In this week’s episode of Bookstack, host Richard Aldous chats with Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, about his latest book, The Restless Wave: A Novel of the United States Navy (Penguin Random House). Bookstack is now a production of American Purpose at Persuasion. Follow Persuasion on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events, as well as updates from excellent writers across our network. And,...

In this week’s episode, host Richard Aldous talks to fellow Bard College historian Sean McMeekin about his new book, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Basic Books). Bookstack is now a production of American Purpose at Persuasion. Follow Persuasion on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events, as well as updates from excellent writers across our network. And, to receive pieces like this in your inbox and support our...

Bookstack is back with its 150th episode! On this week's show, host Richard Aldous talks to Marsha E. Barrett, assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, about her new book, Nelson Rockefeller's Dilemma: The Fight to Save Moderate Republicanism (Three Hills/Cornell University Press).  Bookstack is now a production of American Purpose at Persuasion. Follow Persuasion on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events,...

On this week's episode of Bookstack, host Richard Aldous is joined by Clara Bingham to discuss her new book, The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973. Bookstack is now a production of American Purpose at Persuasion. Follow Persuasion on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events, as well as updates from excellent writers across our network. And, to receive pieces like this in your inbox and support our work, subscribe...

Bookstack is back! On today's episode, host Richard Aldous talks to James Graham Wilson, historian at the U.S. Department of State, about James's new book, America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan (Cornell University Press). This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe

The typical Black American family has fifteen cents of wealth for every comparable dollar that a White American family holds. Exploring the historical expansion of the wealth gap, journalists Louise Story and Ebony Reed join Richard Aldous to reveal how their investigation into the U.S. financial system uncovered scores of setbacks that continue to perpetuate that gap. The result of their careful efforts, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap, offers...

The global pandemic unmasked not just the many vulnerabilities in the world’s supply chain, but also its hidden innerworkings. Reporting on the world from an economic lens for over twenty-five years, award-winning New York Times journalist Peter S. Goodman joins Richard Aldous to share insights from his latest book, How the World Ran Out of Everything. While the vulnerabilities abound, Goodman offers hope on how to reorient the supply chain to maintain innovation and efficiencies, while...

How did Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man of simple Kansas-bred beginnings, inspire implicit trust by his historical peers, from FDR and Churchill, to Stalin and DeGaulle? And how did he become a shaper of a new world order, asserting America’s post-war dominance? Michel Paradis, author of The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, joins Richard Aldous for this week’s episode to offer up profound insights into Eisenhower’s enduring global influence and...

Is there hope to be found amidst the current political climate? How to generate solidarity in an atmosphere of growing difference? Renowned sociologist James Davison Hunter tackles these questions in his new book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis. Hunter joins Richard Aldous in this week's Bookstack, for a conversation about the cultural contradictions that underpin American history and the ongoing struggle to achieve unity in divisive times.

When President Joe Biden stated in 2022 that the United States would defend Taiwan military in the event of a Chinese invasion, he crossed a line of ambiguity that had been purposefully danced around for decades. And yet, even though such a scenario would pit two nuclear powers against each another, “The United States does not know why Taiwan is important to it,” argues Sulmaan Wasif Khan. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the history of the standoff and the dangers lurking ahead as...

In divided times, many Americans are sealing themselves off from those who think differently. Diana McLain Smith tells a different story in her new book, Remaking the Space Between Us: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future for All, focusing on the tens of thousands reaching out to fellow Americans across the divides to promote understanding. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss why the path to a better polity must begin with We the People: “We’re waiting for someone to...

Thanks to American missionaries’ successes around the globe, the face of evangelicalism is no longer White America. In_ Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims_, Adriana Carranca reveals an extraordinary tale that has been under the radar: Missionaries from Latin America are leading the way in spreading the Gospel to Muslim countries, including in former U.S. war zones. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the dangerous work being undertaken by a new wave of...

Harry Truman was educated in Missouri public schools, never went to college, and spent a number of his adult years as a dirt farmer. Yet eleven years after first being elected to the Senate he became President of the most powerful nation on earth in the midst of momentous world events. In his new book Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World, David Roll suggests that from these humble beginnings Truman undertook “the most consequential transition” in...

Ian Fleming heroicized for all the world the British intelligence agent in James Bond. In his new book Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, renowned biographer Nicholas Shakespeare digs into the legend of Fleming himself. Like his most famous character, Fleming’s life was colorfully marked by high-stakes intelligence, alcohol, and dalliances with women. Yet Fleming was tormented rather than buoyed by his literary success. Shakespeare joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the turbulent life of the...

In surveying dysfunction across America, the question arises: Is the source of the trouble at the local or the national level? Seth D. Kaplan has shifted his analytical gaze from fragile nations abroad to examine the fragility of his home country. He believes America’s problems from health to politics are downstream of individuals becoming increasingly disconnected, neighborhood by neighborhood. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American...

Solidarity has been at the root of social change throughout history, bringing people together across their differences to challenge injustice within societies. In their new book, Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor examine the sociological concept that is at the heart of social transformation. Hunt-Hendrix joins host Richard Aldous to share her thoughts on both the concept and the social movements with which it is intimately...

There are now over a million Russians living in exile, spurred on by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Unable to safely oppose their own government at home, they often find themselves subject to harassment and disdain as immigrants. In his new book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia, Paul Starobin joins host Richard Aldous for a look at the hopes and dreams of those Russians living abroad, and to explain why he thinks more and more of them will “take up the gun.”

Rejected in official circles in his day and embraced in modern times by a motley array of admirers, Spinoza was in many ways ahead of his time. His commitment to truth, universal principles, and freedom lie at the heart of Western liberal thinking. As those ideas come under attack on both the left and the right, Spinoza’s philosophical thinking is as relevant as ever. Ian Buruma joins Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia not only embarked on very different political paths at home, but they viewed the future of their relationship in starkly divergent terms. In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, authors Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel show how Russia’s determination to control an independent Ukraine only pushed it further away. Popova joins host Richard Aldous to discuss how the varying cultural and political realities in the...

Large threats to the well-being of humankind such as the pandemic and climate change have cemented the notion that scientists across the globe naturally work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems. In Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate, historian of science Lorraine Daston traces the trajectory of such cooperation, noting that along the way scientists have as often been competitors as collaborators. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the history of “the scientific...

Amidst all the positive and negative ink dedicated to Winston Churchill, Cambridge emeritus professor of international history David Reynolds offers a new dimension. He places the leader for whom history was determined by “great men” among the other greats who both inspired and enervated him. Reynolds joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his latest book, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.

The remarkable shift in the economic ideas at the heart of the Democratic Party—from the embrace of neoliberalism in the ’90s to the left-wing populism that Joe Biden accommodates today—traces its origins to the 2008 financial crisis. Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders and AOC after her, put the economic frustrations of ordinary Americans at the heart of her policies, making fashionable a populism of the left that was not unlike Donald Trump’s brand of it on the right. Journalist Joshua...

For tens of thousands of people, living in Mexico today means living in a country where criminal violence begets state-sponsored violence, and where law and justice have so failed ordinary citizens that they often take matters into their own hands. In his new book Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance, Azam Ahmed chronicles the tale of a mother whose desperation led her to do just that. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss those who...