Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

For two hundred years, conservatism has defied its reputation as a backward-looking creed by confronting and adapting to liberal modernity. By doing so, the Right has won long periods of power and effectively become the dominant tradition in politics. Yet, despite their success, conservatives have continued to fight with each other about how far to compromise with liberalism and democracy—or which values to defend and how. In Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020), Edmund Fawcett provides a gripping account of this conflicted history, clarifies key ideas, and illuminates quarrels within the Right today.Focusing on the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, Fawcett’s vivid narrative covers thinkers and politicians. They include the forerunners James Madison, Edmund Burke, and Joseph de Maistre; early friends and foes of capitalism; defenders of religion; and builders of modern parties, such as William McKinley and Lord Salisbury. The book chronicles the cultural critics and radical disruptors of the 1920s and 1930s, recounts how advocates of laissez-faire economics broke the post 1945 consensus, and describes how Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and their European counterparts are pushing conservatism toward a nation-first, hard Right.An absorbing, original history of the Right, Conservatism portrays a tradition as much at war with itself as with its opponents.Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com

Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now also identify as ideologically conservative, up from less than 10 percent in the 1970s. Why has ideological change failed to push more black Americans into the Republican Party? Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior (Princeton University Press, 2020) answers this question with a pathbreaking new theory that foregrounds the specificity of the black American experience and illuminates social pressure as the key element of black Americans’ unwavering support for the Democratic Party.Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird argue that the roots of black political unity were established through the adversities of slavery and segregation, when black Americans forged uniquely strong social bonds for survival and resistance. White and Laird explain how these tight communities have continued to produce and enforce political norms—including Democratic Party identification in the post–Civil Rights era. The social experience of race for black Americans is thus fundamental to their political choices. Black voters are uniquely influenced by the social expectations of other black Americans to prioritize the group’s ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. When navigating the choice of supporting a political party, this social expectation translates into affiliation with the Democratic Party. Through fresh analysis of survey data and original experiments, White and Laird explore where and how black political norms are enforced, what this means for the future of black politics, and how this framework can be used to understand the electoral behavior of other communities.An innovative explanation for why black Americans continue in political lockstep, Steadfast Democrats sheds light on the motivations consolidating an influential portion of the American electoral population.Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com.

Do you teach, or do you care about education? Then you have to read this book. At turns radical in the interventions it proposes in educational practice, at turns perspicacious in the views it opens on the act of teaching, at turns inspirational in the words it drops in the teacher's ear, Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document that Changes Everything (Princeton UP, 2020) belongs in every teacher's hand, as well as in the hands of many an administrator and policymaker.William Germano's and Kit Nicholls's idea to tag an entire pedagogy to one single document is brilliant, and it's brilliant because the document deserves the attention. As any college instructor and also many high school teachers will know, the syllabus kicks off the academic season, fills in as the rulebook and the referee, and presents that scoreboard of disciplinary knowledge called the reading list. William Germano and Kit Nicholls have much to say about all these functions of one remarkable and unremarkable document, much that is new and much that was already there but has now been put in new light; and more importantly, William Germano and Kit Nicholls say much, much more. In fact, every line of the syllabus becomes for them an opportunity to consider and discuss just what teachers want and (more to the point) just what their students want. Aligning these two in the interests of learners is one of the books many achievements.The book is not a how-to guide because, like all good books about such essentially human activities as parenting or writing or (as here) teaching and learning, Syllabus takes the wide view and Syllabus covers all the details: collaboration and community, schedules and heightened moments of learning, the citizen of the classroom, the optimal assignment, and the studied improvisation required to the teacher who would learn together with a classroom of students. These are just a few of William Germano's and Kit Nicholls's concerns in their book Syllabus, a book about what teaching looks like when teaching turns into learning.Daniel Shea heads Scholarly Communication, a Special Series on the New Books Network. Daniel is Director of the Writing Program at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write writingprogram@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de

What exactly does the word “holy” mean in various religious traditions? What is the opposite of it in translations from the Hebrew? Is the antonym of “holy” in the Old Testament not, as many of us assume, “profane” but “unclean?” And, if so, what are the theological implications and in human affairs of that difference?How did Biblical figures such as Moses and Joshua justify brutal levels of violence against their enemies? What motivated that violence in the first place—and is there, in fact, any evidence that any took place at that level in those times?What did leading philosophers from Maimonides to William James to Abraham Joshua Heschel have to say about the concept of the “holy” and is there a difference in meaning between the words “sacred” and “holy?”Is it even rational to believe that something is “holy” or are such beliefs relics that have only been used to justify religious violence? Is there a place for the concept of the holy in our time and in our actions and world views?These are some of the questions that Alan L. Mittleman addresses in his 2018 book, Does Judaism Condone Violence?: Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition (Princeton UP, 2018).Given that in recent years we have seen the desecration of religious sites and murders and assaults by and on religious people of all faiths across the globe, Mittleman’s book is timely for not only Jewish readers but anyone who wishes to know more about the history of violence and the often seemingly contradictory ways God and otherwise humane people employ it or condone it.The book is a learned study of our sometimes blood-stained, but also noble, past.Give a listen.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

In her new book Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton University Press, 2020), Despina Stratigakos investigates the Nazi occupation of Norway. Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model “Aryan” society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler’s Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire—one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings.Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler’s Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway’s Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme—a German cultural capital and naval base—remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance.A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler’s Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been—a world colonized under the swastika.Despina Stratigakos is vice provost and professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. 

How are algorithms changing journalism? In Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press), Angèle Christin, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, explores the impact of metrics and analytics on the newsrooms of New York and Paris. Using an ethnography of...

In today’s new episode, we speak with Sean Roberts about his brand new book The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, 2020). Roberts is the Director of the International Development Studies program at George Washington University. He received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology...

The fact that the vast border between China and Russia is often overlooked goes hand-in-hand with a lack of understanding of the ordinary citizens in these much-discussed places, who often lose out to larger-than-life figures like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. A book that combines a look at the history...

There is no shortage of books on the growing impact of data collection and analysis on our societies, our cultures, and our everyday lives. David Hand’s new book Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters (Princeton University Press, 2020) is unique in this genre for its focus on those...

How has philosophy transformed human knowledge and the world we live in? Philosophical investigation is the root of all human knowledge. Developing new concepts, reinterpreting old truths, and reconceptualizing fundamental questions, philosophy has progressed―and driven human progress―for more than two millennia. In short, we live in a world philosophy made....