All the threads

Jazz trumpet let the sons and grandsons of slaves assert manhood and win applause, not lynching.

The basic thesis of Hotter Than That is that the trumpet has been associated, rightly or wrongly, with masculinity. The men who have played it have jealously guarded their exclusive...

Hotter Than That

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Jazz trumpet let the sons and grandsons of slaves assert manhood loudly and draw applause rather than lynching.

This book is about the trumpet, but it brings the subject to life with several different approaches. First, it is a cultural history of the instrument, from the oldest surviving...

Hotter Than That

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Treating the presidential vote as the essence of democracy deskills citizens and strengthens the office whoever holds it.

The-president-as-superhero myth promises all the democracy with none of the work. As such it teaches citizens to admire rule by strong individuals and to abjure the messy workings—disagreement, slow debates,...

Bad for Democracy

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Our habit of putting the president at the center of democracy works against democracy.

As I finished my last book, National Manhood, a historical look at how notions of middle-class manhood and citizenship developed in the early United States, two movies about fictional presidents...

Bad for Democracy

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Treating the presidential vote as the essence of democracy deskills citizens and strengthens the office whoever holds it.

The first and biggest part of my book is about how we take the president for granted as the symbolic, cultural and institutional center of democracy, and how we take...

Bad for Democracy

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France took a century to recover from 1789 and found consensus only after the defeat of 1870.

The way in which the French related to the world outside is dealt with less as foreign policy than as ways in which French travellers discovered and commented on foreign...

Children of the Revolution

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France took a century to recover from 1789 and found consensus only after the defeat of 1870.

This is not just a political story, because that only tells part of what is fascinating about France in this period. What are the images we have of France in...

Children of the Revolution

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France took a century to recover from 1789 and found consensus only after the defeat of 1870.

‘The bloody truth about France’ was the heading of the London Sunday Times review of this book. For those who think France is about camembert and surrender, here is another...

Children of the Revolution

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Loneliness is a way of life, rooted in a missing mother, that shapes political as well as personal possibility.

The book’s epilogue is entitled “Writing.” It is short, about seven pages, but it tells a story about a trip I made to Ethiopia with my older brother, right before...

Loneliness as a Way of Life

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Loneliness is not a mood but a way of life.

I first approached this study as an intellectual history of individualism. From early on in my life as a political theorist, I have been interested in those large forces that...

Loneliness as a Way of Life

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Loneliness is a way of life, rooted in a missing mother, that shapes political as well as personal possibility.

The title is an almost absurdly clear description of the book, but the truth is, until my editor suggested that title to me, I wasn’t quite sure that what I...

Loneliness as a Way of Life

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Douglass and Lincoln were America's two preeminent self-made men, and self-making itself is antithetical to racism.

One of my favorite moments in Douglass and Lincoln’s relationship was at Lincoln’s second inaugural, when they met for the last time. It was as though in four years, the...

GIANTS

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Self-transformation helped challenge social hierarchies and reshape American ideals of freedom and equality.

It’s often said that biographies reveal as much about their biographers as their subject. I plead guilty, for I was born in Lincoln (Nebraska) and fell in love with the...

GIANTS

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Douglass and Lincoln were America's two preeminent self-made men, and self-making itself is antithetical to racism.

GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln is a dual biography of the two preeminent self-made men in American history. Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less...

GIANTS

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Public opinion is manufactured by the very political actors who claim to submit to it.

Many of the same Americans who believe in the Easter bunny also think that public opinion is a significant force in political life. Perhaps, not all would accept James Bryce’s...

The American Lie

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Ordinary citizens must approach politics with skepticism rather than trust because political leaders routinely use deception and manipulation to advance their own interests at the public’s expense.

In more than thirty years of teaching politics, I have observed that students’ natural healthy cynicism is constantly criticized by the press and by their teachers. I want to assure...

The American Lie

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Public opinion is manufactured by the very political actors who claim to submit to it.

Americans are constantly urged to involve themselves in political life, to pay attention to the issues, to vote for the best candidates and, above all, to avoid succumbing to political...

The American Lie

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African religious practice pervades the popular music of the Americas, surviving as form and so reading as secular.

There are a number of individual moments in the book I would want a reader to find on first browsing, so it is hard to choose only one. On balance,...

Secular Devotion

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Popular music in the Americas remains deeply shaped by African religious traditions.

A great deal of what I am saying depends on the claim that black musical genres and belief-systems are part of a single, unified complex in the Americas from Brazil...

Secular Devotion

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African religious practice pervades the popular music of the Americas, surviving as form and so reading as secular.

The main argument of Secular Devotion, I suppose, will appear to some people as outrageous. I am saying that popular music in the Americas is popular in part because it is so heavily influenced by...

Secular Devotion

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Emission paths differ little in atmospheric CO2 by 2050 and enormously after.

Named after Charles David Keeling, a distinguished carbon-cycle scientist, the carbon atom Dave serves, I hope, as a literary device that aids in revealing the fascinating paths that actual carbon...

CO2 Rising

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The commercial sexualization of girls is a market product, separable from the age-appropriate sexual development it displaces.

The Lolita Effect promises girls that they can experience joyful sexuality and femininity, but only at a price: the price of conforming to the restrictive ideals it imposes on the entire landscape of female. .

The Lolita Effect

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Emission paths differ little in atmospheric CO2 by 2050 and enormously after.

When you go to a doctor and the doctor gives you information about your body, the doctor makes a crucial assumption: Even though you are not a medical expert you do know the basics about how your....

CO2 Rising

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The commercial sexualization of girls is a market product, separable from the age-appropriate sexual development it displaces.

There has been a great deal of public discussion lately about the sexualization of girlhood, from the provocative Bratz dolls for toddlers (described by Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker as looking like...

The Lolita Effect

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Burning fossil fuels introduces ancient carbon into Earth’s natural carbon cycle, creating a profound imbalance that threatens the climate and the future of human civilization.

When fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are combusted they release CO2. This greenhouse gas is no ordinary pollutant but an inherent waste byproduct of the energy conversion. The CO2 is...

CO2 Rising

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Myths about girls’ sexuality that circulate in the mainstream media are in sharp contrast to healthy, factual, progressive notions of sexuality.

The Lolita Effect addresses the media sexualization of young girls. In the book, I draw a distinction between healthy, age-appropriate concepts of sexuality that should develop as children mature, and...

The Lolita Effect

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