This exciting new book explores the role of government, politics, and policy in American lives. Full of real life applications and scenarios, this text encourages and enables political thinking. The second edition has been updated to include recent developments in U.S. politics and government. This includes the description and analysis of the 2016 elections as well as the early Trump administration. Chapters have expanded coverage of immigration policy, environmental policy, economic policy, and global affairs (including counterterrorism policy). The text also includes analysis of racial issues in contemporary American politics and law. It also addresses questions about the state of the economy, jobs, and wages.Hyperlinks and URLs provide ?deeper dives? into various topics and examples of comparative politics.

Accessible, authoritative, and entertaining in the signature style of theComplete Idiot'sGuide® series, The Complete Idiot's Guide® to U.S. Government and Politicsprovides a wonderful foundation of knowledge about the way our country's system of government works. Understanding how our government functions and the political forces that influence it is vital for all Americans. At the high school level, U.S. government, the class formerly called civics, has evolved to become a focus of the Advanced Placement test. In 2007, the AP U.S. government and politics exam was the most widely taken test among high school students on a college track, with over 333,562 students sitting for the 3.5-hour exam. Several strictly test prep books help students prepare for this exam. However, they're limited to the key points covered by the exam and don't afford much information outside the strict curriculum. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to U.S. Government and Politics gives the reader much more. As a comprehensive overview and history of the subject, this book is designed to help anyone interested in learning about our government and the origins of its complex inner workings, our political system, and key elements that have affected our growth as a nation-all while serving as a the best supplementary reading a student can get to help them prepare for the AP exam.

"American Government in Black and White: Diversity and Democracy, Fifth Edition, covers all of the standard topics found in an Introduction to American Government text while also speaking to today's students who want to examine how racial inequality has shaped-and will continue to shape-who we are and what we believe. Authors Paula D. McClain and Steven C. Tauber address issues of inequality in major facets of American government, including the U.S. Constitution, key political institutions, and the making of public policy. Engaging the original voices of racial and ethnic actors in our nation's history, the text shows how to measure and evaluate the importance of equality in America, from its founding up to today"--

Though Americans rarely appreciate it, federalism has profoundly shaped their nation’s past, present, and future. Federalism—the division of government authority between the national government and the states—affects the prosperity, security, and daily life of every American. In this nuanced and comprehensive overview, David Brian Robertson shows that past choices shape present circumstances, and that a deep understanding of American government, public policy, political processes, and society requires an understanding of the key steps in federalism’s evolution in American history. The most spectacular political conflicts in American history have been fought on the battlefield of federalism, including states’ rights to leave the union, government power to regulate business, and responses to the problems of race, poverty, pollution, abortion, and gay rights. Federalism helped fragment American politics, encourage innovation, foster the American market economy, and place hurdles in the way of efforts to mitigate the consequences of economic change. Federalism helped construct the path of American political development. Federalism and the Making of America is a sorely needed text that treats the politics of federalism systematically and accessibly, making it indispensible to all students and scholars of American politics. Chosen as one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012.

This new offering from AP® teacher Karen Waples and college professor Scott Abernathy is tailor-made to help teachers and students transition to the redesigned AP® U. S. Government and Politics course. Carefully aligned to the course framework, this brief book is loaded with instructional tools to help you and your students meet the demands of the new course, such as integrated skills instruction, coverage of required cases and documents, public policy threaded throughout the book, and AP® practice after every chapter and unit, all in a simple organization that will ease your course planning and save you time. We’ve got you covered! With a program specifically tailored for the new AP® framework and exam. With a brief student edition that students will read and enjoy. With pedagogy and features that prepare students for the AP® exam like no other book on the market. With a teacher edition and resources that save you time in transitioning to the new course. With professional development to help you transition your instruction.

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title This authoritative overview of election redistricting at the congressional, state legislative, and local level provides offers an overview of redistricting for students and practitioners. The updated second edition pays special attention to the significant redistricting controversies of the last decade, from the Supreme Court to state courts.

When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

Public opinion matters. It registers itself on the public consciousness, translates into politics and policy, and impels politicians to run for office and, once elected, to serve in particular ways.This is a book about opinion?not opinions. James Stimson takes the incremental, vacillating, time-trapped data points of public opinion surveys and transforms them into a conceptualization of public mood swings that can be measured and used to predict change, not just to describe it. To do so, he reaches far back in U.S. survey research and compiles the data in such a way as to allow the minutiae of attitudes toward abortion, gun control, and housing to dissolve into a portrait of national mood and change.Using sophisticated techniques of coding, statistics, and data equalization, the author has amassed an unrivaled database from which to extrapolate his findings. The results go a long way toward calibrating the folklore of political eras, and the cyclical patterns that emerge show not only the regulatory impulse of the 1960s and 1970s and the swing away from it in the 1980s; the cycles also show that we are in the midst of another major mood swing right now?what the author calls the ?unnoticed liberalism? of current American politics.Concise, suggestive, and eminently readable, Public Opinion in America is ideal for courses on public opinion, public policy, and methods, as well as for introductory courses in American government. Examples and illustrations abound, and appendixes document the measurement of policy mood from survey research marginals. This revised second edition includes updated data on public opinion and voters through the 1996 presidential election.