Kate Manne is an assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University. As a feminist and moral philosopher, Manne examines an idea that has been inadequately addressed in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2017).

We end the year by remembering our favorite authors, books, and some of the titles. There were so many great books written this year that we had the fun of reading and talking to a few of the authors. Weve both been doing a lot of grading, so left out...

What is it about Black Republicans that makes them fodder for comedy? How do Black Republicans view their participation in their political group? Corey D. Fields answers these questions and more in his new book,

Catapulted into the Oval Office by an unusual set of circumstances, Gerald Ford remains a unique figure in American presidential history. In Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography of Gerald R. Ford (University Press of Kansas, 2017),

In his new book, Disposable Leaders: Media and Leadership Coups from Menzies to Abbott (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney,

If any place (outside contemporary North Korea) can be called “Totalitarian,” it would be Stalinist Russia. Under the “Greatest Genius of All Time,” Soviet “citizens” enjoyed no free speech, no free press, and no free assembly.

Black Power was one of the most iconic movements of the twentieth century. Recent documentary treatments like The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 in 2011 and The Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution in 2015 brought the Panthers into the households...

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian.

Melanee Thomas and Amanda Bittner have assembled a fascinating and important exploration of the role, understanding, and perceptions of mothers and motherhood within the realm of politics. Mothers and Others: The Role of Parenthood in Politics (Univers...

In Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Antisemitism and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Jack Jacobs, Professor of Political Science at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York,

In From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction (University of Missouri Press, 2017) , Forrest Nabors sets out to show that congressional Republicans regarded the work of Reconstruction in the same way they regarded the work of the...

In his new book, Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940 (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Jason Oliver Chang (University of Connecticut) traces the evolution of the Chinese in Mexico from “disposable laborers” (motores de sangre,

On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, 2016), Joshua Rubenstein recounts the events surroundin...

Colleen Murphy’s new book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), argues that attaining some degree of justice is possible in nations transitioning to democratic states.

Sheshalatha Reddy’s British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) examines historical and literary texts relating to three rebellions in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Sep...

The idea of being a “political prisoner” may seem timeless. If someone was imprisoned for his or her political beliefs, then that person is in some sense a “political prisoner.” Think of the Tower of London and its various occupants. But,

David Morgan-Owen‘s The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2017) tells a complex story clearly and concisely. In the decades prior to the Great War,

Before the revolution that—very unexpectedly—brought them to power, the Bolsheviks lived nomadic lives. They were always on the run from the authorities. That the authorities were always after them is not really a mystery,

Rapidly changing politics. Debates over the meaning of immigration. Widespread violence against minority groups. An economy undergoing a radical shift in form. The thirty years after the end of the Civil War have much in common with the United States i...

The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian Revolution (Encounter Books, 2017), written by legal scholar Stephen F. Williams, uses a biographic account of the life and career of Vasily Maklakov to explore issues of legality and rule of ...

Catherine Zuckert‘s new book, Machiavelli’s Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2017), systematically analyzes all the texts that Machiavelli wrote, exploring each text individually, but also as part of Machiavelli’s more expansive teaching as a phi...

From the export of the Chicago Police Department’s interrogation experts to Iraq after 2003, to casual references of the US-Indian Wars by US soldiers in Vietnam, Race and America’s Long War (University of California Press,

In the fourth podcast of Arguing History, Mark D. Steinberg and Michael David-Fox discuss the factors driving the Russian Revolutions of 1917. They consider how what is often remembered as two distinct events was in fact a multitude of different revolu...

Richard Power Sayeed’s book, 1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017), is a brilliant and exhaustively researched account of the late 1990s. The subject matter covered is broad. From music to politics, from feminism to the media,

How does a group become defined as white? And does that group define themselves that way as well? Neda Maghbouleh‘s new book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race (Stanford University Press, 2017),