Writer, teacher, and historian.

Bio

Sean T. Byrnes is a writer, teacher, and historian. His work explores issues related to U.S. politics, international relations, and global economic inequality.

The author of Disunited Nations: U.S. Foreign Policy, Anti-Americanism, and the Rise of the New Right (LSU, 2021), he is currently working on two books. The first, The United States and the Ends of Empire: Decolonization, Hierarchy, and World Order since 1776, explores how decolonization and attendant concepts of race and hierarchy have shaped US interactions with the world since the American Revolution. It is under contract with Bloomsbury Academic. The second, No Guarantee: The Family Assistance Plan and the Transformation of American Politics, 1968-1972, tells the story of the “Family Assistance Plan,” a program for a minimum guaranteed income for all Americans that nearly passed Congress during the Nixon Administration. It is under contract with LSU Press.

His work has appeared in Time, The New Republic, Dissent, Jacobin, Diplomatica, International Journal, and for the History News Network. He hosts conversations with authors on the New Books Network, serves on the Board of Editors for Federal History, and is a Section Editor for the forthcoming Routledge Online Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Sean holds a Ph.D. in history from Emory University and lives in Middle Tennessee. Learn more about his recent work, and get in touch, below.

Recent Work

  • Disunited Nations: US Foreign Policy, Anti-Americanism and the Rise of the New Right

    Click here to purchase or learn more about my 2021 book on the US, the UN, and world order in the 1970s.

  • What’s the Matter With the Democrats?

    Read my recent review essay on liberalism and the 2024 election in DISSENT here.

  • Changing Views on Israel Isolating the U.S. at the U.N.

    Click here to read my essay for Time.

  • Letting the World Scream: The U.S. and the ICJ in the 1980s

    Check out my piece on an episode in the history of the U.S. and the “rules based order” here.

  • Patrick Deneen's Escape from Liberalism

    Read my review of Patrick Deneen’s Regime Change and Jackson Lears’s Animal Spirits in The New Republic.

  • The Myth of Reagan’s Cold War Toughness Haunts American Foreign Policy

    See my review essay on Reagan and the end of the Cold War for The New Republic here.

  • Searching for an Alternative to Neoliberalism and Right Wing Nationalism

    Read my most recent essay for Jacobin — a review of Tara Zahra’s Against the World — here.

  • Indigenous Continent Flips American History

    Click here for my review of Pekka Hämäläinen’s book Indigenous Continent in The New Republic.

  • Interview with Timothy Shenk

    Click here to listen to my interview with DISSENT’s Dr. Timothy Shenk, discussing his new book Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy.

  • How Liberals Gave up on Progress.

    Click here to check out my review of Fritz Bartel’s The Triumph of Broken Promises for Jacobin.

  • Neoliberalism Hasn't Helped Much of the Global South

    Read my essay on neoliberalism and development in Jacobin here.

  • The Defeat of Progressive Movements in the Global South Made US Hegemony Possible

    Read my essay for Jacobin on US foreign policy and global economic reform in the 1970s here.