New Books in Politics and Polemics

After the U.S. presidential election in 2016, discussions about white nationalism, supremacists, and neo-Nazis went from being a niche topic to mainstream news. For those who hadn’t been keeping tabs on what we’re now calling the “alt-right,” it was as though they simply burst on to the national stage with... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becomi...

There’s been a lot written about the Tea Party, but nothing focused on members of Congress like the new book, Reactionary Republicans: How the Tea Party in the House Paved the Way for Trump’s Victory (Oxford University Press, 2018) by Bryan T. Gervais and Irwin L. Morris. Gervais is assistant professor... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople and activists – to piece together a comprehensive oral history of the Barack Obama presidency, in Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017 (Little A, 2018).  Based almost solely on the words of those who... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America (University of  Massachusetts Press, 2018) takes as its point of departure and central preoccupation the notion of “paradoxical ebullience,” by which author Lessie B. Branch means the optimism expressed by African Americans during the presidency of Barack Obama despite... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

Is there a case for the impeachment of Donald Trump? Constitutional attorney Ron Fein says not only is there a case, but also that the case exists regardless of what happens with the special counsel investigation. The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump (Melville House,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming...

President Donald Trump is not sui generis. Populist impulses and political actors have been pulsating in the American soul since the nation’s founding. Timothy J.  Lombardo’s excellent book, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Populist Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) recounts one such example. Starting in the mid-1960s, Rizzo dominated... Learn more about you...

How can we end the scourge of poverty? How we can sustain ourselves once robots eliminate the need for many jobs? Annie Lowrey offers an answer in the title of her book, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World (Crown, 2018). She... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premiu...

The Marginalized Majority: Claiming Our Power in a Post-Truth America (Melville House, 2018) offers a roadmap to reeling progressives, delivers a searing critique of cynical pragmatism and defends identity politics as a galvanizing force for positive social change. Journalist Onnesha Roychoudhuri shares personal stories of how her identity shaped her... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...

Harold Washington’s election as mayor of Chicago in 1983 sent a shockwave through the politics of America’s third largest city, one that reverberated for decades afterward. Yet as Roger Biles describes in his book Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Washington’s... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Suppo...

How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, explores art activism, looking at the power, potential, and problematics of art for political and social change.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

The office of the president in the United States is one of the most visible institutions not just in its own country, but around the world as well. The expectations that the office and officeholder carries are considerable, as are the power that goes with the office. And yet, Americans... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!...

In American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division (Oxford University Press, 2016), Michael A. Cohen shows how the 1968 American presidential election proved to be an “inflection point” of history that shattered the long-standing “liberal consensus,” and unleashed a conservative populism that continues to reverberate today. Cohen delivers... Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...

In 1962 Richard Nixon suffered a humiliating defeat in the California gubernatorial election, one that led him to declare an end to his career in politics. What followed was one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American history, one chronicled by Victor Li in his book Nixon in New... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium...

Stories about the suburbs often focus on conservatism. But, as Lily Geismer shows in her fascinating book, called Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberalism and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton University Press, 2014) suburbs can also be liberal spaces. The high-tech corridor of the Route 128 highway that circles Boston... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

Democrats need to stop their “monomania” over Donald Trump and reconnect with their party’s core ideals to reclaim political power, argues Thomas B. Reston in his book Soul of a Democrat: The Seven Core Ideals That Made Our Party and Our Country Great (All Points Books, 2018). He explores those ideals... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Investigative journalist and Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, David Neiwert has been covering the radical right-wing for decades. In Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (Verso, 2017), Neiwert takes his years of experience to chronicle the rise of what is now known... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our sh...

Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris counsels Democrats to disregard procedural precedents and niceties, and pugnaciously wield power in his book, It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics (Melville House, 2018). As Faris explains in this interview, he doesn’t mean Democrats should... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

To find out what Americans really think about their government, University of Texas-Austin Professor Roderick P. Hart read and analyzed approximately 10,000 letters to the editor, from 12 “ordinary” cities, written between 1948 and the present. In Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Hart... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...

For all the American media coverage of President Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia, what’s rarely heard are the voices of Russians themselves. Russians on Trump: Coverage and Commentary (East View Press, 2018), edited by Laurence Bogoslaw, surveys the range of opinions about Trump that have appeared in the Russian... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our s...

During the 2016, journalist Salena Zito, who is based in Western Pennsylvania, sensed a brewing conservative populist in the white working-class when many thought the election would be determined by other demographic groups. Her dispatches from the back roads proved prescient when Donald Trump won the presidency. She teamed up... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Suppo...

CNN commentator Amanda Carpenter was an early conservative critic of Donald Trump when she was targeted in a smear campaign falsely accusing her of an extramarital affair with Trump’s 2016 Republican primary rival Sen. Ted Cruz. In her words, she was “gaslit,” driven crazy by bald-faced lies. In Gaslighting America:... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show...

Those looking for deeper understanding of why the socially conservative, evangelical Christian community has been so loyal of Donald Trump will find answers in the book God and Donald Trump (Frontline, 2017). Author Stephen Strang provides an insider’s perspective on how evangelical leaders who initially backed Sen. Ted Cruz for Senate... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi...

Today we are joined by Jesse Berrett, author of Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Berrett is a high school history teacher at University High School in San Francisco. He earned a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley, and has... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a p...

In Schoolhouse Wreck: The Betsy DeVos Story (Strong Arm Press, 2018), Jason Linkins delivers a searing critique of controversial Trump administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The book tracks the DeVos family’s accumulation of wealth through the multi-level marketing company Amway, which was founded by her Betsy DeVos’ father-in-law, and the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit meg...

In Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy (Crown Forum, 2018), conservative Jonah Goldberg argues that America’s foundation of democracy and capitalism is a “Miracle” which has saved us from chronic violence and crushing poverty, but now is threatened by rising... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap...