Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime. That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform. La Guardia's approach to low-level policing anticipated later trends in law enforcement, includin ... Show More
Jan 26
Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, disused for decades, where over the years unhoused people have taken shelter. The sociologist Terry Williams ventured into the tunnel r ... Show More
27m 9s
Jan 25
Kimberley Johnson, "Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Kimberley Johnson is about how the Black Power movement reshaped urban politics in the United States—from expectations to practices. Although the national and international dimensions of the ... Show More
49m 40s
Jan 25
Simon Devereaux, "Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Simon Devereaux provides the first comprehensive account of execution practices in England and their extraordinary transformation from 1660 to 1900. Agonizing execution rituals were once common. Male t ... Show More
46m 9s
Jan 2024
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime. That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform. La Guardia's appr ... Show More
1h 8m
Aug 2024
Anne Gray Fischer, "The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification" (UNC Press, 2022)
Anne Gray Fischer speaks about her path to and through research, including how sex workers informed her analysis of policing and state violence, the role of law enforcement in struggles over economic development, and the intellectual and practical factors of research design.
Men, ... Show More
1h 12m
Mar 2025
Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025)
Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism--emerged. In Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, Timothy Weaver argues that the intercurrent impact of these order ... Show More
28m 41s