Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz, and Travis N. Ridout are the co-authors of Political Advertising in the United States (Westview Press 2016). Fowler is assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, Franz is associate professor of government and legal studies at Bowdoin College, and Ridout is Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy in the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at Washington State University.

The authors, co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project, draw from the latest data to analyze how campaign finance laws have affected the sponsorship and content of political advertising and how the Internet has changed the distribution of ads. With detailed analysis of presidential and congressional campaign ads and discussion questions in each chapter, Political Advertising provides an ideal explainer for students, scholars and practitioners who want to understand the ins and outs of political advertising.

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In Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement (Yale University Press, 2015), Lori A. Flores illuminates a neglected part of Salinas Valley’s past “to show how this agricultural empire was continually a center, a microcosm, of significant transitions and moments in U.S. labor, immigration, and Latino history.” Focusing on a period some consider the golden age of 20thcentury American abundance and prosperity, 1942-1970, this history examines the interactions of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants during the implementation, administration, and termination of the U.S.-Mexico Emergency Farm Labor Program (a.k.a. Bracero Program). Challenging the more conventional narrative of postwar American prosperity, Grounds for Dreaming reveals how industrial agriculture’s unquenchable thirst for Mexican immigrant labor shaped race relations in California, produced intragroup conflict within ethnic Mexican communities, and stymied the advancement of Mexican American labor and civil rights. Drawing comparisons and contrasts to the ethnic Mexican experience in urban settings like Los Angeles, Dr. Flores argues that within the world of capitalist agriculture, the formation of identity and community were indelibly shaped by racialized notions of Mexican labor and its presumed discontinuity with American citizenship. In addition to relating a chilling history of the ills of California agribusiness at the pinnacle of its power, Grounds for Dreaming sheds new light on the merger of urban and agricultural activists in the formation of the Farmworker and Chicana/o struggles for social justice.

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Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov are the authors of Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Klar is assistant professor of political science at the University of Arizona; Krupnikov is assistant professor of political science at Stony Brook University.

Independents voters number up into 40% range in some elections, but are largely misunderstood. Are they apathetic? Centrist? Or undecided voters? Klar and Krupnikov suggest something quite different. They argue that many independent voters are partisans in disguise, hiding partisan-leanings because of a perceived social stigma. Through a series of experiments and related studies, they show that the social desirability of independence prevents many from declaring a party affiliation, but also diminishes other forms of political participation.

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How can we de-colonize critical theory from within, and reimagine the way it grounds its normative claims as well as the way it relates to post- and de-colonial theory? Amy Allen (Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University) takes up this project in her book The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Columbia Univ. Press, 2016). The work challenges the way that the Frankfurt School of critical theory constructs and deploys concepts of normativity, history, and progress, in the process offering rich interpretations of Jßrgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst. Allen then turns to the work of Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault in order to articulate a different perspective on these issues, one that enables a radical self-critique and de-colonization of critical theory. She concludes by exploring alternative means for critical theory to justify its normative claims as a way for it to more deeply engage with post- and de-colonial theory.

Matt Lewis is the author of Too Dumb Too Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (And How it Can Reclaim its Conservative Roots) (Hachette Books, 2016). Matt Lewis is a Senior Contributor at The Daily Caller, a CNN Political Commentator.

Clever book titles are hard to find, especially ones that are going to draw a crowd. Lewis has succeeded in drawing a large crowd to his title and the argument of his interesting new book. He traces an intellectual history of conservatism, highlighting many of the well-known, as well as lesser-known figures. Of late, Lewis argues, a variety of factors have produced a strong anti-intellectual strain within conservative politics. He ends the book with recommendations for ways that conservative politics can move beyond this period of dumbing-down.

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Chances are that at this very moment, you are either looking at a computer screen, holding a digital device, or listening to my voice through plastic earphones. Our computers and these other devices are constructed out of materials that have their origins in lands across the globe. And oil plays a central and early role in the causal story of how we came into possession of them. Oil also plays a leading role in the major global conflicts of our day. Much of the world’s oil is sold to us by brutal tyrants who use the monetary proceeds to strengthen their tyranny. But it is arguable that tyrants who control a territory have no legitimate claim to ownership of the territory’s resources; the oil belongs to the people, not to the tyrant. So the oil that goes into creating the objects that we now possess and use is likely stolen. How is it then that your computer, which is made of oil in the form of plastic, is your property? And what can be done about the fact that out ordinary consumption habits so directly place large sums of money into the pockets of the world’s most brutal men?

In Blood Oil: Tyranny, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World (Oxford University Press, 2016), Leif Wenar examines the history, sociology, and politics of the global oil trade. Although the reality depicted in the book is bleak and disturbing, Wenar’s message is ultimately uplifting. He argues that, despite all of the prevailing injustices in the world, the tools of radical reform are close at hand.

Adam Seth Levine has written American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction (Princeton University Press, 2015). Levine teaches in the Department of Government at Cornell University.

If we have learned anything about American politics over the last several months, it is that there are a lot of people who are angry about the present and fearful about the future. American Insecurity demonstrates why it is difficult to channel these sentiments into political action. Using a series of lab and field experiments, we learn in American Insecurity that those who feel economically insecure may be de-mobilized if reminded about their insecurity. There are numerous implications of Levine’s findings for how we understand the psychology of insecurity and the ways interest groups might hone mobilization strategies.

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State executioners in their various guises are explored in all their horrific detail by Tasneem Khalil, in his new book Jallad: Death Squads and State Terror in South Asia (Pluto, 2016). From the Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh to the men in white vans in Sri Lanka, the book interrogates both the brutal specificities of state agents, as well as the underlying themes that cross cut state terror in the region. Strong, brave and relentless Jallad is an important and timely book.

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The Canadian author and journalist Naomi Klein says right-wing conservatives who deny the reality of global warming are correct about the revolutionary implications of climate change.

In her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (Simon and Schuster, 2014) Klein quotes Thomas J. Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who says that the steps being proposed to radically reduce carbon emissions would change the American way of life and put large segments of the economy out of business.

Klein agrees, but argues that transforming global capitalism into a more humane economic system would be a good thing. In her book, she urges progressives who care about the environment to show that the steps needed to avert catastrophic climate change “are also our best hope of building a much more stable and equitable economic system, one that strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work, and radically reins in corporate greed.”

Klein also argues that the imperatives of growth and consumption that drive global capitalism are incompatible with what we need to do to avert catastrophic warming.

Published in October 2015, Caroline Shaw‘s timely new book, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford University Press, 2015), traces the intertwined development of the category of refugee and of the moral commitment of Britons to providing refuge for persecuted foreigners. By confidently working across a range of methods and geopolitical contexts, Shaw shows how the refugee category became “potentially universal in scope,” thanks to the depth of this moral commitment. Yet the attendant challenges of providing relief and resettlement for a potentially endless stream of people fleeing slavery in the US and East Africa, political persecution in continental Europe, and Russian pogroms raised a number of questions, not least where these refugees would live and work. Here, the British Empire provided an important safety valve: resettling refugees abroad made the work of relief seem feasible, despite real problems on the ground. By the later nineteenth century, however, this moral commitment ran up against tightened resources and the increasingly violent radical politics of many who sought relief, leading both to the enshrinement of a “right to refuge” in law and the simultaneous narrowing of who exactly counted as a persecuted foreigner