Category Archives: Politics
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The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, argues that capitalist imperatives have superseded those of Christianity over time.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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Current
Beach Reads!
Evangelical Narratives / Exvangelical Memoirs
The success of evangelical youth culture in the 1990s has yielded a soul-searching generation of disillusioned exvangelicals in the first decades of the 21st century. Some of these have written books about their experience, and this paper examines the ways … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Christianity, Culture War, Politics
Tagged Evangelical, Exvangelical, Narratives
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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
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Culture War, Politics
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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Recommended Reading – An Emersonian Summer
Perhaps the foremost philosophical and literary figure in all of American history, Ralph Waldo Emerson is a challenging and sometimes mystifying writer. The books on this list are arranged in hope of making his life and work more accessible, and … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Politics, Reading
Tagged Emerson, Transcendentalism, Unitarianism
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A Recession of Charisma
David A. Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University. His book, Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution, documents the political influence of military … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Politics
Tagged Charisma, Leadership, Revolutions
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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
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Politics
Tagged GOP, Nicole Hemmer, Partisans
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Church, Commerce, Creation – A Conversation with Mark Stoll
Mark Stoll is Professor of History at Texas Tech University. He is the author of Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America; Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism; and Profit: An Environmental History. Each book explores … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Climate Change, Convo, Politics
Tagged Environmentalism, Mark Stoll
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Recommended Reading – Growth & Degrowth
Over the course of 2023 my interest in climate advocacy has carried me deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of climate change causes, which turn out to be the same forces driving a whole host of other ecological problems, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Climate Change, Politics
Tagged Climate Change, Degrowth
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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
Posted in Book Reviews, Christianity, Culture War, Politics
Tagged Christianity, Evangelicalism, Racism
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Communicating Climate Change
David Wallace-Wells is editor-at-large for New York Magazine, as well as a contributor at the New York Times. His 2017 article, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” later expanded into a 2019 book of the same title, sparked a heated discussion within the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Climate Change, Politics
Tagged Climate Change, Katharine Hayhoe, Wallace-Wells
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Speaking of the Culture Wars
At the Table, tonight!
Posted in Climate Change, Culture War, Politics
Tagged Culture War
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Recommended Reading 