Andrew J. Taylor, “Congress: A Performance Appraisal” (Westview Press 2013)

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 Trestman demonstrates in Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin (Louisiana State University Press, 2016), required overcoming not just the ingrained assumptions that men had towards professional women during that time but also the poverty of her early childhood and the loss of her mother when Margolin was only three years old. As Trestman reveals, Margolin exploited to the full the opportunities she was given as a ward of the Jewish Orphans Home in New Orleans, which provided her with a comfortable upbringing and a good education. From Newcomb College and Tulane University, Margolin went on to a fellowship at Yale University and a career in the federal government, which she began by participating in the defense of some of the most important laws to come out of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program and concluded by championing measures mandating equal pay and opposing age discrimination. And yet Trestman shows that for all of the sacrifices she made to establish a career for herself, Margolin did so on her own terms and in a way that many Americans can relate to today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

26 Kesä 20161h 21min

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? Meinke has answered these questions in his new book. Through extensive archival and quantitative research, he shows the way these organizations have changed since the 1970s. Increasingly, House leaders use party organizations to advance the party’s policy agenda and to exchange information with supporters outside of Congress. As such, Meinke’s book fits into the ongoing exploration of the Congressional polarization and points in the direction of possible Congressional reforms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Kesä 201622min

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 two-volume biography of the senator and Democratic Party presidential nominee, Thomas Knock chronicles McGovern’s life and career from his Depression-era upbringing in South Dakota to his 1968 reelection campaign and emergence as a presidential contender. Knock describes McGovern’s transformation from a shy young boy into a confident debater who, after America went to war in 1941, volunteered for service in the Army Air Corps as a B-24 bomber pilot and flew 35 combat missions over Germany and Austria. Upon returning home, he embarked on a path that took him from the ministry to a Ph.D. in history and then the college classroom before he settled upon a career in politics. After serving two terms in the House of Representatives and as Director of Food for Peace in the Kennedy administration, in 1962 McGovern won a seat in the United States Senate, where he emerged as a prescient critic of America’s descent into the Vietnam War. In detailing his opposition to that expanding conflict, Knock not only shows how McGovern emerged as a national leader, but also demonstrates the relevance of his vision to the challenges our nation faces today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 Kesä 20161h 15min

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 African American communities. The book, a combination of political history and policy analysis, argues that the Nixon and Reagan administrations advanced the neoliberal policy-making agenda and contributed to the associated rise in economic inequality, especially for African Americans. At the same time, African American communities and institutions are transformed by this neoliberal turn and its underlying, and surprising compatibility, with hustle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 Touko 201621min

In this podcast I talk with Mary Ziegler, Stearns Weaver Miller Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law about her book, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Harvard University Press, 2016). Ziegler’s work revolves around Roe v. Wade and uses this landmark American abortion rights case to explore broad questions such as litigation as a vessel for social change and the role the court plays in democracy. To explore these questions, in addition to archival research Ziegler also did over one hundred oral histories. This method has allowed her to go beyond caricatures of people in the pro-life and anti-abortion camps and to delve deeply into their motivations and look at the angles they approached the abortion issue with great precision. Roe is often seen as a cautionary tale for judicial intervention as described for example by both right leaning Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and left leaning Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg. Her research reveals, however, that much of the polarization that we’ve blamed on the Supreme Court had little to do with what the court said in Roe. She discusses how the bright line divide between the pro-life and pro-choice movements had not yet coalesced in the 1970s. Some other topics we discuss are: –Whether Roe prematurely ended debate about the meaning or scope of abortion rights –The forces that brought together the political right and the pro-life movement –Roe as a canvas onto which activists could project different strategic aims Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 Touko 201650min

Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His book The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 2016) interprets the New Deal as a massive but unstable experiment from the main of American political culture. Against arguments that the New Deal was the product of the American penchant for reform, Cowie asserts that it was a remarkable historical detour. The Great Depression and WWII were specific historical circumstances that wrought a short-lived effort for central government intervention in securing collective economic rights. Unions flourished, industrial workers gained job security and good wages, and the country enjoyed a relative amount of political cohesion. Multiple legislative measures and the growth of unions offered a countervailing power against corporate wealth accumulation and promised a bright economic future. Several enduring fissures in political culture would all but undo the New Deal after the 1970s. The long tensions over immigration, religious and racial hostility, the frailty of unions, and the ideology of Jeffersonian individualism remained and assured that the new interventionist role for the state would not last. By examining the birth of New Deal and its decline, Cowie locates a legacy of individual rights that stood against its long-term viability. As the central government has continued to expand under free market ideology, collective initiatives are being led at the local and state level by a cross-class neo-progressivism organizing labor and advocating for immigrants and other minorities. While the New Deal gave way to free market ideology, the future may lie in a new imaginary rising from below. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18 Huhti 201657min

Daniel K. Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia. His book, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers the origins of the pro-life movement not as reactionary and anti-feminist, but rather as a New Deal-inspired crusade for human rights and part of a progressive Catholic social agenda. Pro-lifers saw themselves as crusaders for the “right to life” appealing to natural law and the constitution of the United States. In the 1930s they stood against the utilitarian views of abortion liberalization promoted by secular doctors. After World War II Catholic doctors and lawyers were equating abortion with the holocaust and arguing for the fetus as protected by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. In the early 1960s, the debate over abortion moved to legislative and constitutional battles. Restrictive state laws began to crumble and post-Vatican Catholic opposition to abortion continued to erode among the laity. The decade ended with a restructuring of the movement as it gained allies among young progressives, anti-war activists, Protestants and evangelicals. Pro-life women, expressing a feminism of difference, became visible in the leadership ranks in what had been a virtually an all-male public campaign. The pro-life movement’s legislative victories were short term. Roe v. Wade and change in public opinion interrupted the ascendancy of the pro-life movement and its bipartisan identity to become part of a larger cultural battle. Williams offers an important contribution by highlighting the progressive origins of the pro-life movement before it became a conservative evangelical cause and an issue that continues to divide the nation. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Huhti 20161h 4min

Steve Phillips is the author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (The New Press, 2016). Phillips is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Several weeks ago, Matt Lewis came on the podcast to assess the state-of-affairs for conservatives. This week, Steve Phillips offers his new book on how progressives might reposition their electoral coalition in the future. Drawing on demographic data and the changing electoral map, Phillips argues for a shift from focusing on white swing voters to a new coalition of African American, Latino, and progressive white voters. The podcast is hosted by Heath Brown, assistant professor of public policy at the City University of New York, John Jay College and The Graduate Center. You can follow him on Twitter @heathbrown Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

21 Maalis 201619min