Joseph Stieb (Author of The Regime Change Consensus)

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation by Zaakir Tameez (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
An outstanding and inspiring book about a truly heroic American. Sumner was one of the greatest champions of human rights and American democracy there has ever been. He grew up in a largely black neighborhood in Boston, believed deeply in the message ...more
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Joseph Stieb rated a book liked it Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Thought this was ok. The Frankenstein monster is a good metaphor for the anarchy and cruelty of Iraqi in the mid-2000s, but you don't really learn why the monster was created in the first place. There are some vague allusions to Shelley, but I would ...more
Sep 27, 2025 09:25AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book it was ok The Known World by Edward P. Jones	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dang. I wanted to like this more than I did. But it was really confusing and meandering. Exploring black slaveholders before the Civil War through a novel is a really interesting idea. At times, the story is very good, as Jones explores the paradoxes ...more
Sep 20, 2025 01:50PM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Known World by Edward P. Jones. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Known World by Edward P. Jones <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Absolutely righteous, devastating, brilliant, and maddening. A true portrait of the peril that women face on a daily basis and of O'Farrell's own irascible, indomitable personality. The ending was particularly brilliant. One of the best memoirs I hav ...more
Sep 17, 2025 12:01PM · 1 like · like · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing The Case Against the Supreme Court by Erwin Chemerinsky	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I thought this was quite good and significantly ahead of its time, now that we live in a world with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, which has reversed Roe and basically handed the President unchecked power. EC argues that the SC's real purp ...more
Sep 15, 2025 07:10AM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Case Against the Supreme Court by Erwin Chemerinsky. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Case Against the Supreme Court by Erwin Chemerinsky <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) by John M. Owen IV	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Owen's work is very compelling to me because I'm deeply interested in the role of regime type and liberalism in USFP. This book argues that there is a liberal peace that is somewhat distinct from the famed democratic peace. It operates in two ways. F ...more
Sep 13, 2025 11:58AM · 1 like · like · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book liked it Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America by Michael Luo	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I was a bit disappointed with this. I'll get my criticisms out up front: while the topic of Chinese immigration and exclusion is underexplored among historians and under-appreciated among the general public, this book kind of over-promises and under- ...more
Sep 10, 2025 10:40AM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Strangers in the Land by Michael Luo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Strangers in the Land by Michael Luo <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Politics and Culture) by William A. Galston	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This was solid. At this point I have read a lot of book on this topic and they are starting to blur together. Galston makes a good case for a sort of social democracy to counter the rising tide of populism, and he has an excellent chapter on French p ...more
Sep 05, 2025 08:36AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Anti-Pluralism by William A. Galston. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Anti-Pluralism by William A. Galston <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it Commonwealth by Ann Patchett	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I liked this! It didn't blow me away, but it's a sensitive, well-written, largely sweet story about intergenerational family conflict and the responsibilities we have to each other. I thought parts of it were great, but the ending petered out a bit. ...more
Sep 04, 2025 09:55AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Commonwealth by Ann Patchett <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Excellent book! The title oversells a bit, as there isn't an Afghan equivalent to the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers. But Whitlock uses interviews, declassified docs, and other sources to show the long trend of American leaders and generals saying that ...more
Sep 03, 2025 08:30AM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation
by Zaakir Tameez (Goodreads Author)

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An outstanding and inspiring book about a truly heroic American. Sumner was one of the greatest champions of human rights and American democracy there has ever been. He grew up in a largely black neighborhood in Boston, believed deeply in the message An outstanding and inspiring book about a truly heroic American. Sumner was one of the greatest champions of human rights and American democracy there has ever been. He grew up in a largely black neighborhood in Boston, believed deeply in the message of the Declaration of Independence, and worked his entire life to bring a society of racial egalitarianism and liberty to America. He was way, way ahead of his time, especially among white people.

SUmner rose to political prominence when he replaced Daniel Webster in the Senate. Webster was willing to compromise with the Slave Power, but Sumner represented a growing wave of Americans who believed no such compromise was possible. He excoriated southerners and slaveholders as rapists, kidnappers, and torturers who had broken with the true purpose of America. For his rhetorical assaults, he himself was physically assaulted by Preston Brooks, a Democratic member of the House, who nearly killed him on the floor of the Senate and gave him lifelong psychological trauma.

Webster believed in maximizing the use of state power and the Constitution to attack slavery and build up the rights of all citizens, especially black people. When the Civil War began, he pushed Lincoln to use his war powers to undermine and ultimately destroy slavery. Lincoln moved more cautiously, and in my mind, judiciously, but there's no doubt Sumner was ahead of the curve on pushing for these changes. He then became a stalwart champion of Reconstruction and the revolutionary idea of non-racial citizenship. His post-Civil War career was tragic in that he witnessed the peak of reformism in the 14th and 15th amendments but then watched (and contributed to) the fragmenting of the Republican Party into liberal and stalwart factions, both of which drifted further away from Reconstruction. His last act was to push through a rather toothless Civil Rights bill, which was Congress' last act on civil rights until the 1950s

Sumner was a hero and a visionary, but he had his flaws, as ZT fully documents. He was not a great politician in that he refused to compromise at key times, didn't do much to actually craft and pass legislation, and became fixated on a personal rivalry with Grant to the extent that he nearly endorsed the racist Democrat Horace Greeley in the 1872 election. Sumner had another blind spot with women; he did and said little in the name of their rights during his lifetime, holding to the archaic belief that a woman was adequately represented in politics through her husband.

Interestingly, Sumner was probably a gay man. He had extremely close relationships with male friends, including letter exchanges that seem quite romantic. He married once, but it was an absolute catastrophe, and his wife spread rumors that he was "impotent" or unable to sexually perform. He even got himself into a sorts with Samuel Walker and Julia Ward Howe, the latter of whom felt emotionally cheated by SUmner's deep affection for Walker. Anyways, it was interesting to see the history of a gay person at a time when the social concept of homosexuality didn't really exist, at least not in our modern form.

It's hard to come away from this book with anything but tremendous respect for Sumner. He was singularly devoted to a vision of racial justice that we are still trying to live up to, and he was one of the greatest exponents of the idea of the American experiment in republican self-government. This book is rather long, but it's completely worth it and makes a very good listen. ...more

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Frankenstein in Baghdad
by Ahmed Saadawi

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Thought this was ok. The Frankenstein monster is a good metaphor for the anarchy and cruelty of Iraqi in the mid-2000s, but you don't really learn why the monster was created in the first place. There are some vague allusions to Shelley, but I would ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was ok

The Known World
by Edward P. Jones

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Dang. I wanted to like this more than I did. But it was really confusing and meandering. Exploring black slaveholders before the Civil War through a novel is a really interesting idea. At times, the story is very good, as Jones explores the paradoxes ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)

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Absolutely righteous, devastating, brilliant, and maddening. A true portrait of the peril that women face on a daily basis and of O'Farrell's own irascible, indomitable personality. The ending was particularly brilliant. One of the best memoirs I hav ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

The Case Against the Supreme Court
by Erwin Chemerinsky

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I thought this was quite good and significantly ahead of its time, now that we live in a world with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, which has reversed Roe and basically handed the President unchecked power. EC argues that the SC's real purp I thought this was quite good and significantly ahead of its time, now that we live in a world with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, which has reversed Roe and basically handed the President unchecked power. EC argues that the SC's real purpose is to be a counter-majoritarian institution. It is supposed to check against the tyranny of the majority by protecting individual rights from the government, which in a democracy is a perennial problem. Take prisoners for example: prisoners can't vote and have no political representation. Politicians and legislatures aren't going to go out of their way to spend more money on them or ensure their rights are protected. So that leaves the courts as the last resort of these parties (theoretically). The SC is also supposed to have a final word on the constitutionality of a law, although that's a practice that evolved over time rather than being embedded in the Constitution.

But the Court, EC shows, has rarely played this role. It has sided consistently with capital, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other dominant forces. It has reinforced majoritarianism rather than restrained it. There are exceptions, most notably the Warren Court, but that was an exception to the rule. EC shows that all of this was the case even before the rise of the highly selective doctrine of originalism, which conservative justices now use to make the law support their political preferences. Some of the cases he profiles are truly egregious abuses of individual rights and dignity.

Still, EC argues, we still need the Courts to play some kind of role in determining the meaning and application of the law and the Constitution. The alternative of having legislatures have the final say in the meaning of law would only add to the majoritarian dilemma. So EC recommends a number of changes to the Court to make it more accountable and "with the times." We need a systematic way of appointing justices. They should serve 18-year, non-renewable terms, ensuring that every President gets to pick 2, thereby better reflecting political cycles and the people's preferences. There should be merit-based boards that apply to the Supreme Court as well. They should communicate more clearly with the people, including televising hearings, publishing short summaries of their decisions, and avoiding shadow docket rulings that come without explanation.

These solutions, as EC admits, only go so far. There is no use pretending that the Court is an apolitical body. The law changes depending on who is interpreting it, which depends on who wins elections. EC has become even more blunt about the political nature of the Court since 2014, and there is no restoring the Court to its proper, responsible role without winning elections and, possibly, packing the Court itself. ...more

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Liberal Peace, Liberal War by John M. Owen IV

Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
by John M. Owen IV

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Owen's work is very compelling to me because I'm deeply interested in the role of regime type and liberalism in USFP. This book argues that there is a liberal peace that is somewhat distinct from the famed democratic peace. It operates in two ways. F Owen's work is very compelling to me because I'm deeply interested in the role of regime type and liberalism in USFP. This book argues that there is a liberal peace that is somewhat distinct from the famed democratic peace. It operates in two ways. First, liberalism constrains war with other liberal states, but only if liberals perceive those other states to be liberal. For example, when the US issued the Emancipation Proclamation, British public (and to some extent elite) opinion turned in favor of the North, which had taken a decisive stance for liberalism. Liberal states, even in crises, give other liberal states the benefit of the doubt because they believe liberalism makes states more peaceful and rational, and they see fellow liberal states as engaged in a common global cause and shared values. Moreover, as states become more objectively liberal (measured by norms, institutions, structures, voting rights, etc), they become less likely to fight with each other. He shows convincingly that these perceptions/decisions are not merely epiphenomenal of economic interests or the objective size of the threat (contra realist interpretations of ideas) This is the complement to the democratic peace, as liberalism and democracy are not the same thing. So the argument is an interesting mix of constructivist and liberal IR theory.

However, the flip side of the argument is that as liberal states come to see another state as illiberal or authoritarian, they don't give them the benefit of the doubt and read their intentions as hostile, making them more likely to escalate crises or even pursue regime change wars. I think Owen goes a little far in his Hegelian argument that liberalism is forever stuck in this duality because of its need to define itself by its opposite. This is also, of course, IR theory, and the formalism of the argument makes it a little bit tough to get through (I'm a historian). Still, this is a well-argued book that remains relevant to US foreign policy today, and one which I'm sure I'll draw on a lot in my own research. ...more

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Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
by Michael Luo

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I was a bit disappointed with this. I'll get my criticisms out up front: while the topic of Chinese immigration and exclusion is underexplored among historians and under-appreciated among the general public, this book kind of over-promises and under- I was a bit disappointed with this. I'll get my criticisms out up front: while the topic of Chinese immigration and exclusion is underexplored among historians and under-appreciated among the general public, this book kind of over-promises and under-delivers. It sounds like a history of Chinese-Americans in general, but it is really about the period from the Gold Rush to the Chinese Exclusion Acts. It focuses intensively on labor conflicts, anti-Chinese riots, and exclusionary/prejudicial laws as well as the experiences of many Chinese immigrants and workers. You absorb some important themes, but the detail is mind-numbing. The book covers basically the same dynamics of discrimination in violence in many settings, making it feel repetitive. And, for me, there weren't enough "so what" moments to put the details in perspectives. I would have liked to hear a lot more on the mid-20th century stuff about opening up Chinese immigration to the US in the era of the Cold War and WWII..

Nonetheless, this book did show a few important historical things for me. First, it demonstrates the intense hatred and violence against Chinese workers, who were seen as "strangers in the land;" unassimilable foreigners who were taking income and resources from Americans and who had bizarre cultural ways. Of course, Americans exploited the crap out of these workers and kept them in a de facto Jim Crow status, so it shouldn't be surprising that many of these workers wanted to return home. They were an overwhelmingly male wave of immigrants, which added to the fear that they were an invading force. The book is very good on the laws and political movements that sought to exclude Chinese people and were actually pretty successful, causing the population to decline in the early 20th century. Many of stories about individual Chinese people, especially ones who converted to Christianity and attempted assimilation, were interesting.

Still, this book was too long and detailed for me. I think it would have been better as a more evenly paced study of the entire Chinese-American experience. ...more

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Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Politics and Culture)
by William A. Galston

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This was solid. At this point I have read a lot of book on this topic and they are starting to blur together. Galston makes a good case for a sort of social democracy to counter the rising tide of populism, and he has an excellent chapter on French p ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it

Commonwealth
by Ann Patchett

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I liked this! It didn't blow me away, but it's a sensitive, well-written, largely sweet story about intergenerational family conflict and the responsibilities we have to each other. I thought parts of it were great, but the ending petered out a bit. ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War
by Craig Whitlock

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Excellent book! The title oversells a bit, as there isn't an Afghan equivalent to the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers. But Whitlock uses interviews, declassified docs, and other sources to show the long trend of American leaders and generals saying that ...more

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