Stephen Caliendo and Charlton McIlwain are the authors of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in US Political Campaigns (Temple University Press 2011). Caliendo is Professor of Political Science at North Central College and McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communications at New York University. The two present a complicated portrait of the way race has played a part in recent elections. They utilize a multi-method approach combining content analysis and experiments to analyze how race is presented in campaign advertisements and comment on the verbal and visual dimensions of race in advertising. The book can help make sense of past elections and also the way race may play a part in campaigns in the future.

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While reading about genocide and mass violence should always be be disturbing, a certain numbness sets in over time. Every once in a while, however, a book breaks through that numbness to remind the reader of the horror inherent in the subject.

The new book Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide, edited by John Roth and Carol Rittner (Paragon House, 2012) is one of these books. While individuals have always committed or fell victim to sexual violence during conflicts, only recently have armies and states begun to use large-scale rape as a tactic to help them achieve their broader war aims. Rittner and Roth set out to explore why and how this is happening and to identify possible solutions to the problem. Some of the essays are academic, some personal, but they all contain horrifying reminders of the intensely personal experience of rape and sexual violence. Aimed at students as well as professionals, the book offers a broad survey of the state of research rather than overarching conclusions. In doing so, it sears its way into your consciousness.

John and Carol have the kind of easy familiarity that comes from having worked together for decades. The result is more a conversation than an interview. I threw in some guiding questions, but mostly sat back and enjoyed the chance to hear two experts talk with each other about a subject of pressing importance. I hope you’ll appreciate the chance to do the same.

 

Ines Mergel, assistant professor of public administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University, is the author of Social Media in the Public Sector: A Guide to Participation, Collaboration and Transparency in the Networked World (Jossey-Bass 2012). This timely and insightful book can be read by a host of audiences, from the scholar to the practitioner. The book relates the development of social media technologies to the open government movement of the last generation. It demonstrates how government agencies can better integrate tools such as Twitter and Facebook into their operations. In doing so, agencies can open a door to public input and deliberation. This is a book that should be read by political scientists interested in how federal agencies grown and change, but also by those in federal agencies who want to respond to calls for greater openness.

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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. His book adds to the growing list of scholarship on gun control and gun rights. Scott’s disciplinary background in Sociology contributes to a better understanding of the nature of the NRA’s members, the links between their views towards guns and other issues, and what lies ahead for the organization. Through in-depth interviews with NRA members, we learn more about what it means to be a part of this organization, something few scholars have addressed directly in the past. The book is both a great read about policy, about an influential interest group, but also about the sociology of an organization.

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Somewhere Hannah Arendt is smiling. In the pages of the 1945 Partisan Review Arendt declared, “The problem of evil will be the fundamental question of postwar intellectual life in Europe.” In the short-term, Arendt couldn’t have been more wrong. With Marxists and postmodernists rejecting the very idea of “evil,” academics and intellectuals (yes, there is a difference between the two) rarely investigated the “problem of evil.”

The international security issues of the post-Cold War era, however, have brought Arendt’s proposition to the fore. From the Balkans and Rwanda to Osama bin Laden, American policymakers have confronted issues of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and mass terror that have forced intellectuals to reconsider “evil.” One of our culture’s leading public intellectuals, Alan Wolfe, has penned a marvelous work on the issue,Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It (Vintage, 2012)). In this readable and timely book, Wolfe defines political evil, offers some definitional accuracy, and urges readers to become serious about the issue. If you are at all interested in the politics of foreign policy and crafting a intellectual framework for a serious strategy go listen to this interview and go buy and read this book.

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Thomas Holyoke has recently published Competitive Interests: Competition and Compromise in American Interest Group Politics with Georgetown University Press (2011). Tom is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University – Fresno. His book advances political science knowledge of the political process through an in-depth analysis of the role of interest groups. The book is based on interviews with nearly 90 lobbyists who have advocated on issues as varied as environmental policy to banking reform. The book contributes a rich empirical analysis supported by statistical models, but also a careful development of theory. Holyoke speaks to both the interest group audience and the wider field of American politics.

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You wouldn’t know from the 2012 president race but the United States remains engaged in a fairly bloody conflict in Afghanistan. In addition to boots on the ground, we deploy scores of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa to keep Al Qaeda and its affiliates at bay. In the post-9/11 world does the US have any other option aside from semi-permanent war against non-state actors that operate in developing and/or failed states? Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld thinks American policymakers have viable options, alternatives and policies that can address the national security challenges of the 21st century.

In Let There Be Light: Electrifying the Developing World With Markets and Distributed Energy, co-authored with Drew Sloan, (Truman National Security Institute, 2012), they reveal that “energy,” or the lack thereof, keeps many nations mired in poverty. To jump start-developing economies, Kleinfeld offers some relatively doable innovations to make energy plentiful. In so doing, failed states could very well become success stories or, at the very least, less likely to incubate poverty, lawlessness and threats to international security. In the same vein, Kleinfeld’s second book, Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), offers additional policies to promote the rule of law in developing nations. In both cases, these books give viable policy solutions that address the national security challenges of the 21st century.

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Liberal democracies are in the business of protecting individuals and their rights. Central among these are the rights to free expression, freedom of association, and freedom of conscience. Liberal democracies are also in the business of sustaining a political environment in which citizens are regarded as political equals. In exercising their rights, some citizens will come to hold beliefs and viewpoints that are fundamentally at odds with the idea that all citizens are their equals. That is, in a free society, some citizens will come to endorse views which reject the idea of a society of free and equal citizens. Such cases seem to put the liberal democratic state in a bind. It must permit citizens to adopt and express illiberal and anti-democratic viewpoints, or else violate its commitment to the core freedoms it prizes. Yet the spread of such viewpoints, and sometimes even their very expression, can threaten the equality other citizens and undermine the stability of a democratic society. What should the state do?

In his new book, When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? How Democracies can Protect Expression and Promote Equality (Princeton University Press, 2012), Corey Brettschneider proposes a view he calls “value democracy” to address this kind of quandary. He claims that although the democratic state must permit the adoption and expression of even hateful views, it nonetheless can object to and criticize them. That is, Brettschneider makes a case for thinking that the state is permitted to–and in some contexts must–employ its expressive power to combat hateful viewpoints. The book hence addresses fundamental philosophical questions concerning free speech, equality, and the authority of the democratic state.

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James Daily, J.D. and Ryan Davidson, J.D. are the co-authors of The Law of Superheroes (Gotham Books 2012). The book uses comic book scenarios, much as previous volumes on physics and philosophy, to answer questions such as “Would mutants have civic rights?” and “Could Batman patent the Batmobile?” The authors deftly combine their legal background with a keen sense of the comic book universe to introduce a variety of legal concepts in an approachable fashion. This humorous take on legal topics could easily fit into an introductory public law class or general education course on law and society.

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Tired of politics? I grew tired of campaign commercials, especially once Mitt Romney identified Pennsylvania (where I live) as a battleground state. Now that the ad wars have ended and the ballots have been counted, I am really interested in understanding what has happened to modern American conservatism. That is why I had Patrick Allitt on to discuss his new book, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (Yale University Press, 2010).

Professor Allitt traces the evolution of American conservatism from its Federalist roots up through the George W. Bush administration. Accessible and written in a lively style, this is a fine book that deserves a wide reading.

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