Co-Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Publishers Weekly Favorite Book of the Year In the United States today, one in every thirty-one adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the “land of the free” become the home of the world’s largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America’s prison problem originated with the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society at the height of the civil rights era. “An extraordinary and important new book.” ―Jill Lepore, New Yorker “Hinton’s book is more than an argument; it is a revelation…There are moments that will make your skin crawl…This is history, but the implications for today are striking. Readers will learn how the militarization of the police that we’ve witnessed in Ferguson and elsewhere had roots in the 1960s.” ―Imani Perry, New York Times Book Review

Recommended on 1 episode:

The Very American Roots of Trumpism

After last week’s episode, “The Emergency Is Here,” we got a lot of emails. And the most common reply was: You really think we’ll have midterm elections in 2026? Isn’t that naïve? I think we will have midterms. But one reason I think so many people are skeptical of that is they’re working with comparisons to other places: Mussolini’s Italy, Putin’s Russia, Pinochet’s Chile. But we don’t need to look abroad for parallels; it has happened here. Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author of “Illiberal America: A History.” In this conversation, he walks me through some of the most illiberal periods in American history: Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, Japanese American internment, Operation Wetback. And we discuss how this legacy can help us better understand what’s happening right now. This episode contains strong language.

Books recommended:

• 📕  Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop
• 📘  From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Hinton Associate Professor of History and African American Studies and Professor of Law
• 📗  Troubled Memory, Second Edition: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana by Lawrence N. Powell

Steven Hahn April 23, 2025 3 books recommended

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