New Books in Public Policy

Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In ...

Mara Mills et al., "How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic" (NYU Press, 2025)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic is the first book to document the experiences of those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City—disabl...

Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco" (U Nevada Press, 2025)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone's name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was m...

Amy Adamczyk, "Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion" (Oxford UP, 2025)

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most people think about abortion in the context of the country they live in. In the U.S., abortion fuels debate, elections, and legislation. In China,...

Jason Schupbach and Rana Amirtahmasebi, "The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning" (Routledge, 2024)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning (Routledge, 2024) provides a manual for planning for arts and culture in cities, featuring chapters...

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us--A Conversation with Stephen Macedo (Part 2)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Madison’s Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeto...

Bryan Caplan, "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing" (Cato Institute, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel’ can be a...

Gregor Craigie, "Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada's Housing Crisis" (Random House Canada, 2024)

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Canada is experiencing a housing shortage. Although house prices in major Canadian cities appeared to have topped out, new housing isn’t coming onto...

Mark Neocleous, "Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police" (Verso, 2025)

16 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Mark Neocleous about his new book Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police (Verso, 2025). For more than two decades, Neoc...

Carolyn Whitzman, "Home Truths: Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis" (On Point Press, 2024)

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians exist on the edge. Renters fear eviction, homeowners feel trapped, and both are vulnerable to becoming homeless wit...

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capit...

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us: A Conversation with Frances Lee

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison’s Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton...

Kimberly Clausing, "Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital" (Harvard UP, 2019)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right ...

Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns ...

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Succinct and eloquent, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025) is an essential primer on how to face the threats to privacy in today's age of d...

Chris Higgins, "Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education" (MIT Press, 2024)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a plac...

Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism-...

Kelly Alexander, "Truffles and Trash: Recirculating Food in a Social Welfare State" (UNC Press, 2024)

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On a fragile planet with spreading food insecurity, food waste is a political and ethical problem. Examining the collaborative, sometimes scrappy inst...

Aure Schrock on Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, a...

Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, t...

Melinda Cooper, "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance" (Zone Books, 2024)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over s...

Ray Brescia, "The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2025)

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routi...

Miles Glendinning, "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive histo...

Allison Rank et al., "Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientists Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley have a new edited volume, Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an E...

American Higher Education Under the Second Trump Administration

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy ...

Adam Laats, "Mr. Lancaster's System: The Failed Reform That Created America's Public Schools" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. Pennsylvania and Massachusett...

Hiroshi Motomura, "Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair, Realistic, and Sustainable Immigration Policy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Immigration is now a polarizing issue across most advanced democracies. But too much that is written about immigration fails to appreciate the complex...

Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing sch...

Yuca Meubrink, "Inclusionary Housing and Urban Inequality in London and New York City: Gentrification Through the Back Door" (Routledge, 2024)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Municipalities around the world have increasingly used inclusionary housing programs to address their housing shortages. Inclusionary Housing and Urb...

Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at R...

Philip Rathgeb, "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA" (Oxford UP, 2024)

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across th...

Andy Wightman, "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it" (Birlinn, 2025)

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get ...

Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin. "Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum" (NYU Press, 2024)

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How the US asylum process fails to protect against claims of gender-based violence. Through eyewitness accounts of closed-court proceedings and powerf...

Brigid Schulte, "Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life" (Henry Holt, 2024)

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte's groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention...

Steven King, "Fraudulent Lives: Imagining Welfare Cheats from the Poor Law to the Present" (McGill Queen's UP, 2024)

19 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Western welfare state model is beset with structural, financial, and moral crises. So-called scroungers, cheats, and disability fakers persistentl...

Alva Gotby, "Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing" (Verso, 2025)

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Housing is more than bricks and mortar. The home is where our hopes and dreams play out, and it lies at the heart of our lives. This is where we rest,...

Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove, "White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy" (Liveright, 2024)

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My guest today is Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove. Wilson-Hartgrove is a writer, preacher, and moral activist. He is an assistant director at the Center for...

David Lyon, "Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Surveillance is everywhere today, generating data about our purchasing, political, and personal preferences. Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction ...

Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made ...

Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018)

05 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working ...

Shannon Mattern, "A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences" (Princeton UP, 2021)

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficienci...

Ben Highmore, "Playgrounds: The Experimental Years" (Reaktion, 2024)

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After World War II, a new kind of playground emerged in Northern Europe and North America. Rather than slides, swings, and roundabouts, these new play...

Larry S. Temkin, "Being Good in a World of Need" (Oxford UP, 2022)

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a world filled with both enormous wealth and pockets of great devastation, how should the well-off respond to the world's needy? This is the urgent...

Leah Downey, "Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How the creation of money and monetary policy can be more democratic. The power to create money is foundational to the state. In the United States, th...

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, "The Unequal Effects of Globalization" (MIT, 2023)

22 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increas...

Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

21 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are gr...

Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler, "Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

17 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

American democracy is in trouble. At the heart of the contemporary crisis is a mismatch between America's Constitution and today's nationalized, parti...

Melissa B. Jacoby, "Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal" (New Press, 2024)

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to pro...

Leslie Beth Ribovich, "Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools" (NYU Press, 2024)

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The processes of secularization and desegregation were among the two most radical transformations of the American public school system in all its hist...

Who Cares? A Conversation with Emily Kenway

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press...

Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024)

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a s...

Jeremy Brecher, "The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy (U Illinois Press, 2024) offers a visionary program ...

Stacy Torres, "At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America" (U California Press, 2025)

08 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To understand elders' experiences of aging in place, sociologist Stacy Torres spent five years with longtime New York City residents as they coped wit...

Elyse Ona Singer, "Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2022)

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one...

J. Mijin Cha, "A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future" (MIT Press, 2024)

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To meet the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, a transition away from fossil fuels must occu...

Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024)

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial an...

Carrie N. Baker, "Abortion Pills: US History and Politics" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this compelling and informative interview, Carrie N. Baker discusses her newest book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Pr...

Steven King et al., "In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834–1900" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2022)

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Few subjects in European welfare history attract as much attention as the nineteenth-century English and Welsh New Poor Law. Its founding statute was ...

Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah, "Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States" (NYU Press, 2024)

28 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientists Dan Mallinson and Lee Hannah, both experts on state-level politics and the policy making process, have a new book that focuses on...

Tom Scott-Smith, "Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter" (Stanford UP, 2024)

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade...

Daniel S. Goldberg, "Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Football is the national game in the United States – and many families and friends bond over their love of the sport. While few people play professi...

Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million...

Elizabeth Garner Masarik, "The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024), Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik ...

Herbert Hoover gave us Woody Guthrie (with David Cunningham)

23 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the final episode of What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 e...

Robert B. Talisse, "Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance" (Oxford UP, 2024)

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An internet search of the phrase "this is what democracy looks like" returns thousands of images of people assembled in public for the purpose of coll...

Without Parents or Papers: A Discussion with Stephanie L. Canizales

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States (U California Press, 2024), a which explo...

An Existential Fight between Green and Carbon Assets (with Mark Blyth)

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 election and discussin...

Muhammad H. Zaman, "We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Around the world, millions are forcibly displaced by conflict, climate change, and persecution. Some cross international borders, while others are dis...

Domingo Morel, "Developing Scholars: Race, Politics, and the Pursuit of Higher Education" (Oxford UP, 2023)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past fifty years, debates concerning race and college admissions have focused primarily on the policy of affirmative action at elite institut...

Vishaan Chakrabarti, "The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From one of today's most inspired architects and urban advocates, a manifesto for architecture as a force for addressing our biggest social challenges...

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, "What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

12 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman's book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice (St. Martin's Press, 2024) presents a modern argument, g...

Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and ...

Paul M. Renfro, "The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America" (UNC Press, 2024)

10 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan Whi...

Todd Stern, "Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next" (MIT Press, 2024)

08 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the U.S. lead negotiator on climate change, an inside account of the seven-year negotiation that culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement in 201...

Ethel Tungohan, "Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care (U Illinois Press, 2023) challenges the stereotype of downtrodden...

Ethel Tungohan, "Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care (U Illinois Press, 2023) challenges the stereotype of downtrodden...

Gareth Millward, "Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State" (Oxford UP, 2022)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State (Oxford UP, 2022) is a history of how the British state asked, 'who is really sick?' Tracing medica...

Emiliana Vegas, "Let's Change the World: How to Work within International Development Organizations to Make a Difference" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

So many talented young people receive a great education and set out to make a difference in the world. Yet, they often find the global institutions on...

Anne M. Whitesell, "Living Off the Government?: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare" (NYU Press, 2024)

03 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who deserves public assistance from the government? This age-old question has been revived by policymakers, pundits, and activists following the massi...

Sanaullah Khan, "Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self" (Lexington Books, 2023)

03 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditi...

Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning, "Beginning to End the Climate Crisis: A History of Our Future" (Brandeis UP, 2023)

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Climate change is the biggest crisis of humankind. We can’t watch other people drive our future right against the wall.” This is a quote by Luisa...

From Rubinomics to Bidenomics: On the Democratic Party’s Shifting Trade & Industrial Policy

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is episode two Cited Podcast’s new season, the Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise. This season tells stories of the political and scholarly ...

Dariusz Wojcik et al., "Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money" (Yale UP, 2024)

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the emergence of money in the ancient world to today’s interconnected landscape of high-frequency trading and cryptocurrency, the story of fina...

Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dicken...

Johanna Hedva, "How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom" (Zando-Hillman Grad Books, 2024)

27 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding...

Simon Kuznets and the Invention of the Economy

27 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Economics sometimes feels like a physics–so sturdy, so objective, and so immutable. Yet, behind every clean number or eye-popping graph, there is us...

Kathleen McGoey and Lindsey Pointer, "Little Book of Restorative Teaching Tools for Online Learning: Games and Activities for Restorative Justice Practitioners" (Good Books, 2024)

26 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Teaching, training, and gathering online has become a global norm since 2020. Restorative practitioners have risen to the challenge to shift restorati...

Sarah Ball, "Behavioural Public Policy in Australia: How an Idea Became Practice" (Routledge, 2022)

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Max Weber once remarked that bureaucracy’s power comes from its massing of expert and factual knowledges. It amasses this power, in part, by keeping...

René Boer, "Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives" (Valiz, 2023)

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In cities across the world, a new urban condition is spreading rapidly: an ever-increasing push toward efficiency, sanitization, surveillance and the ...

Adam Greenfield, "Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire" (Verso, 2024)

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024), Adam Greenfield presents a compelling vision for collective resilience in ...

Anna Lora-Wainwright, "Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China" (MIT Press, 2021)

20 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and...

Jennifer Chudy, "Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy, Suffering, and Solidarity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sym...

Amanda Shoaf Vincent, "Constructing Gardens, Cultivating the City: Paris's New Parks, 1977-1995" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the space of about two decades, five major parks were proposed, designed, and created in Paris. Some emerged from competitions between professiona...

Keith E. Whittington, "You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms" (Polity Press, 2024)

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented ef...

Gretchen Sisson, "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

12 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the otherwise partisa...

Wes Marshall, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System" (Island Press, 2024)

12 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse in recent years, yet we continue...

Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions...

Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the st...

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, "The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places" (MIT Press, 2024)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An expressive book of prose and photographs that reveals the powerful ways our everyday places support our shared belonging. Where would you take some...

Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of ...