New Books in American Politics

Steve Fainaru and his brother Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote a bestselling and award-winning book (and accompanying PBS documentary series) about the NFL coverup of concussion trauma, League of Denial. This conversation inaugurates an occasional Recall this Book series on collaborative work: who does it well, what makes it succeed, why can't grumpy isolatos like English professors get with the program? T...

In Co-Illusion, writer and critic David Levi Strauss, tracks the rise of Donald Trump and the media landscape that warped around him. In this interview he discusses the language of Trump, the forthcoming election, and the changing relationship between image and truth. The political crisis that sneaked up on America--the rise of Trump and Trumpism--has revealed the rot at the core of American excep...

What is academic freedom for? What are the greatest threats to academic freedom today? Should Critical Race Theory be taught on college campuses? What about in K-12 classrooms? Keith Whittington, Chairman of the Academic Freedom Alliance's Academic Committee and the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, joins the show to answer these questions and discuss the work...

The Emergence of Arthur Laffer: The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics in Chicago and Washington, 1966–1976 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) explores the origins of Arthur Laffer’s economic theories and how they became a part of mainstream economic policy. Utilizing interviews and archival material, Laffer’s life is traced from his early education through to his time working for the Nixon and Reagan a...

Robert P. George is the indispensable man of American social conservatism. The Princeton professor is a scholar of such intellectual power that he almost single-handedly rescued the anti-abortion movement from the fringes of the American sociopolitical and legal landscape in the 1990s when the secular left assumed that the reign of abortion on demand for any reason was a done deal. George (born 19...

Is the Declaration of Independence unique? Does the Declaration prescribe a form of government? What is the relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution? Allen C. Guelzo, Director of the James Madison Program's Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, joins the show to answer these questions and more.  Guelzo's essay "Harry and me" can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices....

“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. Bell, an almost unanimous Court upheld a Virginia law allowing the sterilization of people the state found to be “socially inadequate” and “feebleminded.” This landmark decision allowed the eugenics movement to take full effect, with multiple states pas...

What does the future hold for the Republican Party? What are the greatest challenges facing America today? How many pull-ups should a young man be able to do? Congressman Mike Gallagher joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helen Andrews, senior editor at The American Conservative, joins Madison's Notes to discuss her new book, Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the relationship between America's Founding principles and her foreign policy? What are unalienable rights and how do we know they exist? How have other nations responded to the final report of the U.S. Department of State's Commission on Unalienable Rights? Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Mary Ann Glendon, Chair of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, join Madison's Notes to ans...

What made George Washington the "greatest man in the world"? What is his legacy outside the United States? What did "honor" mean to America's Founding Fathers, and why was it so important to them? Craig Bruce Smith, author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals During the Revolutionary Era, joins the show to answer these questions and others.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of religion, politics, and the interplay between them are no less crucial to how the United States has engaged with the world beyond its borders. Yet scholarship on American religion tends to bracket the domestic and foreign, despite the fact that...

John Cribb is the author of Old Abe, an historical novel which former Vice President Mike Pence says is the "best book on President Lincoln" he has ever read. John joins to show to discuss the book, the importance of heroes, the "great man" approach to history, Facebook's attempts to "cancel" his book, and more!  You can find Cribb's essay "Facebook Cancels Abe Lincoln" here. Learn more about your...

America was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. Benjamin E. Park traces how Americans imagined novel forms of nationality during the country's first five decades within the context of European discussions taking place at the same time. Focusing on three case studies - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and...

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority’” and commitment to “‘service’ and ‘sacrifice’ and ‘honor’” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meani...

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 women beginning in 1994, differences persist across states in how domestic violence is addressed. Kaitlin Sidorsky and Wendy J. Schiller's book Inequality across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United State...

With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hairdresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argu...

Unequal opportunity sparked Jim Brown's endeavors to encourage Black development while Billie Jean King fought so that women tennis players could earn more money and enjoy greater freedom. Gregory J. Kaliss examines these events and others to guide readers through the unprecedented wave of protest that swept sports in the 1960s and 1970s. The little-known story of the University of Wyoming footbal...

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Allen C. Guelzo, Director of the James Madison Program's Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, joins the show to discuss the legacy of the Gettysburg Address and what Lincoln might say to us today.  Guelzo's 2013 article for The New York Times is here.  Guelzo's 2013 piece in the Claremont Review of Books is here. Learn mo...

Today’s Postscript focuses on abortion politics in the United States, with particular attention to the April 7, 2023 federal court decisions in Texas and Washington controlling access to mifepristone and the wider political forces at play. We have a slightly different format for today’s emergency podcast – spanning four time zones. First, legal historian Mary Ziegler, Martin Luther King Professor...

Are transgenderism and feminism at odds? Are we living through another sexual revolution? Why have conservatives been so unsuccessful in fighting the "culture wars"? Scott Yenor, Professor of Political Science at Boise State University, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and discuss his new book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies. Yanor's essay "The...

Could totalitarianism take root in America? What does it mean to "live not by lies"?  Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative and the author of several books, including The Benedict Option. He joins the show to answer these questions and discuss his new book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. Solzhenitsyn's 1974 essay is here. Learn more about your ad choices....

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 as an urban renaissance. From Detroit to Newark to Oakland and elsewhere commentators saw cities rising again. Yet revitalization generated a second urban crisis marked by growing inequality and civil unrest reminiscent of the upheavals associated wit...

Is America still a democracy? What is at stake in the 2020 presidential election? Michael Anton, Lecturer at Hillsdale College and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, joins the show to answer these questions and discuss his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy Coney Barrett is a judge on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2019, Judge Barrett delivered the James Madison Program's Annual Walter F. Murphy Lecture in American Constitutionalism. The lecture was entitled "The Constitution as Our Story." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices