New Books in American Politics

Today we are joined by the sports journalist David Steele, who has written for the Sporting News, AOL, the Baltimore Sun and the San Francisco Chronicle, and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, the Association of Black Media Workers, the Associated Press Sports Editors, and the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of It Was Always a Choice: Picking up the Baton of Athlete Activism (Temple UP, 2022). In our conversation, we discuss the beginnings of black athlete activism in the 20th century, the different approaches pursued by black and white athletes across the century, and whether or not athletes should use their privileged position to promote positive change in the world.In It Was Always A Choice, Steele explores two interconnected histories: the longer durée story of black athlete activism in the 20th and 21st centuries, beginning with Jack Johnson in the 1910s, and the history of the Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protests and how contemporary athlete activists have engaged with the broader Black Lives Matter movement.The book moves both chronologically and thematically, alternating between past and contemporary activist moments to tie them together. His chapters centre on specific questions: “Your Presence Is an Act of Protest: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson” looks at American sports idols and illustrates the significant challenges that they faced to competition but also the limits of their protest. In their case, their presence was often the only kind of protest available to them. In some instances – for example Jesse Owen’s case – they later stood up against the more radical protests of the 1960s.Steele was influenced by Kaepernick’s protest and the Black Lives Matter movement to write the book, and that alone would have been an interesting story, but the real strength of the work is how he finds the echoes of these movements in earlier radical efforts by male and female black athletes to change American society. He makes references in many chapters to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, whose work with the Olympic Project for Human Rights and raised fist protest acted as a spiritual predecessor to Colin Kaepernick’s protest. He also notes early flag protests such as Eroseanna “Rose” Robinson’s refusal to stand for the US National Anthem during the 1959 Pan America Games.His work also points out the ways that athlete activists have succeeded and failed to change the broader culture. Although black athletes have won significantly inside of sporting organizations, Colin Kaepernick’s protests have highlighted how far American society still must go. The WNBA might be the most progressive league: the Atlanta Dream’s players forced out an owner that they opposed and then successfully campaigned against her running for the US Senate.It Was Always A Choice raises interesting questions about the nature of athlete protests. Steele’s chapter “Peter Norman, Chris Long, and Gregg Popovich: White Allies” shows the ways that white athletes can support their black teammates and players; some members of the public and sporting leagues seem more receptive to the Black Lives Matter message from white athletes. Steele offers a strong but nuanced criticism of Micheal Jordan, OJ Simpson and Tiger Woods who “dropped the baton” and privileged their own financial success over their politics. White House visits both offer opportunities for the government to promote the popularity of the president but also a chance for athletes to protest against them.Steele’s work demands that athletes (and readers) make a choice. It is a must read for people interested in the history of athlete protest and as a whole or in individual chapters it would be useful for teaching the history of sport.Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael W. Doyle's book Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War (Liveright, 2023) offers an urgent examination of the world barreling toward a new Cold War.By 1990, the first Cold War was ending. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Warsaw Pact was crumbling; following Russia’s lead, cries for democracy were being embraced by a young Chinese populace. The post–Cold War years were a time of immense hope and possibility. They heralded an opportunity for creative cooperation among nations, an end to ideological strife, perhaps even the beginning of a stable international order of liberal peace.But the days of optimism are over.As renowned international relations expert Michael Doyle makes hauntingly clear, we now face the devastating specter of a new Cold War, this time orbiting the trilateral axes of Russia, the United States, and China, and exacerbated by new weapons of cyber warfare and more insidious forms of propaganda.Such a conflict at this phase in our global history would have catastrophic repercussions, Doyle argues, stymieing global collaboration efforts that are key to reversing climate change, preventing the next pandemic, and securing nuclear nonproliferation. The recent, devastating invasion of Ukraine is both an example and an augur of the costs that lay in wait.However, there is hope.Putin is not Stalin, Xi is not Mao, and no autocrat is a modern Hitler. There is also an unprecedented level of shared global interest in prosperity and protecting the planet from environmental disaster.While it is unlikely that the United States, Russia, and China will ever establish a “warm peace,” there are significant, reasonable compromises between nations that can lead to a détente. While the future remains very much in doubt, the elegant set of accords and non-subversion pacts Doyle proposes in this book may very well save the world.Andrew O. Pace is a historian of moral dilemmas of US foreign relations and an adjunct professor of history at Salt Lake Community College. He is a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network and is currently working on a book about the reversal in US foreign policy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at apace24@slcc.edu or via andrewopace.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gold epaulettes that George Washington wore into battle. A Union soldier's bloody shirt in the wake of the Civil War. A crushed wristwatch after the 9/11 attacks. The bullet-riddled door of the Pulse nightclub. Volatile and shape-shifting, relics have long played a role in memorializing the American past, acting as physical reminders of hard-won battles, mass tragedies, and political triumphs.Surveying the expanse of U.S. history, American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory (U Massachusetts Press, 2023) shows how these objects have articulated glory, courage, and national greatness as well as horror, defeat, and oppression. While relics mostly signified heroism in the nation's early years, increasingly, they have acquired a new purpose--commemorating victimhood. The atrocious artifacts of lynching and the looted remains of Native American graves were later transformed into shameful things, exposing ongoing racial violence and advancing calls for equality and civil rights. Matthew Dennis pursues this history of fraught public objects and assesses the emergence of new venues of memorialization, such as virtual and digital spaces. Through it all, relics continue to fundamentally ground and shape U.S. public memory in its uncertain present and future.Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A century ago, journalist H. L. Mencken provocatively stated in Notes On Democracy (new edition by Warbler Press, 2023) that anti-democratic behavior is not only not shocking but that we should in fact expect democracies to give rise to un- and even anti-democratic forces. Mencken doubted that such the evils of democracy will be cured by more democracy, which usually means elections and ‘fostering democratic norms and behaviors. So what is to be done?I spoke with NYU Professor and political commentator Ruth Ben-Ghiat on the current threats to democracy posed by populism, the media’s role in shaping political views, what historical precedents of strongmen can teach us about today’s threats to democracy, and what is crucially missing from today’s political landscape.Find the texts:Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2021) by Ruth Ben-GhiatNotes On Democracy (1926) by H. L. MenckenRuth Ben-Ghiat is a distinguished expert in the history of fascism and is appointed at NYU as Professor of History and Italian. A leading authority on the contemporary challenges facing democracies globally, she frequently provides insights as a commentator for various news networks and contributes as an MSNBC opinion columnist. In her newsletter, Lucid, she delves into the critical issues threatening democracy. Her work has been recognized with Guggenheim, NEH, Fulbright and other fellowships. Her latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present explores the regimes and rise to power of authoritarian leaders, while proposing strategies for their defeat. Follow her here: Twitter @RuthBenGhiat; Instagram @RuthBenGhiat.Ulrich Baer teaches literature and photography as University Professor at New York University. A recipient of Guggenheim, Getty and Humboldt awards, in addition to hosting "Think About It” he hosts (with Caroline Weber) the podcast "The Proust Questionnaire” and is Editorial Director at Warbler Press. Email ucb1@nyu.edu; Twitter @UliBaer; IG: @thinkaboutit.podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the past, it was assumed that men, as good citizens, would serve in the armed forces in wartime. In the present, however, liberal democratic states increasingly rely on small, all-volunteer militaries deployed in distant wars of choice. While few people now serve in the armed forces, our cultural myths and narratives of warfare continue to reproduce a strong connection between military service, citizenship, and normative masculinity.In Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. Katharine M. Millar provides an empirical overview of "support the troops" discourses in the US and UK during the early years of the global war on terror (2001-2010). As Dr. Millar argues, seemingly stable understandings of the relationship between military service, citizenship, and gender norms are being unsettled by changes in warfare. The effect is a sense of uneasiness about the meaning of what it means to be a "good" citizen, "good" person, and, crucially, a "good" man in a context where neither war nor military service easily align with existing cultural myths about wartime obligations and collective sacrifice. Instead we participate in the performance of supporting the troops, even when we oppose war—an act that appears not only patriotic and moral, but also apolitical. Failing to support the troops, either through active opposition or a lack of overt supportive actions, is perceived as not only offensive and inappropriately political, but disloyal and dangerous.Dr. Millar asserts that military support acts as a new form of military service, which serves to limit anti-war dissent, plays a crucial role in naturalizing the violence of the transnational liberal order, and recasts war as an internal issue of solidarity and loyalty. Rigorous and politically challenging, Millar provides the first work to systematically examine "support the troops" as a distinct social phenomenon and offers a novel reading of this discourse through a gendered lens that places it in historical and transnational context.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal era started the retreat of the state. Privatisation and deregulation meant power was handed over to corporations and markets. Now that neoliberalism has run its course, will there be a return of the state? Listen to Owen Bennett Jones in conversation Graeme Garrard. Garrard is the author of The Return of the State: And Why It Is Essential for Our Health, Wealth and Happiness (Yale UP, 2022).Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite living and working in California, one of the county's most environmentally progressive states, environmental justice activists have spent decades fighting for clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and safe, healthy communities. Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism (U California Press, 2022) tells their story—from the often-raucous protests of the 1980s and 1990s to activists' growing presence inside the halls of the state capitol in the 2000s and 2010s. Tracy E. Perkins traces how shifting political contexts combined with activists' own efforts to institutionalize their work within nonprofits and state structures. By revealing these struggles and transformations, Perkins offers a new lens for understanding environmental justice activism in California.Drawing on case studies and 125 interviews with activists from Sacramento to the California-Mexico border, Perkins explores the successes and failures of the environmental justice movement in California. She shows why some activists have moved away from the disruptive "outsider" political tactics common in the movement's early days and embraced traditional political channels of policy advocacy, electoral politics, and working from within the state's political system to enact change. Although some see these changes as a sign of the growing sophistication of the environmental justice movement, others point to the potential of such changes to blunt grassroots power. At a time when environmental justice scholars and activists face pressing questions about the best route for effecting meaningful change, this book provides insight into the strengths and limitations of social movement institutionalization.Avery Weinman earned her Master’s in History from UCLA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chhaya Kolavalli's book Well-Intentioned Whiteness: Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City (U Georgia Press, 2023) documents how whiteness can take up space in U.S. cities and policies through well-intentioned progressive policy agendas that support green urbanism. Through in-depth ethnographic research in Kansas City, Kolavalli explores how urban food projects--central to the city's approach to green urbanism--are conceived and implemented and how they are perceived by residents of "food deserts," those intended to benefit from these projects.Through her analysis, Kolavalli examines the narratives and histories that mostly white local food advocates are guided by and offers an alternative urban history of Kansas City--one that centers the contributions of Black and brown residents to urban prosperity. She also highlights how displacement of communities of color, through green development, has historically been a key urban development strategy in the city.Well-Intentioned Whiteness shows how a myopic focus on green urbanism, as a solution to myriad urban "problems," ends up reinforcing racial inequity and uplifting structural whiteness. In this context, fine-grained analysis of how whiteness takes up space in our cities--even through progressive policy agendas--is more important. Kolavalli examines this process intimately and, in so doing, fleshes out our understanding of how racial inequities can be (re)created by everyday urban actors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In my talk with Barry Gewen on his 2020 book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (W. W. Norton, 2020), we explore the disparate influences that shaped Kissinger as both an intellectual and as a practitioner of power. Our conversation touches on Kissinger’s upbringing in a German-Jewish community in Bavaria at the time of Hitler’s rise to power and pivots to an understanding of Kissinger’s Realism as his pessimistic yet unwavering approach to foreign affairs and exigencies like the balance of power. In his committed opposition to the Wilsonian creed—the missionary idea of America’s role in the world—Kissinger was decidedly in the camp of the political scientist Hans Morgenthau, a fellow German-Jewish immigrant and mentor of sorts. Barry Gewen, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, deserves to be heard, and his book deserves to be read, for his judicious, textured appraisal of Kissinger. His Kissinger is neither a war criminal nor a diplomatic magician but one guided by the stern maxim that order is prior to justice in the affairs of an ever-perilous world. Our talk closes with Gewen’s assessment of Kissinger’s thinking on the present-day foreign-policy challenges for the U.S. of China and the Russia-Ukraine war.Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports) will be published in January. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An incisive critique that examines the origins of contemporary American ideas about surveillance, terrorism, and white supremacy.For more than three centuries, Americans have pursued strategies of security that routinely make them feel vulnerable, unsafe, and insecure. American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability (Princeton UP, 2023) probes this paradox by examining American attachments to the terror of the sublime, the fear of uncertainty, and the anxieties produced by unending racial threat. Challenging conventional approaches that leave questions of security to policy experts, Russ Castronovo turns to literature, philosophy, and political theory to show how security provides an organizing principle for collective life in ways that both enhance freedom and limit it. His incisive critique ranges from frontier violence and white racial anxiety to insurgent Black print culture and other forms of early American terror, uncovering the hidden logic of insecurity that structures modern approaches to national defense, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy. Drawing on examples from fiction, journalism, tracts, and pamphlets, Castronovo uncovers the deep affective attachments that Americans have had since the founding to the sources of fear and insecurity that make them feel unsafe. Timely and urgent, American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability sheds critical light on how and why the fundamental political desire for security promotes unease alongside assurance and fixates on risk and danger while clamoring for safety.Brittney Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison. I specialize in 20th and 21st century African American Literature and Culture with a special interest in Black Humor Studies. Read more about my work at brittneymichelleedmonds.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices