New Books in Politics and Polemics

Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely to enter university than their advantaged counterparts.Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrasting secondary schools in England, including interviews with children from three year groups and careers advisors, Schooling Inequality: Aspirations, Opportunities and the Reproduction of Social Class (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jessie Abrahams explores the aspirations, opportunities and experiences of young people from different social-class backgrounds against a backdrop of continuing inequalities in education.By focusing both on the stories of young people and the schools themselves, the book sheds light on the institutional structures and practices that render young people more, or less, able to pursue their aspirations.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In his book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century (PublicAffairs, 2024), Dmitri Alperovitch (with Garrett M. Graff) argues that the United States is in a “Cold War II” with China, and lays out a set of policy recommendations for how the US can win this new Cold War.Alperovitch is currently the Founder and Executive Chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank focused on “advancing American prosperity and global leadership in the 21st century and beyond.” Before moving into the think tank world, Alperovitch was the CTO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, a multi-billion dollar cybersecurity company that gained public attention for investigating the 2016 DNC email leaks and 2014’s North Korean hack of Sony Pictures.Through his work at CrowdStrike and McAfee before that, Alperovitch was involved in investigating numerous Chinese cyber-intrusions into US and global institutions, for instance Operation Aurora and Operation Shady RAT. Alperovitch’s cybersecurity expertise has also led him to advise numerous US government institutions including the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.Drawing from his experiences across the private and public sectors, Alperovitch injects World on the Brink with incisive analyses and historical precedents that should spark the interest of those who follow US-China competition. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging (Beacon Press, 2023) is an unflinching look at the challenges and misunderstandings mixed-race people face in family spaces and intimate relationships across their varying cultural backgrounds.In this emotionally powerful and intellectually provocative blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, scholar and essayist Samira Mehta reflects on many facets of being multiracial.Born to a white American and a South Asian immigrant, Mehta grew up feeling more comfortable with her mother’s family than her father’s—they never carried on conversations in languages she couldn’t understand or blamed her for finding the food was too spicy. In adulthood, she realized that some of her Indian family’s assumptions about the world had become an indelible part of her—and that her well-intentioned parents had not known how to prepare her for a world that would see her as a person of color.Popular belief assumes that mixedness gives you the ability to feel at home in more than one culture, but the flipside shows you can feel just as alienated in those spaces. In 7 essays that dissect her own experiences with a frankness tempered by generosity, Mehta confronts questions about: authenticity and belonging; conscious and unconscious cultural inheritance; appropriate mentorship; the racism of people who love you. The Racism of People Who Love You invites people of mixed race into the conversation on race in America and the melding of found and inherited cultures of hybrid identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Daniel Susskind examines the brief and powerful history of economic growth and puts it into perspective with human prosperity in Growth: A History and a Reckoning (Harvard UP, 2024).Susskind acknowledges the tremendous benefits of economic growth, which he credits with freeing billions of people from poverty and allowing us to live longer and healthier lives. He also recognizes the real and substantial costs of our relentless pursuit of growth at the expense of other considerations and moral challenges. Responding to the degrowth movement, Susskind counters the assumption that simply reducing growth will lead to better outcomes.In particular, Susskind points out that our key measure of growth, GDP, is one imperfect metric that is neither intended nor effective as a proxy for well-being. He recommends a more balanced "dashboard" approach that includes GDP along with other success measures.Reducing our myopic focus on GDP does not mean less growth. Susskind presents an alternate approach, arguing that we should continue to pursue growth through the creative application of new ideas that allow us to use our finite natural resources more effectively and efficiently. Ideas, he points out, are not a scarce asset but an infinite one; by shifting to focus on new ways of thinking and working Susskind shows how we can continue to pursue the benefits of growth while mitigating the high costs.Book referenced: GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane CoyleRecommended reading: Planting the Oudolf Gardens by Rory Dusoir Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

We commonly think of trolls as anonymous online pranksters who hide behind clever avatars and screen names. In Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford UP, 2024), Jason Hannan reveals how the trolls have emerged from the cave and now walk in the clear light of day. Once limited to the darker corners of the internet, trolls have since gone mainstream, invading our politics and eroding our civic culture. Trolls are changing the norms of democratic politics and shaping how we communicate in the public sphere. Adding a twist to Neil Postman's classic thesis, this book argues that we are not so much amusing as trolling ourselves to death. But how did this come to be? Is this transformation attributable solely to digital technology? Or are there deeper political, economic, and cultural roots? This book moves beyond the familiar picture of trolls by recasting trolling in a broader historical light. It shows how trolling is the logical expression of widespread alienation, cynicism, and paranoia deeply rooted in a culture of possessive individualism. Drawing from Postman, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt, this book explores the disturbing rise of political unreason in the form of mass trolling. It explains the proliferation of disinformation, conspiracy theory, "cancel culture," and public shaming. Taking inspiration from G. F. W. Hegel, Paulo F reire, and bell hooks, this book makes a case for building a spirit of trust to counter the culture of mass distrust that feeds the epidemic of political trolling.Dr. Jason Hannan is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2023) and the editor of Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial (Sydney University Press, 2020). His current book project is Reactionary Speech: Conservatism and the Rhetoric of Denial.Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does that really imply? All other ancestries on planet earth have been coerced to believe that conformity to Euro-American lifestyle is the way to become 'civilized' on planet earth. But the term civilization owes its genesis to the African cultural and educational achievements in Egypt. Consequently, Black ancestry, the first human specie on planet earth, should lead humankind to cultural and epistemological supremacy--but that has always been met with skepticism. This book examines this debate, especially between the Black and the White ancestry. There appears to be a pejorative connotation associated with the term Black. It has been 'inferiorized' because of the stain of slavery, servitude and brutal murders suffered by those from the continent of Africa that are overwhelmingly Black. Dr. Kehbuma Langmia offers “counter arguments on ‘inferiority’ and ‘superiority’ designations” (p. 181) that have been applied to particular groups and have prevented the unity of the entire human "race."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In political philosophy, “liberalism” is not the name of a particular social platform. Rather, it refers to a framework for thinking about politics. It is the way of thinking according to which the state, its laws, and its institutions all stand in need of justification, and that the justification of the state must be addressed to those who live within its territory. In this way, liberalism as a philosophical stance affirms the moral equality of persons and prioritizes the liberty of each, “taken one by one,” as it were. The idea of liberalism as a way of life thus may seem curious. According to many traditional liberal thinkers, liberalism is distinguished from other approaches by the denial that it is a “way of life.” On these views, a liberal political order establishes the conditions under which each individual can “seek their own good in their own way,” as John Stuart Mill put it.In Liberalism as a Way of Life (Princeton University Press 2024), Alexandre Lefebvre argues that liberalism currently informs our cultural sensibilities. What’s more, he argues that liberalism is a worthwhile way of life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many have dubbed "crimmigration." Southern border enforcement still monopolizes the national immigration debate, but immigration enforcement has become common within the United States as well. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations are a major part of American immigration enforcement, Felicia Arriaga maintains that ICE relies on an already well-established system--the use of local law enforcement and local governments to identify, incarcerate, and deport undocumented immigrants.In Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America (UNC Press, 2023), Arriaga contends that the long-term partnership between local sheriffs and immigration law enforcement in places like North Carolina has created a form of racialized social control of the Latinx community. Arriaga uses data from five county sheriff's offices and their governing bodies to trace the creation and subsequent normalization of ICE and local law enforcement partnerships. Arriaga argues that the methods used by these partnerships to control immigration are employed throughout the United States, but they have been particularly visible in North Carolina, where the Latinx population increased by 111 percent between 2000 and 2010. Arriaga's evidence also reveals how Latinx communities are resisting and adapting to these systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Amy Schiller, who spent a number of years working in both political and major gift fundraising, has a new book detailing some of the fundamental problems currently afflicting American philanthropy and how to correct some of these problems. Schiller, a political theorist currently at Dartmouth College’s Society of Fellows, brings two important perspectives to her research in The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It (Melville House, 2023)—combining her experience in the philanthropic world with her training and expertise in political theory, especially democratic theory. The Price of Humanity also provides the reader with a vital history of philanthropy and giving, especially in the West, and how thinking about the role of supporting others as part of the common good has shifted over the course of more than two millennia. Schiller makes an important point about how St. Augustine, in his teachings on donations and giving, shifted the framing and understanding of giving from a community-based common good to a global approach to donating, tying the act of giving to individual salvation. This approach not only highlighted suffering and need and stratified those who give from those who are in need, but it also disconnected the philanthropic experience from the immediate community while objectifying those who are in poverty or generally in need.The Price of Humanity doesn’t dwell in the past but provides this important lens that continues to apply to our contemporary thinking about giving. This more disconnected approach is also overlaid, in our current environment, with the demand that non-profits and philanthropies product quantifiable goods: how many cases of malaria have been eradicated, how much food has been provided to those experiencing scarcity, how are the dollars donated spent and by whom and in what ways? Thus, in so many ways, philanthropic organizations have to report out their successes in the same ways that private corporations need to detail their fiscal health to their boards of directors and shareholders. All of these approaches tend to disconnect the act of giving from the world in which we live, according to Schiller, and this disconnection makes the reason for giving much more attenuated, distancing us from each other, our communities, and the real role of the common good. Instead of linking individuals together in our shared love for one another and humanity as a whole—which is actually what the word philanthropy means in the original Greek—we live in a philanthropic world that separates and isolates. The Price of Humanity spotlights different approaches to giving, with discussions of the Gates Foundation, Effective Altruism, Robber Barons and the Gilded Age, and other forms of the business of giving. Schiller also focuses on modern examples of philanthropy as the common good, which brings it into the realm of democratic theory, as a means to provide the flourishing of humanity, not merely fulfilling the desperate needs of individuals. This is a fascinating and valuable interrogation of the idea of giving to others, and how we need to reconsider our thinking about the act of giving itself and the role that this act plays in our community and in our democracy.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

A perfectly timed book for the educational resistance—those of us who believe in public schools Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations of public education. What’s behind these efforts? Why are our schools suddenly so vulnerable? And how can the millions of Americans who love their public schools fight back? In this concise, hard-hitting guide, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider answer these questions and chart a way forward. The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual (The New Press, 2024) explains the sudden obsession with race and gender in schools, as well as the ascendancy of book-banning efforts. It offers a clear analysis of school vouchers and the impact they’ll have on school finances. It deciphers the movement for “parents’ rights,” explaining the rights that students and taxpayers also have. And it reveals how the ostensible pursuit of “religious freedom” opens the door to discrimination against vulnerable children. Berkshire and Schneider outline the core issues driving the education wars, offering essential information about issues, actors, and potential outcomes. In so doing, they lay out what is at stake for parents, teachers, and students and provide a road map for ensuring that public education survives this present assault. A book that will enrage and enlighten the millions of citizens who believe in their public schools, here is a long-overdue handbook and guide to action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics