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Faculty and leaders of the school have recently published books on vital public policy topics connected to Sanford's key themes. Read more below about recent books published by members of the Sanford community.
Frank Bruni: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster) March 1, 2022
One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. Overnight, a rare stroke had cut off blood to one of his optic nerves, rendering him functionally blind in that eye—forever. And he soon learned from doctors that the same disorder could ravage his left eye, too. He could lose his sight altogether.
In The Beauty of Dusk, Bruni hauntingly recounts his adjustment to this daunting reality, a medical and spiritual odyssey that involved not only reappraising his own priorities but also reaching out to, and gathering wisdom from, longtime friends and new acquaintances who had navigated their own traumas and afflictions.
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Nicholas Carnes: co-editor, The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas) Dec. 23, 2022
This is the first book to look expansively at politics in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and asks the question, “What lessons are this entertainment juggernaut teaching audiences about politics, society, power, gender, and inequality?” Carnes is Creed C. Black Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy.
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Aaron K. Chatterji, co-editor: The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth (University of Chicago Press) March 1, 2022
This volume presents studies from experts in 12 industries, providing insights into the future role of innovation and entrepreneurship in driving economic growth across 12 different sectors. Currently on leave as chief economist of the United States Department of Commerce, Chatterji is Mark Burgess & Lisa Benson-Burgess Distinguished Professor.
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Susan Colbourn: Euromissiles The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (Cornell University Press) Nov. 15, 2022
Associate director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, Colbourn takes a long view of the strategic crisis — from the emerging dilemmas of allied defense in the early 1950s through the aftermath of the INF Treaty 35 years later. The result is a dramatic tale that changes the way we think about the Cold War and its culmination.
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William A. Darity Jr., co-editor: The Pandemic Divide (Duke University Press) Nov. 1, 2022
As COVID-19 made inroads in the United States in spring 2020, a common refrain rose above the din: “We’re all in this together.” However, the full picture was far more complicated—and far less equitable. Black and Latinx populations suffered illnesses, outbreaks, and deaths at much higher rates than the general populace. Those working in low-paid jobs and those living in confined housing or communities already disproportionately beset by health problems were particularly vulnerable. The contributors to The Pandemic Divide explain how these and other racial disparities came to the forefront in 2020. They explore COVID-19’s impact on multiple arenas of daily life—including wealth, health, housing, employment, and education—while highlighting what steps could have been taken to mitigate the full force of the pandemic. Most crucially, the contributors offer concrete public policy solutions that would allow the nation to respond effectively to future crises and improve the long-term well-being of all Americans.
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Bruce Jentleson: Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press) Sept. 27, 2022
William Preston Few Professor of Public Policy, Jentleson offers a concise, authoritative overview of a little-understood yet extremely important phenomenon in world politics: the use of economic sanctions by one country to punish another. He demonstrates that examining sanctions is key to understanding international relations and explains how and why they will likely continue to bear on global politics.
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Jennifer Lansford, co-editor: Schools Systems, Parent Behavior, and Academic Achievement: An International Perspective (Springer Publishing) 2019
The book highlights similarities and differences in education and parenting across these nine countries - all varying widely in socioeconomic and cultural factors that affect schools and families. The volume contributes to greater understanding of links between parenting and academic performance in different cultural groups. It sheds light on how school systems and parenting are embedded in larger cultural settings that have implications for students’ educational experiences and academic achievement. As two of the most important contexts in which children and adolescents spend time, understanding how schools and families jointly contribute to academic achievement holds promise for advancing the international agenda of promoting quality education for all.
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Philip Napoli: Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press) August 2019
Social Media and the Public Interest explores how and why social media platforms became so central to news consumption and distribution as they met many of the challenges of finding information—and audiences—online. Napoli illustrates the implications of a system in which coders and engineers drive out journalists and editors as the gatekeepers who determine media content. He argues that a social media–driven news ecosystem represents a case of market failure in what he calls the algorithmic marketplace of ideas. To respond, we need to rethink fundamental elements of media governance based on a revitalized concept of the public interest. A compelling examination of the intersection of social media and journalism, Social Media and the Public Interest offers valuable insights for the democratic governance of today’s most influential shapers of news.
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Christopher Sims: The Pretend Villages: Inside the U.S. Military Training Grounds (Kehrer Verlag) May 11, 2021
The Pretend Villages documents the inhabitants and structures of imagined, fabricated Iraqi and Afghan villages on the training grounds of U.S. military bases. Situated in the deep forests of North Carolina and Louisiana and in a great expanse of desert near Death Valley in California, these villages serve as strange and poignant way stations for soldiers headed off to war, and for those who have fled from it: American troops encounter actors, often recent immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan, who are paid to be “cultural role players.” Christopher Sims photographed in these surprising and fantastical realms over a fifteen-year period as U.S. wars abroad fluctuated in intensity. With this book, he presents an archival record of “enemy” village life that is as convincingly accurate and comically misdirected as it is mundane and nightmarish.
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Mallory SoRelle: Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection (University of Chicago Press) November 2020
In Democracy Declined, Mallory E. SoRelle argues that the failure of federal policy makers to curb risky practices can be explained by the evolution of consumer finance policies aimed at encouraging easy credit in part by foregoing more stringent regulation. Furthermore, SoRelle explains how angry borrowers’ experiences with these policies teach them to focus their attention primarily on banks and lenders instead of demanding that lawmakers address predatory behavior. As a result, advocacy groups have been mostly unsuccessful in mobilizing borrowers in support of stronger consumer financial protections.
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Margaret Sullivan: Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life (Macmillan Publishers) Oct. 28, 2022
Veteran journalist and New York Times columnist Margaret Sullivan chronicles her years in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroom. She takes us behind the scenes of the nation's most influential news outlets to explore how Americans lost trust in the news and what it will take to regain it. In January, Sullivan will be the 2023 Egan Visiting Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy.
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Erika Weinthal, co-editor: Water Quality Impacts of the Energy-Water Nexus (Cambridge University Press) Feb 1. 2022
Avner Vengosh and Erika Weinthal, both professors at the Nicholas School of the Environment, focus on how water use, and wastewater and waste solids produced from fossil fuel energy production affect water quality and quantity. They highlight the growing evidence that fossil fuel production leads to water quality degradation, while regulations remain fractured and highly variable across and within countries.