Liberals won’t like it, but according to the Seattle based historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner, Trump’s wannabe imperial presidency is a “natural outgrowth” of the centralized power of the FDR presidency. In a provocative Jacobin piece, Bessner contends that executive power has been expanding since FDR, with the U.S. President increasingly becoming an "elected monarch." The leftist Bessner criticizes American liberals for both obsessing over the fictional specter of fascism and for failing to address the economic inequality that enabled the rise of Trump. And he expresses pessimism about me ..read more

Question: What was the position of 19th century American Jews to the Civil War and Slavery? Answer: Complicated. Very complicated. Painfully and, in some ways, shamefully complicated, according to the historian Richard Kreitner. In his new book, Fear No Pharaoh, Kreitner explores the radically diverse positions that American Jews held toward slavery during the Civil War. He highlights 6 prominent Jewish figures including Judah Benjamin (a Confederate leader), Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphael (who justified slavery using Torah), David Einhorn (an abolitionist rabbi), Isaac Mayer Wise (who advised Jew ..read more

Stephen Witt’s last book was entitled How Music Got Free. His latest, The Thinking Machine, a history of NVIDIA and its CEO Jensen Huang, might have been called How Intelligence Got Expensive. It’s about NVIDIA’s role in both the multi trillion dollar AI revolution and the world’s Taiwan-centric microchip economy. Witt explains how NVIDIA transformed itself from an obscure gaming graphics company into an AI hardware powerhouse by investing in scientific computing when competitors wouldn't. He describes Huang's relentless leadership style (including demanding Musk style weekly emails from 30,00 ..read more

Should death row prisoners have the right to demand to be executed? In her debut book The Volunteer, Bay Area journalist Gianna Toboni exposes the absurd bureaucratization of the American death penalty system through the story of Scott Dozier, a death row inmate who volunteered for execution. Convicted of two murders on circumstantial evidence, Dozier preferred death to living 22-24 hours daily in a cell. Despite his and the state's shared goal of execution, bureaucratic delays and legal challenges prevented it. Toboni describes how extended solitary confinement undermined Dozier's mental heal ..read more

How to measure the good life? According to Cambridge University’s Professor of Public Policy, Diane Coyle, quantifying progress doesn’t involve traditional economic metrics. In her new book, Measure of Progress, Coyle discusses how economic metrics like GDP, designed 80 years ago, are increasingly inadequate for measuring today's complex economy. She argues we need new approaches that account for digital transformation, supply chains, and long-term sustainability. Coyle suggests developing human-centric balance sheet measures that reflect true progress beyond simple growth numbers. Five Key Ta ..read more

Keach Hagey’s upcoming new biography of OpenAI's Sam Altman is entitled The Optimist. But it could alternatively be called The Salesman. The Wall Street Journal reporter describes Altman as an exceptional salesman whose superpower is convincing (ie: selling) others of his vision. This was as true, she notes, in Altman’s founding of OpenAI with Elon Musk, their eventual split, and the company's successful pivot to language models. Hagey details the dramatic firing and rehiring of Altman in 2023, attributing it to tensions between AI safety advocates and commercial interests. She reveals Altman ..read more

According to the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick, every generation gets the Gatsby it deserves. And our generation, the social media generation, has gotten it with Careless People, by the Sarah Wynne Williams, Facebook's former global policy director, which draws obvious parallels between Facebook and The Great Gatsby. Williams explicitly compares Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to Fitzgerald’s lazily destructive Tom and Daisy Buchanan. She describes how the company prioritized business growth over ethical concerns, focusing on particularly disgraceful incidents in Myanmar and Brazil ..read more

It might be Liberation Day today, but according to Paul Rice, founder of US Fair Trade and author of Every Purchase Matters, Trump’s tariffs are dumb. Rice firmly distances Fair Trade from Trump's controversial trade policies, calling them "backward" and "bad for American business." He explains how Fair Trade - which has expanded beyond coffee to include 40 products, from produce to furniture - certifies products through rigorous standards ensuring workers receive fair wages and environmental protections. Every purchase does indeed matter. And, in contrast with Trump’s short sighted tariffs, R ..read more

Happy April Fools, everyone! Although, according to cultural critic David Masciotra every day in Trump 2.0 America is now April Fool's Day. KEEN ON AMERICA regular Masciotra argues that the new Trump's administration represents a "bipartisan phantasm" featuring absurdly unqualified and ignorant figures from both right (Hegseth & Vance) and left (RFK Jr. & Tulsi Gabbard). Masciotra explores how the destruction of media gatekeepers has allowed fantasy to dominate reality - creating what he dubs, crediting Kurt Anderson, Trump’s Fantasyland America. Thanks for reading Keen On America! Thi ..read more

This is an important interview. I’ve always thought of the political essayist Peter Wehner as representing the conscience of conservative, religious America. Wehner, who writes both for the Atlantic and the New York Times, has been offering a moral critique of Trump’s MAGA movement since 2015. And now that many of his direst warnings are being realized, his voice is amongst the most important in America. In this conversation, Wehner, a religious conservative who worked in several Republican administrations, reiterates his moral critique of Trump, explaining how revenge has become an obsessive ..read more