New Books in Politics and Polemics

Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals’ and communities’ lives. Dr. Lauren Everett’s Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica’s Rent-Controlled Housing (Temple UP, 2025) shows how rent control impacts the lives of the renters themselves. Dr. Everett interviews residents about their experiences in low- and middle-income households in rent-controlled private market housing in Santa Monica, CA, a city where Everett was born and raised but can no longer afford to live. Dr. Everett seeks to understand the extent to which individuals feel at home or not at home and what factors contribute to those experiences. She also explores the nexus of Santa Monica’s tenant protection policies, infrastructure, and resources and the extent to which they inform stability—both perceived and actual—and life decisions. The first scholarly book to take a tenant-centered approach to examining the benefits and problems of rent control, Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land examines the residential experience in this specific local context and explains how it relates to policy and other externalities in cities where homeownership is not financially viable for most renters. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Transcript of the interview Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and structures of power. She formerly served as Programme Chair and Senior Fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, where she led the Black Feminism and the Polycrisis programme. Her work sits at the intersection of ideas, culture, and systems thinking, with a commitment to making complex theories accessible through books, essays, public speaking, and creative projects. She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (Harper Collins, 2025) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury, 2020), which has been translated into multiple languages. Her writing also appears in numerous anthologies and educational publications exploring feminism, African philosophy, media, and cultural criticism. Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Ideas Letter, Project Syndicate, and The Philosopher, and she has delivered talks at global institutions including TEDx, the Institute of Arts and Ideas, the European Commission, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Yale, and Singularity University at NASA. Salami was the creative director of the short film Black Feminism and the Polycrisis, which won the Silver Award for Public Service and Activism at the 2024 Lovie Awards. From 2019 to 2022, she co-directed Activate, an intersectional feminist movement that supported minoritised women in politics and community organising through visibility campaigns, mentoring, and fundraising. The initiative played a key role in shifting narratives and resources toward a more inclusive political landscape in the UK. She has also worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, advised governments on gender equality, developed national school curricula, and curated cultural events at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Her blog, MsAfropolitan, launched in 2010, has reached over a million readers and remains a platform for exploring feminist and African-centred approaches to contemporary life. Salami is a Full Member of the Club of Rome, a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves on the advisory boards of the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State University and Public Humanities at Cambridge University Press, as well as the council of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy. Links to References:Apart Together – essay on Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire’s radical vision for the world Africa’s Populist Trap for The Ideas Letter The Niger River and the Dearth of History: Deconstructing the Myths of Mungo Park by Ezenwa E. Olumba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

John's “Arendt's Refugee Politics” came out in Public Books in early November. He made the case that his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt is an opponent both of identity politics and also of a cosmpolitan universalism that is blind to all the differences (of race, gender, belief) that make us who though not what we are. Going back to one of the first pieces she published in English, a 1943 essay from Menorah called "We Refugees", he reflected on how amazingly Arendt was able to air her unease about militant Zionism at the same time she warned fellow arrivals in America from rushing to disguise their origins. Recall this Book 153 is simply John reading the article aloud. It is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side) in soliloquy. You can consult footnotes and a read a transcript by heading back to the article in its original form here. Reach out and let us know if you think it should be the first of many, or simply a one-off! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Today I’m speaking with Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus on her 2020 book, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2020). Bullshit is a feature of both democracies and dictatorships alike, but it takes different forms. In democracies, while citizens enjoy the freedom of speech and the right to vote, a range of forces often conspire to limit their real power in favor of competing elites. The political and economic elite’s toolkit includes the art of bullshit—the persuasive use of language without regard for truth. Whether meritocratic or populist, elites alike have mastered this form of manipulation, amplified by modern tools of dissemination and authority. To help us understand the challenges that bullshit poses to democratic citizens, I’m pleased to welcome Hélène Landemore. Hélène Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals how American capitalism has been promoted in the most ephemeral of materials: public service announcements, pamphlets, educational films, and games—what Caroline Jack calls “sponsored economic education media.” These items, which were funded by corporations and trade groups who aimed to “sell America to Americans,”found their way into communities, classrooms, and workplaces, and onto the airwaves, where they promoted ideals of “free enterprise” under the cloaks of public service and civic education. They offered an idealized vision of US industrial development as a source of patriotic optimism, framed business management imperatives as economic principles, and conflated the privileges granted to corporations by the law with foundational political rights held by individuals. This rhetoric remains dominant—a harbinger of the power of disinformation that so besets us today. Jack reveals the funding, production, and distribution that together entrenched a particular vision of corporate responsibility—and, in the process, shut out other hierarchies of value and common care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. He is a brilliant academic, capped by sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the Nobel Peace Prize, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and more than fifty other universities, and elected not only to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters but the Royal Society and the British Academy; a public servant, who served as Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, headed international commissions for the UN and France, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor and Australia's Sydney Peace Prize; a public intellectual whose numerous books on vital topics have been best sellers.What brought him to economics were his concerns about the inequality and discrimination he saw growing up. Wanting to understand what drives it and what can be done about it has been his lifelong passion. This book gathers together and extends to new frontiers this lifelong work, drawing upon the challenges and insights of each of these phases of his career.In a still very widely cited paper written fifty years ago, Stiglitz set forth the fundamental framework for analyzing intergenerational transfer of wealth and advantage, which plays a central role in persistent inequality. That and subsequent work, developed most fully here for the first time, described today's inequality as a result of centrifugal forces increasing inequality and centripetal forces reducing it. In recent decades, the centrifugal forces have strengthened, the centripetal forces weakened. His general theory provides a framework for understanding the marked growth in inequality in recent decades, and for devising policies to reduce it.A central message is that ever-increasing inequality is not inevitable. Inequality is, in a fundamental sense, a choice. Stiglitz explains that inequality does not largely arise from differences in savings rates between capitalists and others, though that may play a role (as Piketty, Marx, and Kaldor suggest); but rather, it originates importantly from the rules of the game, which have weakened the bargaining power of workers as they have increased the market power of corporations. He also explains how monetary authorities have contributed to increasing wealth inequality, and how, unless something is done about it, likely changes in technology such as AI and robotization will make matters worse. He describes policies that can simultaneously reduce inequality and improve economic performance. Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University.  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/politics-and-polemics

At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922–1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to 1980, Diggs, Michigan’s first Black member of Congress, was the only federal official to attend the trial of Emmett Till’s killers, worked behind the scenes with Martin Luther King Jr., and founded the Congressional Black Caucus. He was also the chief architect of legislation that restored home rule to Washington, DC, and almost single-handedly ignited the American anti-apartheid movement in the 1960s. Drawing on extensive archival research, including Diggs’s rarely seen personal papers, FBI documents, and original interviews with family members and political associates, political scientist Dr. Marion Orr reveals that Diggs practiced a politics of strategic moderation. Dr. Orr argues that this quiet approach was more effective than the militant race politics practiced by Adam Clayton Powell and more appealing than the conservative Chicago-style approach of William Dawson—two of Diggs’s better-known Black contemporaries. Vividly written and deeply researched, House of Diggs is the first biography of Congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the most consequential Black federal legislators in US history. Congressman Diggs was a legislative lion whose unfortunate downfall punctuated his distinguished career and pushed him and his historic accomplishments out of sight. Now, for the first time, House of Diggs restores him to his much-deserved place in the history of American politics. Our guest is: Dr. Marion Orr, who is the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown University. He specializes in urban politics, race and ethnic politics, and African-American politics. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who produces the Academic Life podcast. She is a dissertation and grad student coach, and a developmental editor for humanities scholars at all stages of their careers. She writes the Academic Life Newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.Com. Playlist for listeners: The End of White Politics The Vice-President's Black Wife No Common Ground The Social Constructions of Race Smithsonian American Women The First and Last King of Haiti Of Bears and Ballots Never Caught Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And get free bonus content HERE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Antiabortion stories, images, and policies have primed Americans to embrace attitudes and politics once deemed extreme. Abroad, US antiabortion tactics, personnel, and funds have contributed to a global rise of the Right.From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary (University of California Press, 2025) is a scholar’s story of why and how abortion foes join other militants in waging war against the federal government. Reflecting on her thirty years of analyzing the intersections of race, reproduction, and right-wing movements, Carol Mason examines primary antiabortion sources that influenced political currents of the last fifty years. From Cold War conspiracism and apocalyptic fundamentalism to anti-statist terrorism, Tea Party populism, and MAGA insurrection, opposing abortion has come to imperil democracy worldwide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interactions of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic molecules. You emerge from the cells of your body. Not since chaos has a concept from physics spread like wildfire to other disciplines. Emergence can be found from chemistry to economics; from psychology to ecology. At its heart is the alluring idea that there's more to the world than physics, that there is a holistic component to nature, an edge of mystery. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" starts by taking you on a tour through a fascinating world of complexity, exploring phenomena from the inside of an atomic nucleus to bacterial behaviour to the ability of your thoughts to affect the world. These examples are used along with a thorough exploration of the philosophical literature to untangle the notoriously poorly defined concept of emergence. This reveals something surprising: the term emergence is redundant. In its weak form it is so weak that it applies to everything. In its strong form it is so restrictive that it is like the belief that there are pixies in your garden, impossible to exclude but not worth spending your time on. Emergence either applies to all systems or to none. Rather than telling us something about the nature of the world, it is an illusion, an artefact of our cognitive limitations. The past decade has seen a dozen or so monographs and collections about emergence, almost all resolutely supportive of the concept. This book aims to redress the balance. But it is more than just a campaign against the idea of emergence. Graham presents a framework called Austere Physicalism and argues that it is the only coherent way to view the world. He uses this framework to reinterpret so-called emergent phenomena and investigates its wider implications for science. In this radically materialist view, we are nothing but physical systems among others. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" ends by exploring what this means for our sense of free will and consciousness. The book will appeal to academics in fields which use the concepts of complexity or emergence. Scientists and philosophers alike will find unexpected and exciting ideas in these pages. But the target audience is much broader including students who want to add context to their studies and the intellectually curious with some scientific background. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics