Can we reform liberal democracy?
Review: Martin Wolf, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (Penguin Press, 2023) Martin Wolf, the veteran chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, lauded by global business folk and a […]
MoreReview: Martin Wolf, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (Penguin Press, 2023) Martin Wolf, the veteran chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, lauded by global business folk and a […]
MoreReview: Glory M. Liu, Adam Smith’s America (Princeton University Press, 2022) Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, a small market town near Edinburgh. A life-long bachelor, Smith […]
More**This is the author’s response in our book forum on Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. This week, we have published four reviews of […]
More** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was […]
More** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was […]
More**This is the second in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was Europe? […]
More** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Each day this week one review […]
MoreReview: Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (Penguin Random House) “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” Thus begins Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses. Six other chapters in this quirky work […]
MoreReview: Martha Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (Basic Books) In their relentless quest for full equality in the United […]
MoreIn his famous survey of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville wondered what effect democratic politics might have on the new nation. Specifically, he worried about democracy’s influence on foreign […]
MoreReview: Michael Sonenscher, ‘Capitalism: The Story behind the Word’, (Princeton University Press, 2022) Before what we now call ‘capitalism’, there were commercial societies founded upon the division of labour, […]
MoreReview: Kei Hiruta, Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics, and Humanity (Princeton University Press) Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), two of the 20th century’s most […]
More**Last week we published a book forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era, with four reviews of Marker’s book and an […]
More**This is the author’s response in our book forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. This week, we have published four […]
More**This is the fourth and final review in our forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Previous reviews include: 1. The […]
More**This is the third in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Previous reviews include: 1. The […]
More** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Each day this week […]
More** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Each day this week […]
MoreReview: David A. Hollinger, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (Princeton University Press, 2022) Although it comprises fewer than 200 pages, David A. Hollinger’s […]
MoreReview: Moisé Naím, The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century (St. Martin’s Press) Less than a week before the recent mid-term elections in […]
More** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. 1. The Limitless […]
More** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. 1. The Limitless Possibilities […]
More** This is the third in a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. 1. The Limitless Possibilities […]
More** Ceci est la deuxième critique du livre New Democracy par William Novak. Elle est la seule en français. Les autres sont rédigées en anglais. This is the second in […]
More** This is the first in a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. Each day this week […]
MoreReview: Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Pluto Press), and Bénédicte Savoy, Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, translated […]
MoreA book review of Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris From the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). Paris is “full of Russians […]
MoreElizabeth Borgwardt, Christopher McKnight Nichols, and Andrew Preston (eds.), Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021) Late in the year 1906, a senior official in the British Foreign Office […]
MoreThis is a book review of Kati Marton’s The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Many can plausibly claim to have had a hand in […]
MoreThis is a book review of Marcel Gauchet’s Robespierre: The Man Who Divides us the Most (Princeton University Press, 2022) The name Robespierre still haunts the memory of the French […]
MoreA review of George Makari’s Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia (W.W. Norton and Company, 2021). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “xenophobia” as a “fear and hatred of […]
More** The past two weeks, we have published four reviews of Olivier Zunz’s new biography of Alexis de Tocqueville—two in French, two in English—followed by a response by Zunz. The […]
More**This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews – two in French and two in English – of Olivier Zunz’s The Man Who Understood Democracy. Last week, we […]
More**This is the last of four reviews of Olivier Zunz’s The Man Who Understood Democracy. Last week, we published the first review: “Voyage dans les arcanes de la pensée Tocquevillienne” […]
More** Cette recension est la troisième d’une série de quatre critiques de la nouvelle biographie d’Alexis de Tocqueville de l’historien Olivier Zunz. La semaine dernière nous avons publié la recension […]
More** This is the second of four reviews of Olivier Zunz’s The Man Who Understood Democracy. Yesterday, we published the first review: “Voyage dans les arcanes de la pensée Tocquevillienne” […]
More** Cette recension est la première d’une série de quatre critiques—deux en français, deux en anglais—de la nouvelle biographie de Alexis de Tocqueville de l’historien Olivier Zunz, suivi par la […]
MoreA book review of Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019.) As World War II ended, European colonial empires of the 19th […]
MoreRaymond Geuss Does Not Think Like a Liberal. Reading Raymond Geuss’s Philosophy and Real Politics a couple years ago was like a breath of fresh air. Geuss was writing […]
MorePar Danielle Charette et Atman Mehta. Traduction par Justin Saint-Loubert Bie. Nous nous sommes entretenus avec Aaron Tugendhaft à propos de son livre, La destruction des idoles : D’Abraham […]
MoreA book review of Paul Sabin’s Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism (W.W. Norton & Co., 2021) 1965 marked the highpoint for […]
MoreJustin Saint-Loubert-Bie, a former intern for Tocqueville 21, sat down with Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass to discuss their new book, Half-Earth Socialism (Verso: April 2022). In the publication, […]
MoreThis is the introduction to our forum on Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. 1. Embedded Democracy – Chris Bickerton 2. Comprendre les démocraties européennes après la […]
More** This post is Martin Conway’s response to our forum on his new book, Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. You can read the previous reviews here: 1. Embedded Democracy – […]
More** This is the third in a series of three reviews of Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. Conway’s response will be published tomorrow. You can read […]
More** This is the second in a series of three reviews of Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. 1. Embedded Democracy – Chris Bickerton 3. The Pre-History […]
More** This is the first in a series of three reviews of Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. 2. Comprendre les démocraties européennes après la Seconde Guerre […]
MoreReview: The Atlantic Realists: Empire and International Thought Between Germany and the United States, by Matthew Specter (Stanford University Press, 2022) Open any textbook on International Relations today, and […]
MoreA book review of Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (Penguin, Allen Lane, 2021). “Those who work hard and play by the rules […]
More** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. […]
More** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. 1. […]
More** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. Each […]
More** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. The […]
More** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. Each […]
More** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of her new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]
More** This is the fourth and last in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French […]
MoreA book review of James McAuley’s The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France (Yale University Press, 2021). In The House of Fragile Things, Washington […]
More** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]
More** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]
More** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]
MoreA book review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020) In late November of this year, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) […]
MoreA book review of James Wyllie’s Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany (St Martin’s Press, 2019). Within the proliferation of literature on seemingly every aspect of […]
MoreA book review of Noah Feldman’s The Arab Winter: A Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 2020). 2011 was the year of the upheaval known as the ‘Arab Spring,’ a time when […]
MoreA book review of Ann Heberlein’s On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt. Translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies (Pushkin Press, 2021). Before she became a celebrated New […]
MoreJames Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Our Future (Penguin Press, 2020) In June 2017, New York City’s Public Theater […]
More** Last week, Tocqueville 21 published a book forum consisting of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War followed by […]
More** This response from Samuel Moyn completes the Tocqueville 21 forum on his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Four reviews of Humane, by […]
More** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]
More** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]
More** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]
More** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]
MoreKathryn Sikkink, The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilities (Yale University Press, 2020) Kathryn Sikkink, Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is one of the […]
MoreReview of Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (Yale, 2021). The ongoing pandemic is the worst crisis the United States has endured since World War II. Over […]
MoreGreg Conti offers a response to his reviewers in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum. It was a pleasure for me to read the commentaries by David Ragazzoni and Arthur […]
MoreThis is the fourth and final review in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum. Review of Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation and Democracy in Victorian Britain by […]
MoreThis is the third review in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum. Review of Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation and Democracy in Victorian Britain by Gregory Conti (Cambridge […]
MoreRobert Zaretsky, The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021) Simone Weil is considered today among the foremost twentieth-century French intellectuals, on par […]
MoreReview of J.H. Elliot, Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion (Yale University Press). Are the United Kingdom and Scotland barreling toward a crisis over Scottish independence of […]
MoreReview essay on Antoine Vauchez and Pierre France, The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private France (Cornell University Press, 2021) En 1976, dans un […]
MoreReview of Bruno Amable & Stefano Palombarini, The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the origins of France’s Political Crisis (Verso, 2021) Depending on one’s perspective, social democracy’s divorce with […]
MoreCritique du livre Les statues de la discorde de Jacqueline Lalouette, Paris, Passés / Composés, 2021. Aux États-Unis, le vandalisme de statues évoquant l’esclavage s’est développé depuis la mort de […]
MoreMartin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X met only once, a chance encounter at the US Capitol on March 26, 1964. The two men were at the Capitol to […]
MoreReview of Robert Schuett, Hans Kelsen’s Political Realism (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) “Make no mistake, Hans Kelsen is my favourite political philosopher…In the theory and practice of international […]
MoreDid American democracy survive the presidency of Donald Trump? The question seems sure to occupy historians, commentators and the public during the administration of Joe Biden and beyond. If nothing […]
MoreCeci est la seconde critique de livre parue dans notre mini-forum sur The Anthem Companion to Alexis de Tocqueville (2019), édité par Daniel Gordon. Dans l’abondante littérature consacrée à Tocqueville, […]
MoreThis is the first of two reviews in our mini-forum on The Anthem Companion to Alexis de Tocqueville (2019), edited by Daniel Gordon. More than two centuries after birth, Alexis […]
MoreDanielle Charette and Atman Mehta interviewed Aaron Tugendhaft about his new book, The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Their conversation covered the […]
MoreReview of William Callison and Zachary Manfredi, eds., Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture (Fordham University Press, 2020). Among its many intellectual repercussions, the current crisis in global […]
MoreIn this post, Emile Chabal responds to reviews of his book—France (Polity, 2020), a short history of the country since 1940—by Art Goldhammer and Emmanuel Jousse. Writing the history […]
MoreReview The Puzzle of Prison Order by David Skarbek (Oxford University Press 2020) The Puzzle of Prison Order is a book about prison governance but reads like a story […]
MoreCeci est notre deuxième recension du dernier ouvrage d’Emile Chabal, une courte histoire de la France depuis 1940: France (Polity, 2020). Pour un lecteur français, l’essai d’Emile Chabal suscite […]
MoreThis is the first of two reviews of Emile Chabal’s brief history of France since 1940: France (Polity, 2020). Emile Chabal’s splendid new book is entitled simply France, without further […]
MoreRepresented in governments across Europe and at the vanguard of the founding of the European project, Christian Democracy was one of the most important postwar political ideologies. Yet surprisingly few […]
MoreThe release of Booksellers, now available for virtual screening, coincides with a nostalgia many of us feel for those days when we could freely browse the stacks. D. W. […]
MoreReview of Stephen Harrigan, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas (University of Texas Press, 2019) Years ago, I was onboard a flight from Los Angeles to Dallas. As […]
MoreThis is the first post in our review forum of Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Anti-Democratic Politics in the West (Columbia University Press, 2019). With […]
MoreWhen we first started Tocqueville 21 in early 2018, Wendy Brown was one of the very first people we reached out to for insights into our contemporary democratic world. Her […]
MoreWith the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 2013, Thomas Piketty became perhaps the world’s best-known chronicler and theorist of global inequality. His latest book, Capital and Ideology, […]
MoreWilliam Selinger offers a response to his reviewers in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum. It is a pleasure to respond to Georgios Varouxakis and Lucia Rubinelli’s commentaries on Parliamentarism: […]
MoreThis is the second review in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum. Review of Parliamentarism: From Burke to Weber by William Selinger (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Historians of political thought […]
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