New Books in Public Policy

How should we understand the history of post-war Britain? In The Welfare State Generation Women, Agency and Class in Britain since 1945 (Bloomsbury, 2022), Eve Worth, a Research Fellow on the Changing Elites project in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford, explores this question by foregrounding the lives of women who grew up, worked, and retired as the firs...

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely translated and acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics in Democracy Rules (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded not just on liberty and equality, but also on uncertainty. The latter will sound u...

Scholars Heather Hlavka (Marquette University) and Sameena Mulla (Emory University) have written a new book that examines and interrogates the place and space of the courtroom, the use of expertise, especially scientific expertise, in the adjudicative process, and how this all intersects with race and gender in cases of sexual assault. Bodies in Evidence: Race, Gender, and Science in Sexual Assaul...

Our future diet will be shaped by diverse forces. It will be shaped by novel technologies, by geopolitical tensions, and the evolution of cultural preferences, by shocks to the status quo-- pandemics and economic strife, the escalation of the climate and ecological crises--and by how we choose to respond. It will also be shaped by our emotions. It will be shaped by the meat paradox. "Should we eat...

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of History at Yale University, about neoliberalism, human rights and what our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about our true values. Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforci...

Howard Burton has been talking to very wise people for decades--scientists, historians, political thinkers, philosophers, etc. When Covid "hit" he was, like many of us, puzzled. Where did it come from? How should we respond to it? What does it say about us? So he did what he does: Had conversations with 32 very wise people about Covid. He filmed the discussions, and you can watch them here. Some o...

Ian Tyrrell's American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea (UChicago Press, 2021) is a powerful dissection of a core American myth. The idea that the United States is unlike every other country in world history is a surprisingly resilient one. Throughout his distinguished career, Ian Tyrrell has been one of the most influential historians of the idea of American exceptionalism, but he has...

Anyone interested in how education policy is made and unmade, in school funding models, their historical and contemporary development and their effects on equity, will find this book fascinating. The ‘Gonski’ review of Australian education funding, commissioned in 2010 by a Labor federal government, sent an expert panel of educators from different sectors on a listening tour of the nation. Submiss...

What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2021), Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fuelling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased racial,...

Andrew Rudalevige, the Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government at Bowdoin College, has a new book that examines the processes that transpires in the generation of executive orders—noting that the process itself is not simply done with the stroke of a pen. Rudalevige, an expert on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Executive Branch, started to pursue this particular research proj...

Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone...

As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the worke...

How can we each do our part to reduce inequality and help the poor, not just in our own communities but around the world? As a devout Christian, Bruce Wydick views helping the poor as an essential requirement of his faith. But is it enough just to give if it may not even be helping? We all have limited time and resources, so where do we allocate them? As an economist, Professor Wydick has the tool...

How can we understand well-being? In Understanding Well-being Data: Improving Social and Cultural Policy, Practice and Research (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Susan Oman, a Lecturer in Data, AI and Society at the University of Sheffield, explores the history of well-being, the history of measurement, and cultural policy. The book covers a huge range of subjects but is written in a clear and accessibl...

Police use of advanced data collection and analysis technologies—or, "big data policing"—continues to receive both positive and negative attention through media, activism, and politics. While some high-profile cases illustrate its potential to hasten investigations or even solve previously unsolved crimes, and others showcase risks to individual liberties and vulnerable communities, we know surpri...

John and new Brandeis host Jerome Tharaud (author of Apocalyptic Geographies) learn exactly how the growth of America's public universities relied on shameful seizures of Native American land. Working with Tristan Athone --editor of Grist and a member of the Kiowa Tribe--historian Robert Lee wrote a stunning series of pieces that reveal how many public land-grant universities were fundamentally fi...

In Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People without Homes (Fortress Press, 2021), Susan J. Dunlap offers the theological fruits of time spent working as a chaplain with people without homes. After depicting the local history of Durham, North Carolina, she describes the prayer service she co-leads in a homeless shelter. Clients offer words of faith and encouragement that take the form of pra...

This book cuts new ground by applying a human rights lens of analysis to domestic mental health laws. It makes a timely contribution into the discourse regarding mental health, supported decision-making and disability rights in the post CRPD era. In A New Era for Mental Health Law and Policy: Supported Decision-Making and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Cambridge Univ...

Today I talked to Carl Rhodes about his book Woke Capitalism: How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy (Policy Press, 2021). When Milton Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom in 1962, whose freedom was he referring to? When you know the answer is corporations, you can begin to understand both what neoliberalism was all about and why today Woke Capitalism may not be so much a harbinger of...

Neurodisability and the Criminal Justice System: Comparative and Therapeutic Responses (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021) delves into an under-researched and little understood but extremely pertinent issue in law; the prevalence of neurodisability within criminal justice systems. Considering the challenges faced by both juveniles and adults with neuorodisabilities who come into contact with the crimi...

In A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities (Duke UP, 2021), David Boarder Giles explores the ways in which capitalism simultaneously manufactures waste and scarcity. Illustrating how communities of marginalized people and discarded things gather and cultivate political possibilities, Giles documents the work of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a global move...

Building on a deep theoretical foundation and drawing on numerous examples, Volden and Shipan examine how policies spread across the American states in Why Bad Policies Spread (and Good Ones Don't) (Cambridge University Press, 2021). The authors argue that for good policies to spread while bad policies are pushed aside, states must learn from one another. The three ingredients for this positive ou...

Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and exclusionary actions. In Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (MIT Press, 2021), Kian Goh examines climate change response strategies in three cities—New York,...

Homeschooling has skyrocketed in popularity in the United States: in 2019, a record-breaking 2.5 million children were being homeschooled, within an increasingly diverse subset of American families. In The Homeschool Choice: Parents and the Privatization of Education (NYU Press, 2021), sociologist Kate Henley Averett examines the reasons why parents homeschool and how homeschooling, as a growing p...

Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company...