Talking Union with Wisconsin Public Radio's "Central Time"

Today is the birthday of my new book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, and I was pleased to be able to share it with radio audiences around the county as part of Penguin's radio book tour, the ultimate in socially distanced book promotion.

Some of the shows were taped for future broadcast, but this evening's interview with Wisconsin Public Radio's statewide interview and call-in program, "Central Time" ran live, and it was a pleasure to be able to share the new book with residents of one of its central character's home state (Frederick Jackson Turner, late of Portage and Madison.)

You can hear the full show online here.

Union went on sale in stores across North America this morning and, in a few minutes, I'll be joining
Maine's own Longfellow Books and the Maine Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance for a virtual launch event and signing (at 7pm.) If you happen to see this post in the moments after I post it, register for the Zoom-driven event here.

Other virtual events to follow, including with Washington D.C.'s Politics & Prose on June 28, where author and NPR veteran reporter Tom Gjelten will be interviewing me about Union (register here.)

Talking American Nations on Wisconsin Public Radio, July 4th

For those of you in the Badger State: I'll be your Independence Day guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's morning program from 7 to 8 Central.

Appropriately enough, I'm talking about the ideas in American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, and their implications for our history, politics, and shared stability.

For those further afield, I'll post a link to the podcast here when it's available. [Update, 7/6/18: Here's the audio link.]

I've appeared on WPR a couple of times in the past, including to talk about my POLITICO Magazine story on Milwaukee's 21st century reindustraliztion drive, and another on the sequel to American Nations, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.

11 Books That Will Make You Smarter About Politics

The folks at Business Insider have been kind to American Nations, re-upping their article on the paradigm a few times over the past couple of years, each time reaching a new cohort of readers previously unfamiliar with the book.

Today they've also included it in this "11 Books That Will Make You Smarter About Politics," in the company of some heavy hitters like David Halberstam, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Madeline Albright. So, thanks again BI!

Partly as a result of their June 18 re-up, for those in the Badger State, I'll be the guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's statewide morning show July 4, 7 to 8 am Central, talking about the American Nations framework and the lessons it brings us. Tune in if you're there!

From U.S. cities, some lessons in protecting liberal democracy

This year's presidential election has exposed a long festering crisis: that tens of millions of Americans are ready to endorse a candidate who has pledged to use extra-constitutional means to solve the country’s problems, including the jailing of his opponent, an erosion of first amendment protections for the press, and ethnographic tests for federal judges.

Authoritarianism now has a sizable constituency in American politics, one that won’t be going away on Nov. 9, regardless of who is president-elect. The next president and congressional leaders will still preside over a country that is politically polarized, with differences that are geographic even as they are ideological, but the risks of inaction have grown.

In the new weekly print edition of my old journalistic home, The Christian Science Monitor, I have

the cover story on how we move forward and shore up our liberal democracy. This is the topic of my most recent book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, but it's been reinforced by what I've seen on the ground as I've travelled the country this year for POLITICO, observing successful innovations of various sorts in cities from Utah to New Hampshire.

The story -- which appears in the print edition dated Nov. 7, but went up online yesterday -- explores how people can balance the individual freedom and the need to build and maintain the social and physical infrastructure that allows it to exist.

It's been a few years since I last wrote for the Monitor, but I'm a past Eastern Europe, Balkan, and Global Affairs correspondent for that paper, having written hundreds of stories from dozens of countries between the early 1990s and 2010 from bases in Budapest, Zagreb, Washington, South Texas and Maine. It's nice to be back in its pages again after a long hiatus.

[Update, 12/31/16: This story prompted editorials in both the Des Moines Register and the Roanoke Times.]

Talking about Milwaukee's reindustrialization with Wisconsin Public Radio

For August's installment of the POLITICO Magazine "What Works" series, I was in Milwaukee, writing about that city's "re-industrialziation" effort and, in particular, their remaking of a blighted industrial zone into a model for what a 21st century manufacturing park can look like. The Menomonee Valley -- once the sacrifice zone for everything the city didn't want anyplace else -- now combines manufacturing with nature trails, parks, trout fishing, New Urbanism-ish design standards, and a landscape that helps control stormwater runoff and flooding.

I was pleased to be the guest Friday on Wisconsin Public Radio's long format interview program, Central Time. Here's a link to the audio of that online.

I was last on WPR in March, talking about my new book, American Character.

How Milwaukee shook off the rust

A lot of cities have worked to repurpose their manufacturing districts. Milwaukee has doubled-down on the largest of theirs, creating a model for what the 21st century industrial park might look like. Mixing recreational, environmental, and manufacturing uses, the Menomonee Valley has filled with tenants from near and far. It's the topic of my latest installment in Politico's "What Works" series, which posted Thursday night.

This is my sixth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; and how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base. In addition, last month -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

[Update, 9/8/16: I did this interview with Wisconsin Public Radio about the piece.]

Talking American Character on Wisconsin Public Radio, WCSH-6, Voclao

On the eve of the release of American Character, I was pleased to do live interviews about the book with Wisconsin Public Radio and Maine's own Rob Caldwell on WCSH-6/WLBZ-2's "207" program.

This morning I spent a full hour with Joy Cardin on her Wisconsin Public Radio show, which runs on their Ideas stations, complete with call-in questions from listeners. You can hear that show online here.

This evening I joined Rob Caldwell and his colleague on Maine's leading television interview

program, "207" which airs on NBC affiliates WCSH-6 in Portland and WLBZ-2 in Bangor. [Update, 3/22/16: Full video here.]

Yesterday, I started my day with Vocalo Radio's Morning Amp host Jill Hopkins. The program, a production of WBEW at Chicago Public Radio, airs across Chicago-land and northwest Indiana.

Thanks to all three programs and their audiences for an excellent kick-off and for acting as my initial practice in talking about the ideas in the book.

Tomorrow, March 15, American Character goes on sale and I'll be the guest on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network's "Maine Calling" radio program from noon to one Eastern. (Call in with your questions. ) [Update: 1/16/16: Here's the audio for that.] That evening I'll be in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for my first live event at the River Run Bookstore.

For full book tour information, including events in Portland (Maine), Beverly, Boston, Newburyport and Falmouth (Massachusetts), Greenwich (Connecticut) and Washington, D.C., click here.

Occupy Wall Street's regional strengths and weaknesses

Interviewers have been asking me what the American Nations paradigm -- that the continent is really divided into eleven "countries," most of them centuries-old -- can tell us about the prospects of the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements.

Analyzing the Tea Party was relatively easy, as they've been engaged in electoral politics from the beginning, creating a wealth of data; my feature in the current issue of the Washington Monthly shows why the movement is doomed to failure in large swaths of the country. The results of last week's off-year elections bolstered the argument.

But the Occupy movement offers much less of a data trail: its newer; it has thus far spurned electoral politics; there's no "OWS caucus" in Congress to track. I've hypothesized that the movement would also face stark regional differences in popularity and leverage but, until today, didn't have any evidence to test the idea.

Today's article at the Washington Monthly's Ten Miles Square blog offers preliminary evidence that OWS is strongest in the very same "nations" where the Tea Party is weakest. But there's a surprise too: OWS appears especially strong in in the Far West, suggesting the (Tea Party-steered) G.O.P. coalition may be vulnerable to fracture. Enjoy the piece, and let me know what you think.

Is the Tea Party Doomed? My take in Washington Monthly

My first feature for Washington Monthly is in the new issue to be released tomorrow, but it's their "sneak preview" article for the month, so it just posted online as well.

The article argues that the Tea Party is doomed to failure in large swaths of the country, making it unlikely to achieve more than fleeting nationwide success. The piece is, of course, informed by the American Nations paradigm. You'll be surprised at the regional character of the movement.

Maine politicos will be interested to know that Tea Party activist and U.S. Senate hopeful Alan Ian Dodge thinks the state movement is collapsing, partly as a result of the debt ceiling debacle.

Fittingly enough, I'm actually in Washington. If you are too and have an interest in American Nations, come to this evening's Zocalo Public Square / Center for Social Cohesion event.

Academic Freedom offers no protection for professor's emails

You may by now have heard the story of Bill Cronon, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who - after writing a New York Times OpEd and blog posting regarding the provenance of Gov. Walker's anti-labor legislation -- became the subject of a public records request by the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which seeks all of Mr. Cronon's emails referring in any way to the state's contentious labor dispute or to key agencies and Republican lawmakers.

Yesterday, three public universities in Michigan received similar requests for all emails from labor studies professors that include the keywords "Scott Walker," "Wisconsin," "Madison," and "Maddow," the MSNBC commentator.

The requests have occasioned a discussion on university campuses on the maintaining the balance between academic freedom and the public's right to review "public documents," which in most states include university e-mail accounts. (An exception: students are protected under a federal privacy law.)

I just co-reported a story in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education on this issue, revealing that blanket requests for faculty e-mail have been heretofore unheard of at other major public research universities, but that in most states they are indeed disclosable. (Unfortunately, the story is currently available online only to Chronicle subscribers.)

I've been a correspondent of the Chronicle for nearly 22 years now, reporting on academe and scientific research around the globe. My most recent story -- which is available online -- was on foreign students and faculty getting inappropriately detained at the U.S. Border Patrol's "internal checkpoints" at highways and bus stations far from the Canadian frontier.