In his new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (Sentinel HC, 2012), Jonah Goldberg, founding editor of National Review Online and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, analyzes various media strategies used by liberals to “cheat in the war of ideas.”  He believes radical ideas are frequently presented swathed in clichés and aphorisms, and attempts to disentangle some of the most recent examples.

In our interview, we talked about how he speaks in a pop culture idiom to appeal to young readers, that Voltaire never said “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it,” and why he takes on the role of Jewish defender of the Catholic Church.

Read all about it, and more, in Goldberg’s very funny new book.

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In her new book, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Sally C. Pipes, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Pacific Research Institute, argues that the Obama health care law will make our health care system worse and provides a step-by-step plan for how to dismantle and replace it.  She also proposes an alternative, free market-based reform that will bring down costs, expand coverage, and support innovation in life-saving drugs and technology.

In our interview, we talked about her vision for the future of health care, the rise of new conservative health experts, and how the Canadian health system failed her own mother in a time of great need.  Read all about it, and more, in Pipes’ detailed new book.

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In his new book, The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Noam Scheiber, Senior Editor of The New Republic, presents a behind the scenes look at the members of President Obama’s economics team and their attempts to deal with the financial crisis.

In our interview, we talked about internecine battles inside the White House, the contrast between experienced staffers and outside perspectives, and whether and when Scheiber’s anonymous sources will be revealed at some date in the distant future.  Read all about it, and more, in Scheiber’s juicy new book.

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In his new book, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine (Twelve, 2011), Eric Weiner, former correspondent for both NPR and the New York Times, confronts his spiritual side after a medical emergency takes him too close to death. Weiner’s quest to understand faith carries him across the globe, from Las Vegas, where he gets to know a few Raelians a little more closely than he’d like, to Turkey, where he practices whirling with Sufi dervishes.

In our interview, we talked about whether his frequent jokes are a defense mechanism of some kind, why his Hebrew school experience lacked meaning, how the Rinpoche insulted Cher, and why people seem to need to find some type of divine meaning in life.  Read all about it, and more, in Weiner’s amusing new book

In his new book,  A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred, (Encounter Books, 2011), Sol Stern, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor to City Journal, provides an eye-opening analysis of the history surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian encounter and offers insight into the motivation underlying the action of both sides.  He argues that the Palestinians have consistently been less than truthful about both the origins of the conflict and their true goals.

In our interview, we talked about the history Stern lays out in his book, why President Abbas’ misleading New York Times op-ed was so important, and how the actions of Palestinian leaders have so often been contrary to the interests of the Palestinian people.  Read all about it, and more, in Stern’s revelatory new  book.

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In his new book, The Right Fights Back (Random House, 2011), Mike Allen, the chief White House correspondent for Politico and author of Robert F. Kennedy and The War Lovers, provides a detailed analysis of the early parts of the 2012 presidential election campaign. His close look inside the GOP campaigns is filled with surprising information that will interest political junkies everywhere.

In our interview, we talked about how Michele Bachmann convinced a reluctant Ed Rollins to join her campaign, why Rick Perry underestimated the importance of the debates, and how Tim Pawlenty was misled about the state of his campaign debt.  Read all about it, and more, in Allen’s informative new book.

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In his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (St. Martin’s Press, 2011), Tim Groseclose, Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA, discusses his quantitative measurements of  political bias in the American news media.  Based on years of in-depth studies, he concludes that nearly every mainstream media outlet is skewed to the left of the American electorate, and that this bias has helped push the American electorate to the left of where it would be otherwise. In our interview, we talked about different kinds of media bias, as well as bias in academia, and the effect it has had on Professor Groseclose’s career. Read all about it, and more, in Groseclose’s illuminating new book

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In his new book, Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him (BenBella Books, 2011), Phil Kerpen, vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity and columnist at FoxNews.com, argues that President Obama’s is trying to bypass Congress  with an activist regulatory agenda. In our interview, we talked about the regulatory process, the Obama health care law, and what net neutrality means for the future of the Internet.  Read all about it, and more, in Kerpen’s alarming new  book.

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In his new book, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi (Penguin Press, 2011), Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, chronicles the story of Karachi’s seemingly instantaneous population explosion, from only 350,000 inhabitants in 1941 to well over 13 million today. Inskeep looks at the circumstances that encouraged and supported the near-overnight formation of what he terms an “instant city,” and provides an analysis of the multiple political and economic problems created by such rapid growth.

In our interview, we talked about The Wire’s David Simon, stolen elections, and America’s own ethnic and racial challenges.  Read all about it, and more, in Inskeep’s eye-opening new book.

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In her new book The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For (Ivan R. Dee, 2011), Naomi Schaefer Riley, former Wall Street Journal editor and affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, critically examines the tenure system. She believes “tenure . . .   is eroding American education from the inside out” and places too much emphasis on research and not enough on teaching. In our interview, we talked about why tenure does not help students get a better education, why faculty donations went 8:1 in favor of Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and how much the government spends to subsidize academic articles. Read all about it, and more, in Riley’s provocative new book.

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In his new book, Teaching America: The Case for Civic Education (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2011), David Feith, Chairman of the Civic Education Initiative and assistant editor at The Wall Street Journal, worked with some of America’s top education experts to address the problem of widespread civic illiteracy.  Feith assembled 23 different educational experts, including a former Education Secretary, Supreme Court Justice, and two Senators, to address the question of how to improve civic education in the U.S.  The result is a thorough analysis of civic illiteracy and its causes, as well as a host of suggestions for how to fix the problem.

In our interview, we talked about how Feith came up with the idea to promote civic education in his college dorm room, whether U.S. schools have the capacity to impart the type of education necessary to do the job, and what the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements can tell us about the state of civic education in America.  Read all about it, and more, in Feith’s eye-opening new book.

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In his new book, A Point in Time: The Search for Redemption in This Life and the Next (Regnery Publishing, 2011), David Horowitz, long ago editor of Ramparts magazine and creator of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, takes a thoughtful look at humanity’s quest to find meaning in life. Horowitz uses the works of Marcus Aurelius and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as his own experiences, to try to measure the sum of a man’s accomplishments.   In our interview, we talked about Horowitz’s journey from left to right, the state of the universities, and whether things are getting better or worse in America.  Read all about it, and more, in Horowitz’s bracing new book.

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In his new book, The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era (B&H Books, 2011), Timothy S. Goeglein, former deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison under President George W. Bush,  describes his nearly eight years working for the White House. He describes President Bush’s reaction to the 2000 election recount, his response to the tragedy of September 11, and the behind-the-scene deliberations leading up to Bush’s stem cell policy.  (Goeglein also, ahem, puts in a plug for the host of this podcast, saying on page 114 that he “relied heavily on my colleague in Public Liaison, Tevi Troy, whose outreach to the American Jewish community was singularly well done.”)

In our interview, we talked about Tim’s experiences serving in the White House, why Gary Bauer endorsed John McCain in 2000, and how Tim got Karl Rove to write the foreword to his book.  Read all about it, and more, in Goeglein’s story-filled new book.

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In his new book Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), former White House aide Ron Christie recounts the history of the pejorative term “acting white.”  He traces its lineage from the present day through the Black Power movement back to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, unraveling a fascinating history in the process.

In our interview, we talked about Ron’s experiences as an African-American Republican, his ambitious vow to eradicate the term “acting white,” and his hopes for the future of America’s African-American community. Read all about it, and more, in Christie’s thought-provoking new book.

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In his new book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford University Press, 2011),  Alan Jacobs, Clyde S. Kilby Chair Professor of English at Wheaton College, discusses the state of reading in the United States. Where some would argue that there are too few people doing the wrong kind of reading, Jacobs argues the contrary. He believes that literature is flourishing, pointing to the existence of enormous booksellers like Amazon or Barnes and Noble, as well as the influence of Oprah’s Book Club as evidence. In our interview, we talked about why our reading muscles have weakened over time, the importance of reading at whim, and the wondrous reading silence of children immersed in books.  Read all about it, and more, in Jacob’s thought-provoking new book.

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In his new book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV (Broadside Books, 2011), Ben Shapiro, who is the youngest person ever to get a nationally syndicated column in the U.S., details the story of how television executives use the medium to spread political propaganda.  Shapiro interviewed over one hundred prominent media figures, from the writer of House to the former president of ABC Entertainment and NBC, to get a sense of the political agendas driving those who produce scripted TV.  In our interview, we talked about how politics makes shows dated, the conservative cast members of the A-Team, and why he won’t watch Glee.  Read all about it, and more, in Shapiro’s revealing new book.

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In her new book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life (Times Books, 2011), Elaine Sciolino, Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, explores the role of seduction in the French way of life.  Sciolino argues that seduction plays an integral role not only in romantic and personal relationships in France, but also in business transactions, intellectual debates, and political campaigns.  In our interview, we talked about Jacques Chirac’s hand-kissing technique, how everyone in France knew about Dominique Strauss Kahn’s aggressive seduction techniques before most Americans had ever heard of him, and the romantic benefits of being lead groundskeeper at Versailles.  Lisez tout et plus dans le nouveau livre charmant de Sciolino. (Read all about it and more in Sciolino’s charming new book).

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In his new book, History of the Future: The Shape of the World to Come Is Visible Today (Lexington Books, 2011), Max Singer, Senior Fellow and co-founder of the Hudson Institute, argues that the human race is undergoing an enormous transition, from an agrarian, violent past to a wealthy and peaceful future.   Singer believes that all countries are on parallel paths to becoming modern states, albeit at different points in the process.   As such, he tries to predict the future of the majority of countries that are still making this transitioning by examining the experiences of countries that have already completed the transition.

In our interview, we talked about the rise of China, why Churchill thought that scuttling the British Navy would immediately end the British Empire, and how freedom is the key element to creating economic powerhouses.  Read all about it, and more, in Singer’s wide-ranging new book

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In his new book The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (University of California Press, 2011), Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, takes a close look at the powerful influence Google has on our society. He believes that by valuing popularity over accuracy, Google dictates what information is most useful to users, thereby changing societal perceptions of what information is relevant. In our interview, we talked about how Vaidyanathan’s American Studies training informed his analysis of Google, the problem of Google’s use in authoritarian countries, and how Google emerged out of nowhere to defeat all other search competitors. Read all about it, and more, in Vaidhyanathan’s illuminating new book.

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In his new book, A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2011) Dov Zakheim, former chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Defense,  describes his time as a Vulcan, one of the elite group of eight foreign policy experts who advised President Bush’s presidential campaign, most of whom later served in the Bush administration.  Zakheim brings an insider’s perspective to the Department of Defense’s management of the War on Terrror, and is not afraid to call out people who were not up to the job.  In our interview, we talked about why it’s so hard to get rid of Pentagon weapon systems, what “snowflakes” are, and why so many former Bush Pentagon officials have written books.  It’s all there, and more, in Zakheim’s eye-opening new book.

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Public policy ideas make their way into the conversation in a variety of ways. Typically, New Books in Public Policy looks at how books influence the debate, but in this episode we talk to the founding editor of National Affairs magazine, Yuval Levin.  Levin has a wealth of experience to draw on, having previously served as Executive Director of the President’s Council on Bioethics under President Bush and as an Associate Director on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Levin is also the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Levin’s most recent article for National Affairs, entitled “Beyond the Welfare State,” examines the tension created by the competing aspirations of our nation. He explores the question of whether we can race ahead while simultaneously leaving no one behind.  But National Affairs is about more than Levin’s ideas: it is designed to highlight the ideas of our best public policy thinkers.  In our interview, we talked about how the magazine got started, some of its most influential pieces, and how to get readers to look at serious policy work in the era of Twitter.

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In their new book Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google (Telescope Books, 2011), Scott Cleland, President of Precursor LLC,  and Ira Brodsky, founder of Datacomm Research, aim to expose the unethical internet behemoth they believe to be hiding behind the motto “Don’t be Evil.” Cleland and Brodsky believe that Google has a hidden political agenda, and is attempting to shape the world to match this agenda by controlling your information, as well as who has access to that information. In our interview, we talked about how terrorists have used Google, why “Don’t be Evil” is an unimpressive goal, and the ways individuals can de-Googlify, if they so choose.  Read all about it, and more, in Cleland and Brodsky’s troubling new book.

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In their new book, This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), the husband and wife team of Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin recount their experiences working as reporters in Jerusalem during the eventful last decade.  Myre, the editor of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and his wife Griffin, Pentagon Correspondent at Fox News, tell gripping stories from individuals involved in the conflict, as well as from their own struggles in raising a young family in the midst of bus bombings and terror attacks. In our interview, we talk about Ariel Sharon’s affinity for Pringles, openly bringing automatic weapons into banks, and kidnappers who let their victims hold their weapons.  Read all about it, and more, in Myre and Griffin’s engaging new book.

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In his new book, Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society, (Hoover Institution Press, 2011) William Damon, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, argues that we are failing to prepare today’s young people to be responsible American citizens. Damon, who is also the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, shows that our disregard of civic and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible effect on the attitudes, understanding, and behavior of large portions of the youth in our country today.  In our interview, we discuss Howard Zinn, Michael Barone, political correctness, and the status of the American Dream.  Read all about it, and more, in Damon’s thought-provoking new book.

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How has the FBI evolved since the days of chasing gangsters and bootleggers, and is it equipped to face the challenges of a global war on terror?

According to Garrett Graff’s The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror (Little Brown, 2011), the FBI has come a long way since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, but it still has a ways to go. The author, the editor of the most excellent Washingtonian magazine (for which I occasionally write – see here and here), looks at the evolution of the FBI into an organization that is very different from the Hollywood vision of the buttoned-down Bureau.

In our interview, we talk about the Bin Laden raid, Hoover’s funeral, the Munich Olympics, the Gorelick Wall, the NYPD, and Operation Goldenrod. Read all about it, and more, in Graff’s sweeping new book.

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In his new book The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, looks at the push for democracy in the Middle East and suggests that Americans need to back the democratic impulse, even if it is messy.

Gerecht, who is also a former Middle East specialist in the Clandestine Service at the Central Intelligence Agency, recognizes that Americans may not like what Middle Eastern democracy looks like, certainly at first, but – echoing Churchill –he says that it is much better that the alternatives.  In our interview, we talked about Iran, the Arabs, Turkey, and how America should deal with it all.  Read all about it, and more, in Gerecht’s timely new book.

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How have the United States and Japan managed to remain such strong allies, despite having fought one another in a savage war less than 70 years ago?

In Michael Auslin’s Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations (Harvard University Press, 2011), the author, an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, explores the history of cultural exchange between the United States and Japan, and how important that exchange has been, and continues to be, from a political perspective.

Auslin, who is also a columnist for WSJ.com, analyses the “enduring cultural exchange” between the two countries, and describes the various stages through which this vital relationship has evolved over the last century and one half.  As Auslin shows, the relationship between the United States and Japan has had a large number of twists and turns, culminating in the current close and mutually beneficial connection between the two nations. In our interview, we talk about baseball, pop culture, gunboat diplomacy, and the first Japanese ever to set foot in America.  Read all about it, and more, in Auslin’s useful new book.

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What kind of education are students at top American law schools getting? And how does that education influence their activities upon graduation? In Walter Olson’s Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (Encounter Books, 2011), the author, an economist and not a lawyer, looks at what is happening at our nation’s elite law schools, and its implications for citizens, businesses, and taxpayers. Olson, a Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute, describes what he calls the consensus view of law school faculties, and how hard it is for law students to find alternative points of view. He describes how the litigation explosion’s origins stem from the views of one influential professor, and the costs that this “American disease” imposes on our economy. In addition, he describes some revealing conflicts between trial lawyers and their allies that reveal the financial incentives motivating the testimony of certain scholars in favor of costly and often frivolous lawsuits. Read all about it, and more, in Olson’s penetrating new book.

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How do government officials decide key homeland security questions? How do those decisions affect our day to day lives? In Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism (Hoover Institution, 2010), Stewart Baker, a former senior official from the Department of Homeland Security, takes us behind the scenes of government homeland security decision making. Baker, who was the DHS’s first Assistant Secretary for Policy, examines some of the key security threats the US faces, and some of our greatest challenges in meeting them. While Baker has a healthy respect for the abilities of outside forces would do us harm, he also recognizes that some of our greatest challenges to providing security come from our allies, and from ourselves. In addition, while many people tune out when they hear acronyms like CFIUS of VWP, Baker shows what those acronyms mean, and their implications for our safety and security. Read all about it, and more, in Baker’s informative new book.

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Seth Leibsohn

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Where do we stand on the War on Terror?  Is it still going on, and if so, are we winning or losing it? In William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn’s The Fight of Our Lives: Knowing the Enemy, Speaking the Truth, and Choosing to Win the War Against Radical Islam (Thomas Nelson, 2011), the authors look at the current state of the War on Terror, how it is going, and why it remains important.

Bennett, a former senior Washington official, and his co-author Leibsohn review the origins of — and the Obama administration’s mixed messages on pursuing — the War on Terror.  They also make the argument of why the U.S. needs to remain vigilant in its prosecution of the conflict.   As we learned in the podcast, the book may surprise those who come to it with preconceived notions about the authors or about the wisdom of fighting and winning a war against terror.  Read all about it, and more, in Bennett and Leibsohn’s eye-opening new book.

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Daniel Drezner

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International theorists like to game out every possible scenario. What would happen if you applied their methodology to dealing with the fictional public policy challenge of a zombie infestation?

In Dan Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies (Princeton UP, 2011), he looks at each of the major international relations schools–realism, liberalism, neoconservatism, etc.–to determine how they would react to a zombie attack. In the book, Drezner combines a strong understanding of international-relations theory with a comprehensive knowledge of the zombies. He also uses charts, cartoons, and humor to make his points. In the podcast, I ask Drezner to apply his approach to the question of how President Obama would cope with a zombie attack.    We discuss all of these things, and have our share of laughs, along the way. Read all about it, and more, in Drezner’s humorous new book.

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Dr. Paul Offit

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If a parent decides not to vaccinate their children, is that an individual choice, or is it a serious threat to the public health? In Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (Basic Books, 2011), Dr. Paul Offit discusses the very real threats to the public health created by the anti-vaccine movement, both in the U.S. and around the world. In the book, Dr. Offit reviews the history of vaccines, their importance, and the various attempts to discredit them over the past few centuries.  One of these efforts, readers will be interested to know, led to the creation of the Raggedy Ann doll. Read all about it, and more, in Dr. Offit’s frightening new book.

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Robert Goldberg

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This week New Books in Public Policy interviews Bob Goldberg about his new book Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet Is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for Fear and Profit (Simon & Schuster, 2010). The book is a look at the way medical science is discussed and played out over the Internet. As Goldberg says on his website, tabloid medicine is “medical reporting or information based on or consisting of Internet material that sensationalizes and exaggerate the dangers of medical technology without describing the benefits.”

In the interview, Goldberg talks about both this problem and its implications, from parents refusing to vaccinate their children to suicidal people avoiding antidepressants for fear of overhyped side effects. He also discusses the role of those who seek to foment fear, as well as discredit their opponents, using new media and innuendo regarding inappropriate conflicts of interest.

Finally, Bob takes on the New Books in Public Policy signature question, “What policies would you initiate if you were king for a day?” and gives his policy prescriptions for addressing the problem of Tabloid Medicine.

Colin Gordon

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[Crossposted from New Books in History] This week we have Professor Colin Gordon of the University of Iowa on the show talking about his new book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Professor Gordon is the author of two previous monographs, Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth Century America (Princeton University Press, 2004) and New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Mapping Decline breaks new ground not only in our understanding of the decay of the American inner-city, but also in its use of quantitative data in combination with GIS mapping technologies. The book is full of beautiful maps that paint a vivid, if somewhat depressing, picture of American urban history. Philip J. Ethington of the University of Southern California calls Mapping Decline “a searing indictment of policymakers, realtors, and mortgage lenders for deliberate decisions that sacrificed their own city of St. Louis on the altar of race.” That it is.

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