Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Starting in ...
26 Jul 202553min
Teo Ballvé, "The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia" (Cornell UP, 2020)
In The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia (Cornell UP, 2020), Teo Ballvé challenges the notion that in Urabá, Colombia, the cause of the region's violent history and unruly cont...
26 Jul 202539min
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export controls affect large numbers of companies ...
25 Jul 20251h 3min
Luke A. Nichter, "The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election Of 1968" (Yale UP, 2024)
A sitting Democratic president who chooses not to run for re-election, a vice president running out of the president’s shadow, and a Republican nominee trying to make a political comeback amidst accus...
22 Jul 20251h 2min
Ketian Zhang, "China's Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Emerging from an award-winning article in International Security, China's Gambit examines when, why, and how China attempts to coerce states over perceived threats to its national security. Since 1990...
21 Jul 20251h 13min
Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov, "American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship" (UP of Kansas, 2021)
All nations make rules -- through their constitutions, legislatures, bureaucratic practices – about who counts as a citizen. American by Birth examines the role of the Supreme Court – particularly a r...
20 Jul 20251h 17min
Frank L. Jones, "Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age" (UP Kansas, 2020)
In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in the chamber today.” Among the respected members who...
20 Jul 20251h 4min
Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)
In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of the symptoms and results of that inequality. Racia...
19 Jul 202544min
