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PerseusWizardry  9mo ago (text post)   771 thread views

What are the best textbooks for understanding American politics/contemporary public issues?

I am embarking on a self-study of American politics in the hopes of becoming generally fluent and comfortable understanding the issues of our day. That said, I don't want to study at such a narrow level (i.e. the news cycle) that what I learn will stop being relevant in two weeks. I have a sense of which general areas I should study, but not which textbooks are ideal. I am open to suggestions! (My background: I just have a BA in philosophy and a BA in psych.)

I assume I should probably read a textbook on:

  1. Economics

  2. The American Public Policy Process

  3. American History

  4. World History, esp Modern Europe and the Americas since 1800

  5. Comparative Politics/History of Major Political Ideas?/Explanation of major ideologies?

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Are you an American? Have you had standard American schoolbook history and civics?

The problem with this question is that to "be generally fluent and comfortable understanding the issues of our day" you need several things:

  1. An understanding of the historical and political narratives that our current leadership grew up with, that is, what was being taught from 1970 to around 2005.

  2. An understanding of the historical and political narratives that are now in vogue (eg. 1619 project)

  3. Revisionist accounts that will explain all the myth-making in 1) and 2). Of course, many revisionist histories are themselves quite false ... so you have to find the right ones. I can tell you what I think are the right ones, but how will you know to trust my judgement?

If you just know 3), the "true history" you will have trouble debating, or even interacting with the mainstream. You might get yourself in a lot of hot water. If you just know 1) or 2), you will basically be an NPC, and a victim of fashion, and a victim of forces larger than yourself and that do not have your interest at heart.

I'll plug my own site that I created many moons ago, which just lists a bunch of book and article pairings that set a left/mainstream/center-left account against a non-left/revisionist account. Maybe you will find it useful: https://countersearch.net/

I don’t see a reason to read any (4) for this project. Europe and America are cousins but since 1800 I’d say we have been mostly on our own path.

(1) I’d probably read some Milton Friedman. I think he’s the best of those who built the underpinnings of Reaganism and early neoliberalism which Clinton adopted. I think modern neoliberalism only has small bits of that still.

I think Tocqueville still has some insights into the American project.

Personally I consider your request especially broad. And you need to read a few hundred books to know all that is going on.

Twitter...

Check out AL Frankens autobiography. It won’t give you truly what you’re looking for, but there’s a lot to be learned from it.

I think biographies are generally the best way to understand American politics. You might consider Nixons biography as I believe a lot of the 1970s set up politics for a generations.

The problem with trying to study modern history is that the world is simply changing too quickly for definitive conclusions! The whole truth is rarely revealed when things happen. Today, people think google is immortal, and yet, 20 years from now, we'll look back at the memoirs of the executives and project directors and see that the writing was on the wall when they unambiguously choked on AI development and dropped the ball to Microsoft and Meta.

Studying the past is much easier, since rumors get cleaned up and facts get checked.

I would suggest checking out some of Tanner Greer's reading lists on American democracy. His musings on what to include in a contemporary American history book may also be useful. His suggestions rarely disappoint.

musings

Thank you!

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