Election History

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States - a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the US Supreme Court - and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century. This thoroughly revised edition, first published to acclaim and some controversy in 2005 as Steal This Vote, reveals why America is unique among established Western democracies in its inability to run clean, transparent elections.

The young adult edition of the unconventionally honest, deeply personal, and sharply funny account from Michigan governor and rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer “will appeal to readers interested in politics and those seeking insights on leadership and attaining success” (Kirkus...

Hailed as "astonishingly powerful" by The New York Times, and "written perfectly" by The Washington Post, Joe Klein's #1 bestseller, Primary Colors, was the most-talked-about political novel of the past century. Now acclaimed journalist and author Joe Klein returns with another brilliant and...

Among the traditional tenets of the Christian faith is the belief that God chooses or elects people for salvation. For some Christians, such an affirmation is an indication of God's sovereign and perfect will. For others, such a notion is troubling for it seems to downplay the significance of human agency and choice. Throughout the church's history, Christians have sought to understand the meaning of relevant biblical texts and debated this theological conundrum.

From the cofounder of the Amazon Labor Union, a definitive how-to guide to workplace organizing told through a David vs. Goliath chronicle for the ages. On April 1, 2022, the Amazon warehouse known as JFK8, in Staten Island, notched an improbable victory when its workers voted to become the...

The early days and inexorable rise of the young Bernie Sanders, the one-of-a-kind visionary who changed American politics forever, told by a son of the People’s Republic of Burlington, Vermont In this symphonic origin story of an era-defining politician, Dan Chiasson, a Burlington native who...

Essays on all 46 American Presidents who have held the office over the last 230 years - from George Washington to Joe Biden. There was a huge upsurge of global interest in US politics during the Trump presidency, culminating in the November 2020 election, the victory of the Democrat candidate...

Did America fake the moon landing? Was 9/11 an inside job? What is the government hiding at Area 51? From secret societies to aliens and assassinations, decode history's greatest cover-ups and decide for yourself. Humanity has long been obsessed with the unexplained, and we have ascribed many...

George Washington, the first President of the United States, warned against the formation of political parties, but it did not take long for American politicians to ignore him and draw a line in the sand regarding the power of the federal government and that of the individual states. That said, the line ebbed away among the bloodshed of the War of 1812, and until the election of 1828, American politics experienced the so-called Era of Good Feelings, during which Americans took heed of Washington’s words and set aside party lines for a supposed new era of political cooperation.

El 2 de mayo de 1973, la integrante de los Panteras Negras Assata Shakur se hallaba en el hospital en estado crítico y esposada a la cama, mientras las autoridades locales y la policía federal trataban de interrogarla acerca del tiroteo en una autopista de Nueva Jersey que costó la vida a un policía blanco. Objetivo durante mucho tiempo de la campaña de Edgar Hoover para difamar, sabotear y criminalizar las organizaciones nacionalistas negras y a sus líderes, Shakur pasó cuatro años en la cárcel antes de su condena en 1977, sustentada en pruebas poco sólidas.

Barack Obama's speech on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches should have represented the culmination of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial unity. Yet, in Fracture, MSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid shows that, despite the...

An extraordinary new writer makes her literary debut with this suspenseful novel of desire, obsession, power and vulnerability, in which a crisis of inheritance leads to the downfall of a wealthy family of Persian Jews in early twentieth-century Iran. For all his wealth and success, Asher...

With every presidential election, Americans puzzle over the peculiar mechanism of the Electoral College. The author of the Pulitzer finalist The Right to Vote explains the enduring problem of this controversial institution.

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the 20th century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

Travis Ridout and Michael Franz examine how political advertisements function in various kinds of campaigns and how voters are influenced by them. The authors particularly study where ads are placed, asserting that television advertising will still be relevant despite the growth of advertising on the Internet.

In US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy, a team of international scholars examines how the relationship between foreign policy and electoral politics evolved through the latter half of the 20th century. Covering all presidential elections from 1940 to 1992 - from debates over American entry into World War II to the aftermath of the Cold War - the contributors correct the conventional wisdom that domestic issues and the economy are always definitive.

Increasingly, political parties have adopted not only different policies, but different sets of facts. As E. J. Fagan argues, partisan think tanks have helped create these alternate realities in their capacity as de facto formal party organizations. Through the analyses generated by aligned think tanks, political elites on both the left and right frequently offer radically different assessments of a policy's consequences.

In November 2012, Americans went to the polls to make yet another historic decision. Their choice was to reelect the nation's first African-American president or to elect the first Mormon president. Obama faced one of the least conventional Republican politicians the country ever had. From his Mormon faith to his governorship of the very blue Massachusetts, Mitt Romney left many on the right wondering whether he possessed the traditional conservative values they deemed necessary.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST AND LITHUB! A woman’s desperate flight from an Apache raid unfolds into a sweeping tale of the Mexico–US border wars. Orchestrated with a stunningly imagined cast of characters, both historical and purely...

The gripping story of the Ruby Ridge siege, showing how the historic standoff between federal agents and a white-separatist family set the stage for the conspiracy-laced politics of the Trump era. “Vivid, frightening, and fascinating…This book blew me away and opened my eyes.”—Walter...