New Books in Public Policy
Episodes
In Search of Green China: Ma Tianjie on Pan Yue and the CCP’s “Ecological Civilization"
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A former journalist and environmental campaigner named Pan Yue rose through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party, championing the concept of “ec...
Lily Hsueh, "Corporations at Climate Crossroads: Multilevel Governance, Public Policy, and Global Climate Action" (MIT Press, 2025)
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Lily Hseuh is trained as an economist and public policy scholar, and is an associate professor in Economics and Public Policy in the School of Pu...
Andrea Freeman, "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: America’s Politics of Food, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch" (Metropolitan Books, 2024)
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first and definitive history of the use of food in American law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black...
Petar Mitric, "The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix" (Springer Nature, 2025)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix (Springer Nature, 2025) explores the evolving landscape of European film and tel...
Katherine J. Parkin, "The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The abortion market was a powerful economic force in American life. Before legalization lowered the cost, one million women each year collectively pai...
Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, "The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail" (Heresy Press, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial e...
Michael Rowe, "Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Researching Street-level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions (Routledge, 2024) is the first among a number of new titles in the R...
John L. Campbell, "Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the be...
Jacinto Cuvi, "The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How street vendors tangle with the law in São Paulo, Brazil. With a little initiative and very little startup money, an outgoing individual might se...
Katherine Eva Maich, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights" (Stanford UP, 2025)
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The personal nature of domestic labor, and its location in the privacy of the employer's home, means that domestic workers have long struggled for equ...
Andrea Louise Campbell, "Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes" (Princeton UP, 2025)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why Americans favor progressive taxation in principle but not in practice Most Americans support progressive taxation in principle, and want the rich...
Breanne Pleggenkuhle and Joseph A. Schafer, "Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the US Criminal Justice System" (Southern Illinois UP, 2025)
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal...
Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024)
07 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted w...
David J. Lynch, "The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right)" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The triumphant globalization that began in the 1990s has given way to a world riven by conflict, populism, and economic nationalism. In The World's W...
Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia Univer...
David Edmonds, "Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need" (Princeton UP, 2025)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around fo...
Dan Davies, "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How t...
Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances dep...
Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances dep...
Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, "Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to supervise a bank? And why does it matter who holds that power? In this episode, Sean H. Vanatta joins us to explore the hidden ma...
Lindsey N. Kingston, "Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights" (Oxford UP, 2019)
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lindsey N. Kingston’s new book, Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights (Oxford UP, 2019) interrogates the idea of citizenship itself, what...
LaShawn Harris, "Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City" (Beacon, 2025)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months beh...
Susan C. Boyd, "Heroin: An Illustrated History" (Fernwood, 2022)
24 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Susan Boyd is a scholar/activist and Distinguished Professor emerita at the University of Victoria. Her research examines a variety of topics rela...
Tim Lenton, "Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis" (Oxford UP, 2025)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As global change escalates, we are already starting to experience damaging tipping points in the social, ecological and climate systems that we depend...
Daniel Lomas, "The Secret History of UK Security Vetting from 1909 to the Present" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Using newly available government records, private papers, and documents obtained through Freedom of Information, The Secret History of UK Vetting fro...
Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, DavisNairobi, known as the Green City in the S...
Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025)
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series a...
Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Autonomous weapons exist in a strange territory between Pentagon procurement contracts and Hollywood blockbusters, between actual military systems and...
Steve L. Monroe, "Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World" (Cornell UP, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World (Cornell UP, 2025), Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and socia...
Christopher R. Matthews, "Doing Good Social Science: Lessons from Immersion, Understanding Social Life and Exploring the In-Between" (Routledge, 2025)
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Doing Good Social Science: Lessons from Immersion, Understanding Social Life and Exploring the In-Between (Routledge, 2025) takes readers on a perso...
Matthew Facciani, "Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It" (Columbia UP, 2025)
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why are people inclined to believe misinformation? Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It (Columbia UP, 202...
Jacob F. H. Smith, "Waves of Discontent: Electoral Volatility, Public Policymaking, and the Health of American Democracy" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After a period of relative calm in congressional elections prior to 2006, America has experienced a series of highly competitive, volatile national el...
Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment...
Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025)
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly do...
Kit W. Myers, "The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States"(U California Press, 2025)
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features Dr. Kit W. Myers, associate professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced, d...
Melody Glenn, "Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis" (Beacon Press, 2025)
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER...
Timothy W. Kneeland, "Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA" (Syracuse UP, 2021)
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join me for an insightful and timely conversation with historian Timothy Kneeland about his book Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the...
On Bullshit in AI
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we’re continuing our series on Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. I have the privilege to speak with Arvind Narayanan co-author o...
Jess Reia, "Urban Music Governance: What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities" (Intellect, 2025)
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our ...
Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The criminalization of Black youth was central to policing in urban America during the civil rights era and continued in Detroit even after the rise o...
Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Hea...
Mark R. Rank, "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2021)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood ...
Osita Nwanevu, "The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding" (Random House, 2025)
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frustrated with our political dysfunction, wearied by the thinness of contemporary political discourse, and troubled by the rise of anti-democratic at...
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, "Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shout back, “...
Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist whose best-selling 2019 book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest...
Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of ...
Phyu Phyu Oo, "Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Myanmar: The Role of the State" (De Gruyter, 2025)
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Systemic sexual violence by the Myanmar army and proxies began to be widely reported in the 2010s, in the course of genocidal violence against Rohingy...
Cat Dawson, "Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape" (MIT Press, 2025)
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, monuments have telegraphed the values and origin myths of dominant culture in public space and on massive scale. They have signaled bot...
Elizabeth Popp Berman, "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" (Princeton UP, 2022)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious chan...
David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age" (Polity, 2024)
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal...
Seeing China’s Belt and Road with Ed Schatz and Rachel Silvey
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
EPISODE SUMMARY: What becomes visible when you shift the lens away from Beijing to how China’s Belt and Road projects unfold on the ground? Seeing...
Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025)
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childle...
Kelsea Best, Kayly Ober, Robert A. McLeman, "Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key conce...
Didi Kuo, "The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't" (Oxford UP, 2025)
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the crisis of democratic capitalism sweeps the globe, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't (Oxford Universi...
Bridging History, Policy and Place with Bruce Harvey
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Harvey is a historian and photographer based in Syracuse, NY, who works at the intersection of memory, place, and public history. As an independ...
Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson, "Why America Didn't Become Great Again" (Routledge, 2025)
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Examining the conditions that not only blocked attempts to make America great again, but actively made the country worse, Why America Didn't Become G...
Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli, "Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. ...
Ross A. Kennedy, "The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the...
Michael Grunwald, "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Grunwald is a well renown journalist, who over the last thirty years has focused on public policy and national politics, with the last fifteen...
Elena Jackson Albarran, "Good Neighbor Empires: Children and Cultural Capital in the Americas" (Brill, 2024)
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A class of child artists in Mexico, a ship full of child refugees from Spain, classrooms of child pageant actors, and a pair of boy ambassadors reveal...
Milton E. Clarke, "The Community College Reform Movement: Contentions and Ideological Origins" (Routledge, 2025)
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Community College Reform Movement: Contentions and Ideological Origins (Routledge, 2025), political scientist Milton Clarke c...
Claire Pierson, "Women's Troubles: Gender and Feminist Politics in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland" (Manchester University Press, 2025)
21 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do feminist movements develop and organise in ethno-nationally divided societies? How does this challenge our understandings of contemporary fourt...
Laura Frances Goffman, "Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia" (Stanford UP, 2024)
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia (Stanford UP, 2024) offers a social and political history of medic...
Atinuke O. Adediran, "Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests that challenged many institutions, including large for-profit companies, to reflect on how to ad...
Howard A. Husock, "The Projects: A New History of Public Housing" (NYU Press, 2025)
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How housing policy failed the people it was designed to help -- and how to fix it As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Amer...
Maraam A. Dwidar, "Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A vital examination of how social and economic justice organizations overcome resource disadvantages and build political power. Why do some coalitions...
Jonathan Tarleton, "Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons" (Beacon Press, 2025)
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons (Beacon Press, 2025), urban planner and oral historian Jonathan Tarleto...
Robert Chernomas, Gregory Chernomas, and Ian Hudson, "The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines" (Routledge, 2025)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Biological justification for all forms of inequality has a long history, with the claim that particular groups suffer disproportionately from inherite...
Jaime Lee Kucinskas, "The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy" (Columbia UP, 2025)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy (Columbia University Press, 2025) explores how civil servants n...
Nicholas Chesterley, "Future-Generation Government: How to Legislate for the Long Term" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our impact on future generations has never been greater, and the challenges we face are increasingly long-term. Future-Generation Government propos...
Catriona M.M. MacDonald, "The Caledoniad: The Making of Scottish History" (John Donald, 2024)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the...
Hali Lee, "The Big We" (Zando - Sweet July Books, 2025)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hali Lee's The Big We (Zando, 2025) offers a compelling counterpoint to traditional billionaire-driven philanthropy (which she dubs "Big Phil"). In...
Postcript: Calibrating the Outrage-Democratic Erosion, Legality, and Politics
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been focusing on the dynamics of democratic backsliding in the United States and beyond. In this episode of Postscript: Conversations on Poli...
Tamara Lea Spira, "Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times" (U California Press, 2025)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in incr...
Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most child...
Jon Shelton, "The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy" (Cornell UP, 2023)
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the o...
False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and ...
Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil libe...
Michael Buser, "Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context" (Policy Press, 2024)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context (Policy Press, 2024) investigates and analyses places in Europe, ...
Jeanne Sheehan, "American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) analyzes the roots of widesprea...
Ryan J. Vander Wielen et al., "The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes ...
Patrick Condon, "Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis" (U British Columbia Press, 2024)
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can urban housing, and the land underneath, now account for half of all global wealth? According to Patrick Condon, the simple answer is that land...
Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in w...
Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the...
"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist an...
Claudia Rowe, "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care" (Abrams Press, 2025)
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams Press, 2025) is compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system...
Caitlin Killian, "Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today's post-Roe v. Wade world, U.S. maternal mortality is on the rise and laws regarding contraception, involuntary sterilization, access to repr...
Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024)
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But w...
Saleem H. Ali, "Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'susta...
Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year ...
Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)
19 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although...
Michael Rosino, "Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside American Grassroots Political Organizing" (UNC Press, 2025)
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and...
Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign nat...
Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, write...
Aaron Kupchik, "Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice" (NYU Press, 2025)
13 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve th...
Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique
12 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Muriel Blaive to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Pandemic Power: The Covid Re...
What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Instit...
Duncan Watson, "Everyone's Trash: One Man Against 1.6 Billion Pounds" (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2024)
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Each day, every single person in the United States, all 324 million, discards about five pounds of waste. Be it a bottle that gets placed in a recycli...
Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticin...
Ieva Jusionyte on American Guns in Mexico: Exit Wounds (EF, JP)
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John and Elizabeth had the chance to talk with Ieva Jusionyte, anthropologist, journalist, emergency medical technician. Her award-winning books inc...