Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 brought with it a major shift in the composition of the U.S. Congress for the first time in several decades. The subsequent introduction of an enormous amount of new legislation sparked debate among many political observers that a new coalition was being built in American politics and that a significant change in the issues on the agenda before Congress heralded a Republican realignment.Barbara Sinclair's study is a major contribution to our underst...

Party Wars is the first book to describe how the ideological gulf now separating the two major parties developed and how today’s fierce partisan competition affects the political process and national policy.Barbara Sinclair traces the current ideological divide to changes in the Republican party in the 1970s and 1980s, including the rise of neoconservativism and the Religious Right. Because of these historical developments, Democratic and Republican voters today differ sub...

This Fight Is Our Fight: Elizabeth Warren's Passionate Call to Save America's Middle ClassIn This Fight Is Our Fight, #1 New York Times bestselling author and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren offers a candid, inspiring look at why our middle class is under siege and how we can win the battle to save it. Drawing on her own experiences growing up in Oklahoma at the ragged edge of the middle class, Warren shows how a government that once looked out for ...

From the #1 bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia, the landmark book that has revolutionized the way we understand leadership and decision making.In his breakthrough bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within.Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in...

American politics seems to grow more contentious and complicated by the day, and whether American democracy works well is hotly debated. Amidst all this roiling partisan argument and confusing claims and counterclaims, there has never been a greater need for an impartial primer on the basics of the American political system. This Very Short Introduction gives readers a concise, accessible, and sophisticated overview of the vital elements of American democracy, emphasizing both how these el...

"An urgent and engaging look at how American politics have become the founding fathers' worst nightmare" ( The Daily Beast).America's political system is dysfunctional. We know it, yet the problem seems intractable—after every election, voters discover yet again that political "leaders" are simply quarreling in a never-ending battle between the two warring tribes.As a former congressman, Mickey Edwards witnessed firsthand how important legislative ...

The veteran political journalist presents "a compelling case that [Obama] was one of the most successful presidents of modern times" ( The Guardian ).Over the course of eight years, Barack Obama amassed an array of outstanding achievements. His administration saved the American economy from collapse, expanded health insurance to millions, negotiated an historic nuclear deal with Iran, helped craft a groundbreaking internat...

Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America's two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and econom...

An outspoken centrist, Senator Snowe stunned Washington in February 2012 when she announced she would not seek a fourth term and offered a sharp rebuke to the Senate, citing the dispiriting gridlock and polarization. After serving in the legislative branch at the state and federal levels for 40 years, including 18 years in the U.S. Senate, she explained that Washington wasn’t solving the big problems anymore.In this timely call to action, she explores the roots of her belief in pri...

From Wisconsin to Washington, DC, the claims are made: unions are responsible for budget deficits, and their members are overpaid and enjoy cushy benefits. The only way to save the American economy, pundits claim, is to weaken the labor movement, strip workers of collective bargaining rights, and champion private industry. In "They're Bankrupting Us!": And 20 Other Myths about Unions, labor leader Bill Fletcher Jr. makes sense of this debate as he unpacks the twenty-one myths most...