New Books Network

Can I Say That: Your Go-To Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is your safe space to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion, and how you can be a force for change. Most DEI books focus on gender, race or the intersection of those two dimensions. This book adopts a broader intersectional lens while also providing concrete tools for allyship.
This book is for you if: you want to know more about diversity, equity, and inclusion but don't know where to start; are worried about saying the wrong thing; feel uncomfortable talking about DEI; are worried conversations might escalate or end in conflict; or don't want to be the only one fighting for change.

By explaining the common fears we all face about DEI, you'll feel empowered to talk with confidence and take action.

Guest: Dr. Poornima Luthra is an author, keynote and Tedx speaker, business consultant, and leading practitioner-academic in the field of talent management and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). As a senior faculty at Imperial Business School and external faculty at Copenhagen Business School, she bridges cutting-edge scholarship with real-world impact. She draws on eighteen years of research, teaching experience, and expertise in the field of talent management and DEI in Asia and Europe. She is the author of Leading Through Bias; The Art of Active Allyship; and Diversifying Diversity, and contributor to Harvard Business Review. Can I Say That? was named as one of the 10 best new management books of 2025.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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John Quincy Adams was the great visionary of America’s post-founding era, a writer and orator of consummate skill who reframed the origins and principles of the republic for a new generation. It’s fitting then that as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of independence, that Adams should be the focus of renewed attention.

One new book in particular caught our eye at Library of America: America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick by Bob Crawford (Zando 2026). Crawford is perhaps best known as the bassist for the acclaimed folk-rock band The Avett Brothers, out of Concord, North Carolina. But he is also the host of not one but two popular podcasts: American History Hotline, on iHeart Radio, and The Road to Now, on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel. With all this going on, we’re very grateful that he could make time to sit down with LOA associate publisher Brian McCarthy for a free-ranging conversation about all things Adams.

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Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical,

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Karine Premont and Christopher Devine have a new edited volume focusing on the American Vice Presidency and analyzing not just the office and the officeholders, but also the role of vice presidential candidates in the campaigns for the presidency. Second in Command: Reevaluating the Role of Vice Presidents and Running Makes in Modern American Politics (U Michigan Press, 2026) is a fascinating exploration of the role and place of the vice president, the vice presidency, and the vice presidential running mate. Often this position and this job are dismissed—since the vice president has very few actual powers, besides his/her role as president of the Senate and tiebreaker in that body, and one of the certifiers of the Electoral College votes after an election. But in the contemporary political environment, vice presidents have grown in importance in terms of their role on the presidential ticket and in their role once elected to office.

Second in Command is split into two parts, the first section focusing on the vice president in office, while the second part examines the vice presidential candidate and the role of being a running mate to a presidential candidate. In our conversation we discuss the fact that the vice president is often considered to be the “appendix” of American government, created at the Constitutional Convention to break a tie in the Senate, should there be one, and to solve the problem coming out of the newly designed Electoral College where two votes needed to be cast for president. But over the past fifty years, there has been tremendous change in terms of the inhabitants in the office, their relationship to the president and the presidency, and their activities on the campaign trail. Vice Presidents have become general advisors to the president. This precedent was established between President Jimmy Carter and his vice president, Walter Mondale. And since the 1970s, this newly engaged position and role for the vice president have generally been in place, with different approaches from different presidents/vice presidential pairs. The idea of trying to “balance” the ticket is still part of the selection dynamic, but it is as important as the working relationship that presidents have pursued with their vice presidential pick.

We had a fascinating discussion of the history of the vice presidency as well as an analysis of the more modern dynamic. We talked about different parts of ticket balancing, since it is not necessarily about geography so much as constituent appeals: religious groups, gender, expertise/experience, and more.

Second in Command: Reevaluating the Role of Vice Presidents and Running Mates in Modern American Politics is available from the University of Michigan Press via open access. Here is the link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14505045 It can, of course, also be purchased.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India (Oxford UP, 2026) explores the role of languages in the intellectual landscape of second-millennium India by way of six theological treatises composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, each written by a key intellectual figure: Vātsya Varadaguru, Periyavāccān Pillai, Meghanādari Sūri, Pillai Lokācārya, and Vedāntadeśika. Drawing on theories of language politics and translation, Manasicha Akepiyapornchai proposes a new theoretical framework of "language sphere" to better capture the linguistic and intellectual interaction from a micro perspective.

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Born and raised in San Diego, Charles Snow held a variety of jobs early in life, including: paperboy, grocery store cashier, accounting clerk, chauffeur, and sports director at a private school; each of which taught him important lessons about how organizations worked and were managed. Chuck earned his PhD in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent his entire academic career as a professor and researcher at Penn State. While there, Chuck taught management subjects to MBA students and executives in more than 35 countries.

In this episode, we focus on the core essay that Chuck and co-editor Oystein D. Fjelstad wrote for their book, “Actor-Oriented Organizing,” which is part of Cambridge University’s Companions to Management series. In conversation, Chuck discusses three key qualities essential to flattening hierarchical bureaucracies so that teams of employees can respond to emerging customer needs with greater speed and spontaneity. First, there’s a great (often unmet) value in openness to change and transparency. The second is a “commons” area, a space where team members feel they’re on equal, shared ground. And third is having the resources – financial, digital, and political – to ensure their work leads to outcomes that are incorporated into the company’s operational bloodstream. Underlying the entire approach that Chuck advocates for is seeking to act for the common good of all, embodying the “mutual sympathy” style that made Adam Smith not the just the “Father of Modern Economics,” but also a leading promoter of empathy before the term rose to prominence today.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.

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John Dewey is among history’s most celebrated thinkers on democracy and

What can we learn from this great thinker as we face challenges such as

Revealing the true scope of Dewey’s educational vision, this book provides a new perspective on a neglected aspect of the philosophical tradition. Natalia Rogach Alexander's Growing People: The Enduring Legacy of John Dewey (Columbia University Press, 2025) presents

Natalia Rogach Alexander is a lecturer in philosophy at Columbia University.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

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It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and today we analyze the new TV series Cape Fear. First we give a reaction to episodes 1 & 2 of the series, and then we discuss the two earlier movie versions of the story, from 1962 and 1991.

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Athenian Democracy provides innovative readings of ancient theorists to reveal both the complexity of democracy's achievements and its limits.

In Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists (U Notre Dame Press, 2026), noted political scientist Arlene W. Saxonhouse offers fresh and provocative explorations of ancient political theorists, lending new insights about democracy's foundations and principles. These insights are more relevant than ever in a moment when the viability of democratic regimes is under scrutiny. Saxonhouse provides an in-depth discussion of the modern mythmakers (Hobbes, Paine, Hamilton, Mill, and Arendt, among others) who, in praising or excoriating Athenian democracy, have in fact distorted it to support their own assessments of democracy. She then offers detailed reinterpretations of the writings on democracy of four ancient theorists who had directly experienced life in the first democratic regime: Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle.

Saxonhouse argues that the mythmaking that often attends our views of Athenian democracy—whether as a flawed, slaveholding regime that fostered factions and oppressed women or as an ideal regime of egalitarian and participatory democracy—blinds us to the deeper understanding of democracies that these ancient theorists can offer.

Arlene W. Saxonhouse is the Caroline Robbins Collegiate Professor of Political Science, Emerita, at the University of Michigan. She is the author of numerous books and articles dealing with ancient Greek political thought, including Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens and Fear of Diversity: The Birth of Political Science in Ancient Greek Thought.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

YouTube Channel: here

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In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experience in colonial administration, American troops also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inhabited these tropical islands.
How was this relatively small and inexperienced army able to wage wars in Cuba and the Philippines and occupy them? American soldiers depended on tens of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos, both for military operations and civil government. Whether compelled to labor for free or voluntarily working for wages, Cubans and Filipinos, suspended between civilian and soldier status, enabled the making of a new US overseas empire by interpreting, guiding, building, selling sex, and many other kinds of work for American troops. In The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines (UNC Press, 2025), Justin Jackson reveals how their labor forged the politics, economics, and culture of American colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines and left an enduring imprint on these islands and the US Army itself. Jackson offers new ways to understand the rise of American military might and how it influenced a globalizing imperial world.

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