Carola Binder, "Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A sweeping history of the United States’ economy and politics, in Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy (U Chicago Press, 2024), Carola Binder reveals how the American state has bee...
27 Maj 202443min
Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans, "The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels" (Crown, 2024)
For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters’ fields—a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning...
26 Maj 202439min
Premilla Nadasen, "Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" (Haymarket Books, 2023)
During the COVID pandemic, billions of dollars in relief aid was sent out to help us ride out the storm, although many people who struggled through it might scratch their heads at such a number, havin...
25 Maj 20241h 10min
Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" (Routledge, 2023)
For 40 years, this classic text has taken the issue of economic inequality seriously and asked: Why are our prisons filled with the poor? Why aren't the tools of the criminal justice system being used...
24 Maj 202436min
Mark Robert Rank, "The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The paradox of poverty amidst plenty has plagued the United States throughout the 21st century--why should the wealthiest country in the world also have the highest rates of poverty among the industri...
21 Maj 202439min
Joseph E. Stiglitz, "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society" (Norton, 2024)
In his latest book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society (W. W. Norton, 2024), Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz rethinks the nature of freedom and its relationship to capitalism. Whil...
20 Maj 202442min
Ryan Reft, "Heroin and Chocolate City: Black Community Responses to Drug Addiction in the Nation’s Capital, 1967-1973" (2024)
Ryan Reft is a historian in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, where he oversees collections pertaining to 20th and 21st century domestic politics and policies. He received his PhD in...
20 Maj 202455min
Elise Andaya, "Pregnant at Work: Low-Wage Workers, Power, and Temporal Injustice" (NYU Press, 2024)
The low-wage service industry is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors in the US economy. Its workers disproportionately tend to be low-income and minority women. Service sector work entails r...
19 Maj 202434min
