Person

Every book Charles Fain Lehman recommended on podcasts

2 books · 1 episode across 1 podcast

Charles Fain Lehman appeared on The Ezra Klein Show to discuss the hidden politics of public disorder, crime, and urban governance. Lehman grounded many of his analytical perspectives in the foundational ideas of political scientist James Q. Wilson, whom he described as his personal ideological hero and arguably the most influential political scientist of the twentieth century. Accordingly, Lehman recommended Wilson's collection of essays, Thinking About Crime, to illustrate the right-leaning social science framework that shaped his views on social order and criminal justice. For his second recommendation, Lehman initially considered Mark Kleiman's Brute Force Fails, which serves as a critical response to Wilson's theories, but ultimately chose a different work by Kleiman. He recommended Against Excess, praising it as the most analytically sound articulation of how to approach drug policy, balance enforcement harms, and navigate the complexities of public safety regulation, thereby offering listeners a rigorous economic and policy-oriented guide to governing vice and addiction.