New Books in Politics and Polemics

Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current state of American democracy rooted in the American pragmatist tradition. Robert Danisch analyzes the characteristics of communication systems and communication practices tha

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows

From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original exploration of popular music’s role in shaping our society. Told through a Marxist lens, Toby Manning traces the last seventy years of political and social upheavals through its mo

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist S

In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press, 2023), an eye-opening exploration of the invisible world of unpaid caregivers. Drawing from her own experience caring for her terminally ill mother, Emily sheds light on

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and