New Books in Public Policy

Emery Roe is the author of Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today’s Management Challenges (Duke UP 2014). Roe is senior associate with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Roe’s book navigates between economics, ecology, and public policy. He challenges the notion that all messes are bad, and points to how public administrations can learn from messes and turn them into good messes. In doing so, public administrators can better design regulatory and administrative regimes to deal with future financial, environmental, and related messes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The constitution guarantees Americans freedom of religious practice and freedom from government interference in the same same. But what does religious liberty mean in practice? Does it mean that the government must permit any religious practice, even one that’s nominally illegal? Clearly not. You can’t shoot someone even if God tells you to. Does it mean, then, that religious liberty is a sort of fiction and that the government can actually closely circumscribe religious practice? Clearly not. The government can’t ban a putatively religious practice just because it’s expedient to do so. So where’s the line? In God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press, Second Edition, 2014), Marci A. Hamilton argues that it’s shifting rapidly. Traditionally, the government, congress, and courts agreed that though Americans should enjoy extensive religious freedom, that freedom did not include license to do anything the religious might like. A sensible accommodation between church and state had to be made so that both the church and state could do their important work. According to Hamilton, in recent decades radical religious reformers have mounted a successful campaign to throw the idea of a sensible accommodation out the window. They have expanded the scope of religious liberty and thereby limited the ability of the government to protect citizens generally. In this sense, she says, religion–a force for great social good, in her mind–has been made into an instrument of harm for many Americans. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Dr. Amy Stambach is the author of Confucius and Crisis in American Universities: Culture, Capital, and Diplomacy in U.S. Public Higher Education (Routledge, 2014). Dr. Stambach is a lecturer in Comparative and International Education at University of Oxford. Dr. Stambach’s book, a part of the Education in Global Context series, offers an ethnographic look at the partnership between American universities and the Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government funded language and cultural teaching centers. Drawing on student, faculty, and administrator interviews, personal experience, and institutional document review, the author provides an in-depth insight and analysis of the often-maligned relationship between these institutions. In the book, it is argued that American universities turn to ventures such as the Confucius Institutes on the grounds that US congressional cuts to higher education can be offset by funding from China. Dr. Stambach also introduces the term “eduplomacy” in this book, which she defines as “diplomatic uses of education to advance the political and economic interests of competing… groups” (p. 3). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Kevin Dougherty and Vikash Reddy are the authors of Performance Funding for Higher Education: What Are the Mechanisms What Are the Impacts (Jossey-Bass, 2013). Dr. Dougherty is Associate Professor of Higher Education and Education Policy at Teachers College-Columbia University and Mr. Reddy is a Senior Research Assistant at the Community College Research Center. In their book, the authors explore past research on performance funding in higher education, a practice where state governments tie university or college budget allocation to certain indictors–like graduation rates, remedial education, or drop out rates. This kind of funding has been around since the late 70s, but has not really taken off in the national discussion, even as around 25 states have some kind of performance funding for their higher education system. Dougherty and Reddy chronicle an expansive of past research on performance funding, dating back to 1979. The book provides a sprawling landscape, yet a concise explanation, of the discourse in the higher education sector for this type of budgetary reform policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In early America, the practice of “warning out” was unique to New England, a way for the community to regulate those who might fall into poverty and need assistance from the town or province. Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the first book about this forgotten aspect of colonial Massachusetts life since 1911. We perambulate with him around Boston’s streets on the eve of the Revolution. Dayton and Salinger present the legal basis of the warning system and the moral, religious and humanistic motives of those who enforced it. We interview legal historian Cornelia H. Dayton of the University of Connecticut about the book she wrote with fellow historian Sharon V. Salinger, of the University of California, Irvine. They discovered his “diary,” and from there found warrants and other documents that allowed them to reconstruct his world, as well as the biographies of the sojourners, soldiers, and members of ethnic and religious minorities who were moving throughout the British Atlantic. They provide fresh insights into why people came to Boston and how long they stayed. Professor Dayton explains how she and Salinger provide a fresh, and perhaps controversial, interpretation of the role that warning played in the city’s civic landscape. Robert Love’s Warnings is a comparative legal history as well as social and political history of New England in the decade before the Revolution. Update (April 26, 2015): Sharon V. Salinger and Cornelia Dayton have received a major book award by the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Their book Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) won the Merle Curti prize for the best book in American social history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Jim Russell is a sociologist and it was his encounter with the hidden realities of his own 401(k) retirement plan that touched off his crusade to demystify for himself, and then others, just what was at stake in the options presented by private and public retirement plans. In Social Insecurity: 401(k)s and the Retirement Crisis (Beacon Press, 2014), he puts into plain language for ordinary Americans the arcane terminology used by retirement-fund managers, and uses his own real-life experiences to build an empathetic bond with anxiety-laden readers. Russell moves seamlessly between the personal and political, the present and past, the domestic and global. The holism of his sociology is Russell’s strongest suit. With admirable succinctness and clarity–this is economics for the-rest-of-us–he recounts the Chicago-school economics that spawned the right-wing privatization movement. He then situates in the emergence of neoliberalism the corporate campaign to move billions of dollars from American pension accounts under pubic and labor union control into private hands. Turns out, the privatization of pension funds is not just an accompanying feature of global neoliberal strategy but the bull’s eye of the target, ground zero of the attack on centrally planned economies like Chile’s under Allende, and the former Soviet Republics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of saying “Do this again and as often as possible.” But there’s more to it than that. For one thing, there are many ways to get to ecstasy, and some of them are very harmful: cutting, starving, and, of course, drug-taking. These things may render an ecstatic state, but they will also kill you. Moreover, many of the ecstasy-inducing activities and substances are powerfully addictive. It’s fine, for example, for most people to use alcohol to feel more relaxed or even to achieve an ecstatic state. But something on the order of 10% to 15% of people cannot safely use alcohol at all without become seriously addicted. And once they do, they usually descend into a profoundly un-ecstatic nightmare that often ends in death. According to Sharon K. Farber‘s Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties (Aronson, 2013), our desire for ecstasy is first and foremost a psychic defense that protects us against on-going or anticipated trauma. When reality (as we perceive it, which, of course, is not always or even often accurately) becomes “too much” for us, we seek refuge in altered states of consciousness. The most attractive of these, of course, is ecstasy. It makes everything frightening just “go away.” Sometimes, the ecstatic state appears spontaneously. More often, however, especially in our culture, it is consciously induced by self-harming and drug-taking. For most of us, this sort of self-medication “works.” For a large minority, however, it ends in addiction and death. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Denise Brennan‘s second book, Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States (Duke University Press, 2014), examines how individuals who were trafficked into forced labor go about rebuilding their lives afterward. Through her ethnography of lived experience and her analysis of immigration policy, Brennan shows that trafficking and forced labor are common byproducts of our capitalist system that relies on cheap and unregulated labor. Migration patterns are gendered, and the persons whose experiences shape this book — Maria, Elsa, and many others — are mostly women in the caregiving and sex industries. Brennan argues that U.S. policy has used anti-trafficking policy to forward a separate agenda of ending prostitution and other sex work, thereby distorting protections for female and male trafficking victims in all labor industries, and drastically limiting the number of T visas allocated since 2000. The book is one of scholarly activism: as an anthropologist, Denise Brennan combines research and advocacy to improve the lives of victims and to modify the realities of trafficking and forced labor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Americans are very politically divided. Democrats say we need a more powerful welfare state while Republicans say we need to maintain the free market. The struggle, we are constantly informed, is one of ideas. And that it is in the worst possible sense, for neither the Democrats nor Republicans seem interested in evidence. They don’t want the facts to get in the way of their arguments. In his remarkable book The Political Economy of Human Happiness: How Voters’ Choices Determine the Quality of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Benjamin Radcliff provides facts that should help both Democrats and Republicans, despite their many differences, decide how to proceed. He asks a simple, compelling question: do conservative or liberal public policies make people happier? After an extensive and sophisticated analysis of the data, he reaches an equally simple, compelling answer: liberal policies do. Radcliff is a great friend of the free market; it is obvious, he says, that capitalism is the best economic system we have at our disposal. But he is also pragmatic: all the evidence shows that free markets alone don’t make people as happy as markets combined with robust welfare and labor-protection programs. There is a lesson here for both Democrats and Republicans. Listen up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The paleontologist Michael Benton describes a mass extinction event as a time when “vast swaths of the tree of life are cut short, as if by crazed, axe wielding madmen.” Elizabeth Kolbert‘s new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt, 2014), explores the five major mass extinction events that have occurred on the Earth over the last half billion years. Kolbert contrasts these Big Five, as they are known, to the sixth mass extinction event, which we are in the midst of today. This time, instead of a massive asteroid or a sudden glaciation event, humans are the culprit. Travelling with different scientists to remote ecosystems around the world, Kolbert sees evidence of the many ways humans are altering the planet – through climate change, ocean acidification, and the spread of invasive species. By the end of the century, scientists predict we will lose 20 to 50% of all living species. Kolbert also places this current extinction event in the context of human history: although the rate at which we are driving species extinct has reached an unprecedented pace, humans have been responsible for causing species loss for tens of thousands of years. As Kolbert comments, “We’ve been at this project for a very long time.” Her book also addresses the paradoxical relationship that humans have with the species we share the planet with, especially the large and charismatic megafauna. Kolbert contrasts our remarkable proclivity to kill off species with some touching examples of the inexplicable lengths we will go to save a species from extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer with The New Yorker since 1999. She is also the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Miriam Kingsberg‘s fascinating new book offers both a political and social history of modern Japan and a global history of narcotics in the modern world. Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History (University of California Press, 2013) locates the emergence of a series of three “moral crusades” against narcotics that each accompanied a perceived crisis in collective values and political legitimacy in nineteenth and twentieth century Japan. In the first moral crisis after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, opium became a symbol of difference between Japan and an “Other” epitomized by Qing China, as Japan sought to “leave Asia” and “enter” the West. Here, Kingsberg traces a series of attempts to regulate drug use in Taiwan in the wake of Japan’s transformation into a formal empire. Between the end of WWI and Japan’s defeat in WWII, Japan saw its second moral crisis as it navigated the most protracted and intense moral crusade against narcotics in its history. The central chapters of Kingsberg’s book trace this second crisis, paying special attention to Japanese colonial rule in Korea and in the Kwantung Leased Territory (KLT) in southern Manchuria as Korea became the “global capital of morphine” and the KLT port handled “the second-highest volume of banned drugs in the world.” The third moral crisis brings us to the end of Moral Nation and the thick of the “hiropon age” of the 1950s, when methamphetamine production and usage skyrocketed in postwar Japan and the nation saw its first full-fledged domestic drug plight. Kingsberg locates a changing cast of “moral entrepreneurs” who motivated these three crises, shedding light on the formative roles of merchants and mass society in this chapter of global narcotic history. It is a wonderful, meticulously researched book that contributes significantly to the histories of Japan, of drugs, and of global politics. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Much of the progress in technology today has come about as a result of innovators who did not seek prior approval from regulatory bodies and such. Yet, even with the beneficial results from innovations like the commercial Internet, mobile technologies, and social networks, a disposition exists to be overly cautious with respect to new things. Adam Thierer calls this the “precautionary principle” in his new book Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom (Mercatus Center, 2014). The “precautionary principle”–which, Thierer argues, is based on fear and concern about loss of control–limits the creativity inherent in unfettered tinkering. In contrast, Thierer advocates “permissionless innovation,” an attitude that would allow experimentation to continue without hinderance. Of course does not mean that there is no use for policies for new technology, as some developments require regulation. Policymakers should, however, take a “wait and see” approach to setting rules for innovative products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Nicholas Carnes is the author of White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Carnes is an assistant professor of public policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. There is surprisingly little in the research literature on the link between social class and legislative behavior. For a topic that seems so ripe for investigation, Carnes’ data collection and analysis open new ground and answer pressing questions. He shows that formerly blue collar workers who serve in Congress behave differently than formerly white collar workers. Blue collar workers are in the extreme minority in numbers, meaning their efforts to pass legislation that tilts towards the working class are often stymied. Carnes offers fresh insight into why this matters for representation more generally and several recommendations for how to rectify this in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Arica Coleman did not start out to write a legal history of “the one-drop rule,” but as she began exploring the relationship between African American and Native peoples of Virginia, she unraveled the story of how the law created a racial divide that the Civil Rights movement has never eroded. Virginia’s miscegenation laws, from the law of hypo-descent to the Racial Integrity Act, are burned into the hearts and culture of Virginians, white, black and Indian. That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia (Indiana University Press, 2014) demonstrates how people continue to insist on racial discrimination and racial purity even though the legal barriers have been lifted and the biological imperatives of “blood purity” have been discredited. Dr. Coleman traces the origins the one-drop rule–that one African American ancestor made a person “colored”–from the days of slavery to the present. She shows how Indians came to disavow their African American descent in the wake of the Virginia racial purity statutes, and how the Bureau of Indian Affairs process continues to perpetuate a fear of admitting racial mixing. She also reveals how one of the most famous Civil Rights cases of our time, Loving v. Virginia, is not about what everyone thinks; it is not, she argues, about the right of blacks and whites to marry. Dr. Arica L. Coleman is Assistant Professor of Black American Studies at the University of Delaware and a lecturer for the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She has a four-year appointment to the Organization of American Historians Alana committee, which focuses on the status of African American, Latino/Latina American, Native American and Asian American histories and historians. Dr. Coleman has lent her expertise on the history and politics of race and identity formation to the Washington Post, Indian Country Today and most recently NPR’s “Another View,” a weekly program with a focus on contemporary African American issues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In 1927 Russian-American legal theorist Alexander Sack introduced the doctrine of “odious debt.” Sack argued that a state’s debt is “odious” and should not be transferable to successor governments after a revolution, if it was incurred without the consent of the people; and not for their benefit. This doctrine has largely been rejected, with a firm presumption of “sovereign continuity” emerging instead: post-revolutionary governments must repay sovereign debt even if it was incurred to cover the personal expenses of plutocrats. If they fail to do so, their credit reputation is harmed. As Odette Lienau explains in a striking line, “we can now imagine prosecuting the leaders of a fallen regime for crimes against a state’s population while simultaneously asking that population to acknowledge and repay the fallen regime’s debts.” In Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance (Harvard University Press, 2014), Lienau unfolds the historical conditions from which this seeming inconsistency emerged. Seamlessly moving between case studies from the early 20th century to the present, Lienau discusses several different versions of this puzzle. Ultimately, Lienau ends up rejecting “sovereign continuity,” and arguing for the recognition of “principled default.” With revolutions and uprisings across the Middle East, and in Ukraine, this book’s argument will likely provoke lively discussion among lawyers, economists, political theorists, and historians. But lay people should ideally engage with the ideas as well. The book gives an extraordinary point of access into what is at stake in the work of enormous international organizations, such as the World Bank. *Photo by Frank DiMeo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In this episode, I talk with Carlo C. DiClemente, a Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland- Baltimore County, about his co-authored book, Substance Abuse Treatment and the Stages of Change: Selecting and Planning Interventions (Guilford Press, 2013). We examine the stages-of-change model (also known as the transtheoretical model) in behavioral change, particularly in substance abuse and drug addiction treatment. We discuss the complexity involved in substance abuse, and the need to consider stage status in effective treatment. We talk about relapse and its implications for individuals’ recovery trajectories. The importance of the individual client as the central mechanism of change is emphasized throughout our discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World (Ashgate, 2013), a new book by Constance DeVereaux (Colorado State University) and Martin Griffin (University of Tennessee) sets out to challenge assumptions about policy making and culture in the contemporary world. The book has, at its centre, an understanding of narrative as both a practice that is central to what it means to be human and an analytical tool for understanding policy and culture. The book uses a wide range of case studies to illustrate the importance of this dual understanding of narrative to account for debates and differences between understandings of global culture as potentially threatening, in the form of globalization, or liberating, in the form of transnationalism. The case studies range from film and media studies, historical examples of Berlin and the USA’s National Endowment for the Arts, as well as questions over cultural heritage, through to readings of fictional case studies using the same narrative methods. The book will be essential reading for all scholars working in cultural policy and cultural studies, but also represents a challenge to the mainstream approaches of political science thinking about public policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In The Struggle for Canadian Copyright: Imperialism to Internationalism, 1842-1971, Sara Bannerman narrates the complex story of Canada’s copyright policy since the mid-19th century. The book details the country’s halting attempts to craft a copyright regime responsive both to its position as a net importer of published work and to its peculiar political geography as a British dominion bordering the United States. Bannerman charts Canada’s early, largely unsuccessful effort to craft a less restrictive policy in the run up to, and aftermath of, the 1886 Berne Convention-the multilateral agreement that established the enduring framework for the international copyright system. The main obstacle, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, was Britain’s insistence on a uniform and Berne-friendly policy throughout the empire. Even as those imperial constraints fell away over the first half of the 20th century, Canada increasingly aligned with powerful net exporters like France and Britain–in large part, Bannerman shows, to strengthen the country’s image as a model international citizen. The Struggle for Canadian Copyright is a story of constraint–the country’s copyright independence was never won–but Bannerman’s account also highlights the historical contingency of the restrictive norms that dominate international IP policy. A companion website includes archival documents and other materials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about her book, Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community (Northeastern University Press, 2013). We discuss the subculture of the “party university,” and how such an environment normalizes and encourages extreme binge drinking and reckless partying. We talk about how extreme partying harms students as well as the larger community, and why students willingly put themselves (and others) at risk for victimization. We discuss why the party subculture appears so resistant to change, and why efforts from university personnel and law enforcement often appear futile. We also explore possible ways to transform the party subculture and address the problems it causes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Patrick Weil is the author of The Sovereign Citizen: Denaturalization and the Origins of the American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). He is a visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center in the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. The Sovereign Citizen is an historical study of denaturalization in the United States. It tells the story of what Weil believes is a revolution in the concept of citizenship, through exhaustive archival research. But is also a story about the actors that have made law what it is – immigrants, political radicals, criminal defense lawyers, bureaucrats, and judges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Robert Darnton, author of books, articles, and Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. Darnton joins host Jonathan Judaken to discuss the future of libraries, the printed press, and his project – the Digital Public Library of America, or D.P.L.A. – which he hopes will foster a culture of “Open Access” to help promote the free communication of knowledge and sharing of intellectual wealth in order to create this “digital commonwealth.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Patrick Burkart‘s Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Conflicts (MIT Press, 2014) considers the democratic potential and theoretical significance of groups espousing radical perspectives on intellectual property and cyber-liberty. Focusing on the Swedish Pirate Party, Burkart details the history of these movements, noting the ways in which they have impacted both the local politics of Europe and the international culture industries. Employing conceptual models drawn from both critical theory and new social movement theory, Burkart makes a compelling case that the politics of piracy must understood as a defense of common culture. Just as social movements have come together to protect the environment, pirate politics aim to keep the Internet a space in individual and communal rights are not overrun by the interests of governments and corporations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Many have argued in recent years that the U.S. constitutional system exalts individual rights over responsibilities, virtues, and the common good. Answering the charges against liberal theories of rights, James Fleming and Linda McClain develop and defend a civic liberalism that takes responsibilities and virtues–as well as rights–seriously. In Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues (Harvard University Press, 2013), they provide an account of ordered liberty that protects basic liberties stringently, but not absolutely, and permits government to encourage responsibility and inculcate civic virtues without sacrificing personal autonomy to collective determination. The battle over same-sex marriage is one of many current controversies the authors use to defend their understanding of the relationship among rights, responsibilities, and virtues. Against accusations that same-sex marriage severs the rights of marriage from responsible sexuality, procreation, and parenthood, they argue that same-sex couples seek the same rights, responsibilities, and goods of civil marriage that opposite-sex couples pursue. Securing their right to marry respects individual autonomy while also promoting moral goods and virtues. Other issues to which they apply their idea of civic liberalism include reproductive freedom, the proper roles and regulation of civil society and the family, the education of children, and clashes between First Amendment freedoms (of association and religion) and antidiscrimination law. Articulating common ground between liberalism and its critics, Fleming and McClain develop an account of responsibilities and virtues that appreciates the value of diversity in our morally pluralistic constitutional democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In Emergencies and Politics: A Sober Hobbesian Approach (Cambridge UP, 2013), Tom Sorell argues that emergencies can justify types of action that would normally be regarded as wrong. Beginning with the ethics of emergencies facing individuals, he explores the range of effective and legitimate private emergency response and its relation to public institutions, such as national governments. He develops a theory of the response of governments to public emergencies which indicates the possibility of a democratic politics that is liberal but that takes seriously threats to life and limb from public disorder, crime or terrorism. Informed by Hobbes, Schmitt and Walzer, but substantially different from them, the book widens the justification for recourse to normally forbidden measures, without resorting to illiberal politics. This book will interest students of politics, philosophy, international relations and law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

What do Barry Goldwater, Edward Abbey, and Henry David Thoreau have in common? On the surface, they would seem to be at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. As Brian Allen Drake shows, however, environmental concerns often brought together public figures with wildly different political orientations. Throughout his book, Loving Nature, Fearing the State: Environmentalism and Antigovernment Politics Before Reagan (University of Washington Press, 2013), Brian Allen Drake analyzes the complex relationship between modern conservatism and postwar environmentalism. Through a wide-ranging narrative that fuses together elements of political, intellectual, and cultural history, Drake illuminates the tense nature of a movement that sought to balance an aversion to centralized government power with a desire to protect America’s natural landscape. Brian Allen Drake is a lecturer in the University of Georgia History Department. His previous work has appeared in Environmental History, the Great Plains Quarterly, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Pretty much every day you can read an article–usually somewhat intemperate–about how women can or can’t “have it all.” Rarely, however, do you read anything about the way in which men try to balance work and family. The assumption seems to be that fathers either: a) don’t want to “balance” anything; or b)say they want to “balance” work and family but actually don’t, or don’t try very hard to bring it off. As Gayle Kaufman points out in her terrific new book Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century (NYU Press, 2013), both of these assumptions are, well, wrong. Most American fathers want to play an active role in their family’s lives, and particularly in the rearing of their children. They face the same challenge as their working wives: how to have rich working lives and nurture their families all at the same time. In Superdads, Kaufman tries to figure out how and to what extent they are finding a good “balance.” Her answers are sobering for those wishing to “have it all.” In the lives of most men, somethings got to give. Listen to the interview and find out what. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Children born in the 1970s and 1980s received just a handful of vaccinations: measles, rubella, and a few others. Beginning the 1990s, the numbers of mandated vaccines exploded, so that today a fully-vaccinated child might receive almost three dozen vaccinations by the time he or she turns six. Worries over vaccinations are nothing new, but in recent years they have reached a new state of intensity. Supposed links between vaccinations and the spike in diagnoses of autism have generated a well-publicized anti-vaccination movement. Mark A. Largent addresses the roots of this controversy in Vaccine: The Debate in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), a book that is as refreshing for its accessible, readable style as it is for the nuanced, dispassionate, and fair manner it treats the players in this debate, from health care professionals to Jenny McCarthy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Virginia Gray, David Lowery, and Jennifer Benz are the authors of Interest Group$ and Health Care Reform Across the United State$ (Georgetown University Press, 2013). Gray is Distinguished Professor of Political Science, UNC, Chapel Hill, Lowery is Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University, and Jennifer Benz is a Senior Researcher at NORC at the University of Chicago. In the wake of the passage of national health care reform (Affordable Care Act (ACA)), we may all have overlooked the plethora of policy making at the state level. Why is it that the ACA took over 50 years to pass, yet states have regularly changed their own health care regulations? This book investigates how state policy makers have reformed health care laws from 1988-2002 with a focus on: market controls; mandated employee coverage; coverage for needy families; and single-payer systems. As the title suggests, they pay particular attention to the role interest groups have played in reform. The authors end the book with a discussion of the implementation of the ACA by states. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Gregory Heller is the author of Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Heller is Senior Advisor at Econsult Solutions, Inc. in Philadelphia. Bacon’s vision and leadership on urban renewal helped to create the physical landscape of what Philadelphia is today. He was central to many of the public and private projects that recreated this modern city. But, as the book title suggests, Bacon’s legacy is more than just as a planner. Heller dubs Heller ‘the planner as policy entrepreneur’. In doing so, Heller’s biography of Bacon can be read as an extended case-study in the policy process and urban politics. Bacon’s deep belief in public participation resulted in a vision for planning that was profoundly democratic and a great departure from many of his contemporaries who were often dismissive or indifferent of public input. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Social stability and justice requires that we live together according to rules. And this in turn means that the rules must be enforced. Accordingly, we sometimes see fit to punish those who break the rules. Hence society features a broad system of institutions by which we punish. But there is a deep and longstanding philosophical disagreement over what, precisely, punishment is for. The standard views are easy to anticipate. Some say that we punish in order to give offenders what they deserve. Others claim that we punish in order to encourage others to obey the rules. Still others see punishment as a process of rehabilitating offenders. Recent theorists have attempted to combine these views in various ways. The debates go on. In his new book, Punishment (Routledge, 2012), Thom Brooks reviews the leading debates concerning punishment and makes a compelling case for a distinctive theory of punishment called the “unified theory.” Brooks contends that the unified theory can embrace several highly intuitive penal goals while avoiding the philosophical difficulties confronting each of the competing theories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Most people who listen to this podcast will know that places like Japan, Italy, and Germany are in the midst of a demographic crisis. The trouble is that people in those countries are not having enough children to replace those of any age who are dying. This means the population of Japan et al. is declining (albeit slowly). But more importantly it means that the “age structure” of countries not at “replacement rate” is headed in the wrong direction: the number of young people is declining and the number of old people is rising. That’s bad because the young people produce all the stuff and also support the old people. Unless the young people become more productive, there’s going to be less stuff for everyone, but particularly for old people. According to Jonathan V. Last this troubling scenario is precisely what the United States will face if present demographic trends continue. In his fascinating What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Crisis (Encounter Books, 2013), Last crunches the numbers and suggests that the U.S. population, even factoring in immigration, will soon fall below “replacement rate.” The problem is not, Last says, that Americans don’t want children. They do. It’s that having children has become more and more expensive. Americans think they can’t afford children. What can we do about that? Listen in and find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The advent of very powerful computers and the Internet have not “changed everything,” but it has created a new communications context within which almost everything we do will be somewhat changed. One of the “things we do” is governance, that is, the way we organize ourselves politically and, as a result of that organization, provide for the individual and public good. In his fascinating book Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology (Princeton UP, 2013), John O. McGinnis examines the promise and peril of advanced computation and Internet communications for our democracy. The former (promise), he says, is great if we think deeply about the impact of the new media on politics and public policy. He proposed that we take the bull by the horns and experiment with new technology so that governance can become both more democratic and more efficient. He suggests a number of ways in which the potential of the new media can be made to do just this. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Americans seem to be more concerned about economic inequality today than they have been in living memory. The Occupy Movement (“We are the 99%”) is only the most visible sign of this growing unease. But what are the dimensions of inequality in the United States? How have they changed over the past century? Are we living in a new Gilded Age in which the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer? In his “book” (it’s really an innovative website) Growing Apart: A Political History of American Inequality (Institute for Policy Studies, 2013), Colin Gordon sets out to answer these questions. Using an interesting array of charts, graphs, and videos, Gordon tells the story of inequality in the U.S. in modern times. Gordon shows that in recent decades the poor have been getting relatively poorer and the rich have been getting relatively richer. The “gap”–already considerable–is growing. In this interview we discuss growing inequality and the reasons behind it. We also touch on what is perhaps the most important question in the debate: does inequality as it is found in the U.S. really matter economically, spiritually, and politically? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The American penitentiary model began as not merely a physical construct, but as a philosophical and religious one. Prisoners were to use their time in silence and isolation to contemplate their crimes/sins and to pursue God’s grace. Alexis de Tocqueville’s trip to America began not as a study of American democracy, but of its prisons, though he would go on to write about both arguing that arguing that American social reformers were beginning to view prisons as the “remedy for all of the evils of society”. As with many of his other observations Tocqueville was both accurate and prescient. Today America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, more than four times the number of second place contender Russia. Regions like upstate NY that used to rely on logging, dairy farms, and manufacturing now rely on prison jobs for economic stability, while states like Mississippi release prisoners in the thousand because they cannot afford to continue to house them. Private prisons trade shares on the NASDAQ, promising to ‘lock up the profits’ of investors, which often means cutting corners in areas that can actually lead to rehabilitation – prisoner education, job training and substance abuse treatment. Marc Mauer‘s Race to Incarcerate (New Press, 2013) is a graphic exploration of this reality based on his earlier book by the same title. Marc was kind enough to speak with us. I hope you enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

We’ve all heard the saying that when arguing we should ‘disagree without being disagreeable’ but, when it comes to guns, we often find ourselves disagreeing without actually disagreeing. Most Americans believe in some kinds of gun control. Most Americans recognize the ‘right to bear arms’. Most agree that expanded background checks can be useful in keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous or irresponsible people. Considering that there is so much agreement on basic policy, what the gun debate desperately needs is sober clear-headed analysis. “Reducing Gun Violence in America” edited by Daniel Webster contributes greatly to this need. Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick‘s Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) brings together experts on public health and public policy and makes the case for a variety of reforms ranging from expanded background checks to greater support of federal agencies like the ATF. It dissects gun violence in its many manifestations (homicides, accidental deaths, suicides) and explores the relationship between these tragedies and public health more broadly. It also examines technology to reduce gun violence like ‘personalized handguns’ as well as international gun control initiatives in countries like Brazil, the UK, and Australia. Daniel Webster was kind enough to speak with us. I hope you enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich are authors of the provocative new book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies (Rowman and Littlefield 2013). Dr. Tienken is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University, and is also currently the editor of the American Association of School Administrators Journal of Scholarship and Practice and the Kappa Delta Pi Record. Dr. Orlich is professor emeritus of education and science instruction at Washington State University, Pullman. Their new book is an unabashed critique of nearly five decades of school reform and the questionable assertions and arguments made by many advocates for standardization, nationalization, and corporatization of public schools. They refer to the famed “Sputnik” moment of the 1950s as a manufactured crisis that Bon Jovi might call a “vagabond king wearing a Styrofoam crown”. They call A Nation at Risk, the landmark study of educational performance in US schools, “an intellectually vapid and data challenged piece of propaganda” and the current federal law, No Child Left Behind, “Stalinist-inspired”. Deep down, this book is a critique of the neoliberal theory of government applied to education. Tienken and Orlich argue that standardization, testing, and charter schools have been foisted upon local school in deference to neoliberalism, rather than in service of students. They suggest that better policies can better improve education. A few highlights from the podcast interview. On Sputnik and Bon Jovi: “Bon Jovi and Sambora have a song off the album, These Days, and the song is called These Days, and in that song they use phrase “vagabond king wearing a Styrofoam crown”. And I heard that phrase and it struck me: yes, that really sums up Sputnik in one phrase, Sputnik is the really the genesis of the school bashing and the current school reform movement. Everyone refers to it as if it was a meaningful event in terms of school reform.” On A Nation at Risk: “When you read A Nation at Risk, we challenge anyone to go ahead and find the actual data to support the claims and conclusions they draw.” On federal education policy: “Under Obama and the Republicans in terms of the Common Core State Standards and new national testing initiatives, so really for the first time in this country’s history, curriculum is being determined by a small group of elites far away from your kids’ and my kids’ schools. That is problematic culturally but also educationally.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

What can the United States learn from Europe? One good answer, says Steven Hill, is social capitalism, a form of economic management that is responsive to markets and productive of broadly-shared prosperity. First known for his work on electoral reform in the United States, Hill began travelling through Europe in the late 90’s to study the use of proportional representation (PR) in European elections. Once there, his research agenda gradually broadened to include European approaches to healthcare, corporate governance, support for families, transportation, energy, media, and other policies that together constitute what Hill calls “The European Way,” as compared to “The American Way.” This comparison is laid out with clarity and a wealth of examples in Hill’s highly-readable book Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age (University of California Press, 2010). In the first half of this interview, we discuss the compatibility of European healthcare systems with thriving economies, focusing on models from Germany for controlling costs and increasing transparency. Hill explains how Europe manages to maintain more Fortune 500 companies than the U.S. and China combined, while at the same time offering benefits to workers like paid maternity leave, generous vacations, paid sick leave, and low-cost child care. We also discuss CEO perspectives on codetermination–a form of corporate power-sharing among workers and management–in German companies like Deutsche Bank, Mercedes, and Volkswagen. In the second half of the interview, we take up the American side of the question. I ask Steven if European-style policies are only possible in small countries with PR, or if they are also possible in a large country without PR, like the United States. Hill describes what it would it take for U.S. states to enact similar policies and where, if anywhere, that is most likely to happen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’t know it. Rates of drug use in the US remain, by historical standards, high and our prisons are full of people–many of whom are hardly drug kingpins–who have violated drug laws. And, of course, it all costs a fortune. What to do? In her book The War on Drugs in America, 1940-1973 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), historian Kathleen J. Frydl argues that there is a better way to control drugs. She points out that prior to the “War on Drugs” the Federal government had controlled the distribution of narcotics and other drugs largely (though not entirely) by means of taxation. The “Federal Bureau of Narcotics” was a branch of the Department of the Treasury. The run up to Nixon’s “War on Drugs” and the war itself changed all that: enforcement of drug laws was transferred to the Department of Justice. Essentially, the Fed had criminalized drug distribution and use and told the states to aggressively pursue distributors and users, or else. According to Frydl, this was a disastrous move. Better, she says, to de-criminalize and even legalize drugs, control them by means of taxation, and support prevention and treatment initiatives. It’s a controversial position, and near the end of the interview we debate it at some length. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

All humans have an emotionally-driven sense of fairness. We get treated unfairly and we get mad. It’s no wonder, then, that our laws–and those of almost everyone else–are intended to assure that people are treated fairly. When those laws fail and we are treated unfairly, we encounter another human universal–the desire for revenge. If someone pokes you in the eye, more likely than not your first inclination is going to be to poke them in the eye too. That “eye-for-an-eye” logic just feels intuitively fair to us. Yet, our laws–and those of most “civilized” places–explicitly deny victims the right to avenge their injuries. The state has a monopoly on justice, and the state’s justice (theoretically) has nothing to do with revenge. The courts asks victims to check their “irrational” desire for revenge and pursue what is (supposedly) a higher, more “rational” form of justice. In Payback: The Case for Revenge (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Thane Rosenbaum argues that we’ve gone way too far in our rejection of revenge. By denying the right to revenge, we have essentially asked people to do something that is impossible–squelch their very natural feeling that wrong-doers must pay in equal measure for the harms they brought. In order for the moral universe to be righted, scofflaws must pay–and be seen to have paid–for what they have done. Our laws recognize none of this, says Rosenbaum, and we should do something about it. We need to bring revenge, he argues, back in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

History is in many respects the story of humanity’s quest for transcendence: to control life and death, time and space, loss and memory. When inventors or companies effectively tap into these needs products emerge that help define their times. The Kodak ‘Brownie’ allowed average consumers – without the knowledge of chemistry or math of a Matthew Brady – to capture powerful images. Ford’s Model T gave the ‘working man’ the ability to travel further and faster than wealthy aristocrats of previous generations. The Timex watch made time accessible to anyone with a few bucks, whether they had interest in philosophical debates about the meaning of time or not. The Glock handgun is on this list of iconic products and while it did not democratize deadly force like the AK-47 it has made its own mark on the American psyche. The Glock has become the standard bearer for American handguns, placing it at the center of some of the most important conflicts of our times from gun control to globalization. It was initially invented for the Austrian army, but its many innovations and the growing belief that American cops were outgunned by criminals made it first popular with law enforcement, and then later with gun enthusiasts of all types. Tupac Shakur praised the Glock and was later murdered with one. Municipalities railed against the Glock then later helped flood the streets with them. Paul Barrett‘s Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun (Broadway, 2013) is the story of a gun, but in a nation of 300 million guns, it tells a much larger story. Paul was kind enough to speak with us. I hope you enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

A friend of mine who had just graduated from law school said “Law school is great. The trouble is that when you are done you’re a lawyer.” Steven J. Harper would, after a fashion, agree (though he would probably add that law schools are not that great). Harper’s book, The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis (Basic Books, 2013), is a stem-to-stern indictment of legal education and the legal profession; he argues that the entire system by which we train and employ (or don’t employ) attorneys is broken. Honesty, humility, and public service are out; “truthiness,” hubris, and greed are in. The very idea of what it means to be a lawyer has been corrupted. Happily, Harper has some suggestions about how we might reform the legal industry. This is a terrific and thought provoking book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

It’s pretty common–and has long been–for people to think that the “way it used to be” is better than the way it is. This tendency to idealize an (imagined) past is particularly strong today among critics of modern civilization. Think of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, but one example of a huge modernity-bashing genre. They say, with some justice, that everything from schools, cities, and nation-states to processed foods, modern footwear, and iPads is, to some degree at least, bad for us. This may be so, but no one to my knowledge except Jared Diamond has explored exactly what we should borrow from our ancient ancestors in order to improve our modern lives. In The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? (Viking, 2012), Diamond does just that. He presents a whole list of things that hunter-gathers did somewhat better than “we” (first world, Western types) do. Listen in and find out what they are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that had the potential to affect the economy in the near term more than any court case ever had. The substance of the case, and its lasting legal implications, are the subject of Andrew Koppelman’s The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform (Oxford University Press, 2012). The plaintiffs in the “Obamacare” case, NFIB v. Sebelius, had political and legal goals. Politically, they failed, because Justice Roberts was not willing to undo the huge Congressional effort to reform the country’s health-insurance system. But legally, in terms of doctrine, the litigation was a smashing success, altering principles that reach back hundreds of years. Andrew Koppelman has written a superb layman’s guide to what was at stake, legally, in last year’s case — and what the plaintiffs accomplished. They persuaded five justices of the Supreme Court to call into question both of the Court’s most economically significant previous decisions, one from the early days of the Republic, and one from the New Deal. In 1819, the Court agreed unanimously that the federal government could solve national problems: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adopted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.” (James Marshall) In 1935, the vote on a similar question was five to four: “Although activities may be intrastate in character when separately considered, if they have such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions, Congress cannot be denied the power to exercise that control.” (Charles Evan Hughes) But the dissent in 1935 took a very different view, one that resonates with the conservative voices of 2012: “The right to contract is fundamental, and includes the privilege of selecting those with whom one is willing to assume contractual relations.” (James McReynolds) In 2012, the Court is now split 4-5, in the other direction, on both of these topics. Prof. Koppelman shows that the “necessary & proper” clause, held to trump states’ rights by Justice Marshall, is hollowed out by Justice Roberts’ opinion. And Justice McReynolds’ “right to contract,” made infamous by the Lochner court, has returned in ghostly form, as a new individual right not to contract with insurance companies. In economic matters, the tide of constitutional law is shifting. The power of the Tough Luck constitutional doctrine was not exercised because of Justice Roberts’ forbearance in preserving the Affordable Care Act on other grounds. But with the help of Prof. Koppelman’s lucid and persuasive book, any reader can now fully grasp the legal significance of this line of thinking. Its practical implications, meanwhile, are becoming visible in the context of Medicaid, because a secondary holding in the case empowered governors to refuse new federal money for health care for the working poor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Modern liberalism is built on the principle of equality and its corollary, the principle of fairness (treating equals equally). But have we taken the one and the other too far? Are we deceiving ourselves about our ability to treat each others equally, that is, to be “fair?” In his provocative new book Against Fairness (University of Chicago, 2013), Stephen T. Asma makes the case that we have indeed become kind of fairness-mad, and that this madness has led us all to be (at best) hypocrites and (at worst) harmful to ourselves and others. Asma says we should temper our (Western) notion of fairness with one that looks at the causes and benefits of favoritism realistically, and even sympathetically. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Why do we work so hard, and should we? These are the questions that Robert and Edward Skidelsky explore in their thought provoking book How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life (Other Press, 2012). Their answer to the first question is (to put it in my own words) that we don’t know any better. Our competitive capitalist culture has taught us to work hard so we can earn more. Further, it has taught us that earning more will be “happier.” It won’t, say the Skidelskys. Their answer to the second question is “no,” full stop. What we should do instead is take advantage of our remarkable wealth, work less, and live the good life. What is the “good life?” Listen in and find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In his compelling and fascinating account of how engineers navigated new landscapes of technology and its discontents in 1960s America, Matthew Wisnioski takes us into the personal and professional transformations of a group of thinkers and practitioners who have been both central to the history of science and technology, and conspicuously under-represented in its historiography. Between 1964 and 1974, engineers in America wrestled with the ethical and intellectual implications of an “ideology of technological change.” Engineers for Change: Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America (MIT Press, 2012) takes us into the debates among engineers over their responsibilities for crafting a future in a world where nuclear weapons and chemical pollutants were now facts of life, as citizens were rising in support of environmental and civil rights, and in protest of war and violence. Wisnioski introduces us to the changing resonances of and debates over key concepts in the print culture of engineers in mid-century America, key experiments in the pedagogy and training of engineers at major US institutions, and key efforts to promote creativity in the profession by collaborating with artists, social activists, and others. The book situates all of this within a wonderful introduction to the classic historiography of social studies of technology and engineering, and is illustrated with striking images from the visual culture of engineering in the 1960s. Readers interested in how these issues extend into the more recent history of technology will also find much of interest in Wisnioski’s accounts of Engineers Without Borders and the Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace (ESJP) Network. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In their book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It (Basic Books, 2012), Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr. present the following big idea: race preferences in higher education harm those preferred. Their argument is interesting in that it is not premised on the idea that racial preferences are unfair. Rather, they crunch the numbers and show that when good minority students are placed among elite students at elite schools, they often fail; when they are placed among other good students at good schools, they do much better. Students, they say, need to be “matched” with students at their level, not “mismatched” (or, rather, overmatched) with students far above their level. Both Sanders and Taylor are very much in favor of Affirmative Action, though they would like to see it reformed. Listen in and see how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy (Viking Press, 2013), John Wood presents this big idea: you can change the world if want to. The nice thing about John’s book is that he doesn’t tell you the “theory” of world-changing (though he does discuss “social entrepreneurship”), he tells you how he did using his own experience. John saw that a lot of people around the world couldn’t read and created an organization to teach them. This involved building a dedicated team, fund-raising, finding out what his clients–illiterate, impoverished children–wanted, and giving it to them in a flexible way. John’s “Room to Read” has built thousands of libraries around the world and taught hundred of thousands of children to read. That’s something. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Scott Melzer is the author of Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War (New York University Press, 2012). Scott earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside and now is an associate professor of Sociology at Albion College. His book adds to the growing list of scholarship on gun control and gun rights. Scott’s disciplinary background in Sociology contributes to a better understanding of the nature of the NRA’s members, the links between their views towards guns and other issues, and what lies ahead for the organization. Through in-depth interviews with NRA members, we learn more about what it means to be a part of this organization, something few scholars have addressed directly in the past. The book is both a great read about policy, about an influential interest group, but also about the sociology of an organization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

“Museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples,” writes Amy Lonetree, associate professor of history at UC-Santa Cruz and a citizen of the Ho Chunk Nation, “as they are intimately tied to the colonization process.” Such a contention appears incongruous to most; museums are supposed to be places of wonder and learning, after all, pillars of our democratic culture. But consider the history. From the wholesale plunder of cultural artifacts and human remains — “If you desecrate a white grave, you wind up in prison,” Walter Eco-Hawk puts it, “but desecrate an Indian grave, and you get a Ph.D.” — to racist representations of disappearance and primitivity, museums are deeply implicated in colonialism. Yet as Lonetree powerfully proposes in Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), it doesn’t need to be that way. Assessing new efforts of collaboration, accountability, and control at Mille Lacs Indian Museum, The National Museum of the American Indian, and The Ziibiwing Center of Anishinaabe Culture & Lifeways, Lonetree lays out a path toward decolonization, putting these once aloof institutions to the task of sovereignty, survivance, and the telling of hard truths. This work is not only politically vital, but ultimately makes for a better museum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy