Robin is the author of the books
Fear: The History of a Political Idea, which won the Best First Book in Political Theory Award from the
American Political Science Association, and
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Upon publication in 2011,
The Reactionary Mind immediately generated tremendous controversy and discussion, including an extended back and forth in the letters page of
The New York Review of Books as well as an article on the controversy in
The New York Times. But with the ascent of
Donald Trump, the book came to be seen as one of the most prescient analyses of modern American politics, leading
The New Yorker, in a lengthy reconsideration of the book, to call it "the book that predicted Trump." A second edition of
The Reactionary Mind was published in 2018 with a new subtitle, "From Edmund Burke to Donald Trump", and was received positively. As interim director at the Graduate Center for Worker Education at Brooklyn College in 2013, Robin was part of the decision-making process to restructure the program. In a
Portside essay, Robin urged readers to ignore a petition protesting the elimination of funding. On August 1, 2013,
Portside published a statement by
Immanuel Ness, editor of
WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, also of Brooklyn College, countering Robin and urging that the petition be signed. Robin responded to these criticisms, providing a litany of details regarding his opinions about mismanagement and questionable use of the facility. Robin has turned his attention to the case of Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas. Often dismissed by the left, Thomas has become one of the more influential figures on the Court. Robin's book,
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas (2019), is the first to examine the black nationalist roots of Thomas's jurisprudence and the first book from the left to take seriously Thomas's jurisprudence of the right. It garnered pre-publication plaudits from
Kirkus Reviews and
The Atlantic. While Robin devotes much of his scholarly research to the right, he also writes extensively for newspapers and magazines about a wide variety of issues of concern on the left. In 2018, he wrote a widely noticed essay in the New York Times on the meaning of socialism today, which examines how
Bernie Sanders and
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are remaking a 19th-century tradition for the twenty-first century. He has written widely about the politics of labor and the workplace, and the recovery of freedom for the left. He also writes about intellectuals such as
Hannah Arendt,
Eric Hobsbawm,
Cass Sunstein, and
Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Publishers Marketplace reported in March 2023 that Robin was writing a forthcoming work,
King Capital, described as "a history of economics and its discontents," to be published by
Random House. His articles have appeared in
The New Yorker, ''
Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The London Review of Books, n+1, the American Political Science Review, Social Research, Jacobin, Politico, and Theory and Event''. == Books ==