Month: January 2016

Recommended Reads: 01.26.16

New year, new reading list. Here are some January releases to kick-start 2016.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Jane Mayer

In recent years the Koch brothers have become liberal bogeymen, invoked in political ads, petitions and editorials to maximize fear factor. Certainly, the truth behind these billionaire brothers is more complicated than that, but they are rightly the focus of Mayer’s history of how the wealthiest Americans have rigged the political system in their favor. Folks of different political persuasions may disagree on ideology, but we should all be able to agree on the importance of transparency. That is what Mayer hopes to provide in this highly acclaimed investigation.

 

DemocracyinBlackDemocracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

Eddie S. Glaude

Staying in the political realm, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude offers this poignant and difficult narrative about the state of race relations in America. For a brief time, we lived under the comfortable illusion of a post-racial country, but since electing its first black president, America has grown more racially divided. Glaude chronicles recent injustices and proposes a bold fix in Democracy in Black.

 

TheConfidenceGame

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It… Every Time

Maria Konnikova

At some point, the market will grow weary of the Gladwellian genre, but not yet. There’s a good reason for that. We are learning more about our brains and our behavior every year, and the findings are compelling. Perhaps the mind has its own ego that loves to read about itself? So much for navel gazing. Now it’s all about the brain gazing, and in Konnikova’s new book she shows why even the brightest among us are capable of being conned.

Author Interview: Joanna Mishtal, The Politics of Morality

Growing up in the west, I had a fairly uncomplicated view of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, they were the EvilThe Politics of Morality Empire. Then down comes the Berlin Wall. The Iron Curtain crumbles. Freedom wins the day. Roll credits.

Of course, history is never that simple.

Anthropologist Joanna Mishtal grew up in Soviet Poland, defected to the United States as a teenager, and now studies reproductive rights in her country of birth. Her research uncovers a thornier narrative of post-Soviet Poland. Rather than a secular democracy, the Catholic church has assumed a dominant political role.

As a result, Poland has some of the strictest abortion laws of any European Union country, and Mishtal explores the effect this has had on women and women’s rights in her first book, The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland.

The book, published by Ohio University Press, blends politics, personal narrative, Polish history and peer-reviewed research. Full disclosure: I have known Mishtal for close to a decade and I proofread early drafts of a few chapters.

Mishtal provides a unique view of Polish politics, having experienced both Soviet and post-Soviet culture as well as having lived in the west. Most impressively, she is able to switch easily between detached observation and insider familiarity, lending a unique voice to her research. Her personal insights enhance the narrative while her use of case studies give flesh and bone to the academics.

With Russia once again a wild card, the EU in crisis and Poland’s recent swing even further to the right, The Politics of Morality is a timely and important read. We are still figuring out both the history and consequences of the end of the Cold War, and Mishtal’s is an important and necessary voice in the discussion.

She recently sat down with Ensuing Chapters to discuss The Politics of Morality.