New Books in Big Ideas

It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations - Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of TimeThomas Piketty, the French economist, was dubbed the modern Marx by The Economist in the wake of his bestselling Capital in the 21st Century, which presented historical data reaching back to the eighteenth century and focused on the dynamics of the distribution of wealth and income and the destabilizing force represented by: r > g – that is, the private rate of return on capital over time can be much higher than the rate of growth of income and output. Readers noted however, in addition to pointing out this ‘central contradiction of capitalism’ Professor Piketty was also clear that the purpose of social science is not to produce mathematical certainties that substitute for inclusive democratic debate. More importantly, he made the case for the progressive taxation of capital, and among many other things for going back to using the term ‘political economy’ for the field of economics – all of which did not render his analysis Marxist, although admittedly, the label made for more catchy magazine column titles in 2014.Six years in the making Piketty has extended the hopeful reach of his analysis by including a much larger global sampling of historical data – not just Western market economies this time, and by expanding the focus to include the political and ideological in his comparative analysis of capital accumulation and ‘inequality regimes’. The professor does so with the same underlying optimism and realistic eye on promoting the social learning process in which we all find ourselves as individuals within various cultures and societies. Enter his expanded interdisciplinary contribution to comparative political economy – Capital and Ideology (Harvard University Press, 2020) – essential reading.Thomas Piketty is a professor at the Paris School of Economics, and a Director of The School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences.Keith Krueger lectures at the SHU-UTS Business School in Shanghai. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

In early 2019, freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ed Markey proposed a bold new piece of legislation, now very well known as the Green New Deal. Intended as a means of combating climate change, it stunned a number of people due to its enormous ambition, including massive overhauls of our energy systems, as well as providing housing and healthcare for everyone. Naturally a piece of legislation this large raised a number of questions, which is what my guests today are here to discuss. I recently had the pleasure of talking with Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos, the authors of ​A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal​ (Verso, 2019). The book is short and accessible, written for everyone interested in understanding this vital piece of legislation, so if you are like me and you don’t understand the fine details of climate economics, you can still pick this up and gain a sense of what is to be done. The book also features a short forward by Naomi Klein, who has been tracking the relationship between economic and climate politics for some time.Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) is a fellow at the Type Media Center and a Contributing Writer at the ​Intercept​. She is the co-editor of ​We Own the Future​ and author of ​The New Denialism​. Her writing has appeared in the ​Guardian​, ​Rolling Stone​, ​Harper’s​, ​In These Times​, and ​Dissent​Alyssa Battistoni (@alybatt) is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and an editor at Jacobin.​ Her writing has appeared the ​Guardian,​ ​n+1​, ​The Nation​, ​Jacobin,​ ​In These Times​, Dissent​, and the ​Chronicle of Higher Education.​Daniel Aldana Cohen (@aldatweets) is an assistant professor of sociolgy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative. His writing has appeared in the ​Guardian​, ​Nature,​ ​The Nation​, ​Jacobin​, ​Public Books​, ​Dissent​, and ​NACLA.​Thea Riofrancos (@triofrancos) is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, and is the author of ​Resource Radicals.​ Her writing has appeared in the ​Guardian​, ​n+1​, Jacobin,​ the ​Los Angeles Review of Books​, ​Dissent,​ and ​In These Times​. She serves on the steering committee of DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider political order? Valerie M. Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen's new book The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide (Columbia University Press, 2020) is a groundbreaking demonstration that the persistent and systematic subordination of women underlies all other institutions, with wide-ranging implications for global security and development.Incorporating research findings spanning a variety of social science disciplines and comprehensive empirical data detailing the status of women around the globe, the book shows that female subordination functions almost as a curse upon nations. A society’s choice to subjugate women has significant negative consequences: worse governance, worse conflict, worse stability, worse economic performance, worse food security, worse health, worse demographic problems, worse environmental protection, and worse social progress. Yet despite the pervasive power of social and political structures that subordinate women, history—and the data—reveal possibilities for progress.The First Political Order shows that when steps are taken to reduce the hold of inequitable laws, customs, and practices, outcomes for all improve. It offers a new paradigm for understanding insecurity, instability, autocracy, and violence, explaining what the international community can do now to promote more equitable relations between men and women and, thereby, security and peace. With comprehensive empirical evidence of the wide-ranging harm of subjugating women, it is an important book for security scholars, social scientists, policy makers, historians, and advocates for women worldwide.Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

In We Don't Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently (Bite-Sized Book, 2019), Sir John Redwood gives us fresh insights into why the populist movements and parties have been winning elections. He looks at how the experts and narrative pushed out by the established elites on both sides of the Atlantic have met with disbelief as well as with strong opposition. He shows how great parties have been all but destroyed as election winning forces as new movements and people sweep them aside.From the establishment himself as an expert and a member of one of the traditional parties, he seeks to show how the sensible elites adjust and respond to new moods and new ideas instead of confronting or denying them. In too many cases a rigid and unhappy elite just keeps shouting back the same things people do not want to hear.One of the worst features of what is happening is the inability of the two sides to understand each other or to work together. The establishment shows scorn for the populists and keeps reasserting the same policies and attitudes as if nothing had happened. The populists show they do not believe the analysis let alone the prescription of established institutions and governments, and seek to sweep them all away.Can the main institutions of the western world adapt in time to the new mood?Sir John Redwood is Conservative MP for Wokingham in the UK, first elected in 1987. He was formerly Secretary of State for Wales in John Major's Cabinet, and twice a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party in the 1990s. He is also a Distinguished fellow of All Souls, Oxford and the author of 23 books on a wide range of subjects, from atheism in early modern British history, to 21st century economics, to politics and government. He always has very insightful and often bold things to say on all these topics.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

So what is Western Civilization, anyway? The term itself is under assault from progressives, as if the very notion is somehow passé and is not inclusive enough in a globalized world.But, the fact is, our daily lives in the U.S and throughout much of the world are governed by core values and concepts that grow out of two inextricably linked aspects of the human condition: faith and reason. You don’t have to be a religious person to benefit from gaining an understanding of how the pairing of reason and faith is one of the hallmarks of Western Civilization and is unique to it.In his illuminating 2019 work of intellectual history, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (Gateway, 2019), Samuel Gregg demonstrates that key features of what we call the West--from the market economy to scientific advancement and the quest for human freedom and justice--are rooted in the relationship between faith and reason. He shows, for example, that the Enlightenment has been misleadingly portrayed as almost wholly anti-religious in nature whereas many of its leading figures were in fact deeply devout and welcomed the development of new fields of study and were, indeed, often pioneers in them.Gregg examines key historical events such as the Regensburg Lecture delivered in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI (and which led to mass demonstrations and riots in parts of the Muslim world) and the origins of the idea of a reasoning, reasonable God in ancient Judaism and early Christianity in order to argue that Western Civilization is worth preserving in an era of Jihadism and other mortal threats to values we all cherish such as religious freedom, freedom of speech, and human rights and dignity.In his book, Gregg compellingly argues that a renewed commitment to the foundational linkage of faith and reason is not only possible but imperative for everyone on the planet who does not wish to live under tyranny. Give a listen.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts―and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction.The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its different sizes, and discover mathematical impossibilities inherent in elections. They will tackle conundrums in probability, induction, geometry, and game theory; perform “supertasks”; build apparent perpetual motion machines; meet twins living in different millennia; explore the strange quantum world―and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

Olivier Roy, who is professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, is one of the most influential analysts of religion and secularisation in late modernity. Today he joins us to talk about his new book, Is Europe Christian?, which was published by Hurst in 2019 and Oxford University Press in 2020. Roy wrote the book to intervene in contemporary debates among European populists who lay claim to the Christian heritage of Europe without often embracing its values. This important new book is some ways a meditation on the success of the countercultural values of the 1960s, which have become so embedded in the legal and political cultures of late modernity as to be virtually unassailable, even by conservative forces that campaign against them. What does the success of 1960s values mean for the reiteration of religious identities? And how have the European churches responded to the appropriation of their heritage by political forces who may not adopt or even approve of the moral values they espouse? Professor Roy’s new book is an important contribution to a very difficult discussion.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

International bestselling author Douglas Murray examines in his latest book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019) the twenty-first century's most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality.Murray argues that we are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal--and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting, threatening the real gains that have been made by these very struggles.Douglas Murray is an author and journalist based in Britain. He has been a contributor to the Spectator since 2000 and has been Associate Editor at the magazine since 2012. He has also written regularly for numerous other outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Sunday Times, the Sun, Evening Standard and the New Criterion. He is a regular contributor to National Review and has been a columnist for Standpoint magazine since its founding.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas

There are quite a few authors writing about the problems facing American democracy and how best to solve those problems. Many of the problematic issues devolve to the question of representation – and how to shift or change the American political system so that it better represents the voters themselves and the plurality of perspectives and opinions across the country. Lee Drutman’s new book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (Oxford UP, 2020) dives into both the problems with the current political dynamic and the possible solutions. As the title indicates, Drutman’s analysis investigates the current binary “doom loop” of two internally consistent parties, and the elected officials who rarely have to compromise within the Madisonian system set up to compel compromise. Drutman’s examination takes the reader through the historical shifts in terms of the parties themselves and American political development, and how Americans have come to find themselves in this “doom loop.” Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop also explores contemporary “toxic politics” and the existential threat that every election seems to pose for parties, partisans, those in elected office, and ultimately for the country itself and public policies. Ultimately, Drutman proposes a number of reforms that, without amending the Constitution, could, as he says, break this doom loop and open up opportunities for more actual representation. Following the examples of a number of cities in the U.S. and the state of Maine, Drutman posits that electoral reform, especially options like ranked choice voting, would shift the dynamic during campaigns, and would lead to coalition building and compromise by lawmakers and elected officials in office. The final section of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America makes the case for how a multiparty system in the United States would work without amending the political institutions established by the Constitution. This is, ultimately, an optimistic book with a variety of proposals designed to untangle some of the persistent knots within the American political system.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/big-ideas