A chronicle of the rise of Indian nationalism offers lessons for defeating our own version.
Books
Book reviews and essays from the Washington Monthly on the new books shaping debates over politics, policy, history, and American democracy.
Posted inNovember/December 2024
Who Will Protect the Watchdogs?
Inspectors general have fought for accountability in U.S. government for decades, with varying success. They will be prime targets in a second Trump administration.
Posted inNovember/December 2024
The Tyranny of the Welfare Queen
For decades, the conversation about social services in America has centered on a false and harmful stereotype about who deserves help.
Posted inNovember/December 2024
The New Christian RightÂ
The charismatic religious movement that supports Donald Trump is less misogynistic and racist than the old Moral Majority, but far more determined to crush liberalism by any means necessary. Â
Posted inNovember/December 2024
From President to Convict
Jonathan Alter takes us inside the hush money trial that made Donald Trump the first ex-president felon in American history.
Posted inPolitics
Would George Orwell Recognize Today’s Republican Party?
Would George Orwell Recognize Today’s Republican Party? Steve Benen’s new book grimly and wisely dissects the “Republican war on the recent past.”
Posted inBooks
Can the 1980s Explain 2024?
The yuppies embodied the winning side of America’s deepening economic divide. Bruce Springsteen spoke for those left behind. Two new books consider what liberals can learn from the decade.
Posted inBooks
A New Look at the Feminist Earthquake
Clara Bingham’s masterful “The Movement” shows how women’s liberation transformed America and why our understanding of 1963-1973 needs to include more voices.
Posted inCollege Guide
The Origin of Specious
Originalism, the school of constitutional interpretation currently modish among conservative lawyers and judges, is not so much an idea as a legal-industrial complex divided into three parts—the academic, the jurisprudential, and the political. In its first part, originalism is an academic pursuit, one that a large number of law scholars have embraced with gusto. A […]
Posted inFeatured
VIDEO: Anne Kim Discusses “Poverty for Profit” with Paul Glastris
‘Poverty for Profit’ pulls back the curtain on a vast, predatory corporate sector that few middle-class Americans know anything about. In the video below, author Anne Kim discussed the book with Washington Monthly Editor-in-Chief Paul Glastris.
