New Books in American Politics

How did the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program evolve from a Depression-era effort to use up surplus goods into America's foundational food assistance program? And how does SNAP survive? Incisive and original, Why SNAP Works: A Political History--And Defense--of the Food Stamp Program (U California Press, 2023) is the first book to provide a comprehensive history and evaluation of the nation's most important food insecurity and poverty alleviation effort. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps, is the nation's largest government effort for helping low-income Americans obtain an adequate diet. Everyone has an opinion about SNAP, not all of them positive, but its benefits are felt broadly and across party lines. Christopher Bosso makes a clear, nuanced, and impassioned case for protecting this unique food voucher program, exploring its history and breaking down the facts for readers across the political spectrum. Why SNAP Works is an essential resource for anyone concerned about food access, poverty, and the "welfare system" in the United States.Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dennis Rasmussen’s new book, The Constitution's Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America's Basic Charter (UP of Kansas, 2023), is a propulsive analysis of one of the key members of the Founding generation, Gouverneur Morris of New York and Pennsylvania. Morris is quite a character—from his reputation as a lady’s man to his brilliant speeches at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Rasmussen has pulled together archival research on Morris along with historical and political context to understand the Constitution’s penman, since Morris was responsible for writing the draft of the document that would become the U.S. Constitution.Gouverneur Morris was a fascinating fellow—and his exploits were well known among his peers and colleagues. Morris, who had been educated at King’s College (now Columbia), and had become a lawyer, made much of his fortune in land speculation. He was active during the Revolutionary War, especially in helping to manage payment and supplies to the troops fighting for the new country. Morris, like Jefferson and Adams, also represented the United States abroad, particularly in France during the revolutionary period there. His capacity to negotiate through the factions during the French Revolution was vital to the United States since he was able to protect both American citizens and U.S. interests in France. Morris’s diplomatic and political expertise was in sharp relief during this period in France. As a Federalist Morris also served in the U.S. Senate, elected in 1800 as the Jeffersonians were coming into office. He was at Alexander Hamilton’s deathbed with him after Hamilton’s duel with Burr. But the central action of The Constitution’s Penman is during the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787.Rasmussen lays out all of the ways that Morris had a hand in the creation of the American constitutional system, even though he was absent from the convention in the early going in June. The bulk of The Constitution’s Penman focuses on each section of the governing structure of the U.S. national system and draws out Morris’ role in shaping these parts of the American system. While some of Morris’ ideas were more extreme than others—including his thinking on the form that the U.S. Senate should take—his ideas and influence are clear throughout the document itself. Rasmussen digs into Morris’ speeches on the floor of the convention, his role in writing up the document—in which he pulled 23 articles into the seven articles that compose the United States Constitution—and his authorship of the Preamble itself. Rasmussen also focuses on Morris’ strident denunciation of slavery at the Convention and elsewhere, becoming, on some level, the Framers’ conscience on the issue of slavery.Dennis Rasmussen has written a book where the story truly dances off the page—and while Gouverneur Morris himself provides much of the content because of his cosmopolitan approach to life, his sharp wit and intelligence, and his interesting lifestyle—this is quite a compelling read.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/adchoices

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions fostered tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members--mostly men--and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities. In Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party (Columbia UP, 2023), Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats. Drawing on interviews, union newsletters, and ethnographic analysis, they pinpoint the significance of eroding local community ties and identities. Using western Pennsylvania as a case study, Newman and Skocpol argue that union members' loyalty to Democratic candidates was as much a product of the group identity that unions fostered as it was a response to the Democratic Party's economic policies. As the social world around organized labor dissipated, conservative institutions like gun clubs, megachurches, and other Republican-leaning groups took its place. Rust Belt Union Blues sheds new light on why so many union members have dramatically changed their party politics. It makes a compelling case that Democrats are unlikely to rebuild credibility in places like western Pennsylvania unless they find new ways to weave themselves into the daily lives of workers and their families.Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Moderation is often presented as a simple virtue for lukewarm and indecisive minds, searching for a fuzzy center between the extremes. Not surprisingly, many politicians do not want to be labelled 'moderates' for fear of losing elections. Why Not Moderation?: Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge UP, 2023) challenges this conventional image and shows that moderation is a complex virtue with a rich tradition and unexplored radical sides. Through a series of imaginary letters between a passionate moderate and two young radicals, the book outlines the distinctive political vision undergirding moderation and makes a case for why we need this virtue today in America. Drawing on clearly written and compelling sources, Craiutu offers an opportunity to rethink moderation and participate in the important public debate on what kind of society we want to live in. His book reminds us that we cannot afford to bargain away the liberal civilization and open society we have inherited from our forefathers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exploring the role of identitarian politics in the privatization of Newark’s public school system In Expelling Public Schools, John Arena explores the more than two-decade struggle to privatize public schools in Newark, New Jersey—a conflict that is raging in cities across the country—from the vantage point of elites advancing the pro-privatization agenda and their grassroots challengers. Analyzing the unsuccessful effort of Cory Booker—Newark’s leading pro-privatization activist and mayor—to generate popular support for the agenda, and Booker’s rival and ultimate successor Ras Baraka’s eventual galvanization of the charter movement, Arena argues that Baraka’s black radical politics cloaked a revanchist agenda of privatization. John Arena's book Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark (U Minnesota Press, 2023) reveals the political rise of Booker and Baraka, their one-time rivalry and subsequent alliance, and what this particular case study illuminates about contemporary post–civil rights Black politics. Ultimately, Expelling Public Schools is a critique of Black urban regime politics and the way in which antiracist messaging obscures real class divisions, interests, and ideological diversity.Laura Beth Kelly is an assistant professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Republic Will Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression (University of Illinois Press, 2023) by Dr. Tariq D. Khan examines the long relationship between America’s colonising wars and virulent anticommunism.The colonising wars against Native Americans created the template for anticommunist repression in the United States. Dr. Khan’s analysis reveals bloodshed and class war as foundational aspects of capitalist domination and vital elements of the nation’s long history of internal repression and social control. Dr. Khan shows how the state wielded the tactics, weapons, myths, and ideology refined in America’s colonising wars to repress anarchists, labour unions, and a host of others labelled as alien, multi-racial, multi-ethnic urban rabble. The ruling classes considered radicals of all stripes to be anticolonial insurgents. As Dr. Khan charts the decades of red scares that began in the 1840s, he reveals how capitalists and government used much-practised counterinsurgency rhetoric and tactics against the movements they perceived and vilified as “anarchist.”This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused 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/adchoices

This episode, which is co-hosted with Mika Thornburg, features a conversation with Dr. Chrissy Yee Lau, the author of the newly published New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America (U Washington Press, 2022). The book centers the compelling life histories of five young women and men in Los Angeles to illuminate how they negotiated overlapping imperialisms through new gender roles. With extensive youth networks and the largest Japanese population in the United States, Los Angeles was a critical site of transnational relations, and in the 1920s and '30s Japanese American youth became politicized through active participation in Christian civic organizations. By racially uplifting their peers through youth clubs, athletics, and cultural ambassadorship, these young leaders reshaped Japanese and US imperialisms and provided the groundwork for future expressions of model minority respectability and Japanese American feminisms.Dr. Lau is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. Her research and teaching interests include Asian American History, U.S. Women's History, California History, and Public History. She is also co-editor of The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice.Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many people view the War on Drugs as a contemporary phenomenon invented by the Nixon administration. But as Dr. Andrew Monteith shows in Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs (NYU Press, 2023), the conflict actually began more than a century before, when American Protestants began the temperance movement and linked drug use with immorality.Dr. Monteith argues that this early drug war was deeply rooted in Christian impulses. While many scholars understand Prohibition to have been a Protestant undertaking, it is considerably less common to consider the War on Drugs this way, in part because racism has understandably been the focal point of discussions of the drug war. Antidrug activists expressed—and still do express--blatant white supremacist and nativist motives. Yet this book argues that racism was intertwined with religious impulses. Reformers pursued the “civilising mission,” a wide-ranging project that sought to protect “child races” from harmful influences while remodelling their cultures to look like Europe and the United States. Most reformers saw Christianity as essential to civilization and missionaries felt that banning drugs would encourage religious conversion and progress.This compelling work of scholarship radically reshapes our understanding of one of the longest and most damaging conflicts in modern American history, making the case that we cannot understand the War on Drugs unless we understand its religious origins.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused 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/adchoices

Born into upper-class America in the same year, 1854, Sara Delano (later to become the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Jennie Jerome (later to become the mother of Winston Churchill) refused to settle into predictable, sheltered lives as little-known wives to prominent men. Instead, both women concentrated much of their energies on enabling their sons to reach the epicentre of political power on two continents.Set against one hundred years of history, Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt (Simon & Schuster, 2023) by Dr. Charlotte Gray is a study in loyalty and resilience. Gray argues that Jennie and Sara are too often presented as lesser figures in the backdrop of history rather than as two remarkable individuals who were key in shaping the characters of the sons who adored them and in preparing them for leadership on the world stage.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused 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/adchoices

In Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women Who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century (U Georgia Press, 2023), Melissa Estes Blair introduces us to five fascinating yet largely unheralded women who were at the heart of campaigns to elect and reelect some of our most beloved presidents. By examining the roles of these political strategists in affecting the outcome of presidential elections, Blair sheds light on their historical importance and the relevance of their individual influence.In the middle decades of the twentieth century both major political parties had Women's Divisions. The leaders of these divisions--five women who held the job from 1932 until 1958--organized tens of thousands of women all over the country, turning them into the "saleswomen for the party" by providing them with talking points, fliers, and other material they needed to strike up political conversations with their friends and neighbors. The leaders of the Women's Divisions also produced a huge portion of the media used by the campaigns--over 90 percent of all print material in the 1930s--and were close advisors of the presidents of both parties.In spite of their importance, these women and their work have been left out of the narratives of midcentury America. In telling the story of these five West Wing women, Blair reveals the ways that women were central to American politics from the depths of the Great Depression to the height of the Cold War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices