New Books in Public Policy
Episodes
Gordon C. C. Douglas, “The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism” (Oxford UP, 2018)
20 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The built environment around us seems almost natural, as in beyond our control to alter or shape. Indeed, we have reached a point in history when citi...
Ben Clift, “The IMF and the Politics of Austerity in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis by Ben Clift” (Oxford UP, 2018)
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I was joined in Oxford by Ben Clift, Professor of Political Economy, Deputy Head of Department and Director of Research at the Department of Politics ...
Stephen Klasko, “Bless This Mess: A Picture Story of Healthcare in America” (Lulu Publishing, 2018)
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Our neighbors on other planets look with puzzlement at the United States, located on the beautiful planet Earth. Despite amazing knowledge, discovery,...
Steven Lubar, “Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present” (Harvard UP, 2017)
13 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Steven Lubar’s latest book Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present (Harvard University Press, 2017), Steven gets to the heart of what...
Melanie A. Kiechle, “Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America” (U Washington Press, 2017)
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melanie Kiechle‘s Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America (University of Washington Press, 2017) takes us into th...
Yasemin Besen-Cassino, “The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap” (Temple UP, 2017)
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With the rise of the #MeToo movement following dozens of high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault by professional men against women colleag...
Peter Allen, “The Political Class: Why It Matters Who Our Politicians Are” (Oxford UP, 2018)
08 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Who is in charge? In The Political Class: Why It Matters Who Our Politicians Are (Oxford University Press, 2018), Peter Allen, a Reader in Comparati...
Larry Cuban, “The Flight of a Butterfly or the Path of a Bullet? Using Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning” (Harvard Education Press, 2018)
06 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In The Flight of a Butterfly or the Path of a Bullet? Using Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning (Harvard Education Press, 2018), Larry Cuban...
Patrick Lopez-Aguado, “Stick Together and Come Back Home: Racial Sorting and the Spillover of Carceral Identity” (U California Press)
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do systems of incarceration influence racial sorting inside and outside of prisons? And how do the social structures within prisons spill out into...
David Faris, “It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics” (Melville House, 2018)
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris counsels Democrats to disregard procedural precedents and niceties, and pugnaciously wiel...
Matthew R. Pembleton, “Containing Addiction: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Origins of America’s Global Drug Wars” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017
25 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s common to place the start of the War on Drugs with the Nixon or Reagan Administrations, but as Matthew Pembleton tells us, those are only phase...
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy” (The New Press, 2018)
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A book that strikes at the source of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Ethan J. Kytle and ...
Jon D. Michaels, “Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic” (Harvard UP, 2017)
17 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jon D. Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA Law School, has written an argument in favor of the administrative state and against recent efforts to shi...
Toby Cosgrove, “The Cleveland Clinic Way: Lessons in Excellence from One of the World’s Leading Health Care Organizations” (McGraw-Hill Education, 2014)
17 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
American healthcare is in crisis. It doesn’t have to be. Dr. Toby Cosgrove‘s The Cleveland Clinic Way: Lessons in Excellence from One of the World...
Sean R. Gallagher, “The Future of University Credentials: New Developments at the Intersection of Higher Education and Hiring” (Harvard Education Press, 2016)
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of University Credentials: New Developments at the Intersection of Higher Education and Hiring (Harvard Education Press, 2016) offers a tho...
Stephen Riley, “Human Dignity and Law: Legal and Philosophical Investigations” (Routledge, 2018)
10 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Riley, a lecturer in the Law School of the University of Leicester in Britain, has written a philosophical work examining the concept of digni...
Laura Spinney, “Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World” (PublicAffairs, 2017)
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth–from the poorest immigr...
John J. Pitney, “The Politics of Autism: Navigating the Contested Spectrum” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015)
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Autism as a condition has received much focused attention recently, but less attention has been paid to its politics. It is a condition that necessita...
Rense Nieuwenhuis and Laurie C. Maldonado, “The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families” (Policy Press, 2018)
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of barriers and risks do single parents face? In their new book, The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families: Resources, Employment and Polici...
Jason Linkins, “Schoolhouse Wreck: The Betsy DeVos Story” (Strong Arm Press, 2018)
07 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Schoolhouse Wreck: The Betsy DeVos Story (Strong Arm Press, 2018), Jason Linkins delivers a searing critique of controversial Trump administration...
Caitlin DeSilvey, “Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving” (U Minnesota Press, 2017)
04 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), geographer Caitlin DeSilvey offers a set of alternatives to those who ...
B.J. Mendelson, “Privacy: And How to Get It Back” (Curious Reads, 2017)
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The use of our data and the privacy, or lack thereof, that we have when we go online has become a topic of increasing importance as technology becomes...
Christy Ford Chapin, “Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
02 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Christy Ford Chapin, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has written a history of the funding of Americ...
Aimi Hamraie, “Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability” (U Minnesota Press, 2017)
25 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Americans with Disability Act passed in 1990, but it was just one moment in ongoing efforts to craft the meaning and practice of “good design”...
Greg Berman and Julian Adler, “Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration” (The New Press, 2018)
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The United States leads the world in incarceration. That’s a problem, especially the disproportionate impact of “mass incarceration” on low-inco...
Jenny Reardon, “The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Knowledge and Justice after the Genome” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do we create meaning after the genome? Such a profound question is at the center of the recently published book by Jenny Reardon, The Postgenomic ...
Samuel Harrington, “At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life” (Grand Central Life & Style, 2018)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people say they would like to die quietly at home. But overly aggressive medical advice, coupled with an unrealistic sense of invincibility or ov...
Jonathan Engel, “Unaffordable: American Healthcare from Johnson to Trump” (U Wisconsin Press, 2018)
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year, Jamila Michener visited the podcast to talk about her new book, Fragmented Democracy, about Medicaid and the state-based structure ...
John Krinsky and Maud Simonet, “Who Cleans the Park? Public Works and Urban Governance in New York City” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
18 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It is possible that you did not know that you need a comprehensive labor market analysis of the New York City Parks Department, but John Krinsky and M...
Alison B. Hirsch, “City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America” (U Minnesota Press, 2014)
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lawrence Halprin, one of the central figures in twentieth-century American landscape architecture, is well known to city-watchers for his work on San ...
Alexandra Cox, “Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of Confinement for Young People” (Rutgers UP, 2018)
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How does the juvenile justice system impact the lives of the young people that go through it? In her new book, Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of ...
Anna Zeide, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry” (U California Press, 2018)
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most everything Americans eat today comes out of cans. Some of it emerges from the iconic steel cylinders and much of the rest from the mammoth proces...
Allison Varzally, “Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations” (UNC Press, 2017)
13 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Allison Varzally docume...
Natasha Zaretsky, “Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the Political Transformation of the 1970s” (Columbia UP, 2018)
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What if modern conservatism is less a reaction to environmentalism than a mutation of it? Historian Natasha Zaretsky’s latest book, Radiation Nation...
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, “Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists” (Oxford UP, 2018)
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez is the author of Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is a...
Halee Fischer-Wright, “Back to Balance: The Art, Science, and Business of Medicine” (Disruption Books, 2017)
05 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this highly engaging, thoroughly persuasive book, Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright presents a unique prescription for fixing America’s health care woes, ...
David Pilling, “The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations” (Bloomsbury, 2018)
04 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What’s not to like about economic growth, you might ask? Well, quite a lot, it turns out, once we begin to examine how GDP and other measures of the...
Timothy Neale, “Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia” (U Hawaii Press, 2017)
02 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Tim Neale examines the controversy o...
Martijn Konings, “Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason” (Stanford UP, 2018)
28 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I was joined by Martijn Konings from Australia where he is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. We had a conver...
Joshua Zeitz, “Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s White House” (Viking, 2018)
28 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How did President Lyndon Johnson engineer one of the biggest bursts of liberal legislation in American history? And did his vision of a Great Society ...
Robert Pearl, “Mistreated: Why We Think Were Getting Good Health Care and Why We’re Usually Wrong” (PublicAffairs, 2017)
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The biggest problem in American health care is us. Do you know how to tell good health care from bad health care? Guess again. As patients, we wrongl...
Domingo Morel, “Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy” (Oxford UP, 2018)
21 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When the state takes over, can local democracy survive? Over 100 school districts have been taken over by state governments since the late 1980s. In d...
Jesse Rhodes, “Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act” (Stanford UP, 2017)
19 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Voting rights are always in the news in American politics, and recent court decisions and an upcoming election in 2018 make this especially true today...
Jonathan D. Quick, “The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It” (St. Martin’s Press, 2018)
16 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A leading doctor offers answers on the one of the most urgent questions of our time: How do we prevent the next global pandemic? The 2014 Ebola epide...
Christina Twomey, “The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia” (NewSouth Books, 2018)
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia (NewSouth Books, 2018), Christina Twomey, Professor of History at Monash University, exp...
Jamila Michener, “Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Medicaid provides health care for around 1 in 5 Americans. Despite the large number served, the programs administration by state and local governments...
Nic Cheeseman, “Institutions and Democracy in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Institutions and Democracy in Africa: How the Rules of the Game Shape Political Developments (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the contributors c...
Policing and Political Division with Alex Vitale
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Vitale is a Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. He has written for a number of...
Hans Hassell, “The Party’s Primary: Control of Congressional Nominations” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When first enacted at the start of the twentieth century, primaries were to decrease the power of party bosses to dominate the choice of who ran for o...
Betsy DiSalvo, et al., “Participatory Design for Learning: Perspectives from Practice and Research” (Routledge, 2017)
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Betsy DiSalvo, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, joins us in this episode to discuss the ...
Saladin Ambar, “American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism” (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a compelling exploration of the political life ...
Shiri Noy, “Banking on Health: The World Bank and Health Sector Reform in Latin America” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
28 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What role has the World Bank played in influencing health sector reform in Latin America? In her new book, Banking on Health: The World Bank and Healt...
Christopher Witko and William Franko, “The New Economic Populism: How States Respond to Economic Inequality” (Oxford UP, 2017)
26 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few weeks, minimum wage workers in 18 states saw their wages go up; in Maine a full dollar increase. Why states have taken the lead on rai...
Jerry Flores, “Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wrap-Around Incarceration” (U California Press, 2016)
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What are the lives of young incarcerated Latinas like? And what were their lives like before and after their incarceration? In his new book, Caught Up...
Daphna Hacker, “Legalized Families in the Era of Bordered Globalization” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As debates on globalization rage in the twenty-first century, many countries and the people within them have been challenged socially, economically, a...
Douglas Kriner and Eric Schickler, “Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power” (Princeton UP, 2016)
21 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power (Princeton University Press, 2016) is an important analysis of both congressio...
Daniel Fridman, “Freedom From Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina” (Stanford UP, 2017)
15 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Freedom From Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina (Stanford University Press, 2017), Daniel Fridman explores wha...
Douglas Hartman, “Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy” (U Chicago Press, 2016)
12 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of late-night basketball gained prominence in the late 1980s when G. Van Standifer founded Midnight Basketball League as a vehicle upon wh...
J. Mark Souther, “Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in ‘The Best Location in the Nation'” (Temple UP, 2017)
09 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Like many cities, Cleveland has gone through periods of decline and renewal, yet the process there has followed a process where these periods were not...
Claire Schmidt, “If You Don’t Laugh, You’ll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017)
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Schmidt is not a prison worker, rather she is a folklorist and an Assistant Professor at Missouri Valley College. However, many members of her ...
Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther, “The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters” (Wharton Digital Press, 2017))
07 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters (Wharton Digital Press, 2017), Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther summarize six major cognit...
Kim Yi Dionne, “Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
AIDS is one of the primary causes of death in Africa. Of the more than 24 million Africans infected with HIV, only about 54% have access to the treatm...
Andrew Keen, “How To Fix The Future” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018)
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As a historian I find myself constantly asking the question “Is that really new, or is it rather something that looks new but isn’t?” If you rea...
Lisa King, “Legible Sovereignties: Rhetoric, Representations, and Native American Museums” (Oregon State UP, 2017)
02 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Legible Sovereignties: Rhetoric, Representations, and Native American Museums (Oregon State University Press, 2017), Lisa King explores the ways in...
Erika Dyck and Alex Deighton, “Managing Madness” (U Manitoba Press, 2017)
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Embracing a multi-perspectival authorial voice, Managing Madness: Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada (Univer...
Franklin Obeng-Odoom, “Reconstructing Urban Economics: Towards a Political Economy of the Built Environment” (Zed Books, 2016)
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, Carlo D’Ippoliti and Andrea Bernardi interview Franklin Obeng-Odoom who teaches urban economics and political economy in the Scho...
Joseph Nathan Cohen, “Financial Crisis in American Households” (Praeger, 2017)
30 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Are iPhones or homes bankrupting Americans? Joe Cohen‘s new book, Financial Crisis in American Households: The Basic Expenses That Bankrupt the Midd...
Zoe Wool, “After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed” (Duke UP, 2015)
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Zoe Wool‘s ethnography of rehabilitation After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed (Duke University Press, 2015) describes how soldiers injured i...
Vicki Bier, “Risk in Extreme Environments: Preparing, Avoiding, Mitigating, and Managing” (Routledge, 2018)
25 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Risk in Extreme Environments: Preparing, Avoiding, Mitigating, and Managing (Routledge, 2018), edited by Vicki Bier, is a series of multidisciplinary ...
Samuel Totten, “Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People Under Siege” (McFarland, 2017)
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast is usually devoted to book written about the past. The authors may be historians, or political scientists, or anthropologists, or even a ...
Chris Zepeda-Millan, “Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
22 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Prior to the wave of protests in 2017 supporting immigrants in the US, there were the protests of 2006. That spring, millions of Latinos and other imm...
Alexandra Dellios, “Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre” (Melbourne UP, 2017)
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Alexandra Dellios, a Lecturer in Heritage...
Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago” (Harvard UP, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North...
Malcolm Harris, “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials” (Little, Brown and Co, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Every young generation inspires a host of comparisons—usually negative ones—with older generations. Whether preceding a criticism or punctuating o...
Seth Barrett Tillman on the Foreign Emoluments Clause and President Trump
10 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Seth Barrett Tillman, an instructor in the Department of Law at Maynooth University in Ireland, is one of the few scholars to have researched and writ...
Judith Schindler and Judy Seldin-Cohen, “Recharging Judaism” (CCAR, 2017)
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In their new book Recharging Judaism: How Civic Engagement is Good For Synagogues, Jews and America (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017), Rab...
Alice Echols, “Shortfall: Family Secrets, Financial Collapse and a Hidden History of American Banking” (New Press, 2017)
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Alice Echols is a professor of history and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. In her ...
Mark Fenster, “The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information” (Stanford UP, 2017)
30 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information (Stanford University Press, 2017) dispels the myth that transparency o...
Chelsea Schelly, “Dwelling in Resistance: Living with Alternative Technologies in America” (Rutgers UP, 2017)
28 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Technology is a form of material culture and is a human activity. The way in which humans view technology is a social construction in which people use...
New Books in Political Science Year-End Round Up, 2017
25 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We end the year by remembering our favorite authors, books, and some of the titles. There were so many great books written this year that we had the f...
Frank Baumgartner, et al., “Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty” (Oxford UP, 2017)
22 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain provisions designed to e...
Melanee Thomas and Amanda Bittner, eds. “Mothers and Others: The Role of Parenthood in Politics” (UBC Press, 2017)
18 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Melanee Thomas and Amanda Bittner have assembled a fascinating and important exploration of the role, understanding, and perceptions of mothers and mo...
Kevan Harris, “A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran” (U. Cal Press, 2017)
11 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kevan Harris is the author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017). Harris is assistant ...
Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider, “The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty” (Princeton UP, 2017)
21 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Volatility. Instability. Insecurity. Precarity. There’s a burgeoning lexicon seeking to capture the grim economic state of more and more Americans. ...
Jennifer Randles, “Proposing Prosperity? Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America” (Columbia UP, 2016)
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“Marriage is the foundation of a successful society,” proclaimed the Clinton-era welfare reform bill. Since then, national and state governments h...
Sandra F. Sperino and Suja A. Thomas, “Unequal: How American Courts Undermine Discrimination Law” (Oxford University Press, 2017
06 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The recent spate of revelations about high-profile sexual predators who have been harassing and assaulting women, sometimes for decades, along with th...
James Forman Jr., “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017)
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast I talk with James Forman Jr. about his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017...
Bryant Simon, “The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives” (The New Press, 2017)
06 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On September 3, 1991, a fire erupted at the Imperial Foods factory in the small town of Hamlet, North Carolina. Twenty-five people died behind the fac...
Alfred Moore, “Critical Elitism: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Problem of Expertise” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
01 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
According to a challenge going back to Plato, democracy is unacceptable as a mode of political organization, because it distributes political power eq...
Heath Fogg Davis, “Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter?” (NYU Press, 2017)
27 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we have sex-segregated restrooms? Are they necessary? What about your drivers license? Have you thought of why your designated sex category is ...
Frances Moore Lappe and Adam Eichen, “Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want” (Beacon Press, 2017)
25 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What is right about democracy? In Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want (Beacon Press, 2017), Frances Moo...
Jamin Creed Rowan, “The Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition” (U. Penn Press, 2017)
14 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jamin Creed Rowan is an assistant professor of English and American Studies at Brigham Young University. His book The Sociable City: An American Intel...
Allison Perlman, “Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles Over U.S. Television” (Rutgers UP, 2016)
11 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Since its infancy, television has played an important role in shaping U.S. values and the American sense of self. Social activists recognized this pow...
Gareth M. Thomas, “Down’s Syndrome Screening and Reproductive Politics: Care, Choice, and Disability in the Prenatal Clinic” (Routledge, 2017)
15 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on an ethnography of Down’s syndrome screening in two UK clinics, Gareth M. Thomas‘ Down’s Syndrome and Reproductive Politics: Care, Cho...
Timothy LaPira, “Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests” (U Press of Kansas, 2017)
14 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Timothy LaPira and Herschel Thomas are the authors of Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of In...
Ilana Gershon, “Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today” (U. Chicago Press, 2017)
06 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Labor markets are not what they used to be, as Ilana Gershon argues in Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today (...
Heather Silber Mohamed, “The New Americans? Immigration, Protest, and The Politics of Latino Identity” (U Press of Kansas, 2017)
31 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The New Americans? Immigration, Protest, and The Politics of Latino Identity (University Press of Kansas, 2017) by Heather Silber Mohamed weaves toget...
Justin Gest, “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality” (Oxford UP, 2016)
28 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In our era of economic instability, rising inequality, and widespread immigration, complaints about fairness and life chances are coming from an inter...
Claire D. Clark, “The Recovery Revolution” (Columbia UP, 2017)
28 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Before the 1960s, doctors were generally in control of the treatment of drug addicts. And that made a certain sense, because drug addicts had somethin...
Victor Tan Chen, “Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy” (U. California Press, 2015)
24 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We are nearly a decade removed from the start of the Great Recession, and many indicators show that the economy is doing relatively well. But during t...