New Books in American Politics

On this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director, Eli Karetny talks with Richard Wolin (Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center) about the intellectual roots of today’s anti-liberal right. Tracing a line from Germany’s “conservative revolutionaries” (Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Heidegger) to France’s nouvelle droite and “great replacement” rhetoric, Wolin shows how cultural critiques of egalitarianism and “decadence” resurface in contemporary movements—from the manosphere and Bronze Age Pervert to tech-elite flirtations with political theology and the “state of exception.” The conversation connects these currents to U.S. figures like Peter Thiel and JD Vance, exploring why myths of decline, warrior brotherhoods, and friend-enemy politics have regained appeal—and what that means for liberal democracy now. A bracing tour through ideas shaping our moment, and a call to understand them clearly before they reshape our institutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nick Bromell is the author of By the Sweat of the Brow: Labor and Literature in Antebellum American Culture and Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the Sixties, both published by the University of Chicago Press. His articles and essays on African American literature and political thought have appeared in American Literature, American Literary History, Political Theory, Raritan, and The Sewanee Review. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he blogs at thetimeisalwaysnow.org. Nick Bromell’s book is a work of intellectual history and political theory that places Black thinkers—writers, activists, and artists—at the center of American democratic thought. He argues that African American intellectual traditions have continually reshaped the meaning of democracy in the U.S., offering critiques and visions that go beyond the frameworks typically emphasized in mainstream political philosophy. The title, taken from James Baldwin’s writings, reflectsthe idea that democracy is never finished—it is always urgent and ongoing.The Time is Always Now: Black Political Thought and the Transformation of U.S. Democracy (Oxford UP, 2013) posits that Black thought epitomizes the crucible of American Democratic theory Bromell contends that African American thinkers are not simply responding to oppression but actively producing political theory—ideasabout freedom, justice, equality, and collective life. Their insights emerge from lived experiences of slavery, segregation,and racial inequality, which provide a unique vantage point for critiquing American democracy.Secondly, Democracy is an ongoing and incomplete project of reconstruction, renewal, and revival. Building on Baldwin’s phrase “the time is always now,” Bromell argues that democracy must be constantly reimagined and fought for. Black intellectual traditions highlight democracy’s fragility and incompleteness, challenging myths of American exceptionalism.Third, American Democracy exists beyond what are known to be traditional American institutions. While mainstream American political theory often places focus on constitutions, governments, or laws, Black thinkers and citizens emphasize affective, relational, and cultural dimensions of democracy—dimensions that exhibit and feature American virtues and values of community, solidarity, and recognition.Fourth, Professor Bromell calls for a vibrant relational empathy and mutual recognition. In this sense, Bromell highlights Black thought’s insistence on recognition of shared humanity and mutual vulnerability as the foundation for democraticpractice. Thinkers as varied as James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr, Toni Morrison, and Ralph Ellison stress the necessity of empathy as a civic virtue. Bromell reframes African American intellectual history as politicaltheory, not just cultural or social commentary. He challenges readers to recognize that the deepest resources fordemocratic renewal in America come from traditions forged under conditions of racial oppression.  Ultimately The Time is Always Now insists that democracy is less about stable American institutions and more about the practice of bettering and refining incipient features of American institutions-facing each other honestly, acknowledging and shouldering of collective pain, and being committed to a shared mutual recognition of the totality of our collective experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare (Portfolio, 2025) has devoted much of his career to exploring how economic power can advance this goal. He served on the teams at the U.S. State Department that designed and negotiated Western sanctions against Russia after its 2014 annexation of Crimea, and whose economic pressure campaign against Iran led to a landmark nuclear deal in 2015. Economic warfare is how America fights its most important geopolitical battles today. From thwarting Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to checking Russian imperialism and China’s bid for world mastery, the United States has reached into its economic arsenal to get the job done. In the process, the world economy has become a battlefield. Its weapons take the form of sanctions, export controls, and investment restrictions. Its commanders are not generals and admirals but lawyers, diplomats, and economists. Its foot soldiers are not brave men and women who volunteer for military service but business executives who seek to maximize profits yet often find they have no option other than to obey Washington’s marching orders. And America’s strength in these battles stems not from its gargantuan defense budget but from its primacy in international finance and technology. This book is about this kind of war. It blends research, analysis, and extensive interviews with more than one hundred of the key players in the events described, highlighting inflection points, interpreting their significance, and pulling back the curtain on the places where economic wars have been fought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2007, Tim Weiner published the book Legacy of Ashes. It was a history of the CIA from its founding to the early 2000s. As a university student in Italy, I bought the book as soon as it came out. The second non-fiction book I ever bought in English. The book was riveting. It kickstarted my interest in the CIA and covert operations. Now, Tim Weiner has published a sequel to Legacy of Ashes. His new book is called The Mission: the CIA in the 21st Century (Mariner Books, 2025). It is a gripping and revelatory history of the from the late 1990s to the present. It ranges from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today's battles with Russia and China--and with the President of the United States.  At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn't being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA's officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.  Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets--Moscow, Beijing, Tehran--while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.  The book reveals how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror--and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The key message of the book is that the CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. This is made even more difficult by the attacks on the intelligence community deployed by the second Trump presidency, from unqualified senior officials to loyalty tests. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance. The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nicholas Jacobs (Colby College) and Sidney Milkis (University of Virginia) have a new book, Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism (UP of Kansas, 2025), focusing on the idea of presidentialism, which is a way to think of political systems that include a dominant president or executive. In the United States, with the original constitutional system of separate co-equal branches of government, presidentialism disrupts the structure that was initially constructed under the U.S. Constitution. Over the course of more than two centuries, the United States has contended with the waxing and waning of presidential power within the multi-branch system. But Jacobs and Milkis maintain that since the 1990s we have seen an expansion of presidentialism, with a collective tendency to invest greater responsibilities and power in the presidential office itself as well as in the person who is serving in that capacity. Part of this thesis is also about how different, competing forces and ideologies have pushed for the use of presidential power to solve cultural struggles, which are not necessarily the institutional or structural role of the presidency. While the growth of American presidentialism may be more contemporary, it has origins in the struggles and ruptures of the 1960s and the 1970s—which were never fully resolved, especially in regard to who belongs within the American community. Subverting The Republic spends time examining this historical framework to help us think about the current structural, political, and cultural contexts, and especially the place of President Donald J. Trump within our understanding of presidentialism. This book is a careful and deeply researched historical and political analysis of the shifts and changes in how the American presidency has operated over the past 75 years, and grounds many of the actions we have seen within both Trump Administrations, as well as much of the pushback against some of these actions and assertions of power. In weaving together the historical background with the structural form of the presidency and the various tools that a president has at his command, Jacobs and Milkis lay out both the precedents relied upon by presidents of the 21st century, especially Donald Trump, but also the anomalies of the Trump Administration and actions. While Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism went to press before President Trump was re-elected in 2024 (and there is a brief postscript that is included, noting the results and considering what the second Trump Administration might look like), the authors noted in our conversation that much of what they discuss about the first Trump Administration in the book has only grown and expanded in the second Trump Administration. This is an important analysis of the office of the American presidency and how that office, as conceived of by the Founders and situated within a constitutional system that includes other centers of power and responsibility, has evolved rather dramatically from that initial form and structure. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln (Reedy Press, 2025), acclaimed scholars Lucas E. Morel and Jonathan W. White assemble Frederick Douglass’s most meaningful and poignant statements about Abraham Lincoln, including a dozen newly discovered documents that have not been seen for 160 years. Readers will encounter the distrust and vitriol Douglass directed at Lincoln throughout much of the Civil War, including his anger and frustration with the president as he moved slowly, but methodically, toward emancipation. Douglass’s writings also reveal how three personal interactions between these two great men led to powerful feelings of friendship and mutual admiration. After Lincoln’s assassination—as Jim Crow laws and political violence gutted the hard-won rights of Black Americans—Douglass expressed greater appreciation for Lincoln’s statesmanship during the Civil War and praised him as a model for postwar America. There is no one better than Frederick Douglass to offer a critical assessment of the Great Emancipator and savior of the Union. His reflections not only convey Lincoln’s contributions to the nation but also teach today’s generation timely lessons on how to fulfill the promise of the American republic. Measuring the Man sheds new light on the most critical period of American history and will transform the way we think about these two extraordinary leaders. Omari Averette-Phillips is a PhD Candidate in History and African American Studies at UC Davis. He can be reached at okaverettephillips@ucdavis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From award-winning writer Sarah Schulman, a longtime social activist and outspoken critic of the Israeli war on Gaza, comes The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity (Penguin, 2025). This book is a brilliant examination of the inherent psychological and social challenges to solidarity movements, and what that means for the future For those who seek to combat injustice, solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals, yet it does not come without complication. In this searing yet uplifting book, award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work—and why it matters. To grapple with solidarity, Schulman writes, we must recognize its inherent fantasies. Those being oppressed dream of relief, that a bystander will intervene though it may not seem to be in their immediate interest to do so, and that the oppressor will be called out and punished. Those standing in solidarity with the oppressed are occluded by a different fantasy: that their intervention is effective, that it will not cost them, and that they will be rewarded with friendship and thanks. Neither is always the case, and yet in order to realize our full potential as human beings in relation with others, we must continue to pursue action towards these shared goals. Within this framework, Schulman examines a range of case studies, from the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain, to NYC’s AIDS activism in the 1990s, to the current wave of campus protest movements against Israel’s war on Gaza, and her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male dominated culture industries. Drawing parallels between queer, Palestinian, feminist, and artistic struggles for justice, Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed. That action comes at a cost, and is not always effective. And yet without it we sentence ourselves to a world without progressive change towards visions of liberation. By turns challenging, inspiring, pragmatic, and poetic, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity provides a much-needed path for how we can work together to create a more just, more equitable present and future. Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993, and the novels The Cosmopolitans and Maggie Terry. Schulman’s honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting, and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, the American Library Association, and others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Schulman holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University and is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled, in a surprise decision, that treaties still on the books as US law meant that the Muscogee people of Oklahoma maintained legal jurisdiction over a large portion of the state; in short, that much of Oklahoma remained Indian Country. McGirt v. Oklahoma has been fought over in the court system since, but the implications are ongoing, in Oklahoma and elsewhere. In By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land (Harper, 2024), award winning journalist, writer, and podcaster Rebecca Nagle tracks this story back hundreds of years, through the history of the Muscogee and other Southeastern Indigenous nations, to the era of removal in the 1830s, and up through the present day. This includes the case of Patrick Murphy, and the murder that kickstarted McGirt's surprising and unlikely trek through the courts. A powerful of story of what can happen when people simply follow the laws as written, Nagle argues that Indigenous resistance, resilience, and power as just as much of the story of the West as disposession and land loss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of World War II, the United States leveraged its hegemonic position in the international political system to gradually build a new global order centered around democracy, the expansion of free market capitalism, and the containment of communism. Named in retrospect the "liberal international order" (LIO), the system took decades to build and is still largely with us today even as the US's relative power within it has diminished. In Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy (Oxford UP, 2025), Michael Poznansky explores how the LIO has influenced US foreign policy from its founding to the present. Proponents argue that its impact has been profound, producing a system that has been more rule-bound and beneficial than any previous order. Critics charge that it has failed to prevent the US itself from consistently violating rules and norms. Poznansky contends that the answer lies in between. While rule-breaking has been a constant feature of the postwar order, the nature of violations varies in surprising and poorly understood ways. America's approach to compliance with the LIO, including whether leaders feel the need to conceal rule violations at all, is a function of two primary factors: the intensity of competition over international order, and the burden of complying with the liberal order's core tenets in a given case. Drawing on nine case studies, including the Korean War and Iraq War, Great Power, Great Responsibility sheds important light on the future of US foreign policy in an era where American unipolarity has ended and great power rivalry has returned. Our guest is Michael Poznansky, an Associate Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a core faculty member in the Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the US Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, no one expected it to become a prominent tool for confronting sexual harassment in schools. Title IX is the civil rights law that prohibits education programs from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” At the time, however, the term “sexual harassment” was not yet in use; this kind of misconduct was simply accepted as part of life for girls and women at schools and universities. In Unlawful Advances: How Feminists Transformed Title IX (Princeton UP, 2025), Celene Reynolds shows how the women claiming protection under Title IX made sexual harassment into a form of sex discrimination barred by the law. Working together, feminist students and lawyers fundamentally changed the right to equal opportunity in education and schools’ obligations to ensure it. Drawing on meticulously documented case studies, Reynolds explains how Title IX was applied to sexual harassment, linking the actions of feminists at Cornell, Yale, and Berkeley. Through analyses of key lawsuits and an original dataset of federal Title IX complaints, she traces the evolution of sexual harassment policy in education—from the early applications at elite universities to the growing sexual harassment bureaucracies on campuses today—and how the work of these feminists has forever shaped the law, university governance, and gender relations on campus. Reynolds argues that our political and interpretive struggle over this application of Title IX is far from finished. Her account illuminates this ongoing effort, as well as the more general process by which citizens can transform not only the laws that govern us, but also the very meaning of equality under American law. New Books in Women’s History Podcast Jane Scimeca, Professor of History at Brookdale Community College, website here @janescimeca.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices