New Books in 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

In this sixth episode of Season 5, I interview Mr. Chris Griswold. An alum of Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was formerly a senior advisor to then Senator Marco Rubio, and is currently the Policy Director for American Compass—a leading center-right public policy think-tank. Recently, he contributed to the book, The New Conservatives (2025), an anthology edited by his colleague, Oren Cass, that re-articulates a conservative economic vision for the country. Drawing on it, we discuss the crisis of America's political economy, from questions surrounding current AI, automation, and the end of free trade; political instability and populism; how economic policy can best serve American workers and families; and what makes us hopeful for the country's future during its 250th anniversary. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison's Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they've sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd's and Sandra Bland's, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence (Beacon Press, 2025) reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circumstances of in-custody deaths. Through rigorous research—including critical records analysis, public health studies, and interviews with victims' families—this book unmasks the systemic failures within forensic medicine. Dr. Terence Keel shows how incomplete autopsy reports, mishandled medical documents, and strategically lost evidence effectively shield law enforcement from accountability.The Coroner's Silence uncovers how the current system of death investigation operates as a mechanism of institutional safeguarding. By highlighting the structural powerlessness of coroners and their disconnection from the communities most affected by police violence, Dr. Keel demonstrates how bureaucratic processes can render human suffering invisible. True accountability requires more than procedural reform. It demands a fundamental reimagining of how we investigate, document, and understand deaths at the hands of state institutions. The Coroner's Silence is a crucial intervention that challenges us to confront the deeply ingrained mechanisms that perpetuate systemic violence. Our guest is: Dr. Terence Keel, who is an award-winning scholar, the founding director of the BioCritical Studies Lab, and a professor of human biology, society, and African-American studies at UCLA. He received fellowships from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health, and is the author of Divine Variations, and The Coroner's Silence. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: The Criminal Record Complex Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine Carceral Apartheid Stitching Freedom Secrets of the Killing State Freemans Challenge Hands Up Don't Shoot What Might Be The Journal of Higher Education in Prison Education Behind The Wall 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

Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases (Springer, 2026) examines one of the most important questions in peace research: What leads to enduring peace after civil wars, and what leads to the resurgence of violence? For decades, intrastate conflicts have been the predominant form of armed conflict, and most recent civil wars were conflicts that recurred. The research presented in this book focuses on influenceable factors, first and foremost on the type of civil war termination and on the post-civil war order that is shaped by the distribution of military power between the former warring parties and the scale of political compromise. Moreover, it shows that the peacekeeping environment has a major influence on whether peace endures.The insights provided in this book are relevant for the academic community, and for decision-makers and practitioners involved in civilian or military efforts to establish and preserve peace. Thorsten Gromes is a Project Leader and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt's (PRIF) Research Department Intra­state Conflicts. His research focuses on post-civil war societies and so-called humani­tarian military inter­ventions. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recommendations: Sixteen Million One: Understanding Civil War by Patrick M. Regan How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them by Barbara Walter Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace by Christopher Blattman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

An expansive treatise on the power relations that govern our movement The Citizen and the Vagabond: A Politics of Mobility (U Minnesota Press, 2026) develops a theoretical approach to the study of mobility and its relationship to the production, maintenance, and transformation of social and cultural hierarchies. Expanding upon his foundational work on the subject, Tim Cresswell examines human movement from around the globe to better understand the various forms of inequality and injustice that shape our lives. Establishing a framework for movement in terms of rhythm, speed, routes, and friction, Cresswell extends these themes to address the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, exploring what this turbulent period reveals to us about the politics of mobility. He demonstrates that while flexibility and ease of movement are typically considered markers of personal freedom, increased mobility brings with it new modes of control and surveillance. As he investigates the hierarchies and embodied experiences that emerge amid these tensions, Cresswell employs two figures: the citizen, whose mobility within and across borders is expected and accepted, and the vagabond, whose perpetual mobility is deemed suspect and in need of ordering. An interdisciplinary intervention into the study of mobility and citizenship, The Citizen and the Vagabond provides a new set of coordinates from which to grasp the shifting dynamics of movement and power. 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 consequences of U.S. border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants. Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds (U California Press, 2026) Amelia Frank-Vitale offers a detailed portrait of the Honduran exodus and what it reveals about the broader consequences of changing US border enforcement policies. She highlights the stories of those who are often presented as unsympathetic: deported young men implicitly associated with the very violence they are trying to flee. In the process, she challenges underlying assumptions frequently held by policy makers and humanitarian agencies. Connecting overlapping regimes of mobility control, from the invisible gangland borders within San Pedro Sula to the growing expansiveness of the U.S. border's reach, this book shows how deportation does not deter migration but, in fact, keeps people moving, and how U.S. policies fuel the migration "crisis" they claim to address. Drawing from her own experiences accompanying migrant caravans over many years, Frank-Vitale also explores how caravans emerge as both protest movement and migration tactic in response to this expanding border regime. 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 Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women (Duke UP, 2026) examines U.S. laws designed to rescue immigrant survivors from gender and sexual violence only if they agree to cooperate with policing. Drawing upon ethnographic stories with legal and social service advocates who work with Asian immigrant women, the book engages abolition feminisms and antiblackness to critique "victim" as a genre of the human in law and produced through racial configurations of the model minority myth and the good/bad immigrant paradigm. Author Lee Ann S. Wang is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies. She is also a Co-PI on the research initiative, Anti-Asian Violence: Origins and Trajectories, housed at UC Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Around the globe, far-right political parties and movements are on the march, winning popular support, legislative seats, and presidencies--and stoking widespread fears of the revival of fascism. What to make of this terrifying drift? In this timely, deeply researched, and deftly argued examination of far-right politics today, the political scientist David Ost shows that to grasp the very real threat of resurgent fascism, we must look beyond the extreme examples of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy lest we miss the growing strength--and the distinctly populist appeal--of today's far right. Instead, drawing on a wide range of compelling contemporary and historical examples, Ost shows that we must understand the current global movement as part of a new political category, which he calls "Red Pill Politics" in reference to the right-wing meme which purports to peel back the facade of liberal hegemony. While Red Pill Politics exhibits many features of classical fascism--racial exclusion, xenophobic fearmongering, enforcement of rigid gender roles--contemporary far-right parties have won power not through violence and mass repression, but through anti-elite, populist rhetoric and elections. For readers of Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works, Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today's Far Right (New Press, 2026) draws on meticulous historical research and analysis of contemporary far-right politics to help us understand and fight one of today's most pressing political threats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. 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 Politics of Failed Policies (Oxford UP, 2025) examines how the interplay of politics and data affects when failed policies get recognized. It shows how compelling data and analysis is an important political tool for highlighting failure. Importantly, the research demonstrates how data and analysis themselves are the products of political processes and reflections of those in power. Using case studies from education and juvenile criminal justice and tax policy, the book makes a theoretical contribution to the study of policymaking, state politics, and the role of knowledge and information in contemporary American politics. 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 fifty years of changemaking and reform haven't fixed Congress—and what that reveals about American democracy. Congress, the central democratic institution in the United States, is hanging on by a thread. On January 6, 2021, a violent attack on the Capitol Building left five people dead, and threats and attacks against politicians are on the rise. In Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress (JHU Press, 2026), Maya Kornberg chronicles the efforts of congressional reformers over the last fifty years and documents the mounting forces that have kept their reforms from creating meaningful change. The "Watergate babies" of 1974, the Contract with America conservatives of 1994, and the historic 2018 class fueled by backlash to Donald Trump all represent younger, more diverse, and less entrenched members who arrived in Washington energized and idealistic. Kornberg reveals the ways Congress has become increasingly inhospitable to change. Political violence, astronomical campaign costs, relentless fundraising demands, shrinking staff, and centralized party leadership all constrain the ability of new members to legislate and represent their constituents. Social media, while offering new platforms for political expression, has also heightened harassment and fed a performative culture that rewards spectacle over substance. Bolstered by dozens of interviews, congressional records, and the voices of lawmakers past and present—including Henry Waxman, Toby Moffett, Phil English, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Lauren Underwood—Stuck offers a sobering portrait of a legislative body paralyzed by its own internal dynamics. Kornberg outlines tangible reforms that could restore Congress's capacity to function and amplify the power of its newest members. At a time when Americans are losing faith in democracy's most representative institution, Stuck makes the case for how it could be saved. Host Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the US. A former British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, she is the author of the award-winning book,America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Maya Kornberg is Senior Fellow and Manager in the Elections and Government program at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice. Her first book Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process (Columbia University Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the 2025 WJM Mackenzie Book Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—and thus denying opportunities to those who need them most. In The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America (Princeton UP, 2025), Melissa Burch sheds light on one of the most significant forces of social and economic marginalization of our time—discrimination on the basis of criminal records. Chronicling the daily interactions of hiring managers, workforce development professionals, and job-seekers with felony convictions in Southern California, Dr. Burch shows that this discrimination is not simply a matter of employer bias. Hiring is shaped by a set of institutions, organizations, and industries that promote the erroneous idea that people with criminal records are dangerous to employ. This “criminal record complex,” as Dr. Burch names it, encourages exclusion and undermines employers' common-sense ways of assessing candidates. In vivid and intimate detail, Dr. Burch reveals both the futility and devastating human consequences of discriminatory policies.Dr. Burch places today's routine practice of background screening within racialized notions of risk originating in early capitalist development, tracing how, over decades, criminal background checks became a convenient catch-all, leveraged by entities with a direct interest in growing the practice. Despite this reach, however, Dr. Burch discovers that small business owners tend to put less value on background checks, trusting their own judgment. Approaching the issue from both personal and policy perspectives, The Criminal Record Complex upends what we thought we knew about the causes of criminal record discrimination. It suggests that our best hope for creating safe workplaces lies not in the false promise of background screening, but in building the kinds of economies and communities that support true safety. Our guest is: Dr. Melissa Burch, who is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and Director of the Afterlives of Conviction Project. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and editor for academics. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine Carceral Apartheid Freemans Challenge Hands Up Don't Shoot The Names of all the Flowers The Journal of Higher Education in Prison Black Boy Out of Time Secrets of the Killing State 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 Twenty-Two Cents an Hour: Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages (Cornell UP, 2022), Doug Crandell uncovers the harsh reality of people with disabilities in the United States who are forced to work in unethical conditions for subminimum wages with little or no opportunity to advocate for themselves, while wealthy CEOs grow even wealthier as a direct result. As recently as 2016, the United States Congress enacted bipartisan legislation which continued to allow workers with disabilities to legally be paid far lower than the federal minimum wage. Drawing on ongoing federal Department of Justice lawsuits, the horrifying story of Henry's Turkey Farm in Iowa, and more, Crandell shows the history of the policies that have led to these unjust outcomes, examines who benefits from this legislation, and asks important questions about the rise of a disability industrial complex. Exposing this complex—which is rooted in profit, lobbying, and playing on the emotions of workers' parents and families, as well as the public—Crandell challenges readers to reexamine how we treat some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens. Twenty-Two Cents an Hour forces the reader to face the reality of this exploitation, and builds the framework needed for reform. Doug Crandell is Public Service Faculty at the Institute on Human Development and Disability at the University of Georgia. For more than thirty years he has worked in disability advocacy, specifically the intersection of employment, economic justice, and much-needed systems change. Doug Crandell is the author of several book and novels, inlcuding most recently "They're Calling You Home." My co-producer for this episode is Shea Tripp, a graduate student in the Department of Communication, Journalism and Public Relations at Oakland 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

What happens when theories of racial hierarchies interact with reality? How are they contested, refuted and changed in light of that encounter? What role do experts, most notably social scientists, play here? And, what can these historical encounters tell us about how we should think of race and migration today? These are the questions which animate Sunmin Kim's The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate (U Chicago Press, 2026). Taking as his focus the Dillingham Commission, a US government investigation into migrant groups established in 1907, Kim shows how theories of racial essentialism, which increasing were moving across the, at the time blurry, boundary between biology and society were used and contested in a moment when prominent political figures were eager to separate out the valued, long-established migrants from Western and Central Europe from those coming from Eastern and Southern Europe who all, on the face of it, were ‘white'. In doing so ideas such as ethnicity and the possibility of assimilation come to be mobilised. In turn Japanese migrants on the Pacific coast were placed beyond the pale of this possibility of assimilation and continued to be excluded. As Kim shows, not only did the commission report introduce some new vocabulary for thinking of race, but also played a key role in the development of US immigration quotas and a form of racial liberalism. This perspective, while accepting the possibility of a diverse body politic, rested on an assumption of a ‘native' and ‘non-native' element, including the possibility that some of the latter simply could never be ‘American'. In our discussion we discuss the formation and activity of the Dillingham Commission. This includes discussing a number of key figures, such as Franz Boas who measures skulls for the commission and in so doing uses the same tools of the eugenicists and positivists to undercut their racist claims and Yamato Ichihashi who, while vociferously making the case that Japanese migrants such as himself are the ideal ‘Americans' ends up being an example of the ‘insurmountable difference' placed in front of such groups. We end by discussing how Zora Neale Hurston, once Boas's student, provides a different way of conceiving of race and its place in immigration debates. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of The Anthem Companion to Henri Lefebvre (2026, Anthem Press) along with other texts. 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 powerful blend of deeply human stories and rigorous research, The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health (Beacon Press, 2026) reveals how social and structural factors like income, occupation, race and ethnicity, neighborhood conditions, and social connections, profoundly shape our well-being. Dr. Monica Wang, an award-winning public health researcher, educator, and working mother who came of age as an Asian American bussing student, brings a personal lens to these complex issues and shares a hopeful, action-oriented vision for building healthier communities from the ground up.Through her own personal and professional journey and the lives of 3 extraordinary women across the US, readers are invited to see how health is shaped in everyday spaces: Marielis, a first-generation Latina student navigating financial insecurity in the Bronx; Dorothy, a semi-retired Black community organizer in rural Alabama; and Rosa, an Indigenous clinical social worker preserving ancestral traditions in Texas. With clarity, urgency, and optimism, The Collective Cure bridges powerful storytelling with evidence-based solutions. More than a diagnosis, this book is a call to reimagine what's possible when we invest in people and places. Our guest is: Dr. Monica L. Wang, who is an award-winning public health researcher and educator. She is an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, an adjunct associate professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and executive editor at Public Health Post. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and developmental editor. She produces and hosts the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Womanist Bioethics The Well-Gardened Mind Community-Building Breaking free from overworking and underliving The Burnout Workbook Reproductive Justice A Meaningful Life Being Well in Academia The Good- Enough Life Gender Bias in the E.R. 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 scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster, by the bestselling authors of Overshoot The world is crossing the 1.5°C global warming limit, perhaps exceeding 2°C soon after. What is to be done when these boundaries, set by the Paris Agreement, have been passed? In the overshoot era, schemes proliferate for muscular adaptation or for new technologies to turn the heat down at a later date by re­moving CO2 from the air or blocking sunlight. Such technologies are by no means safe; they come with immense risks and provide an excuse for those who would prefer to avoid limiting emissions in the present. But do they also hold out some potential? Can the catastrophe be reversed, masked or simply adapted to once it is a fact? Or will any such round­about measures simply make things worse?The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It's Too Late (Verso Books, 2025)maps the new front lines in the struggle for a liveable planet and insists on the climate revolution long overdue. In the end, no technology can absolve us of responsibility for our planet and each other. Cody Skahan is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford as a recipient of a Grand Union ESRC doctoral training partnership. His work focuses on the intersections of people, the environment, and technology. Currently, he is focusing on the emergence of carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal, as well as running a series of public engagement workshops across the UK and the Arctic around the topic of geoengineering. 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 of the world's iconic coastal cities, Boston faces potentially severe impacts from climate change. Depending on global emissions, Boston could face several feet of sea level rise this century, which would leave many parts of the city subject to tidal and storm flooding. Precipitation events could become more frequent and extreme, and its already-humid summers could become dangerously hot, with most days over 90 degrees. Today, Boston is a booming city with a growing population, a glittering new waterfront neighborhood, world-class universities and a strong economy. Its future risks and opportunities related to climate change are shaped by the 400-year environmental, social and economic history of the city's development. As part of Anthem's series, Climate Change and the Future of Boston (Anthem Press, 2026) by Dr. Courtney Humphries describes how Boston's history and current context shape future climate impacts and examines the mitigation and adaptation strategies the city has taken. Boston is a leader in acknowledging the problem of climate change; it has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, among other climate-related goals. It has also developed science-based climate models and undertaken a robust planning process to identify strategies to protect its waterfront from flooding and increase its resilience to other climate-related impacts. Its mayor has embraced a progressive Green New Deal for Boston emphasizing the need for an inclusive and equitable approach to climate mitigation and adaptation. But the city also faces structural challenges, such as aging infrastructure, historic racial inequities, rising gentrification and income inequality and ongoing political and regulatory obstacles that hinder efforts to adapt in an efficient and just manner. The book concludes with a set of forward-looking scenarios about what the future may have in store for the city and the lessons it holds for other coastal cities struggling with these challenges. 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

How the urban-rural divide drives partisan polarization Why have Americans living in different places come to experience politics as a battle between “us” and “them”? In Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy (Princeton UP, 2025) Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown argue that political polarization is not just about red states and blue states, or coastal elites who alienate those in fly-over country. Instead, polarization permeates every region and every state—and has become organized through a pernicious rural-urban division. Mettler and Brown explain the evolution of this gulf across five decades, charting political trends in both places. Drawing on data on individuals, communities, and members of Congress, as well as interviews with local party leaders and former elected officials, they show how the divide emerged and why it poses a threat to democracy. Until about thirty years ago, both political parties attracted support from rural and urban voters. But after place-based inequality grew due to deregulation and trade liberalization, white rural dwellers began to view urban people and Democrats as affluent elites out of touch with their needs. Politically active evangelical churches, antiabortion organizations, and gun groups helped deepen the divide, encouraging many of these rural residents to become staunch supporters of the GOP. Now, regional one-party rule in rural America gives Republicans a systematic edge for gaining control of crucial political institutions, including the Senate, House of Representatives, the Presidency, and even the Supreme Court. This is helping enable an extremist political party and pushing democracy to the brink. Mettler and Brown argue that the divide can be repaired—but only if the Democrats build their own robust local organizations and offer citizens a meaningful choice. Host Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the US. A former British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, she is the author of the award-winning book,America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Trevor Brown is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. In Fall 2026, he will join the University of Oregon's Department of Political Science as Assistant Professor of Inequality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Worker Centered: Allyship & Action in the Contemporary Labor Movement (Oxford UP, 2024) is a close-to-the-ground, ethnographic narrative of a workplace organizing campaign at a company whose workforce was primarily low wage and immigrant. The book details the overall strategy of the campaign and its ultimate failure to win its core demands. The organization used an innovative strategic model and insisted on the importance of worker leadership. And yet allies and staff participated in a campaign that, although continually framed as such, was decidedly not led by workers. Ultimately, Worker Centered challenges conventional notions of political representation, inviting reflection on the complexities of organizing the marginalized and speaking on their behalf. Our guest Biko Koenig is an Assistant Professor in the Government and Public Policy programs at Franklin & Marshall college in Lancaster, PA. He is also co-founder of Research Action, a worker-owned research and organizing firm that performs research and analysis for unions, solidarity economy organizations, community groups and social justice campaigns. Trained as an ethnographer and qualitative specialist at the New School for Social Research, Koenig's research investigates questions of political behavior and mobilization that centers the experiences of everyday actors as they seek to challenge status-quo power relationships. My co-host today is Joe Zerilli, and MA student in the Communication program at Oakland 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

Fifty years of changemaking and reform haven't fixed Congress—what does that reveal about American democracy? In Stuck: How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress, Maya Kornberg chronicles the efforts of congressional reformers over the last fifty years and documents the mounting forces that have kept their reforms from creating meaningful change. Dr. Kornberg reveals how political violence, astronomical campaign costs, relentless fundraising demands, shrinking staff, and centralized party leadership all constrain the ability of new members to legislate and represent their constituents. Social media, while offering new platforms for political expression, has also heightened harassment and fed a performative culture that rewards spectacle over substance. Bolstered by dozens of interviews, congressional records, and the voices of lawmakers past and present—including Henry Waxman, Toby Moffett, Phil English, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Lauren Underwood—Stuck offers a sobering portrait of a legislative body paralyzed by its own internal dynamics. Dr. Kornberg outlines tangible reforms that could restore Congress's capacity to function and amplify the power of its newest members. At a time when Americans are losing faith in democracy's most representative institution, Stuck makes the case for how it could be saved. A Neuroscientist's Guide to a Healthier, Happier Life Our guest is: Dr. Maya Kornberg, who is a senior research fellow and manager in the Brennan Center's Elections and Government Program. She's taught political science at NYU, Georgetown and American University, worked on democratic governance issues at numerous institutions, and led research for a UNDP and IPU project examining civic engagement in the work of over 80 parliaments around the world. She is the author of Stuck. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Bears and Ballots House of Diggs The Fight To Save The Town The End of White Politics Understanding Disinformation You Are Not American The Vice-President's Black Wife You Have More Influence Than You Think We Refuse Dear Miss Perkins 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 Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2026), philosopher Jacob Stegenga breaks with the most dominant epistemologies of science to argue that in judging scientific activity, we should focus on its justification, not the achievement of truth or knowledge. Yet, Stegenga argues, the aim of science goes far beyond justification and is, instead, a special kind of truth—common knowledge, a broadly shared and mutually justified scientific finding. Drawing on both historical examples and recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic, Stegenga outlines his approach before delving into its implications for scientific evaluation, testimony, values, progress, and credit, as well as the nature of science during times of crisis. Truth, he shows, may not be easily identified in the short term. However, an evaluation of scientific justification, grounded in shared standards, is possible. This framework helps us appraise—and appreciate—historical theories that ultimately weren't accurate and offers fresh insights about appropriate science communication and public trust in scientific research. Justification and scientific rigor are not just means to an end, Stegenga writes, but the very heart of good science.Ambitious, authoritative, and accessible, Heart of Science offers a new vision for the philosophy of science. Jacob Stegenga is professor of philosophy in the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of Medical Nihilism and Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine 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 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkArtCulture 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 push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Existing policies won't limit global heating to anything close to a safe level. Claims of sustainability disguise a zero-sum battle where the powerful profit and everyone else foots the bill. Green growth was supposed to bring increased wealth for all. Instead, work has been degraded, energy bills have soared, and the most basic necessities have become expensive and scarce. We need to disrupt green capitalism. In Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition (Verso, 2025), Nicholas Beuret follows those already fighting back through ‘don't pay' campaigns, blockades of fossil-fuel infrastructure, and community counter-planning. He shows we have the tools not only to stop climate change but to build a fairer future. Nicholas Beuret is a lecturer in environmental politics and economic geography at the University of Essex. With a background in both activism and academia, he explores the intersections of climate change, capitalism, and social justice. His work has been featured in the Guardian, The Ecologist, Open Democracy, and Undercurrents. Nicholas lives in the UK, where he continues to write, teach, and engage in environmental advocacy. Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) researching the political economy of nitrogen fertilizer supply chains. 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 Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights (Legacy Lit, 2026) reporter Amy Littlefield investigates the secret killers and hidden motives behind the death of abortion rights. They are going to kill people, investigative reporter for The Nation Littlefield knew, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As a journalist covering abortion for more than a decade, she had already chronicled many near-death experiences caused by anti-abortion policy. After the anti-abortion movement's staggering defeat of Roe, she became fascinated with their victory and why they seemed so much better organized than the pro-choice movement. She set out to investigate the murderers of Roe. Killers of Roe chronicles Littlefield's journey into the unexplored corners of the most successful social movement of our time. As in every good murder mystery, the killers turn out to be the people you least suspect, like a disgraced former Congressman obsessed with offshore tax evasion and an unknown suburban bureaucrat who wrote America's most diabolical anti-abortion policy. She reports from a sweaty presidential tour bus in DC, a chaotic Michigan courtroom where a former fetus thief is on trial, and a Texas town that rejects an abortion travel ban. She encounters surprising characters who shed light on how we got to this moment of authoritarian rule: from the pro-choice superfans she meets at the Reagan library to the Senator who couldn't stop kissing every woman he met. Along the way, Amy draws upon the stories of women who have died from anti-abortion policies and on her own experience as a mother to reveal the life-and-death stakes of America's abortion wars. At once clever and poignant reportage, this abortion whodunnit uncovers the deeper story of how we lost Roe--and how we can win back so much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Many of us take diapers for granted. Yet diaper insecurity is a common, often hidden consequence of poverty in the US, where nearly half of American families with young children struggle to get enough diapers. Drawing on interviews with mothers dealing with this overlooked issue, in Living Diaper to Diaper: The Hidden Crisis of Poverty and Motherhood (U California Press, 2026) Dr. Jennifer Randles shows how diapers have unique practical and symbolic significance for the well-being of families. Tracing the social history of diapering, Randles unravels a complex story of caregiving inequalities, the environmental impacts of child-rearing, and responsibility for meeting children's basic needs. Yet it is also a hopeful story: the book chronicles the work of people who manage diaper banks as well as the growing diaper distribution movement. A hard-nosed yet nuanced tale of parenting, Living Diaper to Diaper is an eye-opening examination of inequality and poverty in America. 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

Throughout the twentieth century, many women in Ireland and Britain endured shame and institutionalisation for becoming pregnant outside of marriage. In Single Mothers in Twentieth-century Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization (Bloomsbury, 2025), Dr. Lorraine Grimes examines the journeys made by hundreds of pregnant Irish women to Britain as they fled to escape their local communities. Their experiences in Britain, however, were not free of stigma and Dr. Grimes's book analyses the nuances of the institutional networks both in Britain and Ireland which these women utilised. Single Mothers in Twentieth Century Ireland and Britain focuses on the experiences of women from 1926-1973 in cities with high Irish emigrant populations, including London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow. Unlike official narratives such as Ireland's Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes, this book prioritises the experiences of the survivors and ensures that women's experiences are central to the narrative. It also incorporates original interviews with children born in institutions and for the first time, interviews with religious and medical staff are also included in the historiography. From extensive archival research, this book reveals cases of Irish single mothers seeking assistance in Britain as well as cases of rape, incest and domestic violence within the institutional records. In addition, archival cases expose prejudice towards women from other colonial countries in institutions in Britain, particularly from the 1960s. 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

Each year, as many as 250 million Americans face civil legal problems like eviction, debt collection, and substandard housing. These problems are disproportionately shouldered by racially and economically marginalized people, particularly women of color. Civil courts and legal aid organizations are supposed to protect their rights, yet more than 90 percent of low-income people receive inadequate or no legal assistance. Instead, access to justice is reserved for those who can afford its high price. For those who can't, the repercussions can be devastating, from homelessness and loss of public benefits to broken families and diminished health. Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power (Princeton UP, 2026) looks at the US civil justice system through the eyes of the people whose very citizenship is indelibly shaped by it. Jamila Michener and Mallory SoRelle show how civil legal problems, and the institutions meant to address them, greatly erode trust in the legal system among marginalized communities, undermining their broader sense of democratic citizenship and political standing. While legal representation offers vital protections, increased access to justice through an ever-growing supply of lawyers does not address the structural problems that generate demand for lawyers in the first place. Looking at cases involving unfair evictions and substandard housing, Michener and SoRelle demonstrate how community groups such as tenants' unions can fill this justice gap and provide the means to build political power that transforms the conditions that create precarity. Drawing on eye-opening qualitative evidence and a wealth of historical and survey data, Uncivil Democracy explains why collective organizing holds the greatest promise for altering the systems that create civil legal problems and exercising the political power necessary for meaningful change. Host Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the US. A former British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, she is the author of the award-winning book,America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Jamila Michener is Professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University and inaugural director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures. She is the author of the award-winning book,  Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Mallory SoRelle is the Tony and Teddie Brown Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is the author of Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection (University of Chicago Press, 2020), based on her award-winning doctoral dissertation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Despite claims that we live in a "post-welfare society," welfare offices remain vital not only for those who depend on them for benefits but also for those who depend on them for a paycheck. The Welfare Assembly Line: Public Servants in the Suffering City (U California Press, 2026), a theory-driven case study of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, examines how welfare work has transformed to allow a department of just 14,000 to serve over a third of the county. Josh Seim argues that frontline workers at this agency--who are mostly Black and Brown women--have become increasingly proletarianized. Their work is defined less by their discretion and more by a lack of control over the productive process. This is enabled by a "welfare assembly line," where high divisions of labor and heavy uses of machinery resemble production regimes in factories and fast-food restaurants. With implications beyond the welfare office, The Welfare Assembly Line is a crucial addition to the broader national conversation about work, social policy, and poverty governance. 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, Joe Williams speaks with Andrew White about how the digital economy is reshaping inequality, work, and the social contract. Drawing on the themes of his book Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), our conversation explores why technological progress has not translated into shared prosperity, how structural features of digital markets concentrate power and wealth, and what this means for the future of work and social policy. We discuss universal basic income as part of a broader attempt to rethink how societies provide security and dignity in an era of automation, and consider what a more sustainable and humane economic model might look like in practice. Joe Williams website here - 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/public-policy

Plantations have been the privileged tool of colonial rule and extraction in Mozambique for more than one hundred years despite never having delivered sustained economic or social benefits. Drawing on extensive archival and qualitative contemporary research, The Plantation Ideal: Landscapes of Extraction in Mozambique (U California Press, 2025) by Dr. Wendy Wolford offers new insights into plantation economies, histories, and landscapes. Dr. Wolford tells the story of how the largely failed pursuit of plantation production has shaped agricultural science, government rule, life on the land, and community development in Mozambique from the harshest years of Portuguese colonization to the present. 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

The world's largest public works investment visible from space, the Interstate Highway System and the hundreds of thousands of miles of supporting roadways, are frequently hailed as a marvel and triumph of engineering. President Eisenhower's 1956 Interstate Highway Act is often praised as a model of successful bipartisanship. Today, the extensive damage wreaked by the creation of the highway system and the ills of car dependency are more widely acknowledged. Congestion and traffic deaths remain endemic despite nearly three-quarters a century of public policies and trillions of dollars spent with a primary stated goal of reducing congestion and improving traffic safety. The financing, governance, and construction models established by the 1956 act continue to influence what gets built today. In Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction (Island Press, 2025), transportation planning expert Dr. Erick Guerra describes how the US roadway system became overbuilt, how public policy continues to encourage overbuilding, what the scale and consequences of overbuilding are, and how we can rethink our approach to highway building in the US. Guerra explains that the national propensity to build roadways is no longer official or intentional policy. Instead, overbuilding stems from the institutions, finance mechanisms, and evaluation metrics developed in the first half of the twentieth century. While more funds are set aside for transit, walking, biking, and beautification, the investment paradigm has not changed. Planners and engineers have not adjusted the tools they use to determine which roads should be built, rebuilt, or widened and why. The country has added more lanes of urban Interstate since declaring the Interstate system complete than prior to it. Despite having too much roadway, the country is still operating in construction mode, using the same basic approach used to finance and build the interstate system quickly, Dr. Guerra states. The interstate was completed more than three decades ago. Overbuilt argues convincingly that it is time to move on. 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

Streetwise: Saving Ourselves from Big Car (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025) exposes how “Big Car”―the complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench car dependence―has pursued profit at the expense of the common good. David Obst explores how Big Car gained almost immeasurable influence over our lives, weighing the benefits and the costs of reliance on private automobiles. He details how industry covered up the harms of lead additives, fought against seatbelts, and continues to fund climate-change denialism. Obst considers the future of mobility, surveying how cities―from Taipei to Tempe, Copenhagen to Chicago―are experimenting with forms of transportation that offer alternatives to the dominance of cars. This is a provocative and comprehensive book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their best intentions, they often perpetuate food access inequalities and racial stereotypes. Hanna Garth shows how the movement has been affected by misconceptions and assumptions about residents, as well as by unclear definitions of justice and what it means to be healthy. Focusing on broad structures and microlevel processes, Garth reveals how power dynamics shape social justice movements in particular ways.Drawing on twelve years of ethnographic research, Garth examines what motivates people from more affluent, majority-white areas of the city to intervene in South Central Los Angeles. She argues that the concepts of "food justice" and "healthy food" operate as racially coded language, reinforcing the idea that health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual behavior rather than structural change. Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement (U California Press, 2026) explores the stakes of social justice and the possibility of multiracial coalitions working toward a better future. Hanna Garth is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, author of Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal, and coeditor of Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Untangling the Political Roots of Immigration and Inequality in the United States (Routledge, 2026) examines the causes, consequences, and politics of mass migration and growing inequality by investigating the case of the United States – the quintessential immigrant nation. While scholars, policy makers, and advocates have put forth a variety of explanations, many misdiagnose the causes and put forward remedies that treat symptoms. This book looks to the root causes of mass migration and intensifying inequality, arguing that they are two sides of the same coin resulting from rapacious forms of capitalist accumulation and imperialist interventionism. Developing a broadly left analytic framework grounded in elements of Marxist theory and political science, two periods are examined – 1870–1925 and 1970–2025 – when the proportion of immigrants in the US peaked at 15% of the total population, the US experienced steep inequality and political polarization, immigration and inequality became contentious political issues that generated sharp conflict, and immigrants and workers organized mass movements that advanced radical politics and transformative change. This book contains a wealth of information and elevates valuable lessons for scholars, policy makers, and organizers interested in understanding these trends and forging equitable and just solutions today. 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 her new book, Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China (Cambridge, 2025), Ning Leng shows how Chinese officials systematically treat formally private firms as political instruments, extracting services that advance careers and maintain social control—often at the expense of business interests, economic efficiency and sustainable development. Ning Leng is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco and is the Director of USF's Master's Program in International and Development Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. Spanning 30 city blocks and home to tens of thousands of monolingual Chinese residents, its endurance is remarkable—especially given how close it came to erasure. In Chinatown: San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake and the Paradox of American Immigration Policy (JHU Press, 2026), Dr. Dafeng Xu uncovers the contested history of this vibrant community, focusing on the transformative period surrounding the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed 80 percent of the city, including Chinatown. White San Franciscans saw the disaster as an opportunity to permanently displace the neighborhood. Instead, Chinatown was rebuilt—but not without conflict or consequence. Using detailed census data and other historical documents, Dr. Xu examines how this rebuilt Chinatown differed socially and physically from its earlier form—and the many ways it stayed the same. He explores whether the earthquake shifted patterns of segregation, if and how Chinese immigrants navigated pressure to assimilate—including adopting English, changing their names, and leaving ethnic neighborhoods—and whether they gained economic ground in the city's new landscape. Dr. Xu's study reveals a striking contradiction: while Chinese Americans were often criticized for not assimilating, systemic barriers made that very process nearly impossible. The post-disaster Chinatown became a symbol of cultural resilience, shaped by both community agency and persistent exclusion. Rich in insight and original research, Chinatown offers a powerful look at how disaster, racism, and resistance shaped one of America's most storied immigrant neighborhoods. 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