Rahul Rao, "The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2025)
From Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond, statues have become sites of resistance and contestation of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The Psychic Lives of Statues by Rahul Rao offers an insi...
19 Maalis 202557min
Bryan Caplan, "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing" (Cato Institute, 2024)
Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel’ can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Bui...
18 Maalis 202541min
Luca Trenta, "The President's Kill List: Assassination and Us Foreign Policy Since 1945" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Investigative reporter Bob Woodward once noted that assassination was the Scarlett letter of American politics because targeted killings challenge the image of the United States as a liberal democracy...
17 Maalis 20251h
Matthew Fuhrmann, "Influence without Arms: The New Logic of Nuclear Deterrence" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
How does nuclear technology influence international relations? While many books focus on countries armed with nuclear weapons, this volume puts the spotlight on those who have the technology to build ...
16 Maalis 202557min
Martin Spychal, "Mapping the State: English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act" (U London Press, 2024)
The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system, the legislation reshaped constitutional arrangement...
15 Maalis 202550min
Postscript: Donald Trump is Erasing History – What YOU Can Do about it
On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order announced that “It...
14 Maalis 202518min
Postscript: How Trump’s Executive Order Contradicts Birthright Citizenship
Birthright citizenship is established in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – yet Donald Trump’s recent Executive Order 14160 denies some types of birthri...
13 Maalis 202539min
In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us: A Conversation with Frances Lee
In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison’s Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, about her co-authored book In COVID’s Wa...
12 Maalis 202545min
