Why subscribe?

This newsletter takes its name from a passage in The Education of Henry Adams that I read in New York City twenty or more years ago:

The New Englander, whether boy or man, in his long struggle with a stingy or hostile universe, had learned also to love the pleasure of hating; his joys were few. Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate.

Now that I’m a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the passage feels almost prophetic—both personally and about what politics has become again.

This newsletter will be a personal view—my view, mostly—of the study of politics and international relations. I’ll talk about what it’s like to be a professor, what I’m researching, and what I’m reading in other people’s research. From time to time I’ll present another entry in the Bad Congress series—a series covering the baddest, evilest, all-around-worst members of the U.S. Congress in history. And there’s the Endnotes section, presenting links to books, reports, articles, and posts that I think might be worth your time.

I publish this approximately “when I can”—somewhere between twice a week and twice a month.

Who am I?

I’m a political scientist specializing in international relations and foreign policy. I work at a university (but this newsletter is very much not affiliated with them and represents nobody’s views but my own, if it even represents my own views).