New Books in Politics

News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, both US-born and immigrants, are an invading force bent on destroying the American way of life. Leo R. Chavez challenges the basic tenets of this assumption and other myths of the "Latino threat," providing a critical investigation into the fears and prejudices that are used to malign an entire population. In this updated and expanded third edition of his groundbreaking book, Chavez incorporates Donald Trump's emergence in American political life, with particular focus on the US-Mexico border as a site of political theater and the further sharpening of anti-Latino and anti-immigration rhetoric in public discourse. He also includes new discussions of "anchor babies," Dreamers and DACA, Latina reproduction and white replacement theory, and the emotional and psychological effects of negative political rhetoric on those whom it targets. Through trenchant analysis, this book reexamines urgent questions about what it means to be American. 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 Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. 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

With contributions by Blake Smith, Roger Lancaster, David Moulton, Stephen Adubato, Amir Naaman, Ran Heilbrunn, Pierre d'Alancaisez, Travis Jeppesen, Oliver Davis, Yotam Feldman, and Marcas Lancaster. Today's world of PrEP, Pride parades, and gay marriage eclipses the wildest dreams of the sexual revolution. While it was formerly deviant to promote gay lifestyles, it is now 'problematic' to suggest that not all departures from the norm are in the homosexual's best interest. Amidst this excess, a new wave of discontentment rises among the once-keenest proponents of sexual progress: gay men. What happened in the transition from inversion to homosexuality, gayness, and queerness? Why do some gay men lament the freedoms afforded to them by sexual and social acceptance? Bold and daring, the essays in Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual (Verdurin, 2025) reflect on the vicious cycle of debasement, acceptance, sacrifice, and liberation that homosexuality has been stuck in for longer than it wishes to acknowledge. As gay culture fails to confront its history, it adopts hollow narratives of struggle. Some gay men fear losing their freedoms, some advocate for sexual restraint, while others, lost in the ever-expanding LGBTQIA+ 'community, ' continue to make maximalist ideological demands of those outside. These responses mark a fracture in gay life. If there is some essence to homosexual desire, how is it being served by today's gay culture and queer politics? Has the gay man - homosexual, queer, or inverted - rendered himself obsolete? Bringing together contributions by eleven leading thinkers, theorists, and critics who examine the consequences of pink-washing history, denial of sexual realities, and the memetic nature of desire, Inversion reclaims homosexuality's lost depth in an era of profound discontent. Fearless in its critique and challenging in its proposals, Inversion considers the cultural and political aspects of gay life after homosexuality as it battles with queerness and the allure of a reactionary return, pharmacologically fueled sexual degeneration, and existential dread. Pierre d'Alancaisez is a critic, curator, and researcher interested in the changing role of art and its social institutions. His writing has appeared in The Critic, ArtReview, The Spectator, and Compact. Amir Naaman worked as a mailman, a cook, a bookseller, a comics publisher, a house painter and is now a personal trainer at the gym. His first novel The Hummingbirds, a homosexual horror story, was published in 2020. 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 Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy (Temple UP, 2025) by Dr. Mirya Holman explicates the purpose, role, and consequences of appointed boards in U.S. cities. Dr. Holman finds cities create strong boards that generate policy, consolidate power, and defend the interests of businesses and wealthy and white residents. In contrast, weak boards pacify agitation from marginalized groups to give the appearance of inclusivity, democratic deliberation, and redistributional policymaking. Cities preserve this strong board/weak board dichotomy through policymaking power, institutional design, and by controlling who serves on the boards. The Hidden Face of Local Power examines the role of boards in the development of urban political institutions, the allocation of power in local politics, and the persistence of inequality. Holman enhances our understanding of how political institutions have contributed to racism and their impact on how people use and live in urban spaces. In her shrewd analysis of the creation and use of boards as political institutions, Dr. Holman proves that neither weak or strong boards achieves the goal they are advertised to achieve. In doing so, she provides a new view of the failures of local democracy along with ideas for improvement. 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

A radical history of England, Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katrina Navickas is a gripping overview of increasingly restrictive policing and legislation against protest in public spaces. It tells the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across the country. Dr. Navickas reveals how protesters claimed these spaces as their own commons, resisting their continuing enclosure and exclusion by social and political elites. She investigates famous and less well-known demonstrations and protest marches, from early democracy, trade union movements and the Suffragettes to anti-fascist, Black rights and environmental campaigners in more recent times. Contested Commons offers positive as well as troubling lessons on how we protect the right to protest. 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

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema. Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about "PTA" and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things examined by Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in what follows, a very unusual live Recall This Book conversation. Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, a consolidation of the counter-insurgency ("drugs, sacrament of the 60's, Evil of the 80's) state from the post-1960's into the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically everything PTA movie but Hard Eight (1996; despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the over-the-topness of the Christmas Adventurer's Club. Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Although Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, he sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy. Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister! 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

Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada--imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane's house, a stream who flows through his own years and days. Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers--and always has. Robert Macfarlane's best-selling books include Is a River Alive? and Underland. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has won many prizes around the world. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Darius Cuplinskas is director at The Ideas Workshop of the Open Society Foundations. He is based in London. 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

Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a crisis of liberalism. The apparent failures of liberal thinking are a starting point for an inquiry into emergent ways of living, acting, and making art in the company of others. What happens when the framework of the nation-state, the figure of the enterprising individual, and the premise of limitless development can no longer be counted on to produce a world worth living in? It is increasingly clear that these commonplace liberal conceptions have failed to improve life in any lasting way. In fact, they conceal fundamental connections to enslavement, colonization, moral debt, and ecological devastation. Nicholas Gamso speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the ills of liberalism and art's role in deciding on what may come after the impasse. Nicholas Gamso is a writer and academic who works across theory, visual culture, performance, and space/place. He's an editor at Places. Kara Walker, A Subtlety, 2014 Manaf Halbouni, Monument, 2017 Warren Kanders controversy at the Whitney Triple Chaser by Forensic Architecture My conversations with and on Forensic Architecture Wolfgang Tillmans and his anti-Brexit campaign Ren Hang Pierre d'Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. 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

Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals' and communities' lives. Dr. Lauren Everett's Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica's Rent-Controlled Housing (Temple UP, 2025) shows how rent control impacts the lives of the renters themselves. Dr. Everett interviews residents about their experiences in low- and middle-income households in rent-controlled private market housing in Santa Monica, CA, a city where Everett was born and raised but can no longer afford to live. Dr. Everett seeks to understand the extent to which individuals feel at home or not at home and what factors contribute to those experiences. She also explores the nexus of Santa Monica's tenant protection policies, infrastructure, and resources and the extent to which they inform stability—both perceived and actual—and life decisions. The first scholarly book to take a tenant-centered approach to examining the benefits and problems of rent control, Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land examines the residential experience in this specific local context and explains how it relates to policy and other externalities in cities where homeownership is not financially viable for most renters. 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

John's “Arendt's Refugee Politics” came out in Public Books in early November. He made the case that his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt is an opponent both of identity politics and also of a cosmpolitan universalism that is blind to all the differences (of race, gender, belief) that make us who though not what we are. Going back to one of the first pieces she published in English, a 1943 essay from Menorah called "We Refugees", he reflected on how amazingly Arendt was able to air her unease about militant Zionism at the same time she warned fellow arrivals in America from rushing to disguise their origins. Recall this Book 153 is simply John reading the article aloud. It is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side) in soliloquy. You can consult footnotes and a read a transcript by heading back to the article in its original form here. Reach out and let us know if you think it should be the first of many, or simply a one-off! 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

Transcript of the interview Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and structures of power. She formerly served as Programme Chair and Senior Fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, where she led the Black Feminism and the Polycrisis programme. Her work sits at the intersection of ideas, culture, and systems thinking, with a commitment to making complex theories accessible through books, essays, public speaking, and creative projects. She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (Harper Collins, 2025) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury, 2020), which has been translated into multiple languages. Her writing also appears in numerous anthologies and educational publications exploring feminism, African philosophy, media, and cultural criticism. Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Ideas Letter, Project Syndicate, and The Philosopher, and she has delivered talks at global institutions including TEDx, the Institute of Arts and Ideas, the European Commission, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Yale, and Singularity University at NASA. Salami was the creative director of the short film Black Feminism and the Polycrisis, which won the Silver Award for Public Service and Activism at the 2024 Lovie Awards. From 2019 to 2022, she co-directed Activate, an intersectional feminist movement that supported minoritised women in politics and community organising through visibility campaigns, mentoring, and fundraising. The initiative played a key role in shifting narratives and resources toward a more inclusive political landscape in the UK. She has also worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, advised governments on gender equality, developed national school curricula, and curated cultural events at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Her blog, MsAfropolitan, launched in 2010, has reached over a million readers and remains a platform for exploring feminist and African-centred approaches to contemporary life. Salami is a Full Member of the Club of Rome, a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves on the advisory boards of the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State University and Public Humanities at Cambridge University Press, as well as the council of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy. Links to References:Apart Together – essay on Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire's radical vision for the world Africa's Populist Trap for The Ideas Letter The Niger River and the Dearth of History: Deconstructing the Myths of Mungo Park by Ezenwa E. Olumba 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 Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus on her 2020 book, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2020). Bullshit is a feature of both democracies and dictatorships alike, but it takes different forms. In democracies, while citizens enjoy the freedom of speech and the right to vote, a range of forces often conspire to limit their real power in favor of competing elites. The political and economic elite's toolkit includes the art of bullshit—the persuasive use of language without regard for truth. Whether meritocratic or populist, elites alike have mastered this form of manipulation, amplified by modern tools of dissemination and authority. To help us understand the challenges that bullshit poses to democratic citizens, I'm pleased to welcome Hélène Landemore. Hélène Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. 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 special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble. 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

Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals how American capitalism has been promoted in the most ephemeral of materials: public service announcements, pamphlets, educational films, and games—what Caroline Jack calls “sponsored economic education media.” These items, which were funded by corporations and trade groups who aimed to “sell America to Americans,”found their way into communities, classrooms, and workplaces, and onto the airwaves, where they promoted ideals of “free enterprise” under the cloaks of public service and civic education. They offered an idealized vision of US industrial development as a source of patriotic optimism, framed business management imperatives as economic principles, and conflated the privileges granted to corporations by the law with foundational political rights held by individuals. This rhetoric remains dominant—a harbinger of the power of disinformation that so besets us today. Jack reveals the funding, production, and distribution that together entrenched a particular vision of corporate responsibility—and, in the process, shut out other hierarchies of value and common care. 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

Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. He is a brilliant academic, capped by sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the Nobel Peace Prize, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and more than fifty other universities, and elected not only to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters but the Royal Society and the British Academy; a public servant, who served as Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, headed international commissions for the UN and France, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor and Australia's Sydney Peace Prize; a public intellectual whose numerous books on vital topics have been best sellers.What brought him to economics were his concerns about the inequality and discrimination he saw growing up. Wanting to understand what drives it and what can be done about it has been his lifelong passion. This book gathers together and extends to new frontiers this lifelong work, drawing upon the challenges and insights of each of these phases of his career.In a still very widely cited paper written fifty years ago, Stiglitz set forth the fundamental framework for analyzing intergenerational transfer of wealth and advantage, which plays a central role in persistent inequality. That and subsequent work, developed most fully here for the first time, described today's inequality as a result of centrifugal forces increasing inequality and centripetal forces reducing it. In recent decades, the centrifugal forces have strengthened, the centripetal forces weakened. His general theory provides a framework for understanding the marked growth in inequality in recent decades, and for devising policies to reduce it.A central message is that ever-increasing inequality is not inevitable. Inequality is, in a fundamental sense, a choice. Stiglitz explains that inequality does not largely arise from differences in savings rates between capitalists and others, though that may play a role (as Piketty, Marx, and Kaldor suggest); but rather, it originates importantly from the rules of the game, which have weakened the bargaining power of workers as they have increased the market power of corporations. He also explains how monetary authorities have contributed to increasing wealth inequality, and how, unless something is done about it, likely changes in technology such as AI and robotization will make matters worse. He describes policies that can simultaneously reduce inequality and improve economic performance. Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University.  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

At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922–1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to 1980, Diggs, Michigan's first Black member of Congress, was the only federal official to attend the trial of Emmett Till's killers, worked behind the scenes with Martin Luther King Jr., and founded the Congressional Black Caucus. He was also the chief architect of legislation that restored home rule to Washington, DC, and almost single-handedly ignited the American anti-apartheid movement in the 1960s. Drawing on extensive archival research, including Diggs's rarely seen personal papers, FBI documents, and original interviews with family members and political associates, political scientist Dr. Marion Orr reveals that Diggs practiced a politics of strategic moderation. Dr. Orr argues that this quiet approach was more effective than the militant race politics practiced by Adam Clayton Powell and more appealing than the conservative Chicago-style approach of William Dawson—two of Diggs's better-known Black contemporaries. Vividly written and deeply researched, House of Diggs is the first biography of Congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the most consequential Black federal legislators in US history. Congressman Diggs was a legislative lion whose unfortunate downfall punctuated his distinguished career and pushed him and his historic accomplishments out of sight. Now, for the first time, House of Diggs restores him to his much-deserved place in the history of American politics. Our guest is: Dr. Marion Orr, who is the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown University. He specializes in urban politics, race and ethnic politics, and African-American politics. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who produces the Academic Life podcast. She is a dissertation and grad student coach, and a developmental editor for humanities scholars at all stages of their careers. She writes the Academic Life Newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.Com. Playlist for listeners: The End of White Politics The Vice-President's Black Wife No Common Ground The Social Constructions of Race Smithsonian American Women The First and Last King of Haiti Of Bears and Ballots Never Caught Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And get free bonus content HERE. 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

Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interactions of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic molecules. You emerge from the cells of your body. Not since chaos has a concept from physics spread like wildfire to other disciplines. Emergence can be found from chemistry to economics; from psychology to ecology. At its heart is the alluring idea that there's more to the world than physics, that there is a holistic component to nature, an edge of mystery. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" starts by taking you on a tour through a fascinating world of complexity, exploring phenomena from the inside of an atomic nucleus to bacterial behaviour to the ability of your thoughts to affect the world. These examples are used along with a thorough exploration of the philosophical literature to untangle the notoriously poorly defined concept of emergence. This reveals something surprising: the term emergence is redundant. In its weak form it is so weak that it applies to everything. In its strong form it is so restrictive that it is like the belief that there are pixies in your garden, impossible to exclude but not worth spending your time on. Emergence either applies to all systems or to none. Rather than telling us something about the nature of the world, it is an illusion, an artefact of our cognitive limitations. The past decade has seen a dozen or so monographs and collections about emergence, almost all resolutely supportive of the concept. This book aims to redress the balance. But it is more than just a campaign against the idea of emergence. Graham presents a framework called Austere Physicalism and argues that it is the only coherent way to view the world. He uses this framework to reinterpret so-called emergent phenomena and investigates its wider implications for science. In this radically materialist view, we are nothing but physical systems among others. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" ends by exploring what this means for our sense of free will and consciousness. The book will appeal to academics in fields which use the concepts of complexity or emergence. Scientists and philosophers alike will find unexpected and exciting ideas in these pages. But the target audience is much broader including students who want to add context to their studies and the intellectually curious with some scientific background. 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

Antiabortion stories, images, and policies have primed Americans to embrace attitudes and politics once deemed extreme. Abroad, US antiabortion tactics, personnel, and funds have contributed to a global rise of the Right.From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary (University of California Press, 2025) is a scholar's story of why and how abortion foes join other militants in waging war against the federal government. Reflecting on her thirty years of analyzing the intersections of race, reproduction, and right-wing movements, Carol Mason examines primary antiabortion sources that influenced political currents of the last fifty years. From Cold War conspiracism and apocalyptic fundamentalism to anti-statist terrorism, Tea Party populism, and MAGA insurrection, opposing abortion has come to imperil democracy worldwide. 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 Infected: How Power, Politics, and Privilege Use Science Against the World's Most Vulnerable (The New Press, 2025), Professor Muhammad H. Zaman reveals the troubling history of how science and public health have been manipulated to serve the interests of power. Moving from the U.S.–Mexico border to Pakistan, from the Tuskegee syphilis trials to COVID-19 vaccine disinformation campaigns, the book traces a pattern in which infection becomes a weapon of exclusion, exploitation, and control. With clarity and urgency, Zaman demonstrates that the problem lies not in science itself, but in the ways it can be co-opted to marginalize, stigmatize, and even endanger the very people it is meant to protect. At once historical and contemporary, Infected is a searing call to recognize the ethical stakes of global health, and to build systems that resist the misuse of knowledge against those who can least afford its betrayal. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Professor Muhammad H. Zaman to discuss how power, politics, and privilege use science against the world's most vulnerable. Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature. 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

Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing? In this clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin of capitalism—function and exist, organizer and author brian bean presents a clear case for the abolition of policing and capitalism. Their End Is Our Beginning traces the roots and development of policing in global capitalism through colonial rule, racist enslavement, and class oppression, along the way arguing how police power can be challenged and, ultimately, abolished. bean draws from extensive interviews with activists from Mexico to Ireland to Egypt, all of whom share compelling and knowledgeable perspectives on what it takes to—even if temporarily—take down the cops and build a thriving community-organized society, free from the police. The lessons they offer bring nuance to the meaning of “solidarity” and clarity to what “abolition” and “revolution” look like in practice. Featuring illustrations by Chicago-based artist Charlie Aleck, Their End Is Our Beginning is an incendiary book that offers a socialist analysis of policing and the capitalist state, a vital discussion of the contours of abolition at large, and the revolutionary logic needed for liberation. Guest: brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International Viewpoint, and more. In addition to Their End Is Our Beginning, brian coedited and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, also published by Haymarket Books. Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. 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

While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and transferred injustice through political and financial architectures. In Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment (Bristol University Press/Policy Press, 2024) Dr. Joshua Castellino presents a five-point plan aimed at system redress through reparations that addresses the colonially induced climate crisis through equitable and sustainable means. In highlighting the structural legacy of colonial crimes, Dr. Castellino provides insights into the complexities of contemporary societies, showing how legal frameworks could foster a fairer, more just world. 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

For more than 60 years, the United States has trained fewer physicians than it needs, relying instead on the economically expedient option of soliciting immigrant physicians trained at the expense of other countries. The passage of the Hart–Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expedited the entry of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) from postcolonial South Asia and sent them to provide care in shortage areas throughout the United States. Although this arrangement was conceived as temporary, over the decades it has become a permanent fixture of the medical system, with FMGs comprising at least a quarter of the physician labor force since the act became law. This cohort of practitioners has not been extensively studied, rendering the impacts of immigration and foreign policy on the everyday mechanics of US health care obscure. In The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, Dr. Alam foregrounds global dynamics embedded in the medical system to ask how and why Asian physicians—and especially practitioners from South Asia—have become integral to US medical practice and ubiquitous in the US public imaginary. Drawing on transcripts of congressional hearings; medical, scientific, and social scientific literature; ethnographies; oral histories; and popular media, Dr. Alam explores the enduring consequences of postcolonial physician migration. Combining theoretical and methodological insights from a range of disciplines, this book analyzes both the care provided by immigrant physicians as well as the care extended to them as foreigners. Our guest is: Dr. Eram Alam, who specializes in the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on globalization, race, migration, and health during the twentieth century. She is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. She received her PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a BA and BS from Northwestern University and a MA from the University of Chicago. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a developmental editor, and the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She writes the show's newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Where Is Home? Immigration Realities Secret Harvests Who Gets Believed The House on Henry Street Womanist Bioethics Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes, or by donating here. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! 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 series of market-related crises over the past two decades – financial, environmental, health, education, poverty – reinvigorated the debate about markets and social justice. Since then, counter-hegemonic movements all over the globe are attempting to redefine markets and the meaning of economic enterprise in people's daily lives. Assessments of market outcomes tend toward the polemical, with capitalists and socialists, globalization advocates and anti-globalization movements, those on the political right and those on the left, all facing off to argue the benefits or harms brought about by markets. Yet not enough attention has been paid to analyzing the conditions under which markets result in just outcomes.  Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures (Routledge, 2020) explores how culture, politics, and ideology help shape market incentives in an attempt to reclaim the language of economic rationality and the policymaking legitimacy that accompanies it. Through a variety of case studies – labor relations in the U.S. meatpacking industry, the globalization process in Juaìrez, Mexico, financial reform in Cuba, and an interfaith Ugandan coffee cooperative – this book provides a framework for understanding the conditions under which markets promote just or unjust outcomes (e.g., discrimination, income inequality, environmental degradation, or racial justice, human rights, and equitable growth).  This book touches on subject matter as varied as food, religion, banking, and race and gender equality, from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It offers an analysis of markets based on community rather than pure individualism that has the potential to change the way we think about economic rationality. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars in political science, economics, sociology, geography, gender studies, critical race studies, environmental studies, and all those interested in the critique of mainstream economics and neoliberal logic. 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, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward spoke with Ismail Patel and Hatem Bazian about Pro-Palestinian resistance and the nature of protests - from the Iraq war demonstrations to the recent protests after the events of October 7th 2023. This conversation extended into the nature of colonial projects of occupation and the role coloniality still plays in conflicts today. Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian scholar in the Departments of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California Berkley. He is also editor in chief of the Islamophobia Studies journal and president of the International Islamophobia Studies Research Association. He has been active in the struggle for Palestinian liberation at least since the 1990s when he founded the first chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley. Ismail Patel is the founder of the Friends of Al Aqsa, an UK based NGO which organises politically for the liberation of Palestine. The Friends of Al Aqsa work with MPs, grassroots organisers and educators to advocate for political change and organise events including the Palestine Expo. 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 podcast from Cornell University's Brooks School of Public Policy Center on Global Democracy About the Podcast Each week, co-hosts Rachel Beatty Riedl and Esam Boraey bring together leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore the challenges and possibilities facing democracy around the world. Produced by Cornell's Center on Global Democracy, Democratic Dialogues bridges academic research with real-world debates — from democratic backsliding and authoritarian resurgence to civic resistance, renewal, and reform. We look at new books, groundbreaking articles, and the ideas reshaping how we understand and practice democracy today. Listen on YouTube, NBN, or wherever you get your podcasts. Episode 1 Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries This week, we feature an episode with Kenneth Roberts, Jennifer McCoy, and Murat Somer, joining co-hosts Rachel Riedl and Esam Boraey to discuss their collaborative article, “Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries,” recently published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Together, they unpack how democracies don't collapse overnight, but instead erode through different pathways — from executive aggrandizement to elite collusion — and how societies can resist or even partially recover. The conversation examines how these dynamics unfold in contexts as varied as Latin America, Turkey, Hungary, and the United States, and what practical lessons citizens and policymakers can draw today. This is an essential conversation for understanding how democracies falter, and how collective action, civic mobilization, and institutional renewal can push them back from the brink. Books, Links, & Articles “Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2025) Jennifer McCoy & Murat Somer, Pernicious Polarization and Its Global Impact Kenneth Roberts, Populism, Political Mobilization, and the Latin American Left Rachel Beatty Riedl, Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Institutions in Africa Upcoming Episodes Our next episode features Susan C. Stokes (University of Chicago) discussing her book The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies. Stay tuned for an in-depth conversation on why democratic leaders sometimes turn against the institutions that empower them — and what can be done to safeguard democracy in an era of uncertainty. Subscribe and follow us on YouTube and social media for new releases every month. 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

Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx by Michael Lazarus Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a way of confronting the impoverished ethical quality of life we face under capitalism. Interpreting Marx anew as an ethical thinker, Absolute Ethical Life provides crucial resources for understanding how freedom and rational agency are impacted by a social world formed by value under capitalism, with consequences for philosophy today. Michael Lazarus situates Marx within a shared tradition of ethical inquiry, placing him in close dialogue with Aristotle and Hegel. Lazarus traces the ethical and political dimensions of Marx's work missed by Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, two of the most profound critics of modern politics and ethics. Ultimately, the book claims that Marx's value-form theory is both a continuation of Aristotelian and Hegelian themes and at the same time his most distinctive theoretical achievement. In this normative interpretation of Marx, Lazarus integrates recent moral philosophy with a historically specific analysis of capitalism as a social form of life. He challenges contemporary political and economic theory to insist that any conception of modern life needs to account for capitalism. With a robust critique of capitalism derived from the determinations of what Marx calls the "form of value," Lazarus argues for an ethical life beyond capital. Michael Lazarus is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Political Economy. Before coming to King's College London, he was Deakin University Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute and a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos 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

AI is changing democracy. We still get to decide how.AI's impact on democracy will go far beyond headline-grabbing political deepfakes and automated misinformation. Everywhere it will be used, it will create risks and opportunities to shake up long-standing power structures.In this highly readable and advisedly optimistic book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (MIT Press, 2025), security technologist Bruce Schneier and data scientist Nathan Sanders cut through the AI hype and examine the myriad ways that AI is transforming every aspect of democracy—for both good and ill.The authors describe how the sophistication of AI will fulfill demands from lawmakers for more complex legislation, reducing deference to the executive branch and altering the balance of power between lawmakers and administrators. They show how the scale and scope of AI is enhancing civil servants' ability to shape private-sector behavior, automating either the enforcement or neglect of industry regulations. They also explain how both lawyers and judges will leverage the speed of AI, upending how we think about law enforcement, litigation, and dispute resolution.Whether these outcomes enhance or degrade democracy depends on how we shape the development and use of AI technologies. Powerful players in private industry and public life are already using AI to increase their influence, and AIs built by corporations don't deliver the fairness and trust required by democratic governance. But, steered in the right direction, AI's broad capabilities can augment democratic processes and help citizens build consensus, express their voice, and shake up long-standing power structures.Democracy is facing new challenges worldwide, and AI has become a part of that. It can inform, empower, and engage citizens. It can also disinform, disempower, and disengage them. The choice is up to us. Schneier and Sanders blaze the path forward, showing us how we can use AI to make democracy stronger and more participatory. Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist focused on making policymaking more participatory. His research spans machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. He has served in fellowships at the Massachusetts legislature and the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. 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 does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in ​The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action (2019)​, published as part of the Historical Materialism book series from Brill and Haymarket books. The book takes on the theories of Marx and Gramsci to develop a philosophical triad of subalternity-antagonism-autonomy as a way of studying political subjectification under oppressive conditions and the potential for resistance. The book then looks at political developments in South and Latin America, trying to understand the underlying dynamics of both where it's coming from, and what its possibilities are for anticapitalist resistance. Massimo Modonesi is professor and chair of the Political and Social Sciences Faculty at the Autonomous National University in Mexico, and is the author of numerous books on political theory and history in Latin America, his most recent in English being ​Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy: Constructing the Political Subject.​ He is a member of the coordinating committee of the International Gramsci Society. Maria Vignau served as a research assistant under Modonesi, and now teaches while working on her PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle. 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 No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World (Oxford University Press, 2021), Deborah Gordon shows that no two oils or gases are environmentally alike. Each has a distinct, quantifiable climate impact. While all oils and gases pollute, some are much worse for the climate than others. In clear, accessible language, Gordon explains the results of the Oil Climate Index Plus Gas (OCI+), an innovative, open-source model that estimates global oil and gas emissions. Gordon identifies the oils and gases from every region of the globe–– along with the specific production, processing, and refining activities–– that are the most harmful to the planet, and proposes innovative solutions to reduce their climate footprints. Global climate stabilization cannot afford to wait for oil and gas to run out. No Standard Oil shows how we can take immediate, practical steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the crucial oil and gas sector while making sustainable progress in transitioning to a carbon-free energy future. Deborah Gordon is a senior principal in the Climate Intelligence Program at RMI where she leads the Oil and Gas Solutions Initiative. Gordon also serves as a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and the principal investigator for the Oil Climate Project. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). 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

Animals are staging a revolution—they're just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, Animal Revolution (U Minnesota Press, 2022) threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate, provocative, cogent call for us to do so. Ron Broglio reveals how fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems. A witty, informative, and captivating work—at the juncture of posthumanism, animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies—Broglio reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism. Ron Broglio is professor of English, director of Desert Humanities, and associate director of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life and Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art. Callie Smith is a poet and a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 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

Freedom is often considered the cornerstone of the American political project. The 1776 revolutionaries declared it an inalienable right that could neither be taken nor granted, a sacred concept upon which the nation was established. The concept and actualization of freedom are also to be defended by the state. However, when such a concept has been arrogated, litigated, and delegitimized by a state that ignores its very definition, the concept of freedom comes under critical examination. Political theorist Elisabeth R. Anker, Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Science at George Washington University, has a new book dissecting the core of this conception of freedom. Ugly Freedoms (Duke UP, 2022) explores who defined and continues to define freedom, she also examines freedom's rhetorical capacity, and thus its potential for weaponization. Anker illuminates how the tainted gestation of freedom birthed a status quo based on the individualistic and conditional conception of ‘freedom' that has long been tangoing with white supremacy, colonialism, climate destruction, capitalism, and exploitation. Such a dance is by design and has been constant throughout U.S. history. Anker establishes that for democratic government to take hold in the United States, racial domination and violence transpired, limiting the freedoms of some individuals in order to establish a governmental system that is based, in theory, on protecting liberty and freedom. This is the kind of tension that Anker explains as “ugly freedom.” Thus, American freedom, our freedom, has embedded in it the role of colonialism, imperialism, enslavement, and land theft. The shocking stains of slavery produced freedom of prosperity and leisure for white people through direct dehumanization of Black and Brown people—this is what Anker is talking about within the concept of ugly freedom. This has also been manifested through more contemporary rhetoric regarding imperial wars like those in the Philippines, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, destroying infrastructure and lives in those countries for the capital prosperity of the imperial core. These ugly freedoms legitimize the economic exploitation of the masses in the name of individual success for the few. Thus, ugly freedom examines the acts of freedom that rely on violence and brutality—this challenges how we often imagine freedom to be. Ugly Freedom explores the connection between politics and aesthetics as well, taking up an array of historical events, political theories and concepts, different forms of art, televisual productions, poetry, music, and biology to illustrate the compounding violence of the few in the name of freedom. The cultural artifacts interrogated were controversial in their own right, and Anker explores them to help understand which kinds of freedom are worth fighting for and which kinds of freedom must be fought against. Through a critical lens, Anker shifts the perception of freedom to help restore justice to its foundational value—one that is less dependent on the individual or individual heroics, and more enveloping of the community and shared collaboration. Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. 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

Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today (Princeton University Press, 2020) draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer--democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Delving into the prevalence of early democracy throughout the world, David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished--and when and why they declined--can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future. Drawing from examples spanning several millennia, Stasavage first considers why states developed either democratic or autocratic styles of governance and argues that early democracy tended to develop in small places with a weak state and, counterintuitively, simple technologies. When central state institutions (such as a tax bureaucracy) were absent--as in medieval Europe--rulers needed consent from their populace to govern. When central institutions were strong--as in China or the Middle East--consent was less necessary and autocracy more likely. He then explores the transition from early to modern democracy, which first took shape in England and then the United States, illustrating that modern democracy arose as an effort to combine popular control with a strong state over a large territory. Democracy has been an experiment that has unfolded over time and across the world--and its transformation is ongoing. Amidst rising democratic anxieties, The Decline and Rise of Democracy widens the historical lens on the growth of political institutions and offers surprising lessons for all who care about governance. David Stasavage is dean for the social sciences and Julius Silver Professor of Politics at New York University. 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

Upstate New York's Anti-Rent Movement is considered the last struggle over feudalism in the United States. Tenant farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk region engaged in organized protest throughout the 1840s to contest monopoly ownership of the land they worked. Arguing their cause in newspapers, on broadsides, and at rallies, their aspirations also took shape in poetry and song. More than twenty sets of lyrics (and one instrumental composition) were written at various stages of the conflict. Some of their musical sources, such as "Old Dan Tucker" and "Bruce's Address," are still well known. Each fully contextualized song offers insight into the role vernacular music played in one of the nineteenth century's major social reform movements. Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes (SUNY Press, 2025) by Dr. Nancy Newman is the first book to gather the poetry and corresponding tunes into one publication (you can find recordings of some of the songs here). It provides detailed analysis of the repertory, followed by new musical scores of the songs, reconstructed from contemporary historical sources for study and performance. It also examines the movement's later dramatization in novels, film, and public commemorations as successive generations grapple with its meaning. 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 this episode, we speak with Hamid Dabashi about his new book, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket, 2025), published by Haymarket Books. Written amid the ongoing war in Gaza, the book confronts what Dabashi describes as the moral and philosophical crisis of the modern West. After Savagery challenges long-standing traditions of Western thought, arguing that their universal claims often conceal a history of exclusion and erasure. Dabashi calls for readers to reckon with the intellectual foundations that have shaped contemporary understandings of humanity, violence, and colonialism. At the same time, he finds hope in art, literature, and film — works that, in his view, keep alive the possibility of a shared and liberated imagination. For Dabashi, Palestine becomes both a specific struggle and a universal metaphor for resistance and renewal.Joe WilliamsHistory PhD researcher at the University of Coimbra and translator website- Censorship and Sacralisation of Politics in the Portuguese Press during the Spanish Civil War- "Year X of the National Revolution" — Salazarist Palingenetic Myth in the Diário da Manhã 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 is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitchen, an Associate Lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth explores this question using a series of literary and media case studies. Drawing on Bakhtin's theories of the carnivalesque, the book assesses the possibilities of media texts, including histories, literature, films and sitcoms, to offer alternative visions of work. More critically, the analysis highlights media's role in reinforcing exploitation and alienation within its seemingly playful and positive engagements with work. Theoretically rich, but accessible for the general reader, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding how media shapes our understanding of work today. 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 bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them.If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating.This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos 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 speech debates have not abated, and it's clear that invoking the First Amendment, and the importance of free speech for democracy, does not settle these debates but provokes more questions. We have lost our way, it seems, since people on all sides invoke free speech and then try to silence those they disagree with. Historian Fara Dabhoiwala of Princeton University reminds us that free speech has always been contested, and that it became a political and social value only recently. We invited him to discuss his new book What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Dabhoiwala examines how free speech started as a risky and radical concept, and how it evolved through centuries of political battles to become central to democracy only at a certain point in history. As Professor Dabhoiwala explains, speech rights have come and gone long before campus protests, debates over what talk show hosts can say, and whether there ought to be limits to speech that's defined as dangerous, offensive, or unpatriotic. If we hope to find a way out of our current predicament, we should study this history carefully – with Professor Dahhoiwala as the perfect guide. 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 Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of the future on an unprecedented scale in order to ignite a new technological revolution that would cement the country's geopolitical preeminence, greatly enhance human wellbeing, and create unimaginable wealth. This book also features a history of the Federal Reserve. Richard Duncan has served as Global Head of Investment Strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management in London, worked as a financial sector specialist for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and headed equity research departments for James Capel Securities and Salomon Brothers in Bangkok, Thailand. He is now the publisher of Macro Watch, a video-newsletter that analyzes the forces driving the global economy in the 21st Century. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. 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 a nation whose Constitution purports to speak for "We the People", too many of the stories that powerful Americans tell about law and society include only We the Men. A long line of judges, politicians, and other influential voices have ignored women's struggles for equality or distorted them beyond recognition by wildly exaggerating American progress. Even as sexism continues to warp constitutional law, political decision making, and everyday life, prominent Americans have spent more than a century proclaiming that the United States has already left sex discrimination behind.Professor Jill Elaine Hasday's We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2025) is the first book to explore how forgetting women's struggles for equality—and forgetting the work America still has to do—perpetuates injustice, promotes complacency, and denies how generations of women have had to come together to fight for reform and against regression. Professor Hasday argues that remembering women's stories more often and more accurately can help the nation advance toward sex equality. These stories highlight the persistence of women's inequality and make clear that real progress has always required women to disrupt the status quo, demand change, and duel with determined opponents.America needs more conflict over women's status rather than less. Conflict has the power to generate forward momentum. Patiently awaiting men's spontaneous enlightenment does not. Transforming America's dominant stories about itself can reorient our understanding of how women's progress takes place, focus our attention on the battles that are still unwon, and fortify our determination to push for a more equal future. 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

The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial efforts from both the political left and right. At a time when conformist pressures threaten viewpoint diversity, and when political attacks on free expression are mounting, this book is a valuable resource for all who seek to understand and defend the right that is central to both individual liberty and our democratic self-government. This concise volume is organized around 10 claims that proponents of speech restrictions regularly assert, such as: “words are violence,” “free speech is right-wing,” and “hate speech isn't free speech.” In lively, clear, and persuasive prose, the authors examine the flaws in these pro-censorship assertions. The book also includes an insightful introduction by Jacob Mchangama, shedding additional light on the topic from historical and international perspectives. Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and was the national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. She is a Senior Fellow at FIRE and serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and National Coalition Against Censorship. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. 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 practical call to action against oppression. Across the globe, millions of people have participated in protests and marches, donated to political groups, or lobbied their representatives with the aim of creating lasting social change, overturning repressive laws, or limiting environmental destruction. Yet very little seems to improve for those affected by rapacious governments. Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail (U Minnesota Press, 2025) brings new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional, and more direct, means. Sasha Davis, an activist and scholar of radical environmental advocacy, focuses on the strategies of movements, many of them Indigenous, that have occupied contested sites and demonstrated their effectiveness at managing or governing them. Including case studies of resistance to development on Indigenous lands in Hawai'i, nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, and the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, he offers insight and direction for activists, students, academics, and others dedicated to protecting and improving the well-being of their communities and beyond. It would be easy to succumb to pessimism and political apathy in the face of governing institutions that are increasingly unresponsive to calls for change and repressive in response to protest, even as they violate human rights, ignore existential climate catastrophes, and concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands. Instead, Davis finds inspiration for genuine political change through social movements that are successfully "replacing the state" and taking over the day-to-day governance of threatened places. From contesting environmental abuse to reasserting Indigenous sovereignty, these social movements demonstrate how people can collectively wrest control over their communities from oppressive governments and manage them with a more egalitarian ethics of care. 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