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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2076
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
2077
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
2078
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
2079
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
2080
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
2081
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
2082
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
2083
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
2084
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
2085
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
2086
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
2087
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
2088
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
2089
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
2090
Paul Barrett, “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun...
History is in many respects the story of humanity’s quest for transcendence: to control life and death, time and space, loss and memory. When inventors or companies effectively tap into these needs products emerge that help define their times.
51 min
2091
Steven J. Harper, “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profess...
A friend of mine who had just graduated from law school said “Law school is great. The trouble is that when you are done you’re a lawyer.” Steven J. Harper would, after a fashion, agree (though he would probably add that law schools are not that great)...
63 min
2092
Jared Diamond, “The World Until Yesterday: What...
It’s pretty common–and has long been–for people to think that the “way it used to be” is better than the way it is. This tendency to idealize an (imagined) past is particularly strong today among critics of modern civilization.
22 min
2093
Andrew Koppelman, “The Tough Luck Constitution ...
Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that had the potential to affect the economy in the near term more than any court case ever had.
56 min
2094
Stephen T. Asma, “Against Fairness” (University...
Modern liberalism is built on the principle of equality and its corollary, the principle of fairness (treating equals equally). But have we taken the one and the other too far? Are we deceiving ourselves about our ability to treat each others equally,
59 min
2095
Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, “How Muc...
Why do we work so hard, and should we? These are the questions that Robert and Edward Skidelsky explore in their thought provoking book How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life (Other Press, 2012). Their answer to the first question is (to put it i...
58 min
2096
Matthew Wisnioski, “Engineers for Change: Compe...
In his compelling and fascinating account of how engineers navigated new landscapes of technology and its discontents in 1960s America, Matthew Wisnioski takes us into the personal and professional transformations of a group of thinkers and practitione...
67 min
2097
Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., “Mismatc...
In their book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It (Basic Books, 2012), Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr. present the following big idea: race preferences in higher education har...
63 min
2098
John Wood, “Creating Room to Read” (Viking Pres...
In Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy (Viking Press, 2013), John Wood presents this big idea: you can change the world if want to. The nice thing about John’s book is that he doesn’t tell you the “theory” of world-...
31 min
2099
Scott Melzer, “Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture...
Scott Melzer is the author of Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War (New York University Press, 2012). Scott earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside and now is an associate professor of Sociology at Albion College.
23 min
2100
Amy Lonetree, “Decolonizing Museums: Representi...
“Museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples,” writes Amy Lonetree, associate professor of history at UC-Santa Cruz and a citizen of the Ho Chunk Nation, “as they are intimately tied to the colonization process.
69 min