Does today’s political moment have you asking “How did we get here?” If so, we have a reading list that includes histories of American commerce and trade, culture wars, the American Supreme Court, European capitalism, and the hunt for Nazis who escaped justice after World War II. Works by political scientists analyze the politics of resentment, the importance of political parties, how constitutional rules can hinder or help the decline of democracy, and the racial politics of the Obama era. Ethnographic studies address the real roots of poverty, the racial dynamics of police stops, the lived experience of dealing with America’s safety net, and the crisis of deindustrialization in working-class communities. Finally, we offer a handy guide for assessing the reliability of information online.

All of the books below are available for 40% off when you use the code PERSPECTIVES40 on our website at checkout.

History

Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy

Douglas A. Irwin

Best of Books 2018  

“At a time when Washington’s approach to trade seems poised to undergo a significant shift, this magisterial book surveys the entire history of US trade policy since the Colonial era, using congressional debates and actions to show how conflicting domestic economic interests have led Americans to clash repeatedly over trade.”—Foreign Affairs,

A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, Second Edition

Andrew Hartman, With a New Afterword

“The first book to tell the story of this war in all its diversity. . . . Hartman, to his credit, insists that the issues at stake in cultural politics are ‘real and compelling.’ . . . His affections clearly rest with the liberals, but he is generally non-polemical in his accounts of the two sides.”—Christian Century  

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

Milton Mayer, With a New Afterword by Sir Richard J. Evans

“In 1951, Mayer returned to Germany to find out what had made Nazism possible. . . . When he returned home, he was afraid for his own country.”—The New York Review of Books  

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden

“The slim volume here summarizes McCloskey’s views of what she has termed the ‘Great Enrichment’ and makes it accessible to a wider public. In every way, this comparatively slim volume is vintage McCloskey: written in a rather informal conversational style, she states her views in her inimitable crystal‑clear prose.”—EH‑Net  

The American Supreme Court, Sixth Edition

Robert G. McCloskey and Sanford Levinson

“The best general book on the Court in years.”—New York Times Book Review, on the first edition

The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?

Gerald N. Rosenberg

“Rosenberg argues with considerable subtlety and power and no little persuasiveness that the promise of Supreme Court action has been chimerical. In his view, Justices are, at best, the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns of the larger American social drama, and the lawyers pleading their cases have mostly been wasting their thespian talents.”—The Nation  

Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil

Michael Soffer

“The value of Soffer’s book lies in its narrow focus on this situation and the effect it had on the people of a progressive American suburb.”—Wall Street Journal

The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

Amitav Ghosh

“Illuminating. . . . Ghosh wants us to reckon with broader structures of power, involving ‘the physical subjugation of people and territory,’ and, crucially, the ‘idea of conquest, as a process of extraction.’ The world‑as‑resource perspective not only depletes our environment of the raw materials we seek; it ultimately depletes it of meaning.”—New Yorker  

Paper $18.00

Political Science

Why Parties?: A Second Look

John H. Aldrich

“Through his careful analysis, the author deftly explains the transformation of parties from ‘ramshackle coalitions’ to ‘quasi‑parliamentary’ and from ‘modern mass parties’ to ‘parties in service.’ Why Parties? is now the premiere standard book on political parties. . . . Highly recommended.”—Choice  

Justice by Means of Democracy

Danielle Allen

“Allen’s big idea is that justice can’t be achieved simply by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and liberty isn’t just about being left alone to do your own thing. People care about more than money, and we are social creatures. We flourish when we participate as equals in the public sphere.”—New York Times

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

Katherine J. Cramer

“If you’re wondering about why politics these days have become so fraught and so emotional, Kathy Cramer is one of the best people to ask.”—Washington Post

How to Save a Constitutional Democracy

Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq

“Awe-inspiring. How to Save a Constitutional Democracy is masterfully informed, crystal clear, and exceptionally sober. I learned an enormous amount.”—Adam Przeworski, New York University  

Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930

Beatrix Hoffman

“Hoffman’s goal is to encourage an honest debate about healthcare reform by identifying the varied forms of healthcare rationing. Health Care for Some examines access to and denial of care in US medicine since 1930. . . . Hoffman paints a striking picture of the human face of need.”—Times Higher Education

Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public

Donald R. Kinder and Nathan P. Kalmoe

“Neither Liberal nor Conservative stands as an important corrective to the prevailing narrative that American voters are becoming more ideological.”—Washington Monthly

The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them

Aziz Rana

“Fascinating and powerful. . . . Rana presents a sweeping history of constitutional politics from the late 19th century to the present that reverses much of what Americans have learned to accept about the Constitution’s meaning.”—The Nation  

Post‑Racial or Most‑Racial?: Race and Politics in the Obama Era

Michael Tesler

“Tesler makes a powerful argument that race has affected even seemingly non‑racial parts of American society.”—Salon  

Ethnographies

Trapped in America’s Safety Net: One Family’s Struggle

Andrea Louise Campbell

“An intensely personal tale with straightforward and sober analysis woven throughout. . . . [Trapped in America’s Safety Net] leaves readers with a clear picture of a broken system and a powerful reason to fix it.”—Health Affairs

Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago

Christine J. Walley

“Walley’s willingness to dive headfirst into questions about the nature of persistent economic segregation seems especially necessary in today’s post‑Occupy environment where issues of inequality are understood to be important yet still seem unable to be truly addressed.”— Spectrum Culture  

The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, Second Edition

William Julius Wilson

“Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass.”—David J. Garrow, Washington Post Book World

Making Sense of Information & News

Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online

Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg “A new book from two leading academics has arrived to help arm us against the flood of deliberate attempts to sow distrust and separate us from our own senses of what’s real and