As a trailblazing attorney, Bessie Margolin lived a life of exceptional achievement. At a time when the legal profession consisted almost entirely of men, she earned the esteem of her colleagues and rose to become one of the most successful Supreme Court advocates of her era. Doing so, as Marlene...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over Polands politically tumultuous steps toward...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Scott Meinke has just published Leadership Organizations in the House of Representatives: Party Participation and Partisan Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2016). He is associate professor of political science at Bucknell University. How have Congressional organizations changed over time? How have House leaders used policy organizations and committees over time?...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

George McGovern is largely remembered today for his dramatic loss to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential campaign, yet he enjoyed a long career characterized by many remarkable achievements. In Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern (Princeton UP, 2016), the first in a projected...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Kirk A. Denton‘s recent book explores the role of the state in China in shaping particular visions of the past through work in and with museums. Focusing on history museums in particular, Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (University of Hawaii Press, 2014)...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

How did two right wing presidents use culture to govern France? In Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Jeremy Ahearne, a Professor of French Studies and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick, explores are range of examples to probe the decade of Right...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

For all that has been written about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many misconceptions about the man and his achievements continue to persist. Roger Daniels seeks to correct these in a new two-volume biography of the 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to the New Deal, 1882-1939 (University of Illinois Press, 2015),...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Betina Cutaia Wilkinson is the author of Partners or Rivals? Power and Latino, Black, and White Relations in the Twenty-First Century (University of Virginia Press 2015). Wilkinson is assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University. In Partners or Rivals, Wilkinson relies on national survey and focus...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” This axiom encapsulates both the approach and dedication exhibited by Fred Ross during the five decades he spent organizing impoverished and disenfranchised communities throughout the country. In America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Lester K. Spence is the author of Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics (Punctum Books, 2016). Spence is associate professor of political science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. In Knocking the Hustle, Spence links the rising prominence of neoliberal ideas to the transformation of...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics