disinformation. Her book is relevant for anyone with an interest in the nature of evidence and justified belief and in the best ways to avoid the high-stakes practical consequences of evidence resistance in policy and practice.

Mona Simion is a philosopher. She is professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow where she is also deputy director of the COGITO Epistemology Research Centre. Simion's work focuses on issues in epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of language, and feminist philosophy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Raven Simone Maragh-Lloyd, "Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age (U California Press, 2024) explores the creative range of Black digital users and their responses to varying forms of oppression, utilizing cultural, communicative, political, and technological threads both on and offline.

Raven Maragh-Lloyd demonstrates how Black users strategically rearticulate their responses to oppression in ways that highlight Black publics’ historically rich traditions and reveal the shifting nature of both dominance and resistance, particularly in the digital age. Through case studies and interviews, Maragh-Lloyd reveals the malleable ways resistance can take shape and the ways Black users artfully demonstrate such modifications of resistance through strategies of survival, reprieve, and community online. Each chapter grounds itself in a resistance strategy, such as Black humor, care, or archiving, to show the ways that Black publics reshape strategies of resistance over time and across media platforms.

Linking singular digital resistance movements while arguing for Black publics as strategic content creators who connect resistance strategies from our past to suit our present needs, Black Networked Resistance encourages readers to create and cultivate lasting communities necessary for social and political change by imagining a future of joy, community, and agency through their digital media practices.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Todd Mcgowan, "Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves" (Repeater, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The left views alienation as something to be resisted or overcome, but could it actually form the basis of our emancipation? We often think of our existential and political projects as attempts to overcome or eradicate alienation: therapists imagine that they help patients to attain self-identity; political revolutionaries strive for a society in which they can live in harmony with others; ecological activists work toward a future form of existence in touch with the rest of the natural world.

In Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves (Repeater, 2024), Todd McGowan offers a completely different take on alienation, claiming that the effort to overcome it is not a radical response to the current state of things but a failure to see the constitutive power of alienation for all of us. Instead of trying to overcome alienation and accede to an unalienated existence, it argues, we should instead redeem alienation as an existential and political program. Engaging with Shakespeare’s great tragedies, contemporary films such as Don’t Worry Darling, and even what occurs on a public bus, as well as thinkers such as Descartes, Hegel, and Marx, McGowan provides a concrete elaboration of how alienation frees people from their situation. Relying on the tradition of dialectical thought and psychoanalytic theory, Embracing Alienation reveals a new way of conceiving how we measure progress — or even if progress should be the aim at all.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can the Constitution Still Unite Us?: A Conversation with Yuval Levin

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

During an era of broad political dissatisfaction, what is the history and role of the Constitution? Does the Constitution still have the power to unite us? Dr. Yuval Levin joins Madison's Notes to discuss his forthcoming book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation ― and Could Again. Along the way, he delves into key American figures from James Madison to Woodrow Wilson and the reasons for our present discord.

Yuval Levin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy, and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies. He is the Founder and Editor in Chief of National Affairs, as well as a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Dr. Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels. He holds a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M. Steven Fish, "Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge" (Rivertowns Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Defeating the forces of authoritarianism is the political combat task of our age, and we must take it up with the certitude and boldness that our eminent forebears did. Rebuilding the Democrats’ appeal by reestablishing reputations for superior strength and patriotism is a challenge. But the fact that democracy’s plight is due to flaws in liberals’ leadership and messaging rather than economic crises, popular prejudices, or a faulty Constitution is good news. It means that the Democrats can turn the tables on Trumpism now.

– Introduction to Comeback (2024)

The fate of American democracy now hinges on the Democrats' ability to defeat the Republicans for the foreseeable future. But for the Democrats to win consistently, they must reestablish their credentials as fearless leaders, tough fighters, and fierce patriots.

Comeback delivers a bold new take on democracy's crisis. Many liberals think that escalating economic anxieties and cultural backlash drove voters to Trump. But a crush of data shows this thinking to be deeply flawed. It also strikes working-class voters as condescending and repellent. And while the Democrats stick to "kitchen table" issues and showing how much they care, voters care more about strength and commitment to principle than prescription drug prices.

Politics is a dominance game and a contest to capture the flag. Politicians who seem to be the strongest leaders and most passionate patriots hold the advantage. The Republicans get it. The Democrats don't.

Republicans have a high-dominance political style. They take risks, savor conflict, and use provocative language. Democrats have a low-dominance style. They're risk-averse, afraid to engage on cultural issues-and more than a little boring. Republicans hammer away at their patriotism, even as they betray the nation and shred American values. Democrats are loyal to American values but have grown squeamish about patriotism and have no national story.

Ordinary people often don't recognize themselves in the stories liberal politicians tell about them, while the authoritarians speak a language of dominance and national greatness that connects. The Democrats need a new approach to messaging. Comeback spells it out and provides a roadmap for trouncing Trumpism.

Steven Fish is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a comparative political scientist specializing in democracy and authoritarianism, religion and politics, constitutional systems, and national legislatures. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and universities in Russia, Poland, China, and Indonesia.

His previous books include: Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (1995); Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy, co-authored (2001); Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (2005); The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (2009); and Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (2011).

His latest book and the focus of the interview – Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge was published by Rivertowns Books, Irvington, N.Y. in 2024.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amy Schiller, "The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It" (Melville House, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Amy Schiller's The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It (Melville House, 2023) makes an attempt to rescue philanthropy from its progressive decline into vanity projects that drive wealth inequality, so that it may support human flourishing as originally intended. The word “philanthropy” today makes people think big money—Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, and Andrew Carnegie come to mind. The scope of suffering in the world seems to demand an industry of giving, and yet for all the billions that are dispensed, the wealthy never seem to lose any of their money and nothing seems to change.

Journalist, academic and consultant Schiller shows how we get out of this stalemate by evaluating the history of philanthropy from the ideas of St. Augustine to the work of Lebron James. She argues philanthropy’s contemporary tendency to maintain obscene inequality and reduce every cause to dehumanizing technocratic terms is unacceptable, while maintaining an optimism about the soul and potential of philanthropy in principle. For philanthropy to get back to its literal roots—the love of humanity—Schiller argues that philanthropy can no longer be premised around basic survival. Public institutions must assume that burden so that philanthropy can shift its focus to initiatives that allow us to flourish into happier, more fulfilled human beings. Philanthropy has to get out of the business of saving lives if we are to save humanity.

Amy Schiller is a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College in the Society of Fellows. Twitter. Website.

Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Anna Dyjach is a senior at Deerfield.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Maria Cristina Garcia, "State of Disaster: The Failure of U. S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change" (UNC Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Natural disasters and the dire effects of climate change cause massive population displacements and lead to some of the most intractable political and humanitarian challenges seen today. Yet, as Maria Cristina Garcia observes in State of Disaster: The Failure of U. S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change (UNC Press, 2022), there is actually no such thing as a "climate refugee" under current U.S. law. Most initiatives intended to assist those who must migrate are flawed and ineffective from inception because they are derived from outmoded policies. In a world of climate change, U.S. refugee policy simply does not work.

Garcia focuses on Central America and the Caribbean, where natural disasters have repeatedly worsened poverty, inequality, and domestic and international political tensions. She explains that the creation of better U.S. policy for those escaping disasters is severely limited by the 1980 Refugee Act, which continues to be applied almost exclusively for reasons of persecution directly related to politics, race, religion, and identity. Garcia contends that the United States must transform its outdated migration policies to address today's realities. Climate change and natural disasters are here to stay, and much of the human devastation left in their wake is essentially a policy choice.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kate Maclean, "Cash, Clothes, and Construction: Rethinking Value in Bolivia's Pluri-economy" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How do alternative economic ideas and practices develop? In Cash, Clothes, and Construction: Rethinking Value in Bolivia’s Pluri-economy (U Minnesota Press, 2023), Kate Maclean, an Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London, considers the Pluri-economy of Bolivia to rethink ideas about gender, politics, development and the state. The book uses three core case studies, money, clothing, and construction, to explore how economic alternatives have emerged in Bolivia since the 2005 election of Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism (MAS). The book offers a feminist critique of both the expectations of neoliberal economics, and MAS’s alternatives, drawing on the perspectives and insights of indigenous women in Bolivia. Drawing on a deep engagement with place, as well as a rich theoretical and empirical contribution, the book will be essential reading across social science and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in alternatives to our current economic settlement.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alissa Quart, "Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream" (Ecco Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The promise that you can "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is central to the story of the American Dream. It's the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will eventually succeed. However, time and again we have seen how this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition.

Alissa Quart argues that at the heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions--from "grit" to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe--Quart reveals how we have been steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing the social safety net we so desperately need.

Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quart's lively writing and deep reporting, and for fans of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Ecco Press, 2023) is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level and a plan for how we can free ourselves from these self-defeating narratives

Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart is a contributor to The Washington Post and New York Times and the author of several nonfiction works including Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers and Squeezed: Why our Families Can’t Afford America, as well as works of poetry like Thoughts and Prayers. Alissa Quart is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the editor with David Wallis of Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the world’s richest country which we discussed on this podcast in February.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere, "Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What are the tactics needed for a world of platforms and algorithms? In Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power (MIT Press, 2024), Tiziano Bonini, Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Siena, and Emiliano Treré, a Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at Cardiff University, examine the impact of platforms and algorithms on people, communities, and global social life. The book explores these issues using three case studies of gig work, culture, and politics. At its heart, the book demonstrates the potential for transforming the seeming total control of platforms and algorithms through the tactics and strategies of workers, artists, and social movements. The book is essential reading across humanities, social sciences, and computing, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary digital life. The book is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

New Books in Politics and Polemics

Billionaire Backlash

Lily Geismer on the Democratic Party in the 1990s

Why Voters Support Politicians Who Undermine Democracy

Voices from North Korea: Refugees Tell Their Stories

Sarah M. Rios, "Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice" (Temple UP, 2026)

Richard Ned Lebow, "Why Nations Still Fight" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Srirupa Roy, "The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

David Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp" (Princeton UP, 2026)

A.J.A. Woods, "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West" (Verso, 2026)

Jacob Hagstrom, "Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan

Edward T. G. Anderson, "Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Georgia Kernell, "Inside Parties: How Party Rules Shape Membership and Responsiveness" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu

Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)

Eric O Silva, "Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization: Identity Construction in the Culture Wars" (De Gruyter, 2026)

Isabel Heger-Laube, "China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, ﻿Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability" (Würzberg UP, 2025)

The Resurgence of War and the Collapse of Arms Control

Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration

Building A Freedom Infrastructure in the Age of Networked Control

Kurt Warner, "False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy" (Vernon Press, 2024)

J. W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev, "Against Money" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Susanne Paola Antonetta, "The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today" (Catapult, 2025)

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, "Animals and the Right to Politics" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Christopher M. Federico et al., "The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Luna Sabastian, "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva" (Harvard UP, 2025)

The Emerging Anocracy: AI, Tech Oligarchs, and the Future of Democracy with Alexis Cruz

Democratic Backsliding and Resistance: Poland’s Civil Society, Electoral Strategies, and Institutional Levers

What are the Limits of Political Speech? A Conversation with Erik J. Olsen

Are Capitalism and Democracy Fundamentally Incompatible? A Conversation with Mordecai Kurz

A. G. Hopkins, "The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Campaigning, Parties and the Digital in Contemporary Politics

Nicholas Freudenberg, "Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since The 1960s" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Molly Crabapple, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund" (Random House, 2026)

Anna Terwiel offers A Moment of No to the Prison-Industrial Complex (JP)

Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A Conversation with Gregory Claeys

Kate Bayliss, "Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets" (Manchester UP, 2026)

Ranita Ray, "Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

Bryan Alexander, "Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

John K. Roth, "Saving the American Dream: Meditations for Dark Times" (Wipf and Stock, 2026)

Why Democracy’s Troubles Should Come as No Surprise

Robin Dembroff, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Blair LM Kelley, "Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

Steven Segal, "Mandela’s Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom" (Routledge, 2026)

Derek R. Peterson, "A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda" (Yale UP, 2025)

Curtis Dozier, "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" (Yale UP, 2026)

AI, Algocracy, and Democracy's Challenging Road Ahead with Andrew Sorota

Margaret O’Mara on the Clintons, Tech, and Memory

The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera

Michael Brownstein et al., "Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change" (MIT Press, 2025)

Geraldine Fela, "Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis" (UNSW Press, 2024)

Gary Hoover, "Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead" (U California Press, 2026)

Andrew Demshuk, "The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)

Paige Towers, "What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption" (U Iowa Press, 2026)

Franziska Sittig and Noam Petri, "Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future" (Ibidem Press, 2025)

Billionaire Backlash: Can It Help Save Democracy?

Stuart Schrader, "Blue Power: How Police Organized to Serve and Protect Themselves" (Basic Books, 2026)

Shyam Ranganathan, "Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026)

Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" ﻿(Desassossego, 2022)

Inken Von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas, "Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change” (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Beyond Minorities: Power, Identity, and Conflict in the Middle East

Robin Andersen, "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza" ﻿(﻿OR Books, 2026)

Steffen Mau et al., "The Trigger Points: Inequality and Political Polarization in Contemporary Society" (Policy Press, 2026)

Are We Entering An Arms Race in Outer Space?

Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia

Odd Arne Westad, "The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History" (Henry Holt and Co, 2026)

Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

What Does the American Presidency Mean?

Alana Lentin, "The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy" (Pluto Books, 2025)

Russell McCutcheon, "Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia, second edition" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Daniel Gross, "Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World" (Haymarket, 2026)

William I. Robinson, "Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Trevor Jackson, "The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World" (Norton, 2026)

Rugged Individualism

Assessing Global Democratic Health Amidst a Growing Shadow of Autocracy

Caste and Race: Ambedkar and King with the Ambedkar King Study Circle

Isabel Heger-Laube, "China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability" (Würzberg UP, 2025)

Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" (Desassossego, 2022)

Robin Andersen, "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza" (OR Books, 2026)

⁠The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health⁠

Tristan J. Rogers, "Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee, "Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2026)