NB Public Policy (2024)

06/07/2022

THE OPPORTUNITY TRAP: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program (NYU Press) is the first book to look at the impact of the H-4 dependent visa programs on women and men visa holders in Indian families in America. Comparing two distinct groups of Indian immigrant families -families of male high-tech workers and female nurses-Pallavi Banerjee reveals how visa policies that are legally gender and race neutral in fact have gendered and racialized ramifications for visa holders and their spouses.

Drawing on interviews with 55 Indian couples, Banerjee highlights the experiences of high-skilled immigrants as they struggle to cope with visa laws, which forbid their spouses from working paid jobs. She examines how these unfair restrictions destabilize-if not completely dismantle-families, who often break under this marital, financial, and emotional stress.

Banerjee shows us, through the eyes of immigrants themselves, how the visa process strips them of their rights, forcing them to depend on their spouses and the government in fundamentally challenging ways. The Opportunity Trap provides a critical look at our visa system, underscoring how it fails immigrant families. Learn more on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-opportunity-trap

30/06/2022

Formal mathematical models have provided tremendous insights into politics in recent decades. FORMAL MODELS of DOMESTIC POLITICS (Cambridge University Press) is the leading graduate textbook covering the crucial models that underpin current theoretical and empirical research on politics by both economists and political scientists. This textbook was recently updated to reflect the wealth of new theory-building around the functioning of authoritarian regimes, as well as to include recent developments in the theory of electoral competition, delegation, legislative bargaining, and collective action.

In our interview, we discuss what formal models are, how they work, and illustrates their usefulness with several examples. We also speak briefly at the end about current Russian politics and the ideas he outlined in his February Washington Post Monkey Cage blog piece on the implications of the invasion of Ukraine. Listen in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/formal-models-of-domestic-politics

28/06/2022

Philanthropists are praised for their generosity but does their desire to keep control of what happens to their donations mean they exercise power in ways that clash with democratic principles? Approval of philanthropists’ good intentions can mask some important moral considerations about what philanthropy means for the donor and the recipient.

Generosity, influence, reputation and paternalism: democracy and philanthropy with Owen Bennett Jones and Emma Saunders Hastings. Hasting is author of PRIVATE VIRTUES, PUBLIC VICES: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality (University of Chicago Press). Author-interview podcast link 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/private-virtues-public-vices

23/06/2022

Men, especially Black men, often stand in as the ultimate symbol of the mass incarceration crisis in the United States. Women are treated as marginal, if not overlooked altogether, in histories of the criminal legal system. In THE STREETS BELONG to US: S*x, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification (UNC Press)--a searing history of women and police in the modern United States--Anne Gray Fischer narrates how sexual policing fueled a dramatic expansion of police power. The enormous discretionary power that police officers wield to surveil, target, and arrest anyone they deem suspicious was tested, legitimized, and legalized through the policing of women's sexuality and their right to move freely through city streets. Author-interview podcast link ⬇️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-streets-belong-to-us

23/06/2022

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. Racial, social, and class inequities and the public health crises in the US are deeply intertwined, their roots and manifestations continually pressuring each other. This has been both illuminated and exacerbated since 2020, with the Movement for Black Lives (BLM) and the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on historically disadvantaged groups within the US.

Dayna Bowen Matthew explores and unpacks the public health crisis that is racism in her new book, JUST HEALTH: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America (NYU Press). She describes how structural inequality undermines the interests of a thriving nation and the steps we can take to undo the pervasive nature of inequality to create more equitable and just systems. Hear her conversation with Lilly Goren on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/just-health

22/06/2022

The exorbitant costs of urban housing and the widening gap in income inequality are fueling a combative new movement in cities around the world. A growing number of influential activists aren't waiting for new public housing to be built. Instead, they're calling for more construction and denser cities in order to increase affordability.

YES TO THE CITY: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing (Princeton University Press) offers an in-depth look at the "Yes in My Backyard" (YIMBY) movement. From its origins in San Francisco to its current cadre of activists pushing for new apartment towers in places like Boulder, Austin, and London, Max Holleran explores how urban density, once maligned for its association with overpopulated slums, has become a rallying cry for millennial activists locked out of housing markets and unable to pay high rents. Holleran provides a detailed account of YIMBY activists campaigning for construction, new zoning rules, better public transit, and even candidates for local and state office. YIMBY groups draw together an unlikely coalition, from developers and real estate agents to environmentalists, and Holleran looks at the increasingly contentious battles between market-driven pragmatists and rent-control idealists. Arguing that advocates for more housing must carefully weigh their demands for supply with the continuing damage of gentrification, he shows that these individuals see high-density urbanism and walkable urban spaces as progressive statements about the kind of society they would like to create. Listen in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/yes-to-the-city

23/05/2022

THE LOST PROMISE: American Universities in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press) is a magisterial examination of the turmoil that rocked American universities in the 1960s, with a unique focus on the complex roles played by professors as well as students.

The 1950s through the early 1970s are widely seen as American academia’s golden age, when universities—well funded and viewed as essential for national security, economic growth, and social mobility—embraced an egalitarian mission. Swelling in size, schools attracted new types of students and professors, including radicals who challenged their institutions’ calcified traditions. But that halcyon moment soon came to a painful and confusing end, with consequences that still afflict the halls of ivy. In this new book, Ellen Schrecker— historian of both the McCarthy era and the modern American university—delivers a far-reaching examination of how and why it happened. PODCAST LINK 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-lost-promise

04/05/2022

Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracked up to be? If so, how is it changing the game? How is it likely to affect us as customers, tenants, aspiring homeowners, students, educators, patients, clients, prison inmates, members of ethnic and sexual minorities, and voters in liberal democracies? Authored by experts in fields ranging from computer science and law to philosophy and cognitive science, A CITIZEN'S GUIDE to ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (MIT Press) offers a concise overview of moral, political, legal and economic implications of AI. Give John Zerilli's NBN interview a listen ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/a-citizens-guide-to-artificial-intelligence

26/04/2022

Over the last 40 years, the US penal system has grown at an unprecedented rate―five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. In THE PUNISHMENT IMPERATIVE: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America (NYU Press), criminologists Todd Clear and Natasha Frost argue that America’s move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation; it was a grand social experiment. Tracing a wide array of trends related to the criminal justice system, this book charts the rise of penal severity in America and speculates that a variety of force have finally come together to bring this great social experiment to an end. Listen in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-punishment-imperative

26/04/2022

Public debts have exploded to levels unprecedented in modern history as governments responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis. Their dramatic rise has prompted apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of heavy debts―about the drag they will place on economic growth and the burden they represent for future generations.

IN DEFENSE of PUBLIC DEBT (Oxford University Press) offers a sharp rejoinder to this view, marshaling the entire history of state-issued public debt to demonstrate its usefulness. Authors Barry Eichengreen, Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves, and Kris James Mitchener argue that the ability of governments to issue debt has played a critical role in addressing emergencies―from wars and pandemics to economic and financial crises, as well as in funding essential public goods and services such as transportation, education, and healthcare. In these ways, the capacity to issue debt has been integral to state building and state survival. Learn more on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/in-defense-of-public-debt

18/04/2022

The beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late 19th-century labor movement and to policymakers’ efforts to appeal to working-class voters. But in AGENTS of REFORM: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State (Princeton University Press), Elisabeth Anderson shows that the regulatory welfare state began a half-century earlier, in the 1830s, with the passage of the first child labor laws.

Listen in as the author discusses this pathbreaking contribution to our understanding of the emergence of the welfare state and the role of social movements in political reform on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/agents-of-reform

18/04/2022

Few would disagree that inclusion is both the right thing to do and good for business. Then why are we so terrible at it? If we believe in the morality and the profitability of including people of diverse and underestimated backgrounds in the workplace, why don’t we do it? Because, explains Ruchika Tulshyan in this eye-opening book, we don’t realize that inclusion takes awareness, intention, and regular practice. Listen in as Tulshyan discusses INCLUSION ON PURPOSE: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work (MIT Press) on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/inclusion-on-purpose

15/04/2022

UNDOING DRUGS: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction (Hachette Book Group) tells a long-running, but largely unknown, story of how a few people and groups – propelled at first by the AIDS pandemic -- swam against one of the most powerful policy tides in America – our nation’s 50-year war on drugs. Maia Szalavitz’s book is a personal and political history of the idea of harm reduction, which is a philosophy, a set of health practices, and a call to action. Harm reduction is a powerful alternative to virtually all of the “conventional wisdom” about drugs and drug policy. Learn more as Szalavitz discusses the book on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/undoing-drugs

08/04/2022

Since its establishment, Social Security has become the financial linchpin of American retirement. Yet demographic trends—longer lifespans and declining birthrates—mean that this popular program now pays more in benefits than it collects in revenue. Without reforms, 83 million Americans will face an immediate benefit cut of 20% in 2034. How did we get here and what is the solution?

In FIXING SOCIAL SECURITY: The Politics of Reform in a Polarized Age (Princeton University Press), R. Douglas Arnold explores the historical role that Social Security has played in American politics, why Congress has done nothing to fix its insolvency problem for 3 decades, and what legislators can do to save it. Delve deeper on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/fixing-social-security

04/04/2022

"Should we eat animals?" was, until recently, a question reserved for moral philosophers and an ethically minded minority, but it is now posed on restaurant menus and supermarket shelves, on social media and morning television. The recent surge in popularity for veganism in the UK, Europe, and North America has created a rupture in the rites and rituals of meat, challenging the cultural narratives that sustain our omnivory.

In THE MEAT PARADOX: Eating, Empathy, and the Future of Meat (Pegasus Books), Rob Percival, an expert in the politics of meat, searches for the evolutionary origins of the meat paradox, asking when our relationship with meat first became emotionally and ethically complicated. Tune in as he joins us on the NBN ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-meat-paradox

04/04/2022

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely translated and acclaimed WHAT IS POPULISM?, takes us back to basics in DEMOCRACY RULES (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded not just on liberty and equality, but also on uncertainty.
Listen in as Müller suggests concretely how democracy's critical infrastructure of intermediary institutions could be renovated, re-empowering citizens while also preserving a place for professionals such as journalists and judges. PODCAST LINK: ⤵️
https://newbooksnetwork.com/democracy-rules

16/12/2021

Inequality in America manifests in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in how we eat. From her years of field research, sociologist and ethnographer Priya Fielding-Singh brings us into the kitchens of dozens of families from varied educational, economic, and ethnoracial backgrounds to explore how—and why—we eat the way we do. In HOW the OTHER HALF EATS: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America (Little, Brown Spark), we get to know 4 families intimately: the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas, a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family. Learn more ↙

https://newbooksnetwork.com/how-the-other-half-eats

15/12/2021

Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment. The country's history is also, however, brimming with social movements that have condemned such restrictions as violations of fundamental American liberties. This fierce conflict is one of the defining features of the social history of medicine in the United States.

In CHOOSE YOUR MEDICINE: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America (Oxford UP), Lewis A. Grossman presents a compelling look at how persistent but evolving notions of a right to therapeutic choice have affected American health policy, law, and regulation from the Revolution through the Trump Era. Listen in as Grossman joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/choose-your-medicine

16/12/2020

In the United States, gun violence is in a state of national crisis, yet efforts to reform gun regulation face significant political and constitutional barriers. In WEAPON of CHOICE: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights (Harvard University Press)
Ian Ayres and Fredrick E. Vars put forward practical solutions which, where adopted, will cause an immediate reduction in lives lost as a result of gun violence without infringing on the individual freedoms of gun ownership protected by the second amendment. Ayres and Vars join Jane Richards on the podcast ↙

https://newbooksnetwork.com/weapon-of-choice

17/11/2020

"At their heart, pandemics are an information problem. Solve the information problem and you can defeat the virus."

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March, economist Josuha Gans decided to write about the complex interplay between epidemiology and economics and the policy dilemmas it poses. By June, Joshua Gans had published ECONOMICS in the AGE of COVID-19. Today he joins Tim Gywnn Jones to give us the rundown on the new extended version, THE PANDEMIC INFORMATION GAP: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press).👂👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-pandemic-information-gap-and-the-brutal-economics-of-covid-19

11/11/2020

Assessing legal cases, scholarship, and popular media through an intersectional and q***r studies lens, QUEERING LAW and ORDER: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System (Rowman & Littlefield) comprehensively surveys the state of LGBTQ people within the criminal justice system. Author and John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor Kevin Nadal joins Nick Pozek on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/q***ring-law-and-order-lgbtq-communities-and-the-criminal-justice-system

09/11/2020

THE POLITICS of POLICE REFORM: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (Oxford University Press) provides an answer to a very important question: “What does it take to reform a post-Soviet police force?” Erica Marat looks at specific case studies – in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan – in order to identify and analyze instances where public mobilization challenged the conduct of police offers and their use of violence. She considers the legacies of Soviet policing, but also identifies important factors that led to policing’s reform. Check out her conversation with Nicholas Seay 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/erica-marat-the-politics-of-police-reform-society-against-the-state-in-post-soviet-countries-oxford-up-2018

04/11/2020

Kathryn A. Mariner has written an ethnography of adoption processes in the United States through the inner workings of a private adoption agency in Chicago. Focusing especially on transracial adoptions, CONTINGENT KINSHIP: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States (University of California Press) orients our gaze away from the adoptive family as the logical outcome of adoption, making the case that we should understand adoption as a future-oriented process with various possible outcomes. Learn more as Mariner joins Reighan Gillam on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/kathryn-a-mariner-contingent-kinship-the-flows-and-futures-of-adoption-in-the-united-states-u-california-press-2019

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