Here are 100 books that An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States fans have personally recommended if you like
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.
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Since 2008, I have conducted research on themes related to International Political Economy. I am currently the co-chair of the research committee on this topic at the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and am passionate about making sense of the interplay between material and symbolic factors that shape capitalism and globalisation. Being based in Brazil, I was stuck when the country—which did not have salient identity cleavages in politics—came to be, after 2008, a hotspot of religious-based right-wing populism associated with the defence of trade liberalisation as globalisation started to face meaningful backlash from White-majority constituencies who are relatively losers of the post-Cold War order in the advanced industrialised democracies.
As post-Cold War globalisation seems to face its fate, I always go back to this book as it offers lessons on the perils of taking for granted economic rationality. The 19th-century liberal order crumbled, and fascism emerged as a solution. In the same vein, is far-right populism a reaction against the consequences of neoliberalism?
Although he does not bring to the centre stage the impact of ethnic-religious cleavages, such a shortcoming only made me wonder whether his riveting account of modernity applies nowadays.
In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.
As both a scholar and a citizen I have spent my adult life seeking to better understand the dynamics of power, especially power wielded in flagrantly unjust fashion in societies otherwise founded on notions of life, liberty, and happiness for all. This has led me to study the history of the economy, not just as a material but as a cultural system that encodes the categories of modern life: self and society, private and public, body and soul, and needs and desires.
Eugene Genovese was the most brilliant of a talented generation of scholars whose studies of New World slavery have since been largely deposed by a far more simplistic, black-and-white (pun intended) version of the same.
Genovese’s magnum opus, Roll, Jordan, Roll, offers an unsparing view of a reality in which neither master nor slave “could express the simplest human feelings without reference to the other,” an especially intimate form of class rule which struck a compelling contrast to the anonymity of the wage nexus increasingly prevalent in the Northern states.
These dialectics played out in a continual, if asymmetric, power struggle at the heart of plantation life, where the economy could not be separated out from racial, sexual, religious, and ideological experience, again, in stark contrast to the liberal division of social life into autonomous spheres of existence.
A testament to the power of the human spirit under conditions of extreme oppression, this landmark history of slavery in the South challenged conventional views by illuminating the many forms of resistance to dehumanization that developed in slave society.
Displaying keen insight into the minds of both enslaved persons and slaveholders, historian Eugene Genovese investigates the ways that enslaved persons forced their owners to acknowledge their humanity through culture, music, and religion. He covers a vast range of subjects, from slave weddings and funerals, to language, food, clothing, and labor, and places particular emphasis on religion as both a major…
As both a scholar and a citizen I have spent my adult life seeking to better understand the dynamics of power, especially power wielded in flagrantly unjust fashion in societies otherwise founded on notions of life, liberty, and happiness for all. This has led me to study the history of the economy, not just as a material but as a cultural system that encodes the categories of modern life: self and society, private and public, body and soul, and needs and desires.
Jeffrey Sklansky is that rare academic with a writer’s literary imagination, which serves the reader well in engagingThe Soul’s Economy, a riveting and dense intellectual history of the market’s emergence as the organizing principle of not only economic life, but of a distinctly new moral sensibility between 1820 and 1920.
Sklansky explores this far-reaching turn of events through a series of dedicated readings of America’s leading philosophers and pundits of the times, ranging from Ralph Waldo Emerson to John Dewey, who collectively recast the pursuit of wealth into an ethic of personal rectitude and even the source of society’s general welfare.
Socializing the psyche; Tracing a seismic shift in American social thought, Jeffrey-Sklansky offers a new synthesis of the intellectual transformation entailed in the rise of industrial capitalism. For a century after Independence, the dominant American understanding of selfhood and society came from the tradition of political economy, which defined freedom and equality in terms of ownership of the means of self-employment. However, the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Large landowners and industrialists claimed the right to rule as a privilege of their growing monopoly over productive resources, while dispossessed farmers and workers…
As both a scholar and a citizen I have spent my adult life seeking to better understand the dynamics of power, especially power wielded in flagrantly unjust fashion in societies otherwise founded on notions of life, liberty, and happiness for all. This has led me to study the history of the economy, not just as a material but as a cultural system that encodes the categories of modern life: self and society, private and public, body and soul, and needs and desires.
Maurizzio Lazaratto is a critic of contemporary capitalism.
His view of the subject finds powerful expression in Making of the Indebted Man, a study that tracks the development of a neo-liberal, or financialized, global economy organized around a new form of exploitation – no longer the extraction of surplus value from industrial labor, but the ever-mounting debt assumed by consumers seeking to maintain their standard of living while wages keep falling.
The accruing debts serve as an effective means for disciplining the population while at once becoming an immensely lucrative source of profit for banks and other corporations that buy and sell them on the world’s financial markets.
A new and radical reexamination of today's neoliberalist “new economy” through the political lens of the debtor/creditor relation.
"The debtor-creditor relation, which is at the heart of this book, sharpens mechanisms of exploitation and domination indiscriminately, since, in it, there is no distinction between workers and the unemployed, consumers and producers, working and non-working populations, between retirees and welfare recipients. They are all 'debtors,' guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor." ―from The Making of the Indebted Man
Debt―both public debt and private debt―has become a major concern of economic and…
Joseph D’Agnese grew up in the Bicentennial-fueled excitement of the 1970s, and spent 1976 fake-playing a fife and sporting a tricorn hat in various school events. Besides teaching him how to get in and out of Revolutionary-period knickers, this experience awakened in him a love for the Founding Era of American history. He has since authored three history titles with his wife, The New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan.
I’m not a Constitutional or legal scholar. If anything, I’d be considered a biographer, since my book focuses on the life stories of the men behind the document. For that reason, I’m deliberately omitting any books that discuss the ramifications of the Constitution in modern times.
But I do enjoy this book, by a journalist and Harvard Law School graduate, which carefully breaks down each of the Constitution’s seven Articles and 27 Amendments, and carefully spells out in plain language the meaning of each. Yes, there are plenty of readers who will take issue with the specifics, but I find that Monk’s treatment is even-handed, and she sprinkles the text with asides, quotes, and opinions from top thinkers along the way.
UPDATED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 10 YEARS, The Words We Live By takes an entertaining and informative look at America's most important historical document, now with discussions about new rulings on hot-button issues such as immigration, gay marriage, the right to bear arms, and affirmative action.
In The Words We Live By, award-winning author and journalist Linda R. Monk explores the many interpretations of the Constitution's text in a balanced manner. The Words We Live By presents a new way of looking at the Constitution through entertaining and informative annotations--filled with the stories of the people behind the Supreme…
I am a political science professor who has always been interested in authoritarian regimes, how they function, and how they control their citizens. In particular, I find it fascinating why citizens may genuinely adore and respect the (sometimes outrageous) autocrats that lead them, even though they rule with an iron fist. Additionally, the rise of authoritarianism in democracies also caught my attention. Terms like “slow-moving coups” and “insurrections” are being used when referring to democracies now. In some ways, this is shocking to me—but it’s motivated me to better understand how this happened—and the ways in which autocracies and democracies seem to be mimicking each other.
Legal scholars have offered a lot of insights into how democracies fall apart, but one of the more interesting books from constitutional scholars is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Using a case study of the US to illustrate, this book demonstrates how important constitutional design is in preventing democratic backsliding, as the book explains how would-be autocrats can take advantage of constitutions to flex their own power. And though the US constitution has often been heralded as a model document for new democracies to follow, somewhat surprisingly, it’s not ideal for maintaining a democracy; it actually suffers from two sins of being overly rigid on the one hand, and too vague in shaping the parameters of executive power on the other. This book is both a guide and a cautionary tale.
Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self-rule. In the United States, the tenure of Donald Trump has seemed decisive turning point for many. What kind of president intimidates jurors, calls the news media the "enemy of the American people," and seeks foreign assistance investigating domestic political rivals? Whatever one thinks of President Trump, many think the Constitution will safeguard us from lasting damage. But is that assumption justified? How to Save a Constitutional Democracy mounts an urgent argument that we can no longer afford to…
I have a deep-set interest in and passion for human and civil rights, particularly children’s rights. I see the law, with which I have had a fascination since the age of 14, as the primary vehicle for advancing those rights. My research on the law has always been on my own, and apart from several legally themed high school and university courses, I am a layman in this field. Nonetheless, I have extensively studied law privately for many years, with a particular focus on how it affects relations among people, including those between children and adults. Activism for social change is one of my primary motivators in life, my main purpose and direction, and my reason for being.
I loved the bravery of the author in tackling a controversial question.
This book deals with the US Supreme Court’s “parental rights doctrine.” Through a complete overview of jurisprudence from the earliest days of the country’s existence, Shulman challenges the commonly-held modern idea that parental rights have long held an exalted position in American jurisprudence. He demonstrates that, on the contrary, the American state originally entrusted parents with custody of the child for the purpose of meeting the child's needs and that the notion of the custody of one’s child as an entitlement is a relatively modern one.
I think this is a message that is vital to be brought out into the public sphere, and I am happy that the author was willing to devote an entire book to it.
In this bold and timely work, law professor Jeffrey Shulman argues that the United States Constitution does not protect a fundamental right to parent. Based on a rigorous reconsideration of the historical record, Shulman challenges the notion, held by academics and the general public alike, that parental rights have a long-standing legal pedigree. What is deeply rooted in our legal tradition and social conscience, Shulman demonstrates, is the idea that the state entrusts parents with custody of the child, and it does so only as long as parents meet their fiduciary duty to serve the developmental needs of the child.…
I have been working on science and religion for 15 years now. While there are a number of books on Darwinism and religion (too many to count), the number on Darwin himself and his own (loss of) religion is far smaller. So, I wrote a short "spiritual biography" of the great man. Reading through the Darwin archives, it emerged that there was so much more to the story than “man finds evolution but loses God,” and the more I read around this topic and spoke to the leading academic scholars on the subject, the more I realized that that was the case for science and religion overall.
The Scopes “Monkey” trial was a global media phenomenon and has passed into history as an epic battle, even more dramatic than the Galileo trial 300 years earlier. It certainly is a dramatic story, and Edward Larson retells it in this book with style and pace.
But, as is so often the case in the history of science and religion, the devil is in the detail, and the popular image of ignorant, demented fundamentalists taking on and being humiliated by the cool logic and evidence-based reasoning of secularists is only part of it. Eugenics, racism, politics, economics, biblical theology, and good old-fashioned commercial greed – all have their role to play in the entertaining story of this famous trial.
In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes, represented by Clarence Darrow and the ACLU, in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day -- in cities and states throughout the country.Edward Larson's classic Summer for the Gods -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History -- is the single most authoritative account of…
I fell in love with Latin America as I meandered around Mexico in the summer of 1969. The passion has never died. Within a year I walked into Brazil’s ‘wild west’ to research the violence along its moving frontier, while over fifty years later I am an emeritus professor of Latin American politics at the University of Oxford and an honorary professor at the University of Exeter. An early decision to look at politics from the ‘bottom up’ led to a life-long inquiry into the theory and practice of democracy, and the publication of many essays and books that are available to view on my Amazon author page.
You have to ask how is it that Argentina has produced so many world-class authors, artists, and intellectuals? Roberto Gargarella is one such, and he has succeeded in turning the apparently dry topic of constitutionalism into the key to explaining the central paradoxes of Latin American democratic development. Before this book, constitutionalism was often dismissed as irrelevant to an understanding of Latin American democracy – very different to that of the United States – but Gargarella comes to the analytical rescue of the constitution and makes it central to his perceptive and counterintuitive analysis.
Latin America possesses an enormously rich constitutional history, but this legal history has only recently begun to be subjected to scholarly inquiry. As Roberto Gargarella contends, contemporary constitutional and political theory has a great deal to learn from this history, as Latin American constitutionalism has endured unique challenges that have not appeared in other regions. Such challenges include the emergence of egalitarian constitutions in inegalitarian contexts; deliberation over the value of "importing" foreign legal instruments; a long-standing exercise of socio-economic rights (which is only just starting in other areas of the world); issues of multiculturalism and indigenous rights; substantial experience…
I’m a Philadelphia-based journalist and new author. I’m the Editor at Large for Philadelphia Magazine and President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. As an openly Black gay journalist, I’ve headlined for speaking frankly about intersectional issues in society regarding race, LGBTQIA, and pop culture. Such experiences have awakened my consciousness as an underrepresented voice in the media and have pushed me to explore societal topics. My new book The Case for Cancel Culture, published by St. Martin's Press, is my way of staking my claim in the global conversation on this buzzworthy topic.
This is a book that educates and radicalizes you all at once.
Mystal is more than just a bold political commentator, but a man on a mission to make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about America’s most consequential text in a book that holds back no punches.
I will never again see the Constitution as a historical text that guides my life, but now as a document that is currently being weaponized by politicians to infringe upon it.
This book is a loud alarm to all those who have been casually watching the current political mudslinging and not thinking the fire would hit their doorstep.
It’s here, and it’s time to do something about it.
MSNBC legal commentator Elie Mystal thinks that Republicans are wrong about the law almost all of the time. Now, instead of talking about this on cable news, Mystal explains why in his first book.
"After reading Allow Me to Retort, I want Elie Mystal to explain everything I don't understand-quantum astrophysics, the infield fly rule, why people think Bob Dylan is a good singer . . ." -Michael Harriot, The Root
Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how…
