I write and teach about politics and public culture, present and past. This means I work across several disciplinary domains, especially rhetorical history, political theory, media theory, aesthetics, and philosophy.
You can learn a lot more about my career on my vita and in this bio.
Some Highlights:
Crises of Liberalism
Liberalism is in crisis, but few seem able to agree on what liberalism is, let alone relate it to what it has been. With hopes of helping the conversation, I am hard at work on a history of liberalism titled Superpower, which chronicles the travails of liberalism across its multi-century history.
Reading Hannah Arendt
In 2020 I published Poiltics for Everybody: Reading Hannah Arendt in Uncertain Times. Arendt is one the most important political thinkers of the 20th century, but much of her work is read in only in bits and pieces. Politics for Everybody is attempt to introduce Arendt in full the 20th century’s most important democratic theorist.
Nuclear Imagery and the Cold War
I got into political theory and political history through a back door called the Cold War. My first three books — Spirits of the Cold War: Contesting Worldviews in the Classical Age of Naitonal Security Strategy; The Iconoclastic Imagination: Image, Catastrophe, and Economy from the Kennedy Assassination to September 11; and Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War (written with my good friend, Kevin Hamilton) — were all Cold War books.
The Journal for the History of Rhetoric
In the spring of 2026 I wrap up a seven-year stint as the editor of the Journal for the History of Rhetoric, a labor of love and fascination.
Civic Fields
I have a weekly newsletter at civicfields.org. You can subscribe there.
Podcasts, Radio, and the Press
In addition to writing op eds and the like, I have appeared on numerous podcasts or radio shows addressing topics ranging from Cold War history to American current events.
Documentary Films
I have appeared a couple of Cold War documentaries and served as an advisor for a number of others.
Ned O'Gorman, University of Illinois 