Author: Marshall Poe

Doron Taussig invites us to question the American Dream. Did you earn what you have? Did everyone else? The American Dream is built on the idea that Americans end up, in our working lives, roughly where we deserve to be based on our efforts and abilities—in other words, the United States is supposed to be a meritocracy. When Americans think and talk about our lives, we grapple with this idea, asking how a person got to where he or she is, and whether they earned it. 

In What We Mean by the American Dream: Stories We Tell about Meritocracy (Cornell UP, 2021), Taussig tries to find out how we answer that question. Weaving together interviews with Americans from many walks of life—as well as stories told in American media about prominent figures from politics, sports, and business—What We Mean by the American Dream investigates how Americans think about whether an individual deserves an opportunity, job, termination, paycheck, or fortune. Taussig's frank assessment of the state of the American workforce and its dreams allows him to truly and meaningfully ask the question that underpins so many of our political debates and personal frustrations, did you earn it? By doing so, he sheds new light on what we mean by—and how we can deliver on—the American Dream of today.

Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In her new book From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole: A Life with Television (University of Mississippi Press, 2021) TV scholar and fan Kathleen Collins reflects on how her life as a consumer of television has intersected with the cultural and technological evolution of the medium itself. In a narrative bridging television studies, memoir, and comic, literary nonfiction, Collins takes readers alongside her from the 1960s through to the present, reminiscing and commiserating about some of what has transpired over the last five decades in the US, in media culture, and in what constitutes a shared cultural history.

In a personal, critical, and entertaining meditation on her relationship with TV—as avid consumer and critic—she considers the concept and institution of TV as well as reminiscing about beloved, derided, or completely forgotten content. She describes the shifting role of TV in her life, in a progression that is far from unique, but rather representative of a largely collective experience. It affords a parallel coming of age, that of the author and her coprotagonist, television. By turns playful and serious, wry and poignant, it is a testament to the profound and positive effect TV can have on a life and, by extrapolation, on the culture.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction (Norton, 2021), acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale.

She describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as well as lesser-known figures in conservation history; she reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund; she explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros; and she confronts the darker side of conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism.

As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change escalate, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species—including our own

Jenny Splitter is an independent journalist covering food, farming, science, and climate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In this episode, we are talking to a British writer Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of acclaimed books on human behavior. His latest book, Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes (Harper Business, 2021), is about how to disagree better. Ian regularly publishes in The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Economist. He co-hosted the podcast series Polarized and created a BBC radio comedy series.

The piece we talked about today is "How to have Better Arguments Online" (The Guardian, February 21, 2021).

Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Interested in everything, with a particular weakness for literature and foreign relations.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Providing one of the first comprehensive, cross-cultural examinations of the dynamic market for sexual services, this book presents an evidence-based look at the multiple factors related to purchasing patterns and demand among clients who have used the internet.

The data is drawn from two large surveys of sex workers' clients in the US and UK. The book presents descriptive baseline data on client engagement with online platforms, demographics and patterns of frequency in different markets, information on smaller niche markets and client reactions to exploitation, safety and changes in the law.

Teela Sanders, Barbara G. Brents and Chris Wakefield's book Paying for Sex in a Digital Age: US and UK Perspectives (Routledge, 2020) makes clear that a variety of situational as well as individual factors affect the willingness and ability to purchase sexual services. The view that emerges shatters the stereotypes and generalistions on which much policy is based and demonstrates the complexities surrounding who pays for sex and the contours of sexual consumption in consumer culture.

Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

I spoke with Prof. Tim Jackson about his latest book: Post Growth, Life after Capitalism, published by Polity Books in 2021.

The book starts with a reflection on the event of the past few months. The success in 2019 of the school strikes for climate, the attention that Greta Thunberg received even in Davos, and the arrival of the pandemic that changed our priorities. Even the 2009 crisis challenged the degrowth movement when we experienced the consequences of the recession. I have asked how do we keep the focus on sustainability?

This book and his work in general are about the need for a change in our economic paradigms. But we are still tied to old ideas and institutions. Keynes that many progressive politicians and economists frequently refer to, cannot be really claimed to be offering revolutionary ideas for our times. Still, the book mentions an essay by Keynes from 1930 where he appears clearly interested in what should come after the immediate actions (growth) needed to overcome the great depression.

We discussed how the shift in economic paradigm can follow different patterns in the rich nations and in the developing ones. Finally, referring to the final chapter, 'Dolphins in Venice', we talked about what could happen at the end of the pandemic to our cultural and consumption preferences.

Capitalism is broken. The relentless pursuit of more has delivered climate catastrophe, social inequality and financial instability—and left us ill prepared for life in a global pandemic. Weaving together philosophical reflection, economic insight and social vision, Tim Jackson’s passionate and provocative book dares us to imagine a world beyond capitalism—a place where relationship and meaning take precedence over profits and power. Post Growth is both a manifesto for system change and an invitation to rekindle a deeper conversation about the nature of the human condition.

Dr Tim Jackson holds degrees in mathematics (MA, Cambridge), philosophy (MA, Uni Western Ontario) and physics (PhD, St Andrews). He is Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity and Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey in the UK.

Andrea Bernardi is Senior Lecturer in Employment and Organization Studies at Oxford Brookes University in the UK.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

As Twitter enters its own adolescence, both the users and the creators of this famous social media platform find themselves engaging with a tool that certainly could not have been imagined at its inception. In their engaging book Twitter: A Biography (NYU Press, 2020), Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym (@nancybaym) tell the fascinating and surprising story of how this platform developed from a quirky SMS tool for publicly sharing intimate details of personal life to a major source of late-breaking news, political activism, and even governmental communication. This story explores how many of Twitter's most ubiquitous and iconic conventions were not systematically rolled out from a centralized corporate strategy, but so often driven by users who continued to innovate within the limitations of the platform they had to democratically create the platform they desired. Yet this story highlights the tensions along the way as Twitter has adapted to new and unforeseen challenges, business models, and social consequences as the experiments of social media have become increasingly powerful, influential, and contested. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the wild and changing landscape of internet communication and communities.

Ryan David Shelton (@ryoldfashioned) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche stands among the canon’s most-cited figures, with aphorisms dotting texts on a variety of topics, and his name evokes strong responses from almost anyone who has ever heard of him. His aphoristic and poetic writing style have made it difficult at times to understand what he meant, although the wealth of commentaries pulling him in a variety of different directions points to the fact that he did mean something. On the political right he has been credited as an influence among many reactionary political movements, but even on the left he is cited as an emancipatory figure, suspicious of the powers that be. Aside from these, his writings on art and psychology have remained influential for many. It would seem then that there are numerous Nietzsche’s one can pull from, and due to the loose nature of his writing, one would seem to be warranted in reading Nietzsche a bit more freely. However, that freedom and flexibility misses that there may in fact be a unifying thread to Nietzsche’s thought, and it may in fact be a much darker thread than many of his apologists have realized.

This is the main argument of the book we’ll be discussing today, Domenico Losurdo’s Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Balance Sheet. Originally published about 20 years ago in Italian, it has recently been delivered to English audiences by Gregor Benton and with an introduction by Harrison Fluss as part of the Historical Materialism book series. Clocking in at just over 1000 pages, it is both a literal and figurative bombshell, delivering a rigorous and systematic account of Nietzsche’s thought. A major part of the books length comes from the fact that Losurdo refuses to treat Nietzsche in isolation, and instead spends a large amount of time recreating Nietzsche’s various contexts, 19th century Germany and Europe more broadly, as a way of making the political orientation of Nietzsche’s thought all the more explicit. Through his investigation, Losurdo reveals a Nietzsche who is committed to fighting against the democratic movements happening all around him and being an advocate for a superior elite at the expense of everyone else, whose main purpose in life is to serve them.

Domenico Losurdo was an Italian Marxist historian and philosopher. 

Harrison Fluss received his PhD in philosophy at Stony Brook University. He is a professor at Manhattan College, NYC and wrote the introduction to the English edition of The Aristocratic Rebel.

Daniel Tutt studied at American University and the European Graduate School. He teaches in the philosophy department at George Washington University. He reviewed The Aristocratic Rebel for Historical Materialism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Robert W. Snyder (Columbia University Press, 2019) covers almost 500 years of New York City’s still unfolding story of cultural diversity and political conflict, economic dynamism and unmatched human diversity. This briskly paced volume – which updates a first edition originally published in the mid-1990s – reminds us that today’s hot button debates about immigration, inequality, and globalization have, in various earlier forms, long played roles in the evolution and development of one of the world’s great cities.

Bruce Cory is editorial advisor at The Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day