New Books in American Politics

US Congresswoman Barbara Jordan is well-known as an interpreter and defender of the Constitution, particularly through her landmark speech during Richard Nixon's 1974 impeachment hearings. However, before she developed faith in the Constitution, Jordan had faith in Christianity. In "My Faith in the Constitution is Whole" Barbara Jordan and the Politics of Scripture (Georgetown UP, 2022), Robin L. Owens shows how Jordan turned her religious faith and her faith in the Constitution into a powerful civil religious expression of her social activism.Owens begins by examining the lives and work of the nineteenth-century Black female orator-activists Maria W. Stewart and Anna Julia Cooper. Stewart and Cooper fought for emancipation and women's rights by "scripturalizing," or using religious scriptures to engage in political debate. Owens then demonstrates how Jordan built upon this tradition by treating the Constitution as an American "scripture" to advocate for racial justice and gender equality. Case studies of key speeches throughout Jordan's career show how she quoted the Constitution and other founding documents as sacred texts, used them as sociolinguistic resources, and employed a discursive rhetorical strategy of indirection known as "signifying on scriptures."Jordan's particular use of the Constitution--deeply connected with her background and religious, racial, and gender identity--represents the agency and power reflected in her speeches. Jordan's strategies also illustrate a broader phenomenon of scripturalization outside of institutional religion and its rhetorical and interpretive possibilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jefferson Cowie discusses his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power (Basic Books, 2022), beginning with the book’s origin story, and then tracing the use of "freedom" to dominate others in Barbour County, Alabama, from Indian Removal in the 1830s through the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.This episode was produced for "Working History," the podcast of the Southern Labor Studies Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her latest book, Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé (Harvard University Press, 2023), New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Cobbs shows us that the quest for women’s rights is deeply entwined with the founding story of the United States.When America became a nation, a woman had no legal existence beyond her husband. If he abused her, she couldn’t leave without abandoning her children. Abigail Adams tried to change this, reminding her husband John to “remember the ladies” when he wrote the Constitution. He simply laughed—and women have been fighting for their rights ever since.Fearless Women tells the story of women who dared to take destiny into their own hands. They were feminists and antifeminists, activists and homemakers, victims of abuse and pathbreaking professionals. Inspired by the nation’s ideals and fueled by an unshakeable sense of right and wrong, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. In time, they carried the country with them.The first right they won was the right to learn. Later, impassioned teachers like Angelina Grimké and Susan B. Anthony campaigned for the right to speak in public, lobby the government, and own property. Some were passionate abolitionists. Others fought just to protect their own children.Many of these women devoted their lives to the cause—some are famous—but most pressed their demands far from the spotlight, insisting on their right to vote, sit on a jury, control the timing of their pregnancies, enjoy equal partnerships, or earn a living. At every step, they faced fierce opposition. Elizabeth Cobbs gives voice to fearless women on both sides of the aisle, most of whom considered themselves patriots. Rich and poor, from all backgrounds and regions, they show that the women’s movement has never been an exclusive club.Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all herald a new, youth-inflected radical politics. The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics (Verso, 2022) gets behind the headlines about AOC and her cohort of elected officials to tell the stories of the young organizers who created the Squad and the new social movements that have roiled US politics, from the DSA to the Sunrise Movement to Justice Democrats. Ranging across the country to describe grassroots organizing in places like rural Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Kentucky, Florida, and California, this book examines the panoply of strategies and struggles of activists working in—and trying to transform—electoral politics and the climate justice, racial justice, and labor movements. Propelled by scores of immersive and absorbing conversations on political strategy with young activists determined to reshape the country, this book—by a writer who is herself a member of this generational movement—is a riveting account of a resurgent left.Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cities are central to prosperity: they are hubs of innovation and growth. However, the economic vitality of wealthy cities is marred by persistent and pervasive inequality—and deeply entrenched anti-urban policies and politics limit the options to address it. Structural racism, suburban subsidies, regional government fragmentation, the hostility of state legislatures, and federal policy all contribute to an unequal status quo that underfunds cities while preventing them from pursuing fairer outcomes. Economist Richard McGahey explores how cities can foster equitable economic growth despite the obstacles in their way. Drawing on economic and historical analysis as well as his extensive experience in government and philanthropy, he examines the failures of public policy and conventional economic wisdom that have led to the neglect of American cities and highlights opportunities for reform. Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States (Columbia UP, 2023) features detailed case studies of New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles, tracing how their attempts to achieve greater equity foundered because of the fiscal and political constraints imposed on them. McGahey identifies key lessons about the political coalitions that can overcome anti-urban biases, arguing that alliances among unions, environmentalists, and communities of color can help cities thrive. But he warns that cities cannot solve inequality on their own: political action at state and federal levels is necessary to achieve systemic change. Shedding light on the forces that produced today’s dysfunction and disparities, Unequal Cities provides timely policy prescriptions to promote both growth and equity.Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelical, but his Christian admirers anointed him as their political champion, believing he would lead America back to God. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how Hoover and his FBI teamed up with leading white evangelicals and Catholics to bring about a white Christian America by any means necessary.Lerone Martin draws on thousands of newly declassified FBI documents and memos to describe how, under Hoover's leadership, FBI agents attended spiritual retreats and worship services, creating an FBI religious culture that fashioned G-men into soldiers and ministers of Christian America. Martin shows how prominent figures such as Billy Graham, Fulton Sheen, and countless other ministers from across the country partnered with the FBI and laundered bureau intel in their sermons while the faithful crowned Hoover the adjudicator of true evangelical faith and allegiance. These partnerships not only solidified the political norms of modern white evangelicalism, they also contributed to the political rise of white Christian nationalism, establishing religion and race as the bedrock of the modern national security state, and setting the terms for today's domestic terrorism debates.Taking readers from the pulpits and pews of small-town America to the Oval Office, and from the grassroots to denominational boardrooms, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover completely transforms how we understand the FBI, white evangelicalism, and our nation's entangled history of religion and politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Hern began to examine urban displacement when he first encountered an empty lot in the northeast sector of Portland, OR. This corner was the site of a community resisting against gentrification. In this episode, Chris Gondak speaks with Matt Hern about the inspiration for his book, and the battles that many urban communities are fighting across North America.Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in the United States. It has walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, low-density housing, public transportation, and significant green space--not to mention craft-beer bars and locavore food trucks. But liberal Portland is also the whitest city in the country. This is not circumstance; the city has a long history of officially sanctioned racialized displacement that continues today.Over the last two and half decades, Albina--the one major Black neighborhood in Portland--has been systematically uprooted by market-driven gentrification and city-renewal policies. African Americans in Portland were first pushed into Albina and then contained there through exclusionary zoning, predatory lending, and racist real estate practices. Since the 1990s, they've been aggressively displaced--by rising housing costs, developers eager to get rid of low-income residents, and overt city policies of gentrification.Displacement and dispossessions are convulsing cities across the globe, becoming the dominant urban narratives of our time. In What a City Is For, Matt Hern uses the case of Albina, as well as similar instances in New Orleans and Vancouver, to investigate gentrification in the twenty-first century. In an engaging narrative, effortlessly mixing anecdote and theory, Hern questions the notions of development, private property, and ownership. Arguing that home ownership drives inequality, he wants us to disown ownership. How can we reimagine the city as a post-ownership, post-sovereign space? Drawing on solidarity economics, cooperative movements, community land trusts, indigenous conceptions of alternative sovereignty, the global commons movement, and much else, Hern suggests repudiating development in favor of an incrementalist, non-market-driven unfolding of the city.Matt Hern is Codirector of 2+10 Industries, teaches at multiple universities, and lectures widely. He is the author of Common Ground in a Liquid City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations.In Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq (Oxford UP, 2023), the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. He shows how fear, hubris, and power influenced Bush's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the core of Leffler's account is his compelling portrait of Saddam Hussein. Rather than stressing Bush's preoccupation with promoting freedom or democracy, Leffler emphasizes Hussein's brutality, opportunism, and unpredictability and illuminates how the Iraqi dictator's record of aggression and intransigence haunted the president and influenced his calculations. Bush was not eager for war, and the decision to invade Iraq was not a fait accompli. Yet the president was convinced that only by practicing coercive diplomacy and threatening force could he alter Hussein's defiance, a view shared by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders around the world, including Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector. Throughout, Leffler highlights the harrowing anxieties surrounding the decision-making process after the devastating attack on 9/11 and explains the roles of contingency, agency, rationality, and emotion. As the book unfolds, Bush's centrality becomes more and more evident, as does the bureaucratic dysfunctionality that contributed to the disastrous occupation of Iraq.A compelling reassessment of George W. Bush's intervention in Iraq, Confronting Saddam Hussein provides a provocative reinterpretation of the most important international event of the 21st century.Grant Golub is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Annika sits down with Robert Doar, president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of Washington D.C.'s most prominent think-tanks, to discuss the state of the American Right: what are the driving political issues of our time? What is the importance of freedom and liberty within the right? Drawing on Robert's background in poverty studies, they discuss what the Right has done right and wrong in addressing poverty, as well as Robert's time at our very own Princeton.Robert's own podcast, "AEI Banter," is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The emergence of Haiti as a sovereign Black nation lit a beacon of hope for Black people throughout the African diaspora. Leslie M. Alexander’s study reveals the untold story of how free and enslaved Black people in the United States defended the young Caribbean nation from forces intent on maintaining slavery and white supremacy. Concentrating on Haiti’s place in the history of Black internationalism, Alexander illuminates the ways Haitian independence influenced Black thought and action in the United States. As she shows, Haiti embodied what whites feared most: Black revolution and Black victory. Thus inspired, Black activists in the United States embraced a common identity with Haiti’s people, forging the idea of a united struggle that merged the destinies of Haiti with their own striving for freedom.A bold exploration of Black internationalism’s origins, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States (U Illinois Press, 2022) links the Haitian revolution to the global Black pursuit of liberation, justice, and social equality.Omari Averette-Phillips is a graduate student in the department of history at UC Davis. He can be reached at omariaverette@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices