Category Archives: Book Reviews
Degrowth & Its Critics #1 – McNeill and Engelke
John R. McNeill is Distinguished University Professor of History and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Peter Engelke is Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Snowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. In their 2014 book, The Great Acceleration: A History of … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Climate Change, Degrowth
Tagged Degrowth, Great Acceleration
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The Enchantments of Trumpism
Eugene McCarraher is Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova University. His book, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, argues that capitalist imperatives have superseded those of Christianity over time. The following was presented as part … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Christianity, Politics
Tagged Capitalism, Christianity, Trump
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The Devil You Think You Know
Whitney Phillips is Associate Professor of Information Politics and Media Ethics at the University of Oregon, and Mark Brockway is Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University. Their book, The Shadow Gospel: How Anti-Liberal Demonology Possessed U.S. Religion, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Christianity, Culture War, Politics
Tagged Evangelical, Liberal, Trump
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Imagined Communities
Edward Bellamy was an American socialist author, activist, and journalist who wrote six novels in the second half of the nineteenth century. His most famous work, Looking Backward 2000-1887, inspired the formation of “Nationalist Clubs” throughout the country, each dedicated … Continue reading
Paradise & Pragmatism
Chris Jennings is an historian and writer living in Northern California. His book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism, documents the experiences of five distinct and but related attempts at American communism around the middle of the nineteenth century. … Continue reading
End Time and Time Again
Dorian Lynskey is the author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day and The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984. His latest, Everything Must Go: The Stories We … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books
Tagged Apocalypse, Climate Change, End Times
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Started on the Margin Now We’re Here
Matthew Dallek is Professor of Political Management at George Washington University. In his most recent book, he identifies the John Birch Society as the vanguard of an insurgent right-wing extremism in American politics. Known for their early embrace of conspiracy … Continue reading
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Tagged Birchers, Trump, Veterans
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Nostalgia for a Tragic Past
Steven Hahn is Professor of History at New York University. His previous books, The Roots of Southern Populism, A Nation Under Our Feet, and A Nation Without Borders, have won many prestigious awards. In his latest, Hahn shows how American … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Politics
Tagged Caste, Donald Trump, Illiberalism
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The Sexual Revelation
Benjamin E. Park is Associate Professor of History at Sam Houston State University. His books, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier and American Zion, provide a comprehensive view of Mormonism from … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Christianity, Politics
Tagged Mormonism, Oneida, Polygamy
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Conservatives or Radicals or Something Else Entirely
Nicole Hemmer is Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. She and I discussed her first book back in 2016. Her second book, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, resituates the Republican Party’s sharp rightward … Continue reading
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Tagged GOP, Nicole Hemmer, Partisans
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From Color Line to Colorblind
J. Russell Hawkins is Professor of History at Indiana Wesleyan University. Jesse Curtis is Assistant Professor of History at Valparaiso University. Each is the author of a newish book about white evangelicals and colorblind rhetoric in the second half of … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, Evangelicalism, Racism
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Conservative Christians and Climate Change
Neall W. Pogue is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. Robin Globus Veldman is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Texas A&M University. James Morton Turner is Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley College, … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, Climate Change
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Thinking About Talking About Climate Change
Katharine Hayhoe is Professor of Political Science and past co-director of the Climate Center at Texas Tech University. She is chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, an Oxfam “Sister of the Plant,” and a UN “Champion of the Earth.” Her … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Christianity, Climate Change, Politics
Tagged Climate Change, Evangelicalism
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The Eyes of the World Upon Us, Again
Abram Van Engen is Associate Professor of English at Washington University of St. Louis. Daniel T. Rodgers is Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University. Richard M. Gamble is the Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Chair of History and Politics at … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Christianity, Politics
Tagged Books, City on a Hill, John Winthrop
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The Trappist and the Rock Star, Sort Of
Robert Hudson is a recognized Bob Dylan scholar, a member of the International Thomas Merton Society, and a veteran editor. In his The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966, he documents a series … Continue reading
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Tagged Dylan, Hudson, Merton
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