New Books in Political Science

In his final days in office in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt invited dozens of friends to the White House for lunch. They had never met as a group, but they had one thing in common: Each played tennis with the president and advised on policy matters. Roosevelt half-joked that the public would never know how much these tennis partners did to make his administration a success. Journalists dismissively called them the “Tennis Cabinet,” making light of their contribution, but Roosevelt knew otherwise.

In Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Court Cabinet (Potomac Books, an Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2026), Michael Patrick Cullinane explains that the inner circle led the administration’s campaigns against corporate greed, investigated public health violations, and formulated consumer protections. They founded environmental conservation policies, prosecuted civil rights violations, and implemented bureaucratic efficiencies that saved the government billions. Roosevelt’s tennis mates shaped the nation’s diplomacy, ending wars and promoting American interests abroad.

Never had a more eclectic group advised a U.S. president. The Tennis Cabinet included legendary frontier lawman Seth Bullock and the starched-shirt corporate lawyer Henry Stimson, who served in five presidential administrations. Texas wolf wrangler Jack Abernathy played with stuffy bureaucrats like Labor Commissioner Charles Patrick Neill and social activist James Bronson Reynolds. The French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand spun yarns with football hero George Washington Woodruff and Roosevelt’s college friend and banker Robert Bacon. James Garfield, namesake son of a martyred president, sipped mint juleps with Supreme Court Justice William Henry Moody. And J. P. Morgan’s silver-spooned son-in-law Herbert Satterlee kept company with rugged soldier Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly.

For all their differences, these men shared a desire to help the president transform the nation from a parochial nineteenth-century republic into an imperial and industrial global power. They have escaped the attention of reporters and historians only because of Roosevelt’s towering celebrity. Turning away from Roosevelt as the singular force behind his administration, it is possible to see how the contributions of his Tennis Cabinet quietly sowed the seeds of the American Century.
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False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy (Vernon Press, 2024) examines how modern forms of diversion shape civic life and weaken democratic responsibility. Drawing on the ancient Roman idea of “bread and circuses,” Kurt Warner explores how contemporary society is saturated with distractions that keep citizens focused on what is immediate, pleasurable, profitable, or spectacular, rather than on what is politically and socially meaningful.

The conversation introduces listeners to the book’s central concern: how celebrity culture, consumerism, economic pressures, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games can become “false idols.” These forces do not merely entertain us; they influence how we think, what we value, and how we understand our responsibilities to one another.

A key point of discussion is the book’s comparison between ancient Rome and the contemporary United States. Warner uses “bread and circuses” to consider how societies become complacent when citizens are absorbed by basic needs and entertainment while civic duty fades into the background.

The episode also explores the book’s opening narrative, which follows an ordinary man, Chris, through a day filled with advertising, media, branding, and social pressure. This scene illustrates one of the book’s central arguments: distraction is often woven into everyday life before people have noticed its influence.

Warner’s background in psychotherapy adds an important dimension to the discussion. 'False Idols' connects personal awareness with civic awareness, asking how people can recognize the forces directing their attention and reclaim the ability to think critically.

Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to reflect on the relationship between attention and democracy. 'False Idols' asks what it would mean to wake up from the collective daze of distraction and choose more meaningful forms of civic, ethical, and social engagement.

Key Themes and Context:

“Bread and circuses” in the modern world - One of the book’s central ideas is that Juvenal’s famous phrase “bread and circuses” remains relevant today. Warner uses it to examine how entertainment, consumption, and everyday distraction can draw citizens away from civic responsibility.

The many forms of diversion- The book considers a wide range of modern distractions, including celebrity worship, money, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games. Together, these examples show how distraction can operate across culture, politics, economics, and everyday life.

Democracy and civic duty - At the heart of the book is a concern with democracy. Warner argues that distraction becomes dangerous when it weakens civic engagement and allows people to avoid the difficult work of political and ethical responsibility.

Critical thinking as resistance - The later chapters of 'False Idols' focus on critical thinking as a way of resisting manipulation and recovering agency. The book invites readers to examine not only what they consume, but also how their attention, values, and judgments are shaped.

The psychological dimension of distraction - Warner’s background in psychotherapy informs the book’s attention to emotion, avoidance, and self-awareness. Distraction is presented not only as a social or political problem, but also as something that affects how individuals relate to themselves and others.

Vernon Press – Bridging Scholarly Ideas and Global Readership

Vernon Press stands out as a bilingual independent publisher of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. Their mission is crucial — to provide a home for ideas of international importance and to embrace scholarship from underrepresented voices and perspectives. Through its diverse catalog, Vernon Press engages with global readers, contributing to academic and public discourse.

Dessy Vassileva, the Marketing & Design expert at Vernon Press, brings a 360º multidisciplinary approach to her work at Vernon Press.
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This week on Democracy Dialogues, Rachel Beatty Riedl speaks with Peter John Loewen to reflect on the 250th anniversary of US independence. They discuss the ways in which America’s unique founding moment has shaped democratic institutions and practice, and the paradox of America’s profound democratic experiment.

In this episode, Loewen describes his research on the representative nature of elected politicians – how they are similar to and different from ordinary people in their decision making. He also tackles questions of polarization and what happens when people have increased contact with other points of view. And the conversation wraps up with a discussion of higher education and democracy, and what role universities can play in shaping the next generation of democratic citizens.
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It's a shadowy, ornate world of cover-ups and hidden motives. In Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation (Apollo, 2026), Ambrogio Caiani lifts back the heavy velvet curtains of thechancel and peers behind the locked mahogany doors of the Vatican to reveal the shocking truths that make up a century of Catholic corruption.

For
many, Catholicism's flirtation with evil has become impossible to
ignore: a pope courting Nazi officials and, horribly, turning a blind
eye to the Holocaust; the Vatican becoming embroiled in a series of
dodgy financial dealings; the child abuse continuously perpetrated by
members of the clergy. Time and time again, Catholic figures have made
terrible choices in private and preached in public about goodness and
morality.

This is the first history that focuses exclusively on
Catholicism throughout the twentieth century, sketching not only
scandalous stories of corruption but also lively portrayals of
Catholicism's key characters—from a beret-clad communist revolutionary
priest to the bizarre morning routine of the pope who followed a daily
cold bath with dry unbuttered toast. Caiani, a critical Catholic
himself, takes a frank and sceptical look at the trajectory of global
Catholicism and wrestles with vital questions about the future of the
church. Taking in the wider socio-political contexts of a world at war
and the accumulating momentum of social progress, this brilliant
history traces the evolution of the Catholic church alongside the
development of our modern society right up to the election of Pope Leo
XIV in 2025.
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This book is available open access.

For
more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will
revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers
(MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of
politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how
programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace
activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build
simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet.

Drawing
on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the
history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections,
voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United
States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international
affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the
two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of
exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while
presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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