NBN Book of the Day

Today I’m speaking with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins about the new, edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (W.W. Norton, 2024). Danny is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University and the steward of a fantastic interview series in The Nation magazine. Did it Happen Here? presents a snapshot of the fascism debate being waged on American campuses, in magazines, and on social media. The most recent iteration of the fascism debate began, as with many debates about the state of American politics, with the election of Donald Trump. Since his first term in 2016, speculation about the true nature of Trumpism has generated countless think-pieces and books. Did It Happen Here? is the definitive summary of the major scholarly views on whether fascism has come to America. As Danny puts it, “the fascism debate is Rorschach test for understanding what is truly ailing American society.”Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.Caleb Zakarin is editor at 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/book-of-the-day

Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024)  provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western Marxism, social reproduction theory, eco-socialist thought and more to approach the complex and highly contested relationship between music and capital. By attending to the perverse ways in which recorded music has been ultimately decommodified under the current regime of music production, circulation and consumption, Eric Drott explores issues that far exceed music - consumer surveillance, Silicon Valley monopolism, the crisis of care, capitalist extractivism and the climate emergency - while showing us how the streaming economy is thoroughly imbricated, and implicated, in these processes. Drott's rigorous and wide-ranging analysis thus offers novel ways of understanding music, culture, digitalisation and capitalism in present and future tenses .Eric Drott is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

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

For much of the twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today the legacy of Marxism is contested, with some seeing it as Eurocentric and irrelevant to the wider global struggle.In Global Marxism: Decolonisation and Revolutionary Politics (Manchester UP, 2024) Simin Fadaee argues that Marxism remains a living tradition and the cornerstone of revolutionary theory and practice in the Global South. She explores the lives, ideas and legacies of a group of revolutionaries who played an exceptional role in contributing to counter-hegemonic change. Figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Ali Shariati and Subcomandante Marcos did not simply accept the version of Marxism that was given to them they adapted it to local conditions and contexts. In doing this they demonstrated that Marxism is not a rigid set of propositions but an evolving force whose transformative potential remains enormous.This global Marxism has much to teach us in the never-ending task of grasping the changing historical conditions of capitalism and the complex world in which we liveSimin Fadaee is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements. She is the author of Social Movements in Iran: Environmentalism and Civil Society; editor of Southern Social Movements; and Co-editor of Marxism, Religion and Emancipatory Politics.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/book-of-the-day

The First World War was an unprecedented crisis, with communities and societies enduring the unimaginable hardships of a prolonged conflict on an industrial scale. In Belgium and France, the terrible capacity of modern weaponry destroyed the natural world and exposed previously held truths about military morale and tactics as falsehoods. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers suffered some of the worst conditions that combatants have ever faced. How did they survive? What did it mean to them? How did they perceive these events?Whilst the trenches of the Western Front have come to symbolise the futility and hopelessness of the Great War, in Making Sense of the Great War: Crisis, Englishness, and Morale on the Western Front (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Alex Mayhew shows that English infantrymen rarely interpreted their experiences in this way. They sought to survive, navigated the crises that confronted them, and crafted meaningful narratives about their service. Making Sense of the Great War reveals the mechanisms that allowed them to do so.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In this compelling and informative interview, Carrie N. Baker discusses her newest book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Press, 2024). This book is the first comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States, and Baker examines the actions of scientists, policy-makers, pharmaceutical companies, pro-abortion rights activists and anti-abortion forces as the abortion pill was developed in France in 1980, and subsequently brought to market in the United States. She carefully investigates the fight for FDA approval of the abortion pill, and reproductive rights advocates’ work to expand access. She pays particular attention to the critical period of 2020-2024 when in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic telemedicine abortion became a possibility. Baker ends exploring attempts to restrict abortion pills and self-managed abortions in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision. In this thoroughly researched history, Baker draws on interviews with over 80 activists, abortion providers, researchers, and people who have used abortion pills to demonstrate the range of actors involved in efforts to expand access to abortion pills. In addition, she analyzes medical research, government records, legal cases, and the archives of several reproductive health organizations.Abortion Pills: US History and Politics is available open-access starting December 3, 2024. Click the following link to see a PDF of the bookCarrie N. Baker holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University, a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory’s Institute of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Chair of American Studies and Professor of the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Smith College where, as a legal and social movement scholar, she teaches courses on gender, law and public policy; feminist social movements; and feminist public writing. In addition to publishing peer-reviewed academic scholarship, Baker also serves as a regular writer and contributing editor for Ms. Magazine, has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and hosts Feminist Futures, a radio program on WHMP 101.5 FM in Northampton, Massachusetts.Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, and is an editor at 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/book-of-the-day

In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour.This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side-by-side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, when dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self-made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham.The Power and the Glory: the Country House Before the Great War (Basic Books, 2024) Dr. Adrian Tinniswood explores the country house during this golden age, when Britain ruled over a quarter of the world’s population, when its stately homes were at their most opulent and when, for the privileged few, life in the country house was the best life of all.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

How Government Built America (Cambridge UP, 2024) challenges growing, anti-government rhetoric by highlighting the role government has played in partnering with markets to build the United States. Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain explore how markets can harm and fail the country, and how the government has addressed these extremes by restoring essential values to benefit all citizens. Without denying that individualism and small government are part of the national DNA, the authors demonstrate how democracy and a people pursuing communal interests are equally important. In highly engaging prose, the authors describe how the government, despite the complexity of markets, remains engaged in promoting economic prosperity, protecting people, and providing an economic safety net. Each chapter focuses on a historical figure, from Lincoln to FDR to Trump, to illustrate how the government-market mix has evolved over time. By understanding this history, readers can turn the national conversation back to what combination of government and markets will best serve the country.Sidney A. Shapiro holds the Fletcher Chair in Administrative Law at the Wake Forest University School of Law. He is the author of Administrative Competence: Reimagining Administrative Law (2020) and Achieving Democracy: The Future of Progressive Regulation (2014).Joseph P. Tomain is Dean Emeritus and the Wilbert and Helen Ziegler Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. A highly respected professor and scholar, his teaching and research interests focus in the areas of energy law, land use, regulatory policy, and contracts.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/book-of-the-day

It’s no secret that superhero comics and their related media perpetuate a model of a straight, white, male hero at the expense of representing women and other minorities, but other narratives exist. Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sam Langsdale recognizes that female-led superhero comics, with diverse casts of characters and inclusive storytelling, exist on the margins of the mainstream superhero genre. But rather than focusing on these stories as marginalized, Dr. Langsdale’s work on heroes such as Spider-Woman, America Chavez, and Ironheart locates the margins as a site of innovation and productivity, which have enabled the creation of feminist superhero texts.Employing feminist and intersectional philosophies in an analysis of these comics, Dr. Langsdale suggests that feminist superheroes have the potential to contribute to a social imagination that is crucial in working toward a more just world. At a time when US popular culture continues to manifest as a battleground between oppressive and progressive social norms, Searching for Feminist Superheroes demonstrates that a fight for a better world is worthwhile.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Seth Rogovoy's latest book for Oxford University Press is called Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2024). Often, biographies of musicians put the story of the subject’s life front and center, letting the music recede into the background. For a musician like George Harrison, this would be a mistake. George, the lead guitarist of the Beatles, sometimes referred to as the “quiet one,” was one of his generation’s greatest guitarists. He quietly steered the Fab Four in directions that made them legendary, through his innovative use of sitar or his thoughtful, self-reflective song-writing that contrasted with John’s ironic poetics and Paul’s cheery symphonies. A late-bloomer of sorts, George truly came into his own as a solo artist pursuing a rock and roll that centered spirituality and existential yearning.For a chapter-by-chapter playlist, check out Seth's guided listen.Subscribe to Seth's Substack: Everything is Broken.Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet and The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music and contributing editor for The Forward.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/book-of-the-day