New Books in Public Policy
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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2001
Odette Lienau, “Rethinking Sovereign Debt” (Har...
In 1927 Russian-American legal theorist Alexander Sack introduced the doctrine of “odious debt.” Sack argued that a state’s debt is “odious” and should not be transferable to successor governments after a revolution,
55 min
2002
Carlo C. DiClemente, “Substance Abuse Treatment...
In this episode, I talk with Carlo C. DiClemente, a Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland- Baltimore County, about his co-authored book, Substance Abuse Treatment and the Stages of Change: Selecti...
59 min
2003
Constance DeVereaux and Martin Griffin, “Narrat...
Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World (Ashgate, 2013), a new book by Constance DeVereaux (Colorado State University) and Martin Griffin (University of Tennessee) sets out to challenge assumptions ab...
51 min
2004
Sara Bannerman, “The Struggle for Canadian Copy...
In The Struggle for Canadian Copyright: Imperialism to Internationalism, 1842-1971, Sara Bannerman narrates the complex story of Canada’s copyright policy since the mid-19th century. The book details the country’s halting attempts to craft a copyright ...
55 min
2005
Karen G. Weiss, “Party School: Crime, Campus, a...
In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about her book, Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community (Northeastern University Press, 2013).
54 min
2006
Patrick Weil, “The Sovereign Citizen: Denatural...
Patrick Weil is the author of The Sovereign Citizen: Denaturalization and the Origins of the American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). He is a visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a senior research fellow at the French Nat...
52 min
2007
Robert Darnton, “On the Future of Libraries”
Robert Darnton, author of books, articles, and Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. Darnton joins host Jonathan Judaken to discuss the future of libraries, the printed press,
34 min
2008
Patrick Burkart, “Pirate Politics: The New Info...
Patrick Burkart‘s Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Conflicts (MIT Press, 2014) considers the democratic potential and theoretical significance of groups espousing radical perspectives on intellectual property and cyber-liberty.
47 min
2009
James E. Fleming and Linda C. McClain, “Ordered...
Many have argued in recent years that the U.S. constitutional system exalts individual rights over responsibilities, virtues, and the common good. Answering the charges against liberal theories of rights, James Fleming and Linda McClain develop and def...
40 min
2010
Tom Sorell, “Emergencies and Politics: A Sober ...
In Emergencies and Politics: A Sober Hobbesian Approach (Cambridge UP, 2013), Tom Sorell argues that emergencies can justify types of action that would normally be regarded as wrong. Beginning with the ethics of emergencies facing individuals,
30 min
2011
Brian Allen Drake, “Loving Nature, Fearing the ...
What do Barry Goldwater, Edward Abbey, and Henry David Thoreau have in common? On the surface, they would seem to be at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. As Brian Allen Drake shows, however, environmental concerns often brought together public...
36 min
2012
Gayle Kaufman, “Superdads: How Fathers Balance ...
Pretty much every day you can read an article–usually somewhat intemperate–about how women can or can’t “have it all.” Rarely, however, do you read anything about the way in which men try to balance work and family.
49 min
2013
Mark A. Largent, “Vaccine: The Debate in Modern...
Children born in the 1970s and 1980s received just a handful of vaccinations: measles, rubella, and a few others. Beginning the 1990s, the numbers of mandated vaccines exploded, so that today a fully-vaccinated child might receive almost three dozen va...
55 min
2014
Virginia Gray et al., “Interest Group$ and Heal...
Virginia Gray, David Lowery, and Jennifer Benz are the authors of Interest Group$ and Health Care Reform Across the United State$ (Georgetown University Press, 2013). Gray is Distinguished Professor of Political Science, UNC, Chapel Hill,
27 min
2015
Gregory Heller, “Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, ...
Gregory Heller is the author of Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Heller is Senior Advisor at Econsult Solutions, Inc. in Philadelphia.
29 min
2016
Thom Brooks, “Punishment” (Routledge, 2012)
Social stability and justice requires that we live together according to rules. And this in turn means that the rules must be enforced. Accordingly, we sometimes see fit to punish those who break the rules.
83 min
2017
Jonathan V. Last, “What to Expect When No One’s...
Most people who listen to this podcast will know that places like Japan, Italy, and Germany are in the midst of a demographic crisis. The trouble is that people in those countries are not having enough children to replace those of any age who are dying...
52 min
2018
John O. McGinnis, “Accelerating Democracy: Tran...
The advent of very powerful computers and the Internet have not “changed everything,” but it has created a new communications context within which almost everything we do will be somewhat changed. One of the “things we do” is governance, that is,
59 min
2019
Colin Gordon, “Growing Apart: A Political Histo...
Americans seem to be more concerned about economic inequality today than they have been in living memory. The Occupy Movement (“We are the 99%”) is only the most visible sign of this growing unease. But what are the dimensions of inequality in the Unit...
69 min
2020
Marc Mauer, “Race to Incarcerate” (New Press, 2...
The American penitentiary model began as not merely a physical construct, but as a philosophical and religious one. Prisoners were to use their time in silence and isolation to contemplate their crimes/sins and to pursue God’s grace.
39 min
2021
Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick, “Reducing...
We’ve all heard the saying that when arguing we should ‘disagree without being disagreeable’ but, when it comes to guns, we often find ourselves disagreeing without actually disagreeing. Most Americans believe in some kinds of gun control.
49 min
2022
Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich, “The Sch...
Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich are authors of the provocative new book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies (Rowman and Littlefield 2013). Dr. Tienken is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Set...
22 min
2023
Steven Hill, “Europe’s Promise: Why the Europea...
What can the United States learn from Europe? One good answer, says Steven Hill, is social capitalism, a form of economic management that is responsive to markets and productive of broadly-shared prosperity.
49 min
2024
Kathleen J. Frydl, “The War on Drugs in America...
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’t know it. Rates of drug use in the US remain, by historical standards,
2 min
2025
Thane Rosenbaum, “Payback: The Case for Revenge...
All humans have an emotionally-driven sense of fairness. We get treated unfairly and we get mad. It’s no wonder, then, that our laws–and those of almost everyone else–are intended to assure that people are treated fairly.
61 min