New Books in Public Policy

What would a postcarbon future look like? What would it take to build and maintain a more just, regenerative world? How would it feel to live—and to thrive—in that world? In Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026), Billy Fleming and a wide set of contributors critically engage with the above questions and more. Around the globe, people are transforming their social, ecological, and economic systems in response to the climate crisis. This book guides readers through 29 of these exemplary works, which span 43 nations and 6 continents. From Cuba to Kiribati, Iceland to the Andes, the prairies of North America to the expanding Gobi Desert, these case studies foreground the tactics and modes of practice being employed, often by marginalized peoples, to create more humane, hospitable places. With dispatches from more than a dozen leading scholars working on the front lines of the climate justice movement, Building Postcarbon Futures is both a celebration of action underway and a clarion call to the planners, designers, policymakers, and activists who are pushing this planet toward a future of collective flourishing. Billy Fleming is a leading voice on the role of design in responding to the climate crisis in our cities, communities, and landscapes. He is founding codirector of the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank focused on climate and political economy, and assistant professor of landscape architecture at Temple University's Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo. He is an urbanist and housing policy researcher at the Climate and Community Institute.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As law enforcement agencies deploy increasingly advanced technologies to suppress dissent, hunt migrants, and target marginalized communities, The Carceral Surround (U Minnesota Press, 2026) offers a powerful new theory of police and prison power in the digital age. Making sense of the rapid expansion of digital carceral infrastructure in a nation that claims to value freedom and individual rights, R. Joshua Scannell moves beyond familiar debates over privacy to show that understanding digital policing requires confronting the political and racial logics that sustain police power. Drawing on digital media theory, science and technology studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and carceral theory, The Carceral Surround reveals how twenty-first-century policing is less about managing crime than about governing possibility. Carceral power now operates across every register of daily life through predictive analytics, risk modeling, and algorithmic systems that track, sort, and preempt. From social media archives and facial recognition software to satellite mapping and radiation sensors, Scannell charts how seemingly disparate media converge into an environment of control that links technocratic governance to the maintenance of racial hierarchy and capitalist order. Tracing today?s technoauthoritarian regime from the NYPD?s assault on Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition?s campaign to end predictive policing contracts, The Carceral Surround is a rare hybrid of critique and refusal, illuminating the digital logic of US authoritarianism while imagining pathways for collective resistance beyond its grasp. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit's struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement's struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North (FSG, 2025), the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth's landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures—including Detroit's first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today's backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country's promise. My guest today is Michelle Adams. Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration's Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet (MIT Press, 2026), Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill's near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU with her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too. Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made. Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That's the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? Despite landmark agreements and expanding knowledge, emissions have fallen unevenly and progress has repeatedly stalled or reversed. Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy? explains that failure by focusing on domestic politics: how institutions distribute power, how interest groups exploit “access points,” and why countries with similar wealth and technology diverge. Moving beyond arguments about mere political will, it situates energy and climate outcomes within the institutional architectures of industrialized oil super-producers: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Shum advances a neopluralist theory of climate politics, arguing that policy is shaped by the strategic capture of institutional venues by carbon-intensive interests. He shows how separation of powers, federalism, party systems, and electoral rules configure opportunities for a de facto carbon oligarchy. By mapping where binding decisions are made and who can reach them, the book offers a generalizable framework for diagnosing blockages, explaining cross-national variation, and identifying leverage points for sustaining ambitious climate policy over time.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We live in a fragile world. This much is evident as stories abound of natural disasters that wipe out communities in an instant. How can we survive the future on such a planet, amid intensifying climate change? This question is particularly poignant along the Ring of Fire, a tectonic belt in the Pacific region that routinely faces some of the most devastating disasters in the world. Based on ethnographic research spanning seven years, Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire (Stanford University Press, 2026) examines the work of preparedness training in Japan and Chile, two primary nations along the Ring of Fire that experience frequent and intense disasters. Experts from these countries have often collaborated to create some of the most advanced disaster preparedness systems in the world. Dr. Chika Watanabe traces how local city officials, NGOs, and members of neighborhood and grassroots organizations are, counterintuitively, using fun, playful methods to teach preparation for our darkest hours. While there are many important studies of post-disaster response, much less is written about the future-orientation of disaster preparedness. This book shows how a transnational group of preparedness experts orient people toward potential disasters in gentle and hopeful ways, focusing on improvisation and repair. In a time of political and environmental destabilization globally, this book offers a unique look at how playful preparedness can reset relationships to environments, to the future, and to each other. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and tensions. Law has cultivated both the planet's biggest environmental threats and its most creative innovations for protecting human and ecological health. U.S. laws have driven both exploitation and temperance; destruction and restoration; and resistance and adaptation. Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law (NYU Press, 2026) showcases the fundamental role the law has served in reckoning with environmental harm in the United States. Authors Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels explore the full arc of U.S. environmental legal history across five major periods in the United States, reaching as far back as North America's colonization and ending with the present. Through this rich history, the book considers the ways leadership, social movements, political coalitions, information, and technologies have both been catalyzed by the law and have advanced environmental change.Camacho and Daniels provide a fascinating and insightful history of environmental law. They ask readers to consider: What lessons can we draw from environmental legal history for contemporary challenges like climate change, AI, and emerging biotechnologies? In looking to the past, Lessons for a Warming Planet illustrates how prior generations each used legal imagination to navigate seemingly insurmountable environmental threats.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) examines these political and social changes, evaluates how actors have successfully integrated LGBTQ+ needs into the mainstream policy agenda, and provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the policymaking processes from an LGBTQ+ perspective. Drawing on data from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA, it presents a systematic framework for understanding "queering public policy" as a policy process. The final chapter offers a roadmap for scholars interested in exploring this evolving field further. This book will appeal to anyone interested in public policy, public administration, and queer studies.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One in five children will be sexually abused before their eighteenth birthday. This isn't a problem confined to a single country, city, or neighborhood. It's something that happens everywhere, and what it costs can be enormous: depression, PTSD, and elevated long-term risk for physical illness, including heart disease and cancer. In One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It (Basic Books, 2026), Elizabeth Letourneau and Luke Malone make the case that child sexual abuse is not inevitable. It is preventable, and at this moment in time, we have the tools to stop it before it begins. Letourneau and Malone don't stop at describing the problem. The book creates a clear picture of how much of the harm is caused by other children. They lay out a road map, built on years of research and real compassion, for keeping kids safe and reaching young people at risk of causing harm before anyone gets hurt. In this episode of the New Books Network, we follow that road map and ask what changes when prevention rather than punishment becomes the organizing idea behind child safety. The conversation is energized and respectful of survivors and their families, and it projects an urgency that does not lose hope. I hope you find it worth your time. I think you will, if you are interested in what child sexual abuse prevention can look like in 2026. - Aniss BenelmouffokSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We often blame social media for the rampant problem of disinformation, but the truth is that mainstream news media is often equally at fault. Not only do news outlets disguise paid content to look like online news articles, a practice called “native advertising,” but new research suggests that this form of advertising even influences the real journalism that appears next to it—both perceptions of the journalism as well as its actual substance. In Content Confusion: News Media, Native Advertising, and Policy in an Era of Disinformation (MIT Press, 2025), Michelle Amazeen explores the origins and evolution of this mainstream media practice, how it affects audiences and the industry, and what the implications are for an accurately informed democracy. For policy makers, in particular, the book highlights the longstanding principles from governmental regulation as well as industry professional codes that serve to support clear identification of the provenance of content, an issue that will no doubt intensify with the release of generative artificial intelligence in the wild.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How can a nation with unmatched wealth and medical innovation also have the highest health care costs and the poorest health outcomes among its peers? In America's Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Dr. John E. McDonough offers a compelling explanation for this troubling puzzle of contemporary US life and shows that this reality did not arise by accident. Beginning in the later twentieth century, a powerful political and economic philosophy began to reshape the United States and continues to mold the institutions that govern health care, insurance coverage, and population health. Across four decades, the rise of neoliberal thinking elevated privatization, deregulation, and profit maximization as guiding principles for public policy. Dr. McDonough illustrates how these ideas influenced medical care at every level, altering government roles, accelerating consolidation, encouraging the financialization of once-mission-driven sectors, and shifting the US health system's priorities away from patients and communities. The consequences of these changes include deepening inequality, eroded public health capacity, and a growing burden of medical debt. Synthesizing history, policy analysis, and the lived realities of the American health system, Dr. McDonough reveals how a national commitment to economic freedom above all else set the stage for today's dysfunctional health care system. Despite today's crises, he also highlights emerging efforts that signal the possibility of a new direction, one based on fairness, accountability, and the restoration of health as a public value. America's Wrong Turn offers a framework for understanding how the United States arrived at this moment and what it will take to create a system worthy of the people it serves. 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/public-policy

Are we driving our technology, or is it starting to drive us? In this thought-provoking conversation, Eli Karetny sits down with researcher and author Eduardo Albrecht to explore the invisible, rapidly encroaching frontier of AI governance and data surveillance.Moving far beyond traditional debates about data privacy, Albrecht warns of a near future where the state and corporate partners bypass human speech entirely, relying instead on "sentiment detection" to ascribe thoughts and make decisions that impact our physical lives. Together, they trace the historical trajectory of control—from early fingerprinting and eugenics to modern biometrics and neural implants—and challenge the modern illusion of state efficiency at the expense of human agency.Tune in for a deep dive into the two fundamental rights required to safeguard the future of democracy: absolute transparency over our data, and an evolving, radical defense of our collective freedom of thought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

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/public-policy

A call to place disability at the center of climate and disaster responsesEvery disaster is a disability disaster, argues Angela Frederick. Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster (NYU Press, 2025) tells the stories of Texans with disabilities who endured the 2021 Texas power crisis, which forced millions of Texas residents to endure a dayslong winter storm without heat or water. Based on 58 in-depth interviews with disabled Texans and parents of disabled children, Frederick highlights how disabled people and those with chronic health conditions are uniquely harmed when basic infrastructure such as power and water systems fail. She argues that the vulnerability people with disabilities experienced during this disaster was not an inevitable consequence of individual disabled bodies. Rather, disability vulnerability was “produced” by policies that “disabled” vital infrastructure.Frederick also emphasizes another meaning of the phrase “disabled power:” the individual and collective resilience and creativity Texans with disabilities exercised to survive the disaster. Despite common perceptions of people with disabilities as passive victims, Frederick shows how many found strategies to survive and to provide and receive care within their communities. Ultimately, the implications of this disaster extend far beyond Texas and underscore our increased vulnerability to infrastructural failures as extreme weather events become more common. Disabled Power offers a blueprint for reimagining vulnerability and resilience to center people with disabilities in disaster research and emergency response. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond (U Edinburgh Press, 2025) outlines the need to embed Ocean Heritage into ocean science, sustainable development, and marine conservation to meet the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) and beyond. Ocean Heritage—spanning tangible sites, such as shipwrecks or submerged harbours, and intangible connections such as traditional practices and knowledge systems—remains underrepresented in ocean governance. Yet it offers critical insights for more effective policy and research. Its inclusion is essential to ensuring science is informed by human–ocean relationships and responsive to the needs of communities. Led by the Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (CHFP), the Ocean Decade's only programme focused on Ocean Heritage, this text demonstrates how heritage supports all 10 Ocean Decade Challenges. Ocean Heritage strengthens climate adaptation, improves spatial planning, and supports equitable governance by grounding decisions in historical context and lived experience. The paper draws on more than 20 CHFP-endorsed initiatives, offering clear case studies and actionable recommendations for policy alignment, institutional support, and multidisciplinary collaboration. As the Ocean Decade reaches its midpoint, this book offers a path forward: one where science draws on the full range of human—ocean relationships to guide sustainable, equitable action. Ocean Heritage is not a symbolic gesture—it is a fundamental human right. Rather than treating culture as an add-on to marine conservation, this paper calls for its broad integration into ocean science and decision-making. Athena Trakadas is a maritime archeologist who studies underwater and coastal marine cultural heritage and advises international and national heritage, marine science and governmental organizations. Helen Dewar is an historian of the Atlantic World and French colonization in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. She is a professor of history at the Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada) and the author of Disputing New France: Companies, Sovereignty and Law in the French Atlantic, 1598-1663 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022). helen.dewar[at]umontreal.ca Helen's institutional website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive is a transformative guide for working with a child who is left out, left behind, or labeled “difficult.” Dr. Niki Elliott teaches the best practices to support kids who are misunderstood and marginalized—those who are neurodivergent, have a learning disability, or are trauma survivors. In this practical book, Dr. Elliott brings clear guidance and a hopeful message: when safety, compassion, and trust come first, real learning can begin. Heart-Centered Connections shows you how to create that foundation. Based on decades of her groundbreaking research, Dr. Elliott offers seven pillars that will help you create environments where kids can achieve their full potential. You will learn how to: increase your ability to handle stress so you remain composed when a child acts out; establish stronger bonds, even with kids who initially seem defiant; teach in a way that creates joy and confidence; design neuro-inclusive environments in which youth of all abilities can flourish; view the child from a new perspective, offering them choice and dignity; and help the child settle their nervous system state so they can focus and learn. Guest: Dr. Niki Elliott is a clinical professor and director of the Center for Embodied Equity and Neurodiversity at the University of San Diego SOLES, where she leads research, professional certificates, and statewide initiatives that transform K–16 learning environments through trauma-informed, neuro-inclusive design. A veteran educator of more than 30 years, Dr. Niki is known for translating complex neuroscience into powerful, accessible practices that strengthen belonging, emotional safety, and academic engagement for neurodiverse learners. Host: Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for Listeners: Teaching with Positive Psychology Skills How To Organize Inclusive Events How We Show Up The Power of Play in Higher Education The Burnout Workbook Empathy Takes Action Belonging A Pedagogy of Kindness How Can Mindfulness Help Meditation You Have More Influence Than You Think 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/public-policy

More than eleven million children in the US live in doubled-up households, sharing space with extended family or friends. These households are even more common among low-income families, families of color, and single-parent families, functioning as a private safety net for many in a country with extremely limited public support for families. Despite their prevalence, we know little about how shared households form and how they shape family life. Doubled Up is an in-depth look at the experiences of families with children living in doubled-up households. Drawing on extensive interviews with sixty parents living in doubled-up households, Dr. Hope Harvey examines what circumstances and motivations lead families to form doubled-up households, how living in shared households affects daily routines, and how families fare after these arrangements dissolve.Dr. Harvey shows that although families rely on doubling up to get by in the face of rapidly rising housing costs, precarious labor markets, and unaffordable childcare, these private arrangements are rarely sufficient to overcome such structural barriers. And doubling up incurs its own costs for both host and guest families. For doubled-up families, negotiating household relationships and navigating shared space reshapes family life. Understanding the dynamics of doubled-up households extends scholarship on family life beyond the nuclear family and points the way toward better policies that will serve all families. Guest: Dr. Hope Harvey is an assistant professor at the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky and a research affiliate at the Center for Poverty Research. She is the author of the award-winning book Doubled Up. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: What's On Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life The Fight To Save The Town You're Doing It Wrong Raising Them What Do You Want Out Of Life How Girls Achieve What Might Be 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/public-policy

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/public-policy

Once dominant and institutionalised, the Yakuza, one of Japan's best known criminal organisations, is now shrinking under the combined pressure of legal exclusion, social stigmatisation, and market regulation. Their membership has dropped from more than 80,000 in 2009 to fewer than 20,000 in 2025. Yet their disappearance is far from complete. Based on extensive fieldwork with active and former members, police officers, lawyers, and journalists, in 21st Century Yakuza: Death of Japanese Organised Crime (Oxford University Press, 2026), Dr. Martina Baradel examines how these organisations adapt to repression and explores what happens when a mafia begins to die. 21st Century Yakuza illuminates how Japan's model of regulatory saturation has dismantled the Yakuza's organisational capacity but left behind governance vacuums in markets the state struggles to control. This book demonstrates how the Yakuza persist through symbolic and residual forms of authority even as their formal power erodes, and how their decline has fragmented the criminal underworld. It traces the transformation of the Yakuza from territorially embedded brokers of governance to marginal actors in a more decentralised criminal landscape, including the delegation of trading activities to non-affiliated networks. Through a sharp lens on criminal decline and adaptation, 21st Century Yakuza offers a compelling portrait of a fading underworld and the new forms of disorder emerging in its wake. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the shifting boundaries of law, authority, and illicit power in contemporary Japan. 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/public-policy

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/public-policy

In Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jonathon W. Penney explores the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremist actors using big data, cyber-mobs, AI, and other threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects – or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights – have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. He critiques conventional theories and provides a framework for predicting, explaining, and evaluating chilling effects in a range of contexts. Urgent and timely, Chilling Effects sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power, and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and in the future. You can find more information about Jon at his website: https://jonpenney.com/ Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student and law student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake's work has been published in top venues such as ACM's CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) marked its 60th anniversary. Created amid the optimism and urgency of the civil rights era, HUD embodied a bipartisan commitment to building stronger, more integrated, and equitable cities. How did that vision unfold alongside the music, culture, and politics that shaped urban life? Street Level, a special audio documentary episode of Soundscapes NYC, explores the intertwined histories of urban policy, housing, and popular culture in the years following HUD's establishment. Through archival recordings, immersive sound design, and music drawn from the neighborhoods most affected by federal housing decisions, the documentary traces how government policies shaped city life—and how residents responded through creativity, resilience, and community. Featuring insights from historian and author Bench Ansfield, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Born In Flames, senior career HUD staff members Kent Watkins and John Finch, and public history scholar Kristin Sylvian, Street Level connects policy decisions to lived experience, revealing how federal housing initiatives shaped the urban landscape—and how music and culture helped sustain joy, identity, and perseverance when city life grew more difficult. Part history, part cultural exploration, and part sonic journey, Street Level offers a powerful new perspective on the forces that have shaped America's cities. HOST/PRODUCER: Ryan Purcell WRITER/PRODUCER: Shelagh Little Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The Political Worldviews of American Social Movements: Partisan Politics and the Future of Democracy (Routledge, 2026) explores the political worldviews of progressive American social movements and how they play an increasingly important role in defining social problems, setting the national political agenda, and offering viable policy solutions. Arguing that the liberal consensus that historically held the United States together politically has broken down, this book demonstrates how new forms of authoritarian and democratic populisms are being offered as alternatives to a rigged capitalist system by an unaccountable oligarchy. It utilises the method of frame analysis to elucidate the political worldview of particular, left-leaning social movements, exploring their historical backgrounds, organizing methods, social grievances, policy solutions, current actions, and future goals. It examines three movements concerned with economic issues, three organizing around identity, and three advocating for change in the domain of public safety. The last chapter focuses on the current political situation in the U.S. and potential futures of democracy. Bringing together lessons from U.S. history and the previous chapters, the book ends with a proposal for how to ensure more democratic and egalitarian outcomes in America as a whole. As such, it offers an important reference for both academics and activists in the fields of sociology, political science, and policy analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In 2008, Rachel Canter founded Mississippi First, an education non-profit with the mission of improving educational outcomes for students across the state. Dating back to the 1990s, Mississippi ranked near the very bottom on educational assessment metrics for reading and math. Today, Mississippi's elementary school students score above the national public average and the eight graders have nearly reached the national public average. For nearly two decades, Rachel has been on the frontlines fighting to improve reading and math outcomes for Mississippi's public school students. In the process, she has learned that there are no quick fixes, silver bullets, or magical solutions. Improving educational outcomes takes time, accountability, evidence, and institutional support. Rachel and the Progressive Policy Institute have produced a short research paper on this incredibly improvement in outcomes titled “Inside the Mississippi Marathon.” This paper is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of education in America. Whether you are a researcher, policy maker, parent, or student, Inside the Mississippi Marathon charts a path for national improvement in education. Rachel Canter is the Director of Education Policy for the Reinventing America's Schools project at PPI. She holds a bachelor's degree in English and History from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 2008, she founded Mississippi First and served as its Executive Director for over 16 years. 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/public-policy

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/public-policy

Can I Say That: Your Go-To Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is your safe space to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion, and how you can be a force for change. Most DEI books focus on gender, race or the intersection of those two dimensions. This book adopts a broader intersectional lens while also providing concrete tools for allyship.This book is for you if: you want to know more about diversity, equity, and inclusion but don't know where to start; are worried about saying the wrong thing; feel uncomfortable talking about DEI; are worried conversations might escalate or end in conflict; or don't want to be the only one fighting for change. By explaining the common fears we all face about DEI, you'll feel empowered to talk with confidence and take action. Guest: Dr. Poornima Luthra is an author, keynote and Tedx speaker, business consultant, and leading practitioner-academic in the field of talent management and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). As a senior faculty at Imperial Business School and external faculty at Copenhagen Business School, she bridges cutting-edge scholarship with real-world impact. She draws on eighteen years of research, teaching experience, and expertise in the field of talent management and DEI in Asia and Europe. She is the author of Leading Through Bias; The Art of Active Allyship; and Diversifying Diversity, and contributor to Harvard Business Review. Can I Say That? was named as one of the 10 best new management books of 2025. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Doing The Work of Equity Leadership For Justice And Systems Change How To Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences What Might Be Transforming HSIs for Equity and Justice Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women Ivory Tower We Are Not Dreamers Jumping Through Hoops Speaking While Female Leading From The Margins Gay On God's Campus Empathy Takes Action 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/public-policy

In this episode of the New Books Network, I spoke with Dr Olga Burlyuk and Dr Ladan Rahbari about their new edited volume, From the Margins: Migrant Academics' Narratives of Precarity (Open Book Publishers, 2026). The book is open access. As universities promote internationalisation while maintaining labour systems that leave many migrant scholars vulnerable, this volume builds on the editors' 2023 collection (also featured on New Books Network) by incorporating global perspectives. Through personal and autoethnographic narratives, contributors examine visa insecurity, institutional exclusion, racialisation, loneliness, and overwork, while also highlighting joy, solidarity, and “resilience”. By treating lived experience as critical knowledge, From the Margins offers a strong critique of contemporary academia and invites readers to consider whom universities serve, whose labour sustains them, and what a more equitable academic future could look like. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Religion and Theology within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research examines the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, particularly within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Kristian Williams, longtime activist and writer, joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book Policing the Progressive City: Portland, Oregon, from Settlement to Uprising" (AK Press, 2026) about police reform in Portland. Billed as perhaps the nation's most “progressive” city, Williams explores how “law and order” in Portland has been shaped for over two hundred years by business interests, political climbers, and social campaigners — as well as its history of mass resistance to police brutality. Highlights include: The contrast between image and reality in Portland's history of policing; Portland's role as an experimental site of police reform in the 20th century; When community policing arrived in Portland and how it shaped the city's progressive image; How the city's history of activism against both police brutality and fascism influenced events during the George Floyd Summer in 2020. Guest: Kristian Williams has been writing about and organizing against the police since the mid 1990s. He is the author of seven books, including Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, and lives in Portland, Oregon. Host: 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/public-policy

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/public-policy

If governments provide financial support for affordable housing, should they provide support for inhabitants directly, or rather for the construction of dwellings? Dr. Max Krahé and Sara Schulte both work for the German economic think tank Dezernat Zukunft, and they aim to answer this question by looking at the past. In this interview we discuss the research design, the conclusions, and also what policy implications they draw from their analysis. Want to know more? You can find everything about this housing analysis on Dezernat Zukunft. Additionally, Max Krahé provides an overview of Dr. Krahé's research projects. Geert Slabbekoorn works as a policy officer in the field of housing. In his free time he juggles, raises kids, and improves his languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Erica Bornstein, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon (and Divisional Associate Dean), has a new book that delves into the regulatory reforms within the nonprofit sector in India. These reforms transpired over more than a decade, and Bornstein spent extended time developing this ethnographic study of not only the changes, but the institutional structures that manage nonprofit organizations and how the various regulatory decisions are made. The research explores the ways in which these changes happened, exploring the various actors within the discussions, and evaluating the process of change within the nonprofit sector in India. A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India's Nonprofit Sector (Stanford UP, 2025) is a deeply researched undertaking, paying attention not only to the shifts and changes that were happening in New Delhi, at the seat of the national government, but also in towns and communities in other parts of India, where similar dialogue and processes were also happening, and where the results of so many of these changes could be seen as they moved into implementation. In order to think through the analysis in A Revolution of Rules we must also think about the nonprofit sector as a significant part of political structure in India (and elsewhere). As we discuss in our conversation, there are essentially three sectors, the government or the public sector, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector. Each sector is managed differently and operates towards different ends. But part of the role of the nonprofit sector is to provide capacity where the public sector may not be able to or is not able to fulfill demands. This space, where the rules and regulations are being revised, reformed, and rewritten is where, in a very interesting way, democracy is happening. These are civil society organizations, embedded within the structure of political and economic outcomes, but distinct from both sectors. Since these groups are not aiming at making a profit, the regulatory regime is in a kind of counterpoint to capitalism, and thus in need of different kinds of rules regimes. This is where various stakeholders are coming together to negotiate with each as to how best to manage nonprofits, which are not all the same by any measure, and have different goals, different funding streams, different processes, and different policy formats. This makes the process of regulation complex, since there are constellations of parts that fall under differing kinds of management. This undertaking, designing modes of regulation and policy processes, is not an exercise in creating red tape as much as it is designing processes to achieve important goals and capacities. Bornstein explains that writing policy of this kind, that writing laws is actually writing the future, or as she notes in the book, “writing the horizon”—writing what will happen. With this in mind, A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India's Nonprofit Sector provides the reader with a fascinating exploration of how these organizations operate and how they can best be managed, especially with the aim of achieving benefits for individuals and society as a whole. 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/public-policy

The field of Strategic Studies, which studies the use and threat of force for political purposes, has seen the repeated rise of concepts to dominate discourses and research agendas, only to eventually fall to the margins again. What explains this cyclical pattern? What are the consequences for our understanding of war?Reconceptualizing War: The Rise and Fall of Fashionable Concepts in Strategic Studies (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Chiara Libiseller examines these questions by likening the coming and going of theories to fashions. While in vogue, fashionable concepts are used widely, becoming broader and vaguer until essentially stripped of meaning. At the same time, they are bestowed with authority and power that allows them to withstand criticism and marginalizes alternative perspectives. These characteristics severely affect the quality, depth, and diversity of research by narrowing and siloing the field of inquiry.Tracing three concepts—revolution in military affairs, counterinsurgency, and hybrid warfare—through their fashion lifecycle, Dr. Libiseller demonstrates how fashionability affects the concepts themselves, related research, and the field more generally. Embedded within a discussion of the history and dynamics of Strategic Studies, the book calls for more reflexivity in the study of war and strategy. 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/public-policy

In a world shaken by crises, why does the dollar continue to dominate? In Dollar Dominance: Why It Rules the Global Economy and How to Challenge It (Policy Press, 2025) Photis Lysandrou explores the interaction between global instability and the enduring strength of the dollar. Drawing on examples from the 2008 Great Financial Crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the author reveals how uncertainty and instability in global trade, production and politics drives investors towards the safety of the dollar, reinforcing its dominance over other currencies. With clear and insightful analysis, Lysandrou reveals the true global financial foundations of dollar dominance, and lays out what it would take for other currencies such as the Euro to challenge its position Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics. For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national development. While the illicit opium trade is infamous, the history of licit opium--how it was farmed, refined, and used to build modern medicine and shape state power--has remained largely untold.Drawing on archival sources from Asia, Europe, and the United States, Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers (Oxford UP, 2026) traces the global arc of licit opium from poppy fields and processing plants in India, Turkey, and Australia to the clinics and laboratories of modern medicine. It shows how both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic treated the opium poppy as a national resource and a means of securing global stature. In postcolonial India, by contrast, nationalist leaders initially rejected opium's imperial legacy before embracing its strategic value amid the shifting currents of the Cold War. At the heart of this story are the cultivators, scientists, bureaucrats, and policymakers who shaped the licit opium trade and grappled with its far-reaching consequences. Their work and visions demonstrate how colonial empires and postcolonial states helped forge the global pharmaceutical industry as it struggled to govern a drug it could not abandon.Markets of Pain reveals how a seemingly marginal crop became an unlikely engine of modernization, a tool of Cold War geopolitics, and a harbinger of today's global opioid crisis. Blending vivid scenes from opium's fields and factories with incisive analysis of scientific and diplomatic archives, Benjamin Robert Siegel recovers a buried history with urgent relevance for global supply chains, international power, and public health. Markets of Pain offers an account of the global drug trade in the twentieth century, focusing on the transformation of opium from a colonial commodity into a modern resource for the American and European pharmaceutical industries. Challenging simplistic ideas of licit and illicit drugs in the twentieth century, it reveals how the modern global drug regime was formed by India and Turkey's navigation of the international anti-opium movement, the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, and the complex relationship between agriculture, medicine, and global capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite (U California Press, 2026), by Dr. Rachel Grace Newman is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Dr. Newman unveils the social hierarchies, political languages, and institutional mechanisms that created Mexico's foreign-educated elite. Study abroad began as a private phenomenon for young elites to acquire specific forms of knowledge and to preserve their status. But after the 1910 revolution, elites gradually convinced the Mexican state, under the guise of modernizing the nation, to underwrite their ambitions with merit-based scholarships. Student mobility naturalized the expectation that Mexico's sovereignty and development required knowledge from elsewhere. For historians of Mexico and other countries with foreign-educated elites, this open-access book reveals the subtle, insidious processes by which states reinforce privilege through education policy. 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/public-policy

Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm—from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency. With clarity and urgency, Sylvain dismantles the libertarian mythology that shaped internet law and calls for a new legal regime that protects users over platforms. Recovering the Internet is a powerful, original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time—what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere. Find out more here Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student and law student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake's work has been published in top venues such as ACM's CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Permafrost melts, desert cities boil, inland lakes dry up; but Waltham too in its own way has become one of the dark places of the earth. Adverse manmade climate change is seeping into basements everywhere, and a wonderful new research project, “Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory” (that website launches very soon) counts some of the ways. John is joined by two Brandeis colleagues who spearheaded the project and supplied some of the local interviews that bring climate change dynamics vividly to life. Danielle Jacques is at work on a dissertation exploring the social and spatial dynamics of the renewable energy transition. Rachel McKane is Assistant Professor of Sociology with interests in community-based approaches to environmental justice through networks of solidarity and mutual aid, and articles in such journals as Environmental Research Letters, Environmental Justice, Environmental Sociology, and Local Environment. We also hear from Mark and from Colleen (about peaches!) in this episode. Mentioned in the episode Follow the project's growth at Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory. Or read about its origins in a local newspaper story here. John Dittmer, Local People Victorian neighborhood class proximity maps of London include the famous Booth "poverty maps." Yuki Kato, Gardens of Hope. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today. Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivated its own distinct strategies for survival that became the surprising and lasting blueprint for LGBTQ politics today. Though AIDS cases were relatively low compared to the coasts, the conservative political and religious landscape, lack of medical infrastructure, and diffuse gay communities brought Midwesterners together in unexpected ways. Unearthing this complex story, health activism expert Katie Batza masterfully illustrates the diversity, resilience, innovation, and influence of the Midwest's responses to the AIDS epidemic. Katie Batza is chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s. Their research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States. Donna Doan Anderson is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Maile Aihua Young is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

By exploring the dynamic relationships between politics, policymaking, and policy over time, Climate Politics: Can't Live with It, Can't Mitigate without It (Cambridge UP, 2026) aims to explain why climate change mitigation is so political, and why politics is also indispensable in enacting real change. It argues that politics is poorly understood and often sidelined in research and policy circles, which is an omission that must be rectified, because the policies that we rely on to drive down greenhouse gas emissions are deeply inter-connected with political and social contexts. Incorporating insights from political economy, socio-technical transitions, and public policy, this book provides a framework for understanding the role of specific ideas, interests, and institutions in shaping and driving sustainable change. The chapters present examples at global, national, and local scales, spanning from the 1990s to 2020s. This volume will prove valuable for graduate students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the politics and policy of climate change. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In this episode Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Alba Kapoor. Kapoor is the racial justice lead at Amnesty International UK and previously led the policy team at the Runnymede Trust. Alba Kapoor shared the cutting edge work that Amnesty International UK is leading around racial justice, the surveilling of black and brown communities in the UK through existing policy infrastructure such as Prevent, or new and emergent facial recognition technologies. She also discussed forthcoming research from Amnesty examining the silencing of pro-Palestine narratives in academic contexts and the broader questions that this raises around freedoms and rights. Finally, Kapoor linked this to the pressing issues posed by the growth of the far-right in the UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Miranda Yaver's new book, Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States (Cambridge UP, 2026), has lots of examples and incidents that will seem quite familiar to anyone who has dealt with health insurance coverage in the United States. In a sense, this book speaks to everyone because we have all been in situations like the ones that Yaver hears about from her interviewees. We know what it is like to have a test or a scan or a prescription ordered by a medical professional for us only to have an insurance company tell us that we cannot have that test or scan or medicine. Yaver dives into this quagmire and unearths the constellations of causes and reasons why this is now the essential operating process for much of American health insurance. By unpacking these causes and reasons, Coverage Denied clarifies so many of our experiences and helps us to think about the myriad ways in which health insurers and health insurance contribute to inequality in the United States, across a range of dimensions including race, socio-economic position, gender, sexuality, ability, and more. Part of what Yaver's research finds is that very few individuals appeal coverage denials with their insurance companies. The question becomes one of who is denied coverage or tests or prescriptions, and who is going to try to access the means for getting those denials reversed. This is part of the administrative burden that is not equally distributed, given different economic, disability, employment, and family situations. Thus, the appeals process is part of the driver of inequality in terms of healthcare and healthcare coverage. The findings also note that women are more likely to be denied coverage than are men, in part because women often make more use of healthcare than do men. But this inequity translates across minoritized groups, including those who are disabled and sick, of lower economic status, and/or are Black or Hispanic. Thus, the access to medical care is distributed unequally across a number of different vectors. The denial of coverage, thus the denial of care, also leaves the medical professionals in a quandary as well, since they are unsure of what to prescribe and what is likely to actually happen for a patient. Thus, those trying to prescribe different kinds of care, be it tests or prescriptions or interventions, have little certainty that their patients will receive what the prescribing individual intends for them. While the initial reason behind coverage assessments and the requirement for prior authorization was cost containment, the results, at this point, are a system that often does not work for those who need medical assistance and for the medical professionals working with their patients. Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States is a patient-centered book in that it focuses on the experiences of patients as they try to work their way through this distorted and obtuse system, but it also brings in the perspective of medical providers because they are often equally lost in terms of knowing what kind of care their patients can and do receive. This book is as must read for anyone who is interested in the way healthcare and health insurance operate in the United States, and why these issues, policies, and processes are often so confusing and confounding. Coverage Denied can be purchased at The White Whale Bookstore in Pittsburgh, PA. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University. She is co-host of New Books in Political Science. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics. 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/public-policy

Stephen Sims' New Atlantis essay examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the structure and authority of the modern nation-state. He argues that innovations such as artificial intelligence, drones, and networked warfare are weakening the traditional link between territorial control and the projection of power, enabling smaller actors to operate with unprecedented reach. At the same time, advanced states are enhancing their internal capabilities through data-driven governance and automation, increasing their ability to monitor and manage populations. This dynamic creates a paradox in which states grow more powerful domestically while becoming more vulnerable externally. Sims contends that sovereignty is fragmenting, with authority dispersing both to non-state actors and to transnational technological systems. The result is not the end of the nation-state, but its evolution into a more contested, uneven, and technologically mediated form. Stephen Sims is associate professor of political science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy