New Books in American Politics

Conservatism needs to be rediscovered. That is, it needs to be differentiated from the post WWII concept of liberal democracy and return to its traditional three pillars of religion, nationalism, and economic growth. And it needs to be thought of as Anglo-American conservatism, rooted in the tradition of the English Constitution going back to such thinkers as John Fortescue (c. 1394 –1479) and John Selden (1584 –1654). We need to be a God-fearing nation, with nation and religion at the center of our national belief system. We must live conservative lives.These are some of the arguments made by the political theorist and public intellectual Yoram Hazony in his 2022 book Conservatism: A Rediscovery (Regnery Publishing, 2022).It is a provocative book that even many conservatives may take issue with.For example, Hazony puts a great deal of emphasis on the importance of hierarchy both within the family and in society at large. Given that a good deal of the rationale of right-wing thinking in recent years has been predicated on the necessity for non-violent rebellion against the establishment in the Republican party and the left-wing dominance of academia, Hazony’s arguments may not be embraced by large swaths of the right. But to get conservatives and those on the right who do not identify as such thinking about what they stand for, what they want and how to get it is one of the goals of the book. It succeeds.To those who might blanch at the embrace of religion in the public sphere, Hazony argues that for all intents and purposes the increasingly powerful political philosophy woke neo-Marxism is itself a religion. Hazony criticizes the right for acquiescing in the relegation of traditional religion to the private sphere. He argues robustly for religion, particularly Christianity, to serve as a countervailing force to wokeism. In the face of a progressive order that leaves people in the position of being unable to distinguish between a man and a woman, Hazony advocates for such measures as ending the ban on the Bible and God in the public school classroom.This is a full-throated defense of conservatism and is, therefore, must reading for those on all sides of the political spectrum. Hazony addresses the need for the idea of a nation, its cohesion, and its inherited traditions. For that, he says, you need conservatism. And by conservatism, he means a public conservatism, a public traditionalism in those places where there is a majority that will support it. Hazony maintains that our culture must support parents and congregations in the work of the transmission of values that ensure respect for tradition, nation and hierarchy.This book is a substantive intellectual history of conservative thought and profiles significant figures in the conservative movement (e.g., William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk). It is also a clarion call for those who claim to be conservatives to live genuinely conservative lives. Hazony urges conservatives to stand up for principles like the public acknowledgment of God and such core values as the honor due parents by their adult children, loyalty within marriage, and observance of the sabbath. In the Hazony version of conservatism, all ten of the Ten Commandments ought to be the basis for our country’s social and political life.He includes in his book a memoir of his days at Princeton University in the 1980s, where a campus culture of loose living and rampant drinking led him to seek out a life of faith and family. College students of today and their parents would do well to read this moving chronicle of a young person surrounded by decadence who escapes its ravages via a solid marriage and a return to traditional religion.Let’s hear from Mr. Hazony about his book and the path forward for conservatives and America itself.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (FSG, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.--and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father--as well as the nation's most mourned martyr.In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.Jonathan Eig is a former senior special writer for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including two highly acclaimed bestsellers, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. Visit him at JonathanEig.com. Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marquette University Political Scientist Phil Rocco has a new book focusing on the 2020 U.S. Census and how the states, localities, and federal government all worked – at times well, at times not quite as well – to conduct the census. This is a fascinating exploration of federalism at work in the American system, with some states putting in place extensive mechanisms to help with the census, which is a national responsibility. Other states did far less; and the national government, which is constitutionally required to execute a census every ten years, approached the census with some controversial requirements, with the federal courts having to make decisions as to the constitutional validity of some of those requirements. Counting Like a State: How Intergovernmental Partnerships Shaped the 2020 U.S. Census (UP Kansas, 2025) explores this particular census as a kind of case study. The 2020 census was tricky on a number of fronts, not the least because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and because of the Trump Administration’s approach to the census itself. Rocco goes through the various approaches to the census as a national undertaking, searching for understandings of how the process actually worked and where there were positive and negative engagements with the process. As a scholar of federalism, data science, and public policy, Rocco was intrigued by what he found in terms of cooperation on the state level, especially in places like California. The research also highlights various levels of mistrust of government entities and institutions, which makes the census process more difficult and potentially inaccurate because individuals are skeptical about completing the census forms. Because the census is required by law and regulation, it has a number of statutory deadlines, and in 2020, the Covid pandemic shattered the expected and legally compelled timeline for the reporting of results. This is another important aspect of this particular census that Rocco examines in order to assess how states and the national government tried to manage a rather unique process in 2020. Counting Like A State: How Intergovernmental Partnerships Shaped the 2020 U.S. Census examines not only the 2020 census but also sketches out the history of the census process in the United States so as to provide context for the most recent census and the processes that were implemented across the board. This is a very interesting exploration of how the federal government works, especially in context of federalism and unanticipated constraints. 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 Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022) and The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) 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

1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish economy marked by high inflation, and the disco still riding the airwaves. When it ended, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide, inaugurating a rightward turn in American politics and culture. We still feel the effects of this tectonic shift today, as even subsequent Democratic administrations have offered neoliberal economic and social policies that owe more to Reagan than to FDR or LBJ. To understand what the American public was thinking during this pivotal year, we need to examine what they were reading, listening to, and watching.1980: America's Pivotal Year (Rutgers UP, 2022) puts the news events of the era—everything from the Iran hostage crisis to the rise of televangelism—into conversation with the year’s popular culture. Separate chapters focus on the movies, television shows, songs, and books that Americans were talking about that year, including both the biggest hits and some notable flops that failed to capture the shifting zeitgeist. As he looks at the events that had Americans glued to their screens, from the Miracle on Ice to the mystery of Who Shot JR, cultural historian Jim Cullen garners surprising insights about how Americans’ attitudes were changing as they entered the 1980s.Jim Cullen is the author of numerous books, including The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation, Those Were the Days: Why ‘All in the Family’ Still Matters, and From Memory to History: Television Versions of the Twentieth Century. He teaches history at the newly-founded upper division of Greenwich Country Day School.Jackson Reinhardt is a graduate of University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University. He is currently an independent scholar, freelance writer, and research assistant. You can reach Jackson at jtreinhardt1997@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @JTRhardt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world were galvanized by the moral power of a modest Quaker teacher who never ventured more than a few miles from his home in Philadelphia: Anthony Benezet. While Benezet was buried in an unmarked grave, his fingerprints are all over the extinction of the Atlantic slave trade and the gathering strength of America’s own burgeoning abolitionist movement. He was a figure of global importance, “a saint,” Garry Wills called him, a great bearer to the rest of the world of the American ideals (no matter how compromised) of equality and liberty.Anthony Benezet lived, by chance, at the nexus of radical Christianity and revolutionary democracy, and he fused the power of those two streams of morality in a way that changed lives and challenged political institutions so compellingly that the world became a different place because of him. But for all the magnitude of Benezet’s impact, he is largely unknown outside scholars of the period. He does not exist in any meaningful way in the widely read histories and biographies that define and amplify America’s historical consciousness.In Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist (U Georgia Press, 2025), preeminent biographer Dr. David Chanoff tells Benezet’s story—who he was, what he did, how he did it, and why it was that William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” of Pennsylvania provided the matrix for the historic transformation the abolitionist educator brought about. Indeed, Dr. Chanoff carves out a place for this forgotten American hero as a pioneering figure among those who launched American ideals onto the world stage. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but the attacks of that day also re-ignited battles over the nature of American patriotism. In Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 (UNC Press, 2021), Professor John Bodnar argues that the nature of patriotism as being war-based or empathetic divided the nation as much as the responses to the 9/11 attacks. Using a variety of public media and private correspondence, Dr. Bodnar explores the different ways Americans tried to understand and remember 9/11, their disagreements over government responses to it, and how patriotism itself was also part of the debate. Dr. Bodnar shows how people on all the various sides to national security debates used patriotism as a motivating factor for their positions. Divided by Terrorshows how patriotism and how it is to be practiced was contested and fought over as much as the policies that it inspired. Dr. Bodnar is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University. He is the author of 8 academic books in addition to numerous journal articles. You can find a transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when America loses its foreign-policy playbook? RBI acting director Eli Karetny talks with veteran diplomat and policy strategist Joel Rubin about the vacuum of strategic vision shaping U.S. decisions from Venezuela to Ukraine to Gaza. Rubin pulls back the curtain on factional battles inside both parties, the dangers of politicizing diplomacy, and why rebuilding a bipartisan foreign-policy consensus may be critical for American leadership in a volatile world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drawing Liberalism: Herblock's Political Cartoons in Postwar America (U Virginia Press, 2023) is the first book-length critical examination of the political and social impact of the political cartoonist Herbert Block--popularly known as Herblock. Working for the Washington Post, Herblock played a central role in shaping, propagandizing, and defending the ideals of postwar liberalism, a normative set of values and assumptions that dominated American politics and culture after World War II. Best remembered for his unrelenting opposition to and skewering cartoons of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, Herblock introduced the term "McCarthyism" into the American political lexicon. With its unstinting and unapologetic support for the liberal agenda, across a career spanning over fifty years at the Post, Herblock's work affords a unique lens through which to interpret and understand the shifts and contours of twentieth-century American political culture, from the postwar period through the civil rights era into the Nixon presidency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, and STIs—has been available since the 90s. Yet the majority of states require that sex education stress abstinence, and 22 states do not require sex ed in public schools at all. In The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine (Beacon Press, 2025), writer, advocate, and historian Margaret Grace Myers shows us how we got here. While the earliest calls for sex ed came from a coalition of religious leaders and doctors at the turn of the century who sought to control the prevalence of STIs, the advent of antibiotics and modern condoms meant that abstinence was no longer good public health policy. The religious right, however, continued to frame it as such, using its impressive machinery to replace scientific facts with conservative Christian values. Because sex ed is not mandated at the federal level, these battles have played out locally throughout the decades: through rigged school boards, administrative oustings, court cases, unjust firings, scare tactics, and threats. Myers also shows how the religious right has worked to narrow the discourse around sex ed, often dictating the terms of debate almost entirely. What we teach young people has serious ramifications for reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, and public health. Sex education lies at the intersection of these hugely important cultural forces, yet it has been largely invisible. This book illuminates its potential—and its power. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the acclaimed author of The Fire Is upon Us, the dramatic untold story of Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr.'s decade-long clash over the meaning of freedom--and how their conflicting visions still divide American politics In the mid-1950s, Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the leaders of two diametrically opposed freedom movements that changed the course of American history--and still divide American politics. King mobilized civil rights activists under the banner of "freedom now," insisting that true freedom would not be realized until all people--regardless of race--were empowered politically, economically, and socially. Goldwater rallied conservatives to the cause of "extremism in defense of liberty," advocating radical individualism. In One Man's Freedom, Nicholas Buccola tells the compelling story of Goldwater and King's dramatic decade-long debate over the meaning of an all-important American ideal. Part dual biography, part history, One Man's Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle Over an American Ideal (Princeton UP, 2025)  traces the actions and words of Goldwater and King over a crucial and eventful decade, from their dizzying rise through 1964, which ended with Goldwater's landslide defeat in the presidential election and King's Nobel Peace Prize. The book chronicles why Goldwater and King, who never met in person, came to view each other as perhaps the greatest threat to freedom in America. It explains how their ideas of freedom could be so vastly different, yet both so deeply rooted in American history and their times. And it shows how their disagreement continues to shape and explain politics today, when the bitter divisions between Republicans and Democrats often come down to the question of what kind of freedom Americans want--the one defined by Goldwater or by King? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices