NBN Book of the Day

In The State (Princeton University Press, 2023), the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking, offering a major new account of the foundations of the state and the nature of justice. In doing so, Pettit builds a new theory of what the state is and what it ought to be, addresses the normative question of how justice serves as a measure of the success of a state, and the way it should operate in relation to its citizens and other people.Philip Pettit is L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant 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

Kathryn McGarr’s City of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington (U Chicago Press, 2022) explores foreign policy journalism in Washington during and after World War II—a time supposedly defined by the press’s blind patriotism and groupthink. McGarr reveals, though, that D.C. reporters then were deeply cynical about government sources and their motives, but kept their doubts to themselves for professional, social, and ideological reasons. The alliance and rivalries among these reporters constituted a world of debts and loyalties: shared memories of wartime experiences, shared frustrations with government censorship and information programs, shared antagonisms, and shared mentors. McGarr shows how this small, tight-knit elite of white male reporters suppressed their skepticism to help the United States build a permanent national security apparatus and a shared, constructed reality on the meaning of the Cold War. Utilizing archival sources, she demonstrates how self-aware these reporters were as they negotiated for access, prominence, and, yes, the truth—even as they denied those things to their readers.James Kates is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has worked as an editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other publications. 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

Are meditation and yoga offered to prisoners merely to have them acquiesce to being incarcerated and degraded? Or can they help prisoners interrogate the political and social structures that incarcerate and degrade? In Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2022), Farah Godrej explores the tension between narratives of quiet contemplation and social or political liberation in meditative and yogic practice that the carceral condition exacerbates or exposes. Godrej resists the impulse to treat personal wellbeing and systemic critique as if they are in a binary relationship. By leveraging her own knowledge of yogic philosophy and practice of yoga, and drawing on Gandhian political theory, she offers an account of how incarcerated people in the United States can and do sometimes practice meditation or yoga subversively by going beyond the palliative logics of prison officials and the organisations that train and bring volunteers to teach them. The meaningful question, she shows, is not whether meditation and yoga should be taught inside, but how they are taught. By describing how, her book reveals the contingent possibilities that meditation and yoga provide incarcerated people to cope with degrading coercive conditions and also sometimes hinder mass incarceration, while deferring or foreclosing other possible freedoms.Farah Godrej joins this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science to discuss access, ethics and risk in prisons research; ethnographic observation and scholarly activism inside; the character of resistance to physical and structural violence in the carceral state; the nexus between activism and academic work; joys of co-authorship with research participants; the delicacy of checking research participants’ meanings; and the importance of self-care in research on violent and opaque institutions.Nick Cheesman is associate professor in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University where he co-convenes the Interpretation, Method, Critique network. He is also a committee member of the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods group of the American Political Science Association. 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

I am not now nor at any time have ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet I serve as dean of a large faculty of political science in a Chinese university that trains students and provincial cadres to serve the country as Communist Party officials: It’s typically a post reserved for members of the CCP, given the political sensitivity of the work. That’s part of the surprise. The other part is that I’m a Canadian citizen, born and bred in Montreal, without any Chinese ancestry.– Daniel A. Bell, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat in China (2023)On January 1, 2017, Daniel Bell was appointed dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University―the first foreign dean of a political science faculty in mainland China’s history. In The Dean of Shandong, Bell chronicles his experiences as what he calls “a minor bureaucrat,” offering an inside account of the workings of Chinese academia and what they reveal about China’s political system. It wasn’t all smooth sailing―Bell wryly recounts sporadic bungles and misunderstandings―but Bell’s post as dean provides a unique vantage point on China today.Bell, neither a Chinese citizen nor a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was appointed as dean because of his scholarly work on Confucianism―but soon found himself coping with a variety of issues having little to do with scholarship or Confucius. These include the importance of hair color and the prevalence of hair-dyeing among university administrators, both male and female; Shandong’s drinking culture, with endless toasts at every shared meal; and some unintended consequences of an intensely competitive academic meritocracy. As dean, he also confronts weightier matters: the role at the university of the Party secretary, the national anticorruption campaign and its effect on academia (Bell asks provocatively, “What’s wrong with corruption?”), and formal and informal modes of censorship. Considering both the revival of Confucianism in China over the last three decades and what he calls “the Communist comeback” since 2008, Bell predicts that China’s political future is likely to be determined by both Confucianism and Communism.Professor Bell’s other writings mentioned in this episode include:Communitarianism and its Critics (Oxford, 1993) China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton, 2008) The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in the Global Age (coauthored Princeton 2011) Ancient Chinese Thought - Modern Chinese Power (Trans. series: Xuetong; co-edited Princeton 2013) The China Model: Political Meritocracy and Limits of Democracy (Princeton, 2015) In this interview two book reviews were discussed: 1) "Confessions of a Sinophile" by James Crabtree in the Financial Times, and 2) "Confessions of a China Apologist" by Gordon G. Chang in The New Criterion. Professor Bell graciously responded to a question about them and adds this post-interview thought for The New Criterion reviewer: ‘since my book is banned in China I wish Mr. Chang would inform the relevant authorities that I'm an apologist for China – it might help to unban the book!’Professor Daniel A. Bell is a Canadian political theorist and currently Chair of Political Theory at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. He was previously Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University and professor at Tsinghua University (Schwarzman College and Department of Philosophy). He has authored eight books and edited and/or coedited as many while serving as a series editor for Princeton University Press. 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

Is it right that, despite the promises of feminism, women’s bodies remain at the mercy of state, society and religion? Should a scantily clad woman, or a promiscuous one, be worth less than a fully covered woman, or a chaste one? Are being sexy and being smart really mutually exclusive? Can a woman be both body and brain? Dr. Victoria Bateman has confronted these questions with actions as well as words. She has appeared naked on national television, on stage, in art and at protests – using her body, as well as her brain, to deliver her message.In Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty (Polity/Wiley, 2023), Dr. Bateman makes a compelling case for women’s bodily freedom, and explains why the current puritanical revival is so dangerous for women. Illustrating the swinging pendulum of bodily modesty through the ages, she takes us on a journey from the ancient civilisations of Egypt and Babylon, through the birth of Christianity and Islam, to the lax morals of the medieval period and the bawdiness of Chaucer and Shakespeare; to the clampdowns of the Puritans and later the Victorians and, more recently, to the re-veiling of the Middle East and the purity pledges of modern-day America. She ends with a plea: feminists must unite to challenge the repression of the female body, as only then can women be truly free.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused 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 a society marked by extreme inequality of income and opportunity, why should economists care about how people feel? The truth is that feelings of well-being are critical metrics that predict future life outcomes. In The Power of Hope: How the Science of Well-Being Can Save Us from Despair (Princeton UP, 2023), economist Carol Graham argues for the importance of hope--little studied in economics at present--as an independent dimension of well-being. Given America's current mental health crisis, thrown into stark relief by COVID, hope may be the most important measure of well-being, and researchers are tracking trends in hope as a key factor in understanding the rising numbers of "deaths of despair" and premature mortality.Graham, an authority on the study of well-being, points to empirical evidence demonstrating that hope can improve people's life outcomes and that despair can destroy them. These findings, she argues, merit deeper exploration. Graham discusses the potential of novel well-being metrics as tracking indicators of despair, reports on new surveys of hope among low-income adolescents, and considers the implications of the results for the futures of these young adults.Graham asks how and why the wealthiest country in the world has such despair. What are we missing? She argues that public policy problems--from joblessness and labor force dropout to the lack of affordable health care and inadequate public education--can't be solved without hope. Drawing on research in well-being and other disciplines, Graham describes strategies for restoring hope in populations where it has been lost. The need to address despair, and to restore hope, is critical to America's future.Joe Tasca is a host and a reporter for the NPR affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island. 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

Annabel Kim's second book*, Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) digs into fecal matter as a preoccupation of modern French literature. Inspired by the author's observations of a certain "fecal blindness" among student and other readers of French literature, Cacaphonies examines a series of canonical authors and texts through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which shit plays a powerful role as the work and waste of bodies and a figure of radical equality.Throughout its five chapters, the book examines the writing of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Marguerite Duras, Romain Gary, Anne Garréta, and Daniel Pennac. Reading the role that fecal matter plays in the works of these authors, Cacaphonies considers the materiality of shit in relationship to French identity, democracy, and universalism. It also explores the excrementalities of writing, literature, and literary studies more broadly. Provocative in the aesthetic and political projects it presents and interrogates, Cacaphonies is smart and engrossing, a wonderful and also really, really shitty book.*I last spoke with Annabel Kim in 2019 about her book Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminsit Fictions (The Ohio State University Press, 2018). You can listen to that interview here.Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013. 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 dangerous, trailblazing work of a white journalist and black leader who struck a shocking early blow against legal segregation In 1948, most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for 10 million African Americans living in the Jim Crow South. Then, Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and alongside Atlanta s black civil rights pioneer John Wesley Dobbs lived as a black man in the South for thirty days. His impassioned newspaper series shocked millions and sparked the first nationally aired television-and-radio debate about ending America s shameful system of apartheid. With 30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South (Lyons Press, 2017), author Bill Steigerwald returns this long-forgotten part of American history to its rightful place among the seminal events of the Civil Rights movement. For 30 days and 3,000 miles, Sprigle and Dobbs traveled among dirt-poor sharecroppers, principals of ramshackle black schools, and families of lynching victims. The nationally syndicated newspaper series hit the media like an atom bomb, eliciting a fierce response from the Southern media. Six years before Brown v. Board of Education, seven years before the murder of Emmett Till, eight years before Little Rock s Central High School was integrated, and thirteen years before John Howard Griffin s similar experiment became the bestselling Black Like Me, an unlikely pair of heroes brought black lives to the forefront of American consciousness. 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 Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023).But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis."Ukraine’s successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space".Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard and director of the university's Ukrainian Research Institute.*The author's own book recommendations are The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale (Hurst, 2022) and Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer (Allen Lane, 2023)Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. 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 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the original shrouds used to prepare Jesus Christ’s body for entombment. From that year into the next century, the Shroud of Turin emerged as Christianity’s preeminent religious artifact. In an unprecedented new look, Andrew R. Casper sheds new light on one of the world’s most famous and controversial religious objects.Since the early twentieth century, scores of scientists and forensic investigators have attributed the Shroud’s mysterious images to painterly, natural, or even supernatural forces. Casper, however, shows that this modern opposition of artifice and authenticity does not align with the cloth’s historical conception as an object of religious devotion. Examining the period of the Shroud’s most enthusiastic following, from the late 1500s through the 1600s, he reveals how it came to be considered an artful relic―a divine painting attributed to God’s artistry that contains traces of Christ’s body. Through probing analyses of materials created to perpetuate the Shroud’s cult following―including devotional, historical, and theological treatises as well as printed and painted reproductions―Casper uncovers historicized connections to late Renaissance and Baroque artistic cultures that frame an understanding of the Shroud’s bloodied corporeal impressions as an alloy of material authenticity and divine artifice.Andrew R. Casper's book An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021) introduces rich, new material about the Shroud’s emergence as a sacred artifact. It will appeal to art historians specializing in religious and material studies, historians of religion, and to general readers interested in the Shroud of Turin.Andrew Casper is a professor of art history in the Department of Arts at Miami UniversityMorteza 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. 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