New Books in Politics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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). 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. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. 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. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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 LynchExecutive Producer: Lucinda Knight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics