Consider this a prompt for an open thread.
I’m looking for books to recommend to students to both give them a hint of what academic political science is “really” like but also to get them excited about the systematic study of politics. No single book can do it all, but a summer reading list can at least prod people to look in the right areas. So here’s my list; additions welcome.
- Putnam and Campbell, American Grace: Fascinating survey of religion and politics in American life
- Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller, The Party Decides: Who makes presidents and why?
- Gelman, Park, Bafumi, and Shor, Red State, Blue State: Why do people vote the way they do? Why are some states red and some states blue?
- James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How do ideas constitute and guide state policy?
- James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: Taking anarchism seriously.
- Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail
- Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: The states system we take for granted wasn’t the inevitable or even the only conclusion of European state-making
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: Sweeping descriptions of how politics made and unmade American society–and a reminder that political contestation isn’t teleological.
- BDM and Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Thinking like a bad guy.
- John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics: Few scholars have written such an approachable, provocative, and erudite book.
- Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes: Gripping.
- Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War: Worth re-reading. Most successful comps outline in the history of academia.
- Michael Ross, The Oil Curse. The definitive statement of a generation of the resource curse research project.
- Please Vote For Me: School politics with a twist. Is ‘picky eating’ a valid decision rule?
- Street Fight. I think this was supposed to make me like Cory Booker, but I had the opposite reaction.
And:
- Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View: Thinking hard about the core concept.
- Robert Caro, The Power Broker. Shorter, more accessible, and vastly more successful as an intellectual and historical project than The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which have begun to reveal Caro’s abiding disdain for a complex and multifaceted political leader. The portrait of Moses in this book is one of the classic studies of bureaucratic power.
Kalyvas, Stathis: the Logic of Violence in Civil Wars (ranges from ‘thick’ micro-history to formal modeling – not too complex – and is one of the best treatments of the subject I’ve read, both in its conclusions and its methodology)
I have heard this suggested. It’s my fault for not having read it (which is also keeping The Submerged State off the list).
Not a single book from international political economy, even though that makes up the majority of global politics and most students know less about economic history than security history? I’d insist on *at least* one book covering the global economy, and if restricted to one it’d probably be:
— Jeffry Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the 20th Century.
Others I’d nominate to fill in some of the gaps above:
— G. John Ikenberry, After Victory (for an introduction to order, hegemony, institutionalism, etc.)
— Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights (possibly the best single book on the rights agenda?)
— Susan Strange, States and Markets (for a structural perspective that isn’t about polarity, billiard balls, or levels of analysis; considers security and economy holistically)
— Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order (sweeping history)
Frieden is probably the best candidate of these for undergrads, with Ikenberry a close second. I gave Simmons a very, very hard look but I’m not sure it’s accessible enough to a 20-year-old.
Kathryn Sikkink’s The Justice Cascade might fit your criteria for accessibility in the area of human rights.
Yes. Yes it could. Thanks!!
I think that’s by design
Some very good titles on the list. I’d caution against including “sweeping history” accounts written by non-historians, like Fukuyama and even Acemoglu and Robinson, at least without also including some works of world history more directly tuned into current historiography.
I do, of course, suffer from disciplinary bias.
Here are some suggestions for titles written by non-political scientists, which more poli sci students ought to read (at least belonging on a top 30 list):
– Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents
– C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914
– Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
– Donald R. Wright, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia
– Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference
– Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity'” (Theory and Society 29 (2000)
Burbank and Cooper should have been on there (maybe twinned with Nexon?). Pomeranz is very good; is it too econ-y? Perhaps, but China is a glaring omission from this list (there are other glaring gaps in the list). I look forward to reading Lewis and Wigen, Bayly, and Wright. (Graduate students need summer reading lists too.)
From my experience, if you want to get pol.sci. students interested in history, it helps if its either “traditional” history or social-sciency. On the first, I believe that more people should read books like
– A. J. P.Taylor, The Trouble Makers. Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939. A classic, not too long, very readable and excellent as historical background on liberal international thougt/practice.
– Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience. Again not too long, a bit dated in parts, but again very useful as historical introduction.
On the second type of book, Tilly’s Capital, Coercion etc. is accessible and also very good. For more advanced readers one of John Hobson’s books would also fit the bill.
Hobson’s The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization should be required reading for anyone in the social sciences.
Epstein & Knight, The Choices Justices Make.
Also: Where’s comparative politics?
Nice. Ross? Scott? Acemoglu and Robinson? Stretches, I know.
The real answer: I am not a comparativist, although I’ve played one on ISA panels. The recommendations I’m getting–Bates, Magaloni, Wintrobe–tend to have a very strong comparativist flavor.
I would caution against reading Ross without also evaluating substantive claims against the resource curse (see: Haber and Menaldo).
Also, reading this list, you’d think that political science doesn’t study legislatures, which is inaccurate.
Right, but there are precious few books on (U.S.) legislative politics that fit your criteria.
Oh, and Please Vote For Me is the single best documentary ever made about politics. Cheers for including that on the list!
It seems the single most glaring ommision is books by women. How about Page Fortna’s Does Peacekeeping Work? Beth Simmons’ book & Susan Strange’s book are good additions. And what about Nobel Prize winning Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons?!
Yes. This is by far the weakest part of the list. Magaloni is a strong contestant for the finals.
Simmons and Strange get nominations below. I don’t think Simmons is appropriate for this but I thought very hard about it. Haven’t read Strange but with two nominations it’s clearly time to do so. Ostrom is a very strong choice and probably better for my purposes than A&R. Fortna seems too narrow for this but without having read it I can’t say more.
So is Mettler.
Keck and Sikkink’s Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. And I agree with Kelly—where are the women on this list?!?!
Wouldn’t be hard to pick something by Finnemore either (also, very approachable writing, even for undergrads—-perhaps the intro to her Nat’l Interests in International Society book would be the best short reading). If you want a short Susan Strange piece, I’ve always been a fan of “Cave! Hic Dragones” (if you want to fit it into a discussion of how IR approached the regime concept in the 1980s).
And if you need to make space, I’d cut Ross (uber approachable, but not a seminal work by any means).
Remember: it isn’t a list of seminal works but of books that could get someone interested. I like the balance of the Ross piece between methodological approaches (not enough to scare anyone off but enough to remind them that you pretty much have to engage with numbers at some point).
The list is also light on non-Americans and people of color; I very intentionally called it “15 Must-Read” instead of “The 15 Must-Read” because I knew I was leaving out a lot. I really am grateful for the suggestions.
The followup will probably be called 29 Must-Read Books.
Hmmm. If getting students interested in what you can do with PSC/IR is the goal, I’d still encourage Keck and Sikkink. I think lots of undergrads are motivated by social justice/human rights-ish things and their book is a very approachable and interesting read that hits on these concerns…
Or, if you want to mix in some CP work, maybe Tilly’s Coercion, Capital, and European States or Herbst’s State’s and Power in Africa.
And as far as interesting work goes (or work that will get undergrads interested)—I’d also encourage more on social movements lit in general–maybe Dynamics of Contention?
Yes to Keck & Sikkink and Finnemore. How about one of Margaret
Levi’s books? Trust, government, consent, democracy….. Big topics. And
as long as we’re thinking about gender issues, let’s forgo using the
word “seminal.” ;-)
If the goal is to get students hooked, how about Sex & World Peace by Valerie Hudson & her colleagues? https://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13182-7/sex-and-world-peace
Hey. That looks really interesting–a fresh perspective! Again, thanks.
If you’re after some broad histories that cover the key periods, but do so with an eye to scholarship that understands causal and critical nuance, I’d start with Tony Judt; ‘Reappraisals’ and ‘Postwar’. IMHO the best short international histories of the 20th Century ever written.
Thinking of modern US politics, I think Nixonland is OK, but overrated (in the sense that there is nothing new, even in it’s reinterpretation). Sean Willentz’s ‘The Age of Reagan’ is better IMHO. For a detailed look at the fracturing of the 60’s / 70’s sometimes I do think there is value in going back to work closer to the time (I’m yet to be that convinced scholarship has moved on much). So, Godfrey Hodgson’s ‘America in our TIme”, Matusow’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order’ still have a lot of value. Also, rather than just Caro, what about Dallek on Johnson?
In the same vein as Gelman, Park et al I also like Alan Wolfe’s ‘One Nation: After All”
For IR ‘illutminating the wonders of theory” sort of stuff, I’d go for Hollis and Smith ‘Explaining and Understadning International Relations’ (though it might be a bit tricky for undergrads, still it’s far better than Waltz).
I also wouldn’t be too afraid of texbooks (not sure what level this list is pitched at). The ‘old’ blue cover 3rd. Edition of ‘The Globalization of World Politics’ is still an excellent primer on mainstream theory.
Given it is so important, though the limitations are obvious, placing theory in a context helps at first. Mine is the obvious one (US Foreign Policy) so, the best single bit of text illustrating the role of theory is the introduction to Bruce Cummings’ ‘Origins of the Korean War: The Roaring of the Cataract’. I’ve never found an undergrad read that chapter and not understand the need for theory.
Steven Hurst’s ‘Cold War: Key Perspectives’ is still the best readable guide to the differing main approaches to the Cold War, though again maybe just into postgrad level.
If one of the aims of the selections is to get students “excited” about the study of politics, then I think you should probably remove the Spruyt. It’s a good book (though I have differences w it), but I don’t think it’s going to ‘excite’ anyone v much. The Mearsheimer is well written but students shd be told to read it w their critical antennae even more primed than usual.
There is no normative theory on the list, perhaps b.c you don’t consider it part of the “systematic study of politics”? However, there must be a good recent overview of, e.g., global dist. justice (I think Matthias Risse has a recent bk but it’s probably too long; maybe Kimberly Hutchings (sp?), whom I haven’t read, or Chris Brown’s IR Theory: New Normative Approaches: readable; it came it out quite a while ago, though; Thomas Pogge (eg World Poverty and Human Rights) is provocative; he’s a philosopher not a political scientist, though in this case I don’t think it matters.
Since you mention Caro’s bk on R. Moses, which I haven’t read, I wd mention another biography, not of a politician but of a journalist: Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century. This won’t get students excited about the “systematic study of politics,” but it’s a very good book.
mention mention Caro
sorry delete “mention mention Caro” — a mistake obvs. Blame disqus. why not?
last thought: a trouble here may be the premise. A lot of “systematic study of politics” is prob. just not all that exciting… hmm slightly depressing thought.
+1
Also, like a great many practicing political scientists, my exposure to normative theory is scant. (Note to commenters: I am not celebrating or justifying that fact, nor am I saying “all” or “most”–but “a great many.”)
The Steel book sounds great.