New Books in Public Policy

Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein, "The Incommunicados" (Center for Study of Responsive Law, 2023)

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Incommunicados is a collection of unanswered letters to public officials and other notable figures from iconoclasts Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein. The ...

Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, "Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet inste...

America & Democracy Ep. 2: Jonathan M. Berman on Anti-Vaxxers

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping...

America & Democracy Ep. 1: Robert I. Rotberg on Corruption

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this series of interviews from the MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping ...

Michelle Smirnova, "The Prescription-To-Prison Pipeline: The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain" (Duke UP, 2023)

15 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Prescription-To-Prison Pipeline: The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain (Duke UP, 2023), Michelle Smirnova argues that the ongoing o...

Justine Ellis, "The Politics of Religious Literacy: Education and Emotion in a Secular Age" (Brill, 2022)

14 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Religious Literacy has become a popular concept for navigating religious diversity in public life. In The Politics of Religious Literacy: Education a...

Anne Kaun and Fredrik Stiernstedt, "Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

13 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Prisons are not typically known for cutting-edge media technologies. Yet from photography in the nineteenth century to AI-enhanced tracking cameras to...

Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri, "Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy" (Columbia UP, 2023)

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri's book Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on extensive rese...

The Everyday Feminist with Latanya Mapp Frett

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Equality between the sexes has long been recognized as a fundamental moral and legal objective of the UN, and more recently of many governments and in...

Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking sp...

Karin Chenoweth, "Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement" (Harvard Education Press, 2021)

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement (Harvard Education Press, 2021), long-time education writ...

Stephen G. Post, "Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do we approach a "deeply forgetful" loved one so as to notice and affirm their continuing self-identity? For three decades, Stephen G. Post has wo...

Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, "The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism" (Princeton UP, 2023)

07 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is libertarianism a progressive doctrine, or a reactionary one? Does libertarianism promise to liberate the poor and the marginalized from the yoke of...

Carceral Capitalism

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Conor Rose reads from Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalism. This extract, taken from the opening of the book, offers insight into the Black Lives Matte...

Reece Jones, "White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall" (Beacon Press, 2021)

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Recent racist anti-immigration policies, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, have left many Americans wondering: How did we get here? In White Bo...

Brian Palmer-Rubin, "Evading the Patronage Trap: Interest Representation in Mexico" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Marquette University Political Scientist Brian Palmer-Rubin has a new book that examines the connections and disconnections between economics and poli...

Susan Hartman, "City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town" (Beacon Press, 2022)

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can scholars employ the practices and techniques of investigative journalism? Susan Hartman provides an answer in her intimate look at refugee exp...

Brian Domitrovic, "The Emergence of Arthur Laffer: The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics in Chicago and Washington, 1966–1976" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

01 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Emergence of Arthur Laffer: The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics in Chicago and Washington, 1966–1976 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) explores...

The Future of Germs: A Discussion with Jonathan Kennedy

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have germs or humans done the most to shape the world’s history? Did Homo Sapiens get the better of the Neanderthals because of superior brainpower ...

Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can we stop infrastructure from damaging the planet? In Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond...

Rachael Gabriel, "How Education Policy Shapes Literacy Instruction" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Reading instruction is the most legislated area of education and the most frequently referenced metric for measuring educational progress. This book, ...

Brett Christophers, "Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World" (Verso, 2023)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone ...

Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston, "The Transgender Studies Reader Remix" (Routledge, 2022)

24 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hello, this is Eric LeMay, a host on the New Books Network. Today I interview Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston about The Transgender Studie...

Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

24 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v...

Kerri Lynn Stone, "Panes of the Glass Ceiling: The Unspoken Beliefs Behind the Law's Failure to Help Women Achieve Professional Parity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

More than fifty years of civil rights legislation and movements have not ended employment discrimination. Kerri Lynn Stone's Panes of the Glass Ceili...

Kaitlin Sidorsky and Wendy J. Schiller, "Inequality across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

16 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, one in four women will be victims of domestic violence each year. Despite the passage of federal legislation on violence against...

Freddy Foks, "Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain" (U California Press, 2023)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Freddy Foks's Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain (U California Press, 2023) is a n...

Abortion and the Law

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s Postscript focuses on abortion politics in the United States, with particular attention to the April 7, 2023 federal court decisions in Te...

Rajesh Veeraraghavan, "Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Reform in India" (Oxford UP, 2022)

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rajesh Veeraraghavan’s Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (Oxford University Press, 2022) offers the first ethn...

The Cooperative Extension System

10 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Karl Dudman tells us about the Cooperative Extension System. Formed in 1914 as an extension of the Land Grant Universi...

Howard Gillette, Jr., "The Paradox of Urban Revitalization: Progress and Poverty in America's Postindustrial Era" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

09 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the twenty-first century, cities in the United States that had suffered most the shift to a postindustrial era entered a period widely proclaimed a...

Antero Garcia, "All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It’s been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Dr. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its f...

Solving Public Problems with Beth Noveck

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, we present the recording of a book talk by John Torpey, Ralph Bunche Institute director, with Beth Noveck, ...

Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah...

Eli Elinoff, "Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to design democratic cities and democratic citizens in a time of mass urbanization and volatile political transformation?  Citizen ...

Administrative State 101: A Conversation with Adam J. White

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the Administrative State? Where did it come from? Is it a cause for concern or celebration? Adam J. White, Resident Scholar at the American En...

Mark Robert Rank, "The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity" (Oxford UP, 2023)

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The paradox of poverty amidst plenty has plagued the United States throughout the 21st century--why should the wealthiest country in the world also ha...

Woodrow Hartzog, "Privacy's Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies" (Harvard UP, 2018)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every day, Internet users interact with technologies designed to undermine their privacy. Social media apps, surveillance technologies, and the Intern...

The Future of Political Time and Space: A Discussion with Jan Zielonka

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of time and space in democracy? It's now widely accepted that Chinese politicians are advantaged by the lack of the short time hori...

Heidi J. Larson, "Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away" (Oxford UP, 2020)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around thei...

Kristin Hass, "Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices" (Beacon Press, 2022)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field g...

Derek Hanley, "Photos from the Front Lines: A Year on the Streets of Alameda County" (2022)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Photos from the Front Lines follows medics from Falck Alameda County ambulance during one of the most tumultuous years in recent collective memory - ...

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs, "Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs' book Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor (U California Press, 2023) is a timel...

Adam Sowards, "Making America's Public Lands: The Contested History of Conservation on Federal Lands" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over one quarter - some 640 million acres - of the United States consists of public land owned, not privately, but by the federal government, much of ...

Leigh Goodmark, "Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the st...

The Future of Genes and Equality: A Discussion with Kathryn Paige Harden

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If your genes make you better suited to succeed, is that fair? And if not, can anything be done about it? Kathryn Paige Harden – professor psycholog...

Erin Raffety, "Families We Need: Disability, Abandonment, and Foster Care's Resistance in Contemporary China" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Set in the remote, mountainous Guangxi Autonomous Region and based on ethnographic fieldwork, Families We Need: Disability, Abandonment, and Foster C...

Daniel L. Hatcher, "Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems...

Liz Curran, "Better Law for a Better World: New Approaches to Law Practice and Education" (Routledge, 2021)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Better Law for a Better World: New Approaches to Law Practice and Education (Routledge, 2021) I spoke with Dr Liz Curran about the urgent need f...

Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson, "Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions" (Routledge, 2020)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson's book Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions (Routledge, 2020) brings together...

Felicity Hwee-Hwa Chan, "Tensions in Diversity: Spaces for Collective Life in Los Angeles" (U Toronto Press, 2022)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Urban landscapes are complex spaces of sociocultural diversity, characterized by narratives of both conviviality and conflict. As people with multiple...

Rosalynn A. Vega, "Nested Ecologies: A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine" (U Texas Press, 2023)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Each body is a system within a system—an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This...

Roger Biles and Mark H. Rose, "A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945" (Temple UP, 2022)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The “Pittsburgh Renaissance,” an urban renewal effort launched in the late 1940s, transformed the smoky rust belt city’s downtown. Working-class...

Mareike Schomerus, "Lives Amid Violence: Transforming Development in the Wake of Conflict" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Violent conflict and its aftermath are pressing problems, particularly for international development initiatives. However, the results of development ...

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi, "The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left" (Hurst, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was th...

Aya Homei, "Science for Governing Japan's Population" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Aya Homei’s Science for Governing Japan’s Population (Cambridge UP, 2022) examines the science and policy of population in Japan, 1860s-1960s. ...

Measure for Measure Episode 6: IQ

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Intelligence Quotient is a measure of intelligence that has life-or-death consequences. Should we trust it? GUEST Alan Gouddis is a Partner with S...

Nicola Rollock, "The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival" (Penguin, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do racial inequalities persist? In The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival (Penguin, 2023), Nicola Rollock, a Professor of Social Po...

Raina Lipsitz, "The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics" (Verso, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever el...

Jovan Scott Lewis, "Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa" (Duke UP, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa (Duke UP, 2022), Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tul...

Elizabeth T. Hurren, "Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Elizabeth T. Hurren maps...

Rebecca Gayle Howell et al., "What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People (UP of Kentucky, 2023) is the first major anthology of labor writing in nearly a century. Here, editors...

Richard McGahey, "Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Cities are central to prosperity: they are hubs of innovation and growth. However, the economic vitality of wealthy cities is marred by persistent and...

Ronald L. Trosper, "Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands" (U Arizona Press, 2022)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does “development” mean for Indigenous peoples? Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (U Arizona Press, 2022) lays out a...

Frances Howard, "Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference" (Policy Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can the arts make the world a better place? In Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference (Policy Pr...

Mary Crossley, "Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These ...

Frederick Schauer, "The Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else" (Harvard UP, 2022)

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In a world awash in “fake news,” where public figures make unfounded assertions as a matter of course, a preeminent legal theorist ranges across t...

David Bond, "Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So much of what we know of clean water, clean air, and now a stable climate rests on how fossil fuels first disrupted them. Negative Ecologies: Fossi...

Joseph Plaster, "Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin" (Duke UP, 2023)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin (Duke UP, 2023), Joseph Plaster explores the informal support netwo...

Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson, "Failures in Cultural Participation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless ...

Jonathan Herring, "The Right to Be Protected from Committing Suicide" (Hart Publishing, 2022)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Jonathan Herring makes an argument that suicidal people have a right to be protected from committing suicide, and that the state should be u...

Zoe Adams, "The Legal Concept of Work" (Oxford UP, 2022)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"Why do we think about some practices as work, and not others? Why do we classify certain capacities as economically valuable skills, and others as in...

Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud, "Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy" (Henry Holt, 2023)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy (Henry Holt, 2023) is the inside story of a worldwide investi...

Robyn Sloggett and Marcelle Scott, "Climatic and Environmental Threats to Cultural Heritage" (Routledge, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can cultural heritage give us the methodological tools and source material to confront climate change? How can the cultural heritage sector lead t...

Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical...

John Peters and Don Wells, "Canadian Labour Policy and Politics" (UBC Press, 2022)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic has awakened them to the dangers attendant to a lot of the working conditions in society today—for others, it has ma...

The Politics of Bicycling

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Zack Furness, an associate professor of communications at Penn State Greater Allegheny, talks about his 2010 book, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Po...

The History of Student Loans in the United States

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, talks about her book, Indentured Students: How Government-Gua...

Bioethics, Humility, and Responsibility: A Conversation with Arthur Caplan

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For this episode we welcome Dr. Arthur Caplan, who is currently the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Di...

How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction?

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Parrino has been involved with the delivery of health care and treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) since 1974. As the president of the Ameri...

Gun-Detecting AI, Infrastructure, and Bureaucracy

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Aaron Gordon, Senior Writer at Motherboard, Vice’s science and technology website, talks about his co-authored article, “‘The Least Safe Day’:...

ALICE and Economic Hardship in the United States

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie Hoopes, National Director of United for ALICE, a research center founded at United Way of Northern New Jersey, talks about the ALICE program...

Energy Costs, Poverty, and Race

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Destenie Nock, an assistant professor in the Engineering and Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering Departments at Carnegie Mellon Univ...

We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States. The “Dreamer narrative” celebrate...

Max Bazerman, "Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop" (Princeton UP, 2022)

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Max Bazerman about his book Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop (Princeton UP, 2022). Remember Saturday Night ...

Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione, "Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities" (MIT Press, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A new model of urban governance, mapping the route to a more equitable management of a city’s infrastructure and services. The majority of the world...

Michael Murawski, "Museums as Agents of Change: A Guide to Becoming a Changemaker" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Museums everywhere have the potential to serve as agents of change—bringing people together, contributing to local communities, and changing people’...

The Internet, Inequality, and the “Digital Divide”

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Information scholar Daniel Greene, an assistant professor at University of Maryland, talks about his book, The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequali...

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, "Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Citizens around the world look to the state for social welfare provision, but often struggle to access essential services in health, education, and so...

Iza Ding, "The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China" (Cornell UP, 2022)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does the state do when public expectations exceed its governing capacity? The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance i...

Border Lines: Refugees and the International Order

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Climate change and war have flung millions of people on the move, who often seek safe harbor in the very countries responsible for their displacement....

Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch, "How Cities Can Transform Democracy" (Polity Press, 2022)

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We live in an urban age. It is well-known that urbanization is changing landscapes, built environments, social infrastructures and everyday lives acro...

Derrick Darby, "A Realistic Blacktopia: Why We Must Unite to Fight" (Oxford UP, 2022)

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, unjust disparities in things like income, opportunity, health, safety, and education tightly track racial categorizations of the...

Alexandre I. R. White, "Epidemic Orientalism: Race, Capital, and the Governance of Infectious Disease" (Stanford UP, 2023)

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For many residents of Western nations, COVID-19 was the first time they experienced the effects of an uncontrolled epidemic. This is in part due to a ...

Peter Jones and Kristel van Ael, "Design Journeys Through Complex Systems" (Bis Publishers, 2022)

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As I slowly settle into 2023 — reflecting on the blur that was 2022 — I can’t help but think about the complex problems (aka big messes!) we fac...

Virtually Violent: Are Online Attacks "Violence?"

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable communities have been hit especially hard by disruptive online attacks. But calling these attacks "vi...

Seeing Truth in Museums

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Feeling down about museums? We have so many reasons to, but Chris Newell, Tribal Community Member-in-Residence at UConn and Director of Education at t...

Sheri Brenden, "Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), Sheri Brenden examines how two teenage girls...

Ajay Agrawal et al., "Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" (HBR Press, 2022)

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare....

The History of Temp Work

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Louis Hyman, professor and director of the Institute of Workplace Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations...