American Elections

The Militant Normals, written by one of the conservative movement's wittiest commentators, is a no-holds-barred takedown of the preening elites who have all but made normalcy a crime in America.

Restoring three-dimensionality to more than 50 American sayings, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too turns clichés back into history by telling the life stories of the words that have served as our most powerful battle cries, rallying points, laments, and inspirations. In individual entries on slogans and catchphrases from the early 17th to the late 20th century, Jan Van Meter reveals that each one is a living, malleable entity that has profoundly shaped and continues to influence our public culture.

It's a common complaint that a presidential candidate's style matters more than substance and that the issues have been eclipsed by mass-media-fueled obsession with a candidate's every slip, gaffe, and peccadillo. This audiobook explores political communication in American presidential politics, focusing on what political insiders call "message". Message, Michael Lempert and Michael Silverstein argue, is not simply an individual's positions on the issues but the craft used to fashion the creature the public sees as the candidate.

Conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy was the first celebrity president, in no small part because of his innate television savvy. But as Kathryn Brownell shows, Kennedy capitalized on a tradition and style rooted in California politics and the Hollywood studio system. Since the 1920s, politicians and professional showmen have developed relationships and built organizations institutionalizing Hollywood styles, structures, and personalities in the American political process.

In this sweeping history, author Johanna Neuman demonstrates that American women defeated the male patriarchy only after they convinced men that it was in their interests to share political power.

Following Ratf--ked, his “extraordinary timely and undeniably important” (New York Times Book Review) expose of how a small cadre of Republican operatives rigged American elections, David Daley emerged as one of the nation's leading authorities on gerrymandering. In Unrigged, he charts a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters' revelations.

Award-winning author John Ferling is a leading authority on the American Revolution. His entertaining and enlightening histories have greatly improved our understanding of early America and the Founding Fathers. Now Ferling opens a window to the past and explores the contentious presidential election of 1800.

In early 1860, pundits across America confidently predicted the election of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential race. Douglas, after all, led the only party that bridged North and South. But the Democrats would split over the issue of slavery, leading Southerners in the party to run their own presidential slate. This opened the door for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Office. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln, not the first choice even of his own party, won the presidency with a record-low 39.8 percent of the popular vote.

For many, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a dream come true. Millions saw him as a redeemer destined to make America great again. For others, his election came as a shock and established forces and institutions immediately began to conspire to wreck his presidency. Now, years after leaving the White House, the frenzy to lock Trump up is turning the U.S. into a banana republic. How can a single event provoke such strong reactions and dangerous outcomes?

From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it. A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer’s most incisive—and sometimes remarkably prophetic—commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it.

Despite the abundant evidence from Obama's victories proving that the US population has fundamentally changed, many progressives and Democrats continue to waste millions of dollars chasing white swing voters. Explosive population growth of people of color in America over the past 50 years has laid the foundation for a new American majority consisting of progressive people of color and progressive whites. These two groups make up 51 percent of all eligible voters in America right now, and that majority is growing larger every day.

The chickens are coming home to roost for the corrupt officials, mainstream media, and Democratic operatives who ruined the life of an innocent American in an attempt to subvert our democracy. Carter Page, the man at the center of one of the worst scandals in our country’s history, reveals how our nation’s top law-enforcement officials abused their power and framed an innocent American citizen in their effort to take down Donald Trump.

On June 25, 2013, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidating a key provision of voting rights law. The decision - the culmination of an eight-year battle over the power of Congress to regulate state conduct of elections - marked the closing of a chapter in American politics. That chapter had opened a century earlier in the case of Guinn v. United States, which ushered in national efforts to knock down racial barriers to the ballot.

Hard White explains how the mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major shifts in the movement. While the book argues that white extremism will have enduring effects on American electoral politics for some time to come, it suggests that the way forward is to refocus the conversation on social solidarity, concluding with ideas for how to build this solidarity.

Historian Sean Wilentz presents two key insights that together reveal a clearer, much-needed vision of American political history. First, partisanship has almost always been a feature of American history and in fact has made possible the nation's greatest social reforms. There is little to be gained from a "postpartisan" political world. Second, the recent attention to economic inequality has a long history. From the founders' generation to the present, America's egalitarian tradition has appeared and reappeared like an underground river.

Political races in the United States rely heavily on highly paid political consultants who carefully curate the images of politicians, advise candidates on polling and analytics, and shape voters' perceptions through marketing and advertising techniques. More than half of the $6 billion spent in the 2012 election went to consultants who controlled virtually every aspect of the campaigns, from polling, fundraising, and media to more novel techniques of social media and micro-targeting.

Curtis J. Austin chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and finally destroyed the party as one member after another - Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley - left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned.

Upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. His reply to the crowd: "A republic, if you can keep it." Now America's most respected governor explains just how close we've come to losing the republic, and how we can restore it to greatness

The world's eyes were on Mississippi during the summer of 1964, when civil rights activists launched an ambitious African American voter registration project and were met with violent resistance from white supremacists. Sue Sojourner and her husband arrived in Holmes County, Mississippi, in the wake of this historic time, known as "Freedom Summer". Thunder of Freedom unites Sojourner's personal experiences with her insights regarding the dynamics of race relations in the 1960s South, providing listeners with a unique look at the struggle for rights and equality in Mississippi.

The history and future of our democracy's ultimate sanction, presidential impeachment, and a guide to how it should be used now. To End a Presidency addresses one of today's most urgent questions: when and whether to impeach a president. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz provide an authoritative guide to impeachment's past and a bold argument about its proper role today. In an era of expansive presidential power and intense partisanship, we must rethink impeachment for the 21st century.