David A. Hopkins, “Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
Do we live in a country of red and blue states or something more purple-ish? The red state/blue state meme of 2000 has really never gone away, and scholarly debate, as well as frequent media attention...
12 Feb 201821min
Sam Rosenfeld, “The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
In our hyper polarized world, it is easy to assume that this is a natural state of being, the result of natural shifts in politics. In Sam Rosenfeld‘s new book, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of O...
5 Feb 201822min
Chris Zepeda-Millan, “Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
Prior to the wave of protests in 2017 supporting immigrants in the US, there were the protests of 2006. That spring, millions of Latinos and other immigrants across the country opposed Congressional a...
22 Jan 201826min
Gregory Laski, “Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress after Slavery” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Gregory Laski approaches the concept of democracy in his text, Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress after Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2018) from a variety of dimensions and perspectives,...
15 Jan 201849min
Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, “God at the Grassroots 2016: The Christian Right in American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
In the wake of the Alabama Senate election in December, 2017, attention has been drawn to the intersection of religion and politics. This is the subject of God at the Grassroots 2016: The Christian Ri...
7 Jan 201819min
Elizabeth McRae, “Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Much attention has been drawn to the role of white women in the recent Alabama senate election and the earlier election of Donald J. Trump as president. Today’s racial and gender politics have long hi...
1 Jan 201824min
Corey D. Fields, “Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans” (UC Press, 2016)
What is it about Black Republicans that makes them fodder for comedy? How do Black Republicans view their participation in their political group? Corey D. Fields answers these questions and more in hi...
24 Dec 201753min
Frank Baumgartner, et al., “Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty” (Oxford UP, 2017)
In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the ‘worst of the w...
22 Dec 201719min
