How do laws governing voting and elections shape political representation and power in the USA?Are some demographic and socioeconomic groups of Americans over- or under-represented in Congress, state legislatures, and other elected offices? How do factors like gerrymandering and voting rights influence America's democratic institutions? This accessible resource answers all these questions and many more.This one-stop resource provides readers with historical...

As women continue to gain more prominence in political and electoral processes as voters, candidates, and officeholders, it becomes even more important to understand how gender shapes political power and the distribution of resources within our society. Women, Power, and Politics: The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States offers a timely and engaging analysis of classic and contemporary gender-related issues, focusing on the role of women as active participants in governm...

In order to understand the motivations for and implications of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House- and her subsequent defeat-the authors explore sexism and gender bias in U.S. political and social culture.While there is some indication that overt sexism toward women in politics is declining, whether this is true for women who run for the highest office in American politics remains relatively unknown. Hillary Clinton's historic run as the 2016 Democr...

After 40 years of activists working to reduce sexual violence on college campuses, in 2014, the new Campus Anti-Rape Movement (CARM) finally put this issue on the national policy agenda. President Barack Obama credited “an inspiring wave of student-led activism” for catapulting campus rape into public consciousness. This book positions the new CARM within a long history of anti-sexual violence activism in the U.S. The authors describe the major events of this new movement and how it coales...

Protest Politics in the Marketplace examines how social media has revolutionized the use and effectiveness of consumer activism. In her groundbreaking book, Caroline Heldman emphasizes that consumer activism is a democratizing force that improves political participation, self-governance, and the accountability of corporations and the government. She also investigates the use of these tactics by conservatives.Heldman analyzes the democratic...

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known-a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the po...

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda. The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's univer...

"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save AmericaAn Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue ...

Celebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet's effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, arguments on both sides fail to address the relationship between economic power and the digital world.McChesney's award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In Digital Disconnect

The public intellectual has a long and storied history. Previously, the public intellectual was always expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks rather than highbrow periodicals. In contrast to public intellectuals, thought leaders gain fame as single-idea merchants. Their ideas are o...

Human society is full of would-be 'change agents', a restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organizations, set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with respect. Striking then, that not many universities have a Department of Change Studies, to which socia...

Daily newspapers are closing across America. Washington bureaus are shuttering; whole areas of the federal government are now operating with no press coverage. International bureaus are going, going, gone.Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown.In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert W. McChesney, an academic, and John Nichols, a journalist, who toge...