Shows / New Books in Politics and Polemics
New Books in Politics and Polemics
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Postscript: How Trump’s Executive Order Contradicts Birthright Citizenship
Birthright citizenship is established in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – yet Donald Trump’s recent Executive…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Tahrir Hamdi, "Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Tahrir Hamdi is a Professor of Resistance Literature at the Arab Open University in Jordan. She is the author of the award-winning Imagining Palestine and…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us: A Conversation with Frances Lee
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 University…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird
Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing her…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Postscript: All talk and no action? How political scientists respond to racism and authoritarianism?
After the murder of George Floyd, the United States had the largest protests in the nation’s history. Other public and private responses included corporations…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Kimberly Clausing, "Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital" (Harvard UP, 2019)
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 complain…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Violent Majorities 2.3: Long-Distance Ethnonationalism Roundup (LA, AS)
John joins Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian for the roundup episode of the second series of Violent Majorities, focusing on long-distance ethnonationalism…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Chris Higgins, "Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education" (MIT Press, 2024)
Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Andrew Boyd, "I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor" (New Society, 2023)
Andrew Boyd is a humorist and long-time veteran of creative campaigns for social change. He led the decade-long satirical media campaign “Billionaires for…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)
How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Successful…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)
My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America's Biggest Retail Stores
Our book is: Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores (UP of Colorado, 2024) which presents a new look at how the big box…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Giampaolo Conte, "A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms" (Routledge, 2024)
A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms highlights how, since the recent financial crises, the expression ‘liberal…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Postscript: How to Fight Back: Charting Opposition to the Actions of the Trump Administration
Shortly after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th American president, he issued 37 executive orders and, subsequently, the Trump administration has –…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Ethan Tapper, "How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World" (Broadleaf Books, 2024)
For more than a decade, Ethan Tapper has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism. Literature is a mode of…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Martyn Percy, "The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England" (Hurst, 2025)
The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England (Hurst, 2025) by Dr. Martyn Percy offers a bold and unsettling truth…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Patrick Riordan, "Human Dignity and Liberal Politics: Catholic Possibilities for the Common Good" (Georgetown UP, 2023)
A deeply considered examination of the “common good” reconciling Catholic Social Thought with secular politics and philosophy. The Second Vatican Council…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Trump, Anti-DEI and Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms
In this episode my co-host and I had planned to talk about how the new Trump administration could create unity in America. The episode title had been…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025)
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, this wasn’t…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
René Reinhold Schallegger, "A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames" (McFarland, 2024)
We are witnessing the collapse of the postwar consensus, the implosion of the caring society. In times of social, economic, and political insecurity, egotism…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Alpa Shah, "The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India" (OR Books, 2024)
The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India (OR Books, 2024) pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Rebecca Haw Allensworth, "The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong" (Harvard UP, 2025)
When we think about "red tape" and the cost of regulation it's hard to overstate the impact of professional licensing. According to Professor Rebecca Haw…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
American Higher Education Under the Second Trump Administration
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)
Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to common…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Tao Leigh Goffe, "Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis" (Doubleday Books, 2025)
In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
"Insurgent Ecologies: Between Environmental Struggles and Postcapitalist Transformations" (Fernwood Publishing, 2024)
We are living through a world-rattling ecological inflection point, with an unprecedented consensus that capitalism is leading humanity into a social and…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Martín Alberto Gonzalez, "Why You Always So Political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education" (Viva Oxnard, 2023)
As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Richard Rorty, "What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Today I talked to Chris Voparil about What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics (Princeton UP, 2023), a book of Richard Rorty's writings he co-edited with W…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Corinne Mitsuye Sugino, "Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
In this episode, I talked to Corinne Sugino, whose book Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans (Rutgers UP, 2024) examines how mainstream…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Zahi Zalloua, "The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury 2024) argues for ressentiment's generative negativity, prompting a shift from…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Violent Majorities 2.1: Peter Beinart on Long-Distance Israeli Ethnonationalism (LA, AS)
Political anthropologists Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen are back to continue RTB's Violent Majorities series with a set of three episodes on long-distance…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)
AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Vittorio Bufacchi, "Why Cicero Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Why Cicero Matters (Bloomsbury, 2023) shows us how the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius, better known as Cicero, can help realize a new political…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Mirca Madianou, "Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful" (Polity, 2024)
With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are being…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Eugene Finkel, "Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine" (Basic Books, 2024)
Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet, to Ukrainians, this attack was painfully familiar, the latest episode in a…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Philip Rathgeb, "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across the Western…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
142* Greg Childs on Seditious Conspiracy (EF, JP)
What a difference four years makes. Back in February 2021, still struggling to understand what had just happened at the Capitol, John and Elizabeth spoke with…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Andy Wightman, "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it" (Birlinn, 2025)
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 our…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Brigid Schulte, "Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life" (Henry Holt, 2024)
Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte's groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention to the…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin. "Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum" (NYU Press, 2024)
How the US asylum process fails to protect against claims of gender-based violence. Through eyewitness accounts of closed-court proceedings and powerful…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
August H. Nimtz and Kyle A. Edwards, "The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution" (Brill, 2024)
The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest and urgency to questions of racial oppression and emancipation. We’ve now had about a decade of activists…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Alva Gotby, "Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing" (Verso, 2025)
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, eat, and…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Congressional Deliberation: A Conversation with Kevin J. Burns and Jordan T. Cash
In this episode, we sit down with Professors Jordan T. Cash and Kevin J. Burns to discuss their recently published book, Congressional Deliberation: Major…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Anthony Walton, "The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation" (David R. Godine, 2024)
Born into the Civil Rights Movement, author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw systemic racism…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Mariam Motamedi Fraser, "Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences" (Manchester UP, 2024)
Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story,' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to dogs'…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Nancy Reddy, "The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy's The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)
Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Matthew McManus, "The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism" (Routledge, 2024)
In The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism (Routledge, 2024), McManus presents a comprehensive guide to the liberal socialist tradition, stretching from Mary…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove, "White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy" (Liveright, 2024)
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 Public…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti, "Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of Illiberal and Antidemocratic Views" (Oxford UP, 2024)
How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic values? This…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)
As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made movements…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working class jobs…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Todd McGowan, "Universality and Identity Politics" (Columbia UP, 2020)
The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Victor D. Cha, "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea" (Columbia UP, 2024)
North Korea is, to this day, still one of the world’s most mysterious countries. What little we know about daily life in the country comes from defectors or…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024)
A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commercially…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Larry S. Temkin, "Being Good in a World of Need" (Oxford UP, 2022)
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 central…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Leah Downey, "Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)
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, that power…
- New Books in Politics and Polemics
Matt Beane, "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" (HarperCollins, 2024)
As part of our informal series on artificial intelligence, Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Beane, Assistant Professor of Technology…