New Books in Public Policy

The Fog of Accountability: How Institutions Keep Voters from Holding Their Local Governments Accountable with Justin de Benedictis-Kessner (U Chicago Press, 2026)

In the United States, hundreds of thousands of elected and appointed officials serve more than 50,000 subnational governments, making important decisions about services r

Carceral Utopia: A Global History of Model Prisons with Gregory Salle (Polity, 2026)

What underpins the legitimacy of the prison system in the twenty-first century? Despite numerous challenges and setbacks, there is still a widespread belief that prisons

Outed: LBJ’s Confidant and the Arrest that Transformed a Presidency with Timothy Stewart-Winter (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Timothy Stewart-Winter joins Michael Stauch to discuss the arrest that transformed Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s longest-serving and most trus

Offshore Oildom: America’s Energy Expansion into the Ocean with Tyler Priest (LSU Press, 2026)

Offshore Oildom: America’s Energy Expansion into the Ocean (LSU Press, 2026) tells the riveting story of the United States’ quest to secure the oil riches of the sea. Dra

Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block with Talitha LeFlouria (Beacon Press, 2022)

In Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block (Beacon Press, 2022), historian Talitha L. LeFlouria ce

Parties on the Ground: A Study of Nominations for the House of Representatives with Kathleen Bawn and Knox Brown (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Parties on the Ground: A Study of Nominations for the House of Representatives (U Chicago Press, 2026) is a study of political parties and party nominations for the House

Disability: A History of Resistance with David Turner (Random House, 2026)

Despite there being more than 16 million disabled people in the UK today, disability rarely features in mainstream accounts of our past. That absence is not down to a lac

Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream with Dixie Dillon Lane (Eerdmans, 2026)

Discover the untold story of why homeschooling moved from the margins to the mainstream of American education. In this groundbreaking study Skipping School: A History of

Fictions of Freedom: Migration, Modern Slavery and Bureaucracy in India with Pankhuri Agarwal (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Fictions of Freedom: Migration, Modern Slavery and Bureaucracy in India (Cambridge UP, 2026) emerges from the fact of anti-trafficking interventions having led to newer

Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability with Moritz A. Schramm (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Social media giants like Meta and transnational regulators such as the European Union are transforming private governance by creatively emulating public law frameworks.

Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival with Sarah Brothers (U California Press, 2026)

As overdose deaths continue to mount and debates rage over harm reduction, drug policy, and homelessness, Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival (U California P

Civil Societies, Uncivil States: Government Repression of NGOs with Suparna Chaudhry (Cornell UP, 2026)

Why would a government bother to go after groups that carry no weapons and hold no power? Suparna Chaudhry argues that the answer says a lot about where politics is headi

The Technocratic International: Experts and the Making of a World from Nowhere with Jan Eijking (Oxford UP, 2026)

Most international organisations today-from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the World Health Organisation-present themselves as technical institutions se

Immoral Traffic An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India with Vibhuti Ramachandran (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Immoral Traffic: An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India (Cambridge UP, 2025) delves into the complex intersection of India's anti-prosti

Down and Out in Utopia: Unemployment as Moral Education in Norway with Kelly McKowen (U Toronto Press, 2026)

Imagine that you have just lost your job. You wonder: “Who or what can I depend on now?” The answer, it turns out, varies significantly depending on where you live. In No

A Healthy Union: How States Can Lead on Environmental Health with Susan Kaplan (Island Press, 2025)

In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state policies are the strongest tools available to create safe, sustainable environm

Will AI Make Human Labor Obsolete? with Garrison Lovely

Today I’m speaking with Garrison Lovely, technology journalist and author of the new book, Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us — and How to Sto

The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice with Federica Coppola (Cambridge UP, 2026)

The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge UP, 2026) highlights the concept of 'belonging' as an unprecedented lens

India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South with Amit Ranjan and Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska (Routledge, 2026)

Can we expect leadership and responsibility from the Asian Global South in climate change governance? India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsi

Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing with Rahim Kurwa (U California Press, 2025)

In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing (U California Press, 2025), which ex