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In Democracy in the Headwinds, Andreas Busch examines the growing threats to democracy worldwide and outlines the principles needed to safeguard it.

A mob storms the United States Capitol. A Hungarian strongman hollows out courts, media, and civil society for sixteen years, then is voted out in a landslide. Brexit exposes the fragility of a constitution built on unwritten conventions. In Germany, one in five voters chooses a party classified by the state’s own security apparatus as a suspected threat to the democratic order. What is going on—and should it concern us?

Drawing on evidence from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the wider democratic world, Andreas Busch tells the story of liberal democracy’s rise, its erosion by elected leaders who dismantle institutions from within, and the defenses that hold it together. He traces how economic dislocation, digital disruption, and the polarization of political life have converged to put mature democracies under pressure they were assumed to have outgrown.

At the heart of the book lies a deceptively simple argument: the procedural core of democracy—free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power—is the foundation on which everything else rests. Protect the mechanics, and everything else can be rebuilt. Lose them, and nothing can.

In Erosion, Gina Caison traces how American authors and photographers have grappled with soil erosion as a material reality that shapes narratives of identity, belonging, and environment. Examining canonical American texts and photography, including John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Octavia Butler’s Parable series, John Audubon’s Louisiana writings, and Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Caison shows how concerns over erosion reveal anxieties of disappearance that are based in the legacies of settler colonialism. Soil loss not only occupies a complex metaphorical place in the narrative of American identity; it becomes central to preserving the white settler colonial state through Indigenous dispossession and erasure. At the same time, Caison examines how Indigenous texts and art such as Lynn Riggs's play Green Grow the Lilacs, Karenne Wood’s poetry, and Monique Verdin's photography challenge colonial narratives of the continent by outlining the material stakes of soil loss for their own communities. From California to Oklahoma to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Caison ultimately demonstrates that concerns over erosion reverberate into issues of climate change, land ownership, Indigenous sovereignty, race, and cultural and national identity.

Pandemic Power is a thought-provoking exploration of how the response to the Covid pandemic has undermined our understanding of science, freedom, and democracy. It delivers a searing critique of policies and narratives that have, in fact, fueled the rise of the extreme right in many countries.