New Books in Public Policy - podcast cover

New Books in Public Policy

New Books Networknewbooksnetwork.com
Interviews with Scholars of Public Policy about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Episodes

Nicholas Chesterley, "Future-Generation Government: How to Legislate for the Long Term" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

Our impact on future generations has never been greater, and the challenges we face are increasingly long-term. Future-Generation Government proposes ways that we can reward our governments for making durable policy decisions that anticipate future crises. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

May 31, 202536 min

Catriona M.M. MacDonald, "The Caledoniad: The Making of Scottish History" (John Donald, 2024)

Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the historical narrative the only legitimate medium through which the past can be made known? Are novelists and historians as far apart as convention has it? In an age when history grounds any claims to national status, these are important questions and they have implications for how Scottish history has evolved, and how Scottish identity has been und...

May 30, 202545 min

Hali Lee, "The Big We" (Zando - Sweet July Books, 2025)

Hali Lee's The Big We (Zando, 2025) offers a compelling counterpoint to traditional billionaire-driven philanthropy (which she dubs "Big Phil"). Instead of logic models and donor-centric metrics, Lee champions giving circles—groups of everyday people who pool resources to support causes they value while building genuine community connections. Drawing from her experiences founding the Asian Women Giving Circle and co-creating the Donors of Color Network, Lee showcases giving circles making tangib...

May 24, 202543 minEp. 7

Postcript: Calibrating the Outrage-Democratic Erosion, Legality, and Politics

We’ve been focusing on the dynamics of democratic backsliding in the United States and beyond. In this episode of Postscript: Conversations on Politics and Political Science, Susan talks the co-founder and co-director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, Dr. Robert Blair about how the Consortium offers FREE resources to teachers, students, journalists, policy makers, and any interested person – including shared syllabus, readings, assignments, YouTube virtual roundtables, and policy briefs. Rob...

May 20, 202544 min

Tamara Lea Spira, "Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times" (U California Press, 2025)

Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in increasingly precarious times. Tamara Lea Spira's Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times (U California Press, 2025) traces the shifting dominant meanings of queer family from the late twentieth century to today. With this book, Spira highlights the growing embrace of normative family structures by LGBTQ+ movements--calling into que...

May 19, 20251 hr 6 minEp. 252

Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)

Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most children who enter youth sport are driven to quit by the time they enter adolescence, and many more are sidelined by its high financial burdens. Until now, there has been little legal scholarly attention paid to youth sport or its reform. In More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport (University of California Press, 2025) D...

May 18, 202533 minEp. 291

Jon Shelton, "The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy" (Cornell UP, 2023)

The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the only, way for Americans to access economic opportunity. As Jon Shelton shows, linking education to economic well-being was not politically inevitable. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance, public education was championed as a way to help citizens learn how to participate in a democracy. By the 1930s, public education, along with u...

May 17, 20251 hr 12 minEp. 253

False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression

Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia. In this insightful conversation, Selgin unpacks the myths and realities of FDR’s New Deal through the lens of his book, False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 (University of Chicago Press, 2025). While the New Deal is often celebrated as a ...

May 16, 20251 hrEp. 150

Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)

How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil liberties, democratic principles, and the foundation of the public interest over the past century. Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data (MIT Press, 2024) is a policy history that chronicles how the past century of regulating media infrastructure in the United States has eroded global civil liberties as well as democratic princip...

May 15, 20251 hr 8 min

Michael Buser, "Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context" (Policy Press, 2024)

Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context (Policy Press, 2024) investigates and analyses places in Europe, North America and Asia that are facing the immense challenges associated with climate change adaptation. Presenting real-world cases in the contexts of coastal change, drinking water and the cryosphere, Michael Buser shows how the concept of care can be applied to water security and climate adaptation. Exploring the everyday and often hidden ways in ...

May 14, 202537 min

Jeanne Sheehan, "American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) analyzes the roots of widespread disenchantment with American government. While blame often falls on the individuals in office, they are not operating in isolation. Rather they are working within a system designed by the Framers with one goal in mind, protectionism. Although the Framers got much right, their commitment to protection of liberty led them to design a system replete ...

May 13, 202535 minEp. 208

Ryan J. Vander Wielen et al., "The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes than science. Using a rigorous quasi-experimental research design, observational data, and open science practices, The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News (Cambridge UP, 2024) carefully demonstrates how the re-emergence and rise of partisan cable news in the US affected the behavior of...

May 12, 202531 minEp. 207

Patrick Condon, "Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis" (U British Columbia Press, 2024)

How can urban housing, and the land underneath, now account for half of all global wealth? According to Patrick Condon, the simple answer is that land has become an asset rather than a utility. If the rich only indulged themselves with gold, jewels, and art, we wouldn’t have a global housing crisis. But once global capital markets realized land was a good speculative investment, runaway housing costs ensued. In just one city, Vancouver, land prices increased by 600 percent between 2008 and 2016....

May 10, 202527 minEp. 48

Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” an...

May 09, 20251 hr 13 minEp. 412

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the urgency of this topic. Today we welcome philosopher Jake Monaghan to discuss his book, Just Policing (Oxford UP, 2023), which applies interdisciplinary insights to examine the morality of policing. Though the injustices of our world seemingly require some kind of policing, the police are often sources of injustice themselves. But this is not alway...

May 08, 20251 hr 4 minEp. 29

"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne Nardal’s literary salon became a meeting ground for African, Antillean, and African-American intellectuals, in the Parisian suburb of Clamart. The th...

May 02, 202549 min

Claudia Rowe, "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care" (Abrams Press, 2025)

Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams Press, 2025) is compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system, told through the stories of six former foster youth. This powerful narrative nonfiction book delves into the systemic failures that lead many foster children into the criminal justice system, highlighting the urgent need for reform. Award-winning journalist Claudia Rowe brings her extensive experience and investigative prowess to this eye-opening w...

Apr 29, 20251 hr 12 minEp. 203

Caitlin Killian, "Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

In today's post-Roe v. Wade world, U.S. maternal mortality is on the rise and laws regarding contraception, involuntary sterilization, access to reproductive health services, and criminalization of people who are gestating are changing by the minute. Today I’m joined by Dr. Caitlin Killian, the editor of and one of the contributors to a new book from Bloomsbury Academic, Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts: A Reader. I’m also pleased to host two of the chapter authors, Drs. Nancy Hiems...

Apr 28, 20251 hr 8 minEp. 767

Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024)

What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But what is the best way forward? In Beyond Policing, distinguished scholar and writer Philip V. McHarris reimagines the world without police to find answers and reveal how we can make police departments obsolete. Beyond Policing tackles thorny issues with evidence, including data and personal stories, to uncover the weight of policing on people and com...

Apr 22, 202546 minEp. 500

Saleem H. Ali, "Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'sustainability' of human societies. The term's common usage can be traced back to the advent of the Earth Summit in 1992 when 'sustainable development' was broadly embraced by the international community as an ostensibly win-win proposition for economic development, social inclusion, and ecological conservation. Yet both the natural science underpinning...

Apr 21, 202546 minEp. 29

Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)

In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year was not a deviation from the historic Civil Rights Movement, the contributors to this collection examine the important work of Black men and women during the previous decades to shape, expand, and preserve a multiracial American democracy. The authors of these chapters show that Black Americans have long pushed local and national leaders to ensure tha...

Apr 20, 202528 minEp. 205

Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although agricultural inputs are a huge sector of the global economy, the lion's share of that market is controlled by a relatively small number of very large transnational corporations. The high degree of concentration among these agribusiness titans is striking, considering that just a few hundred years ago agricultural inputs were not even marketed good...

Apr 19, 20251 hr 5 minEp. 128

Michael Rosino, "Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside American Grassroots Political Organizing" (UNC Press, 2025)

In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and wield political power for the greater good. Yet, as Michael Rosino shows in Democracy Is Awkward (UNC Press, 2025), progressive political organizations in the United States have frequently failed to achieve social change. Why? Rosino posits that it is because of the unwillingness of white progressives at the grassroots level to share power with pr...

Apr 17, 202528 minEp. 202

Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens. Run and organized like a supply chain, this system dehumanises those who are detained and deported, treating them as if they were packages to be moved from place to place and relying on poorly paid, minimally trained staff to do so. In Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control (Princeton UP, 2024), Mary Bosworth offers...

Apr 16, 202559 minEp. 167

Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)

Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, writes Neil Kraus in his urgent call to action, The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement (Temple UP, 2023). Kraus claims the idea that both the education system and labor force are chronically deficient was aggressively and incorrectly promoted starting in the Reagan era, when corporate interests and education re...

Apr 14, 20251 hr 15 min

Aaron Kupchik, "Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice" (NYU Press, 2025)

Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior. Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools. Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it. Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racia...

Apr 13, 202528 minEp. 249

Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Muriel Blaive to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique. In the podcast we talked about the (failure of the) pandemic response, the necessity of critique, being shadowbanned on Facebook, censorship, and about liberal intellectuals abandoning their core values. Pandemic Power is available in Open Access, thanks to the support of the Austrian Science ...

Apr 12, 20251 hr 5 minEp. 20

What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions

Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. P...

Apr 10, 202553 minEp. 261

Duncan Watson, "Everyone's Trash: One Man Against 1.6 Billion Pounds" (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2024)

Each day, every single person in the United States, all 324 million, discards about five pounds of waste. Be it a bottle that gets placed in a recycling bin or a piece of paper crumpled and tossed into the waste bin, every bit of the daily 1.6 billion pounds cast-off has a story. Everyone's Trash: One Man Against 1.6 Billion Pounds (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2024) is full of those stories. It will wake you up and give you hope. As the author, Duncan Watson, says, "More people in America recycl...

Apr 09, 202540 minEp. 208

Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticing customers with cheap goods and speedy delivery. Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy (Princeton University Press, 2025) traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retail...

Apr 08, 202550 minEp. 124
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast