New Books in Politics

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. 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 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. 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 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. 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 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: The Coroner's Silence Ghost In The Criminal Justice Machine Hands Up Don't Shoot Freemans Challenge The Journal Of Higher Education In Prison Education Behind The Wall Secrets Of The Killing State Stitching Freedom The Emerson Prison Initiative The Names Of All The Flowers Pink Crime Carceral Apartheid The Criminal Record Complex 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! 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

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 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. 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

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. 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

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. 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 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. 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 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). 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

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. 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 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 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 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. 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

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. 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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

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. 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. 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 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. 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

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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 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. 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 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. 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

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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 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. 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

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. 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

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. 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. 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

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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 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 is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. 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 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' 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 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. 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 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. 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

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. 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 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. 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

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. 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

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 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