Julian E. Zelizer, “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society” (Penguin Press, 2015)
In recent decades, as Democrats and Republicans have grown more and more polarized ideologically, and gridlock has becoming increasingly standard in Congress, there has been a noticeable pining for th...
22 Maj 201554min
Lee Drutman, “The Business of America is Lobbying” (Oxford UP, 2015)
Lee Drutman is the author of The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (Oxford UP 2015). Drutman is a senior fellow at New America. H...
12 Maj 201519min
J. Bronsteen, C. Buccafusco, and J. S. Masur, “Happiness and the Law” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
In their new book Happiness and the Law (University of Chicago Press 2014), John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, and Jonathan S. Masur argue through the use of hedonic psychological data that we sh...
12 Maj 201543min
Finis Dunaway, “Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images” (
Oil-soaked birds in Prince William Sound. The “crying Indian” in a 1970s anti-littering ad. A lonely polar bear on an Arctic ice floe. Such environmental images have proliferated over the past half-ce...
11 Maj 201555min
Kevin Dougherty and Rebecca Natow, “The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)
Funding for higher education in the U.S. is an increasingly divisive issue. Some states have turned to policies that tie institutional performance to funding appropriations so to have great accountabi...
25 Apr 201546min
Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza, “U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century” (Westview Press, 2015)
In this week’s podcast, we hear from an author and an editor. First, Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza are authors of U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: Making Americans, Remaking Ameri...
12 Apr 201527min
Kimberly Phillips-Fein, “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal” (W. W. Norton, 2010)
Today we’ll focus on the history of resistance to the New Deal. In her book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (W. W. Norton,2010), Kimberly Phillips-Fein details how many...
8 Apr 201534min
Pasi Sahlberg, “Finnish Lessons 2.0: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?” (Teachers College Press, 2014)
In late 2001 Finland became the darling of the education and policy communities, as its students toped the reading literacy, mathematics, and science PISA test rankings. While these results were somew...
3 Apr 201543min
