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
Today
Jens Ludwig, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while o ... Show More
1h 3m
Jan 29
Stephen Bezruchka, "Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than those who live in other wealthy nations, despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Why? Embark on a journey to ... Show More
35m 31s
Jan 29
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine
Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future, formerly incarcerated activi ... Show More
44m 18s
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 2020
Kristen Hoerl, "Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements" (UP of Mississippi, 2018)
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Kristen Hoerl (she/hers) on her impressive new book The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, ... Show More
57m 20s