New Books in Big Ideas

American democracy is in trouble. At the heart of the contemporary crisis is a mismatch between America's Constitution and today's nationalized, partisan politics. Although American political institutions remain federated and fragmented, the ground beneath them has moved, with the national subsuming and transforming the local. In Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era (U Chicago Press, 2024), political scientists Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler bring today's challenges into new perspective. Attentive to the different coalitions, interests, and incentives that define the Democratic and Republican parties, they show how contemporary polarization emerged in a rapidly nationalizing country and how it differs from polarization in past eras. In earlier periods, three key features of the political landscape-state parties, interest groups, and media-varied locally and reinforced the nation's stark regional diversity. They created openings for new policy demands and factional divisions that disrupted party lines. But this began to change in the 1960s as the two parties assumed clearer ideological identities and the power of the national government expanded, raising the stakes of conflict. Together with technological and economic change, these developments have reconfigured state parties, interest groups, and media in self-reinforcing ways. Now thoroughly integrated into a single political order and tightly coupled with partisanship, they no longer militate against polarization. Instead, they accelerate it. Precisely because today's polarization is different, it is self-perpetuating and, indeed, intensifying. With the precision and acuity characteristic of both authors' earlier work, Pierson and Schickler explain what these developments mean for American governance and democracy. They show that America's political system is distinctively, and acutely, vulnerable to an authoritarian movement emerging in the contemporary Republican Party, which has both the motive and the means to exploit America's unusual Constitutional design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

In one of the first books to ask head-on what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state, Yaacov Yadgar delves into what the designation "Jewish" amounts to in the context of the sovereign nation-state, and what it means for the politics of the state to be identified as Jewish. The volume interrogates the tension between the notion of Israel as a Jewish state--one whose very character is informed by Judaism--and the notion of Israel as a "state of the Jews," with the sole criterion the maintenance of a demographically Jewish majority, whatever the character of that majority's Jewishness might or might not be.The volume also examines Zionism's relationship to Judaism. It provocatively questions whether the Christian notion of supersessionism, the idea that the Christian Church has superseded the nation of Israel in God's eyes and that Christians are now the true People of God, may now be applied to Zionism, with Zionism understood by some to have taken over the place of traditional Judaism, rendering the actual Jewish religion superfluous.To Be a Jewish State: Zionism as the New Judaism (NYU Press, 2024) deeply informs the democratic crisis in Israel, discussing whether Jewish laws put into effect by the state or political moves made to ensure a Jewish majority can be seen as undermining democracy. In our current era, with nationalism resurging, To Be a Jewish State urges a critical re-assessment of the very meaning of modern Jewish identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

This interview is an exception to our “single author monographs” rule, because the edited collection that is its topic is an intellectual achievement worth making an exception for in over 12 years of New Books in Philosophy podcasts. Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide: Volume I and Volume II (Routledge, 2024) is a two-volume compendium of 62 chapters on emotion theory written by 101 leading theorists from philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology, neuroscience, and other fields, all grappling with the question: What is an emotion? Editor Andrea Scarantino, who is a professor of philosophy at George State University, has compiled a synoptic and thematically organized collection that covers the history of emotion theory, the main contemporary theories of emotions, individual chapters on 35 distinct emotions, and more. The volumes bring together theorists from distinct disciplines that don’t normally engage with each others’ work, and provide readers with a one-stop-shop for clearly written introductions to the current states of play in emotion research.Andrea Scarantino is Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University, where he has taught since 2005.Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

Imagining After Capitalism (Triarchy Press, 2025) is the culmination of a decade-long exploration of what comes next after capitalism. It leverages previous work in developing foresight methodologies, which are featured in two previous books: Teaching about the Future and Thinking about the Future (2nd edition), both with Peter Bishop. It also leverages my work in identifying long-term values shifts—which are pivotal to After Capitalism—that are highlighted in ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape.Arguing that the absence of compelling positive alternatives keeps us stuck in a combination of fear, denial, and false hope, he offers three “guiding images” for the long-term future: an environmentally driven Circular Commons, a socially and politically driven Non-Workers’ Paradise, and a technology-driven Tech-Led Abundance.Imagining After Capitalism argues “first things first.” Let us first decide where we want to go before building detailed plans for getting there. The three “guiding images” are not the answers, but are intended to provoke discussion about the possibilities.The book offers an alternative to the prevailing doom and gloom and suggests there are indeed positive alternatives out there and it’s time to get started on crafting a different path to the future!Andy Hines brings more than three decades of experience as a futurist to the Imagining After Capitalism work. He has explored the future from multiple vantage points. He is currently an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator at the University of Houston Foresight program. He also spent a decade as an organizational futurist, first with Kellogg’s and then Dow Chemical. His consulting futurists roles included Coates & Jarratt, Inc., Social Technologies/Innovaro and currently his own firm Hinesight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, and fascism as a matter of course. The philosophical differences, however, may be more apparent than real. The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) argues that dominant trends in critical and radical theory inadvertently reproduce the cardinal tenets of the twentieth century’s most influential right-wing philosophers. It finds the rejection of foundationalism, rationalism, economic planning, and vanguardism mirrored in the work of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Strauss. If it is to be more than merely an inverted image of the Right, critical theory must reevaluate its relationship to what Julius Nyerere once called “deliberate design” in politics. In the era of anthropogenic climate change, a substantial—not merely nominal—departure from right-wing talking points is all the more necessary and momentous.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

Yochai's book, Not in Our Brain: Consciousness, Body, World (Magnes Press, 2019), examines the meaning of psychology and life based on the premise (following Merleau-Ponty's theory) that we are present in the world through our bodies. We are not merely rational beings or machines, but our existence in the world is through the body. While the book examines Merleau-Ponty's theory through stories of prisoners and people dedicated to meditation, our conversation took a different and fascinating direction. We examined the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza through the lens of Merleau-Ponty and the question of trauma.Yochai Ataria is a professor at Tel-Hai College, Israel. He completed his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conducted post-doctoral research in the Neurobiology Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His notable works include The Structural Trauma of Western Culture (2017), Body Disownership in Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (2018), The Mathematics of Trauma [in Hebrew] (2014), Not in Our Brain [in Hebrew] (2019), Levi versus Ka-Tsetnik (2022), Consciousness in Flesh (2022), and Genes, Technology, and Apocalypse (2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

Elections loom large in our everyday understanding of democracy. Yet we also acknowledge that our familiar electoral apparatus is questionable from a democratic point of view. Very few citizens have access to the kinds of resources that could enable them to stand for election; consequently, political candidates (thus officeholders) tend to come from elite social backgrounds. Moreover, elections involve campaigns, and campaigns almost always deploy various persuasion techniques, many of which are deceptive, manipulative, and downright toxic. Once elected, officials begin seeking re-election, which means that they must devote a great deal of attention to potential donors to their re-election campaigns. And on it goes. If by “democracy” one means “rule by the people,” it’s difficult to see how contemporary electoral practices empower us.Notably, our fixation with elections as the sine qua non of democracy is relatively recent. Aristotle claimed that elections are fundamentally oligarchic, and that lotteries were a truly democratic way of filling public offices. In Lottocracy: Democracy without Elections (Oxford University Press, 2024), Alex Guerrero proposes a non-electoral version of democracy that relies on “single issue legislatures” composed of citizens chosen by lot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

In How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2025), Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno uncovers the process through which schools implicitly and explicitly shape their students’ concept of race and the often unintentional consequences of this on educational equity. Dr.Chávez-Moreno sheds light on how the complex interactions among educational practices, policies, pedagogy, language, and societal ideas interplay to form, reinforce, and blur the boundaries of racialized groups, a dynamic which creates contradictions in classrooms and communities committed to antiracism.In this provocative book, Dr. Chávez-Moreno urges readers to rethink race, to reconceptualize Latinx as a racialized group, and to pay attention to how schools construct Latinidad (a concept about Latinx experience and identity) in relation to Blackness, Indigeneity, Asianness, and Whiteness. The work explores, as an example, how Spanish-English bilingual education programs engage in race-making work. It also illuminates how schools can offer ambitious teachings to raise their students’ critical consciousness about race and racialization.Ultimately, Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s groundbreaking work makes clear that understanding how our schools teach about racialized groups is crucial to understanding how our society thinks about race and offers solutions to racial inequities. The book invites educators and scholars to embrace ambitious teaching about the ambivalence of race so that teachers and students are prepared to interrogate racist ideas and act toward just outcomes.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/big-ideas

More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are looking for in a steady partner, they’ll often rely on superficial norms of attractiveness rooted in whiteness and anti-Blackness.Connecting the past to the present, in The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Beacon Press, 2024) sociologist Dr. Sabrina Strings argues that following the Civil Rights movement and the integration of women during the Second Wave Feminist movement, men aimed to hold on to their power by withholding love and commitment, a basic tenet of white supremacy and male domination, that served to manipulate all women. From pornography to hip hop, women—especially Black and “insufficiently white” women—were presented as gold diggers, props for masturbation, and side-pieces.Using historical research, personal stories, and critical analysis, Dr. Strings argues that the result is fuccboism, the latest incarnation of toxic masculinity. This work shows that men are not innately “toxic.” Nor do they hate love, commitment, or sex. Instead, men across race have been working a new code to effectively deny loving partnerships to women who are not pliant, slim, and white as a new mode of male domination.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/big-ideas

In Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests (Yale UP, 2024), environmental historian Brian Donahue advances a radical proposal for healing the relationship between humans and forests through responsible, sustainable use of local and regional wood in home building. American homes are typically made of lumber and plywood delivered by a global system of ruthless extraction, or of concrete and steel, which are even worse for the planet. Wood is often the most sustainable material for building, but we need to protect diverse forests as much as we desperately need more houses. Donahue addresses this modern conundrum by documenting his experiences building a timber frame home from the wood growing on his family farm, practicing “worst first” forestry. Through the stories of the trees he used (sugar maple, black cherry, black birch, and hemlock), and some he didn’t (white pine and red oak), the book also explores the history of Americans’ relationship with their forests.Donahue provides a new interpretation of the connection between American houses and local woodlands. He delves into how this bond was broken by the rise of a market economy of industrial resource extraction and addresses the challenge of restoring a more enduring relationship. Ultimately, this book provides a blueprint and a stewardship plan for how to live more responsibly with the woods, offering a sustainable approach to both forestry and building centered on tightly connected ecological and social values.Brian Donahue is Emeritus Professor of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University and co-owner of Bascom Hollow Farm in Gill, Massachusetts.Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas