New Books in Public Policy
Episodes
Book Banning: A Discussion with Christine Emeran of the National Coalition Against Censorship
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Book bans and book challenges are both on the rise. And they are increasing at unprecedented rates. But why is this happening? Dr. Christine Emeran of...
Ariana Mangual Figueroa, "Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Learning from children about citizenship status and how it shapes their schooling. There is a persistent assumption in the field of education that chi...
Matilda Bickers, "Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex" (PM Press, 2023)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fiercely intelligent, fantastically transgressive, Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex (PM Press, 2023) is an intimate portrait of the lives...
Ketaki Chowkhani and Craig Wynne, "Singular Selves: An Introduction to Singles Studies" (Routledge, 2024)
04 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Singular Selves: An Introduction to Singles Studies (Routledge, 2024) edited By Ketaki Chowkhani and Craig Wynne examines, for perhaps the first ...
John J. Berger, "Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth" (Seven Stories Press, 2023)
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth (Seven Stories Press, 2023) is a hopeful and critical resource that mak...
The Contagion of Covid Policy: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Freedom of Speech
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After a storied career as a health policy expert, Stanford Medicine's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's work became a political focal point during the COVID-19 p...
Justin O’Connor, "Culture is Not an Industry: Reclaiming Art and Culture for the Common" (Manchester UP, 2024)
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
According to Dr. Justin O’Connor, culture is at the heart of what it means to be human. But twenty-five years ago, the British government rebranded...
Allison Schrager, "An Economist Walks Into A Brothel And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk" (Portfolio, 2019)
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you are a commuter weighing options of taking the bus vs walking to get you to work on time or a military general leading troops into war, ris...
Adia Harvey Wingfield, "Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It" (Amistad Press, 2023)
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to a...
George R. Boyer, "The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain" (Princeton UP, 2019)
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The creation of the postwar welfare state in Great Britain did not represent the logical progression of governmental policy over a period of generatio...
David Pozen, "The Constitution of the War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David Pozen is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of the new book, The Constitution of the War on Drug...
Kathryn Telling, "The Liberal Arts Paradox in Higher Education: Negotiating Inclusion and Prestige" (Policy Press, 2023)
27 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the future of higher education? In The Liberal Arts Paradox in Higher Education: Negotiating Inclusion and Prestige (Policy Press, 2023), D...
Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles, "Mobilizing the Metropolis: How the Port Authority Built New York" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is everywhere in the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1921, its portfolio includes airports, marin...
Michael J. Graetz, "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America" (Princeton UP, 2024)
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Gr...
Susan Partovi, "Renegade M.D.: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets" (Bookbaby, 2024)
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Susan Partovi first experienced poverty medicine volunteering at a dump site in Tijuana during high school. There, she recognized the need for all...
Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King, "America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect Versus Repair" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is happening to the politics of race in America? In America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect Versus Repair (U Chicago Press, 2024), Roger...
Guido Alfani, "As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West" (Princeton UP, 2023)
19 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This provocative and interesting book has received considerable attention. Roaring reviews and interviews include The Financial Times (UK), The...
Bruce O'Neill, "Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
17 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce O'Neill's Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) gets to the bottom of the twenty-first-century city,...
Ieva Jusionyte, "Exit Wounds: How America's Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border" (U California Press, 2024)
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American guns have entangled the lives of people on both sides of the US-Mexico border in a vicious circle of violence. After treating wounded migrant...
Seth D. Kaplan, "Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time" (Little, Brown Spark, 2023)
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many ways: they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the qua...
Jessica C. Robbins, "Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memory, Kinship, and Personhood" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How embedded are the dignity and personhood of the elderly in the collective memory of their nation? In Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memo...
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" (FSG, 2021)
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya t...
Naomi Cahn, et al., "Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A stirring, comprehensive look at the state of women in the workforce--why women's progress has stalled, how our economy fosters unproductive competit...
Margaret Price, "Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life" (Duke UP, 2024)
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life (Duke University Press, 2024), Margaret Price intervenes in the competitive,...
Robert Bruno, "What Work Is" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Bruno is a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he also serves as Director of the ...
Dave Mac Marquis and Moira Marquis, "Books Through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
31 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Co-edited by Dave Mac Marquis and Moira Marquis, two activists with deep experience in organizing prison books programs (PBPs), Books Through Bars: ...
José Tenorio, "School Food Politics in Mexico: The Corporatization of Obesity and Healthy Eating Policies" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For decades now, we’ve all heard the refrain – we are in a war against obesity, with perhaps the most important battle being fought over the healt...
Teresa Ghilarducci, "Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
30 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The issue of the future of Social Security, on which millions of Americans depend, produced great political theater at the State of the Union address....
India’s Waste Problem: A Discussion with Pamela Das
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How is India tackling its persistent wage management problems? And, are new infrastructural solutions the way forward? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nie...
Ignacio Cofone, "The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our privacy is besieged by tech companies. Companies can do this because our laws are built on outdated ideas that trap lawmakers, regulators, and cou...
Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 20...
Why, How, and Who to Marry: A Conversation with Brad Wilcox *01
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox *01 delves into some of the popular wisdom surrounding marriage and tells us what the data has to say: ...
Jeffrey Benson, "Hacking School Discipline Together" (Times Ten Publications, 2024)
22 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Benson’s Hacking School Discipline Together (Times Ten Publications, 2024) follows in footsteps first hacked out by Weinstein and Maynard ...
Karl Widerquist, "Universal Basic Income" (MIT Press, 2024)
22 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Widerquist's Universal Basic Income (MIT Press, 2024) is an accessible introduction to the simple (yet radical) premise that a small cash inco...
Alke Jenss, "Selective Security in the War on Drugs: The Coloniality of State Power in Colombia and Mexico" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paramilitaries, crime, and tens of thousands of disappeared persons—the so-called war on drugs has perpetuated violence in Latin America, at times p...
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed ...
Travis Rieder, "Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices" (Dutton, 2024)
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level ...
David E. Gilbert, "Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land: A Social Movement Ethnography" (U California Press, 2024)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Two decades ago, a group of Indonesian agricultural workers began occupying the agribusiness plantation near their homes. In the years since, members ...
Samantha Majic, "Lights, Camera, Feminism?: Celebrities and Anti-Trafficking Politics" (U California Press, 2023)
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recent years have brought an upsurge in celebrity activism. Not a day goes by without an actor or musician taking to a stage, a podium or the internet...
Jacqueline Kennelly, "Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life (University of Toronto Press, 2023) by Dr. Jacqueline Kennelly traces the politi...
Benjamin J. Pauli, "Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis" (MIT Press, 2019)
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in 2019, Benjamin Pauli’s book, Flint Fights Back offers lasting insights into one of the most important drinking water-caused ...
Adam Dean, "Opening Up by Cracking Down: Labor Repression and Trade Liberalization in Democratic Developing Countries" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did democratic developing countries open their economies during the late-twentieth century? Since labor unions opposed free trade, democratic gove...
Noah L. Nathan, "The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
States are often minimally present in the rural periphery. Yet a limited presence does not mean a limited impact. Isolated state actions in regions wh...
Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, dis...
Verity Harding, "AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own" (Princeton UP, 2024)
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI's power grows, so does the need to figure out what--and who--this...
Carly Goodman, "Dreamland: America's Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction" (UNC Press, 2023)
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be...
Alissa Quart and David Wallis, "Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World's Richest Country" (Haymarket, 2023)
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, former Managing Director of ...
Calla Hummel, "Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State" (Oxford UP, 2022)
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Informal workers make up over two billion workers or about 50 percent of the global workforce, and yet scholarly understandings of informal workers’...
Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2024), by Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein,...
What Does It Mean to Govern a Multilingual Society Well?
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hanna Torsh speaks with Alexandra Grey about good governance in linguistically diverse cities. Linguistic diversity is often seen through a deficit...
Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An enduring paradox of urban public health is that many communities around hospitals are economically distressed and, counterintuitively, medically un...
Laurence Ralph, "Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him" (Grand Central Publishing, 2023)
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He wa...
Allyson Mower, "Developing Authorship and Copyright Ownership Policies: Best Practices" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024)
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Authorship represents a new area of policy-related work within higher education research administration, funding agencies, and scholarly journal publi...
Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, "American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15" (FSG, 2023)
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner so...
Mirelsie Velazquez, "Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
17 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The postwar migration of Puerto Rican men and women to Chicago brought thousands of their children into city schools. These children's classroom exper...
Max Felker-Kantor, "DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools" (UNC Press, 2023)
17 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With its signature "DARE to keep kids off drugs" slogan and iconic t-shirts, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was the most popular drug educatio...
Laurence Cox et al., "Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Social Movements" (Edward Elgar, 2024)
17 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Addressing practice-oriented questions, this handbook engages with both theoretical and political dimensions, unpacking the multidimensional nature of...
Ryan Manucha, "Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups: Canada's Quest for Interprovincial Free Trade" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ryan Manucha about his new book Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups: Canada's Quest for Interprovincial Free Trade (Mc...
Rob Percival, "The Meat Paradox: Eating, Empathy, and the Future of Meat" (Pegasus, 2022)
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our future diet will be shaped by diverse forces. It will be shaped by novel technologies, by geopolitical tensions, and the evolution of cultural pre...
James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson, "Judging Inequality: State Supreme Courts and the Inequality Crisis" (Russell Sage, 2021)
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality have been documented by social scientists – but the public conversation and scho...
William Gale, "Fiscal Therapy: Curing America's Debt Addiction and Investing in the Future" (Oxford UP, 2019)
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The US government is laboring under an enormous debt burden, one that will impact the living standards of future generations of Americans by limiting ...
Tim Keogh, "In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Postwar Suburb" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
11 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There is a familiar narrative about American suburbs: after 1945, white residents left cities for leafy, affluent subdivisions and the prosperity they...
David C. Young et al., "Policy Matters: Perspectives, Procedures, and Processes" (Emerald Publishing, 2023)
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Never have policy initiatives been so important than in today’s society. Neoliberal manifestations, climate change, civil rights movements, and gove...
Nicholas B. Dirks, "City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing from his experiences of having belonged to the faculty, administrative, and presidential circles of the university, author Nicholas B. Dirks ...
Nick Romeo, "The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy" (PublicAffairs, 2024)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed: a provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy. Con...
Calvin John Smiley, "Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition" (U California Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023), Calvin John Smiley explores the lives of people who w...
Jake Berman, "The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every driver in North America shares one miserable, soul-sucking universal experience—being stuck in traffic. But things weren’t always like this....
Lisa L. Phillips et al., "Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts" (Ohio State UP, 2024)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the nature of grassroots activism? How and why do individuals get involved or attempt to make change for themselves, others, or their own comm...
Sabina Andron, "Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City" (Routledge, 2024)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sabina Andron's book Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City (Routledge, 2024) focuses on urban surfaces, on exploring their authorship ...
Chrystin Ondersma, "Dignity Not Debt: An Abolitionist Approach to Economic Justice" (U California Press, 2024)
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American households have a debt problem. The problem is not, as often claimed, that Americans recklessly take on too much debt. The problem is that US...
George Fisher, "Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial M...
Matthew D. Lassiter, "The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs" (Princeton UP, 2023)
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority pop...
The Culture Trap, with Sociologist Derron Wallace (EF, JP)
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Elizabeth and John talk with Derron Wallace, sociologist of education and Brandeis colleague, about his new book The Culture Trap, ...
The Future of School Reform: A Discussion with Alison Colwell
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Educationalists sometimes argue that the best way to improve a failing school is to appoint a strict principal or head, and this is sometimes the case...
Caitlin Killian, "Failing Moms: Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers" (Polity Press, 2023)
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The role of mother is often celebrated in the United States as the most important job in the world but Dr. Caitlin Killian argues that American mother...
Rachel Nolan, "Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala" (Harvard UP, 2024)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The poignant saga of Guatemala's adoption industry: an international marketplace for children, built on a foundation of inequality, war, and Indigenou...
Sandro Galea, "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative chronicle of how US public health has strayed from its liberal roots. The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health...
Bruce Wardhaugh, "Competition Law in Crisis: The Antitrust Response to Economic Shocks" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
26 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, government agencies around the world have been forced to consider the role of competition law and policy in addressing various crise...
Damon Scott, "The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco" (U Texas Press, 2024)
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Damon Scott is a lively hist...
Ofer Sharone, "The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An eye-opening look at how all American workers, even the highly educated and experienced, are vulnerable to the stigma of unemployment. After receivi...
Patricia Strach and Kathleen S. Sullivan, "The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929" (Cornell UP, 2023)
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientists Patricia Strach (The University at Albany, State University of New York) and Kathleen S. Sullivan (Ohio University) have written ...
Paul Gowder, "The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Governments and consumers expect internet platform companies to regulate their users to prevent fraud, stop misinformation, and avoid violence. Yet, s...
Aimee Loiselle, "Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class" (UNC Press, 2023)
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1970s, Hollywood producers took the published biography of Crystal Lee Sutton, a white southern textile worker, and transformed it into a ...
Dana R. Fisher, "Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action" (Columbia UP, 2024)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've known for decades that climate change is an existential crisis. For just as long, we've seen the complete failure of our institutions to rise to...
Alexandra Filindra, "Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has more guns than people and more gun violence than any Western democracy. Scholars in diverse fields interrogate why 21st centur...
Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, "Addressing Modern Slavery" (UNSW Press, 2019)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Before you left your house this morning, chances are that you used products and consumed goods that were produced by modern slavery. From the coffee ...
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on ...
Gerald Epstein, “What's Wrong with Modern Money Theory? A Policy Critique” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the last-but-one financial crisis abated and governments responded to better times by clawing back their stimulus packages, a once-obscure econo...
Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of Ameri...
Matthew O. Jackson, "The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors" (Vintage, 2019)
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson...
Robert N. Gross, “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America” (Oxford UP, 2018)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions...
Gabriel Abend, "Words and Distinctions for the Common Good: Practical Reason in the Logic of Social Science" (Princeton UP, 2023)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How social scientists' disagreements about their key words and distinctions have been misconceived, and what to do about it Social scientists do resea...
Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle, "Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives" (NYU Press, 2021)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars Stephen Engel and Timothy Lyle have a new book that dives into the thinking around power, political and cultural progress, and the LGBTQ+ com...
Martha C. Nussbaum, "Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility" (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in tro...
Robert R. Janes, "Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat" (Routledge, 2023)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who do you turn to at the brink of the apocalypse? What might help us to mitigate the financial, commercial, political, social, and cultural collapse ...
Justin Marceau, "Beyond Cages: Animal Law and Criminal Punishment" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For all the diversity of views within the animal protection movement, there is a surprising consensus about the need for more severe criminal justice ...
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers w...
David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Cou...
Milton Gaither, "Homeschool: An American History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With around two million children currently enrolled in home schools in the USA, no-one can doubt that the subject of Milton Gaither’s new book is ti...
The Future of Migration: A Discussion with Hein de Haas
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Immigration has become one of the biggest issues in all western democracies. And the debate is so charged it's hard to know who to believe. Which is w...