William Howell: Thoughtful, Argumentative, Intellectual Histories

I’m a professor who studies, teaches, and writes about politics. But I’m not a politician. If the 7-year-old can understand that distinction, we’re well and good. My kids didn’t until they were 11.

I’m all over the place. Bedside, I have copies of Rivalry and Reform by Sidney Milkis and Daniel Tichenor, Donald Trump v. The United States by Michael Schmidt, and The Death of Democracy by Benjamin Hett. And on audiobook, I’m toggling between The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anxious People: A Novel by Fredrik Backman.

Like any great city, Chicago has all kinds of amenities and assets. But it’s the ethos of this place that I love the most. People here are grounded in history and geography, forward-leaning, unimpressed with pretense or title, mindful, awake.

As a teenager, I worked in the mailroom at Intuit, when the company had something like 50 employees. We opened letters and sorted them into piles. Over and over and over again.

I wrote this book with my friend and former dissertation advisor, Terry Moe. We both were deeply troubled about the rise of Trump and right-wing populism in American politics. We wanted to write a book that spoke to this particular moment, put it into a larger context, and offered a constructive way forward. I suppose no book satisfies the full measure of an author’s aspirations. But I sure am pleased with how this one turned out.

Some books teach subject matter that aspiring political scientists need to know. Other books imbue readers with a sense of purpose and excitement needed to carry on. But there is another kind of book that is also important for anyone hoping to enter academia: models of the kind of scholarship one hopes to produce oneself. As a graduate student more than 20 years ago, I read Congress: The Electoral Connection by David Mayhew and Divided Government by Morris Fiorina, two short, well-written, carefully crafted books that are packed with theoretical insights. I remember thinking then that they were the sort of books I wanted to someday write myself.

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on prisons, and so I spent the better part of a year reading and re-reading Foucault’s treatment of the subject. I’m not sure I’m better for it.

American politics are just a mess right now. On the media, check out Network Propaganda by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts. On the relationship between health care reform and democracy, see Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics by Jamila Michener. And on the government’s many reputation problems, see Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America by Amy Lerman.

Thoughtful, argumentative, well-written intellectual histories. I’m not sure that’s a genre. Maybe just a niche. But it’s the one I like most.

I’m not sure it’s the best, but the one I enjoyed reading most was the biography of Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. Morris is a fantastic writer; and with Teddy Roosevelt, he couldn’t have better material with which to work.

Robert Caro, who is just magisterial. Nearly the entirety of Caro’s work consists of massive tombs on just one man’s life and times, Lyndon Johnson. Is there anyone else like Caro? Will there ever be?

I don’t think humanity needs any single book. Different people need different kinds of books. And in this moment of anxiety, separation, and longing, I’m inclined to let each person pick the books she needs most.

For reasons that are not at all high-brow, I’d have to go with The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. For years, I was deathly afraid of flying. I no longer am. Junger’s description of helicopters and planes plucking people from the sea in the middle of category 5 storms made the occasional bump and shift of commercial flights seem perfectly manageable.

More and more, I’ve been writing with formal theorists, and I’m learning a ton. Just now, I am writing papers on executive authority, political scandals, and the role of animosity in electoral politics. Truth be told, I’m excited most about whichever paper I’m writing on a given day.

Novels. I need to read more novels. I just signed up for a subscription service at the Seminary Coop, which for my money is the best bookstore in the country. The first book they are sending out is An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky. I can’t wait.

Getting Out of My Own Way: Minor Setbacks, Triumphs, and Discoveries.