Election History

The issue of slavery loomed ever larger in American politics as the middle of the Nineteenth Century passed. The Republican Party, birthed to destroy the institution, inaugurated its first candidate in 1856. Four years later Abraham Lincoln gained the nomination. The Democratic Party, committed to preserving and expanding slavery, nominated Stephen A. Douglas. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, casting the nation into a bloody civil war. Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the Emaciation Proclamation did not end slavery, but it led to its demise at war's end. A History of United States ...

Based on extensive interviews and archival material, The First Wave tells the story of the opposition in Singapore in its critical first thirty years in Parliament.

From a leading voice among young conservatives, an impassioned argument that to stay relevant the Republican Party must look beyond short-term electoral gains and re-commit to historic conservative values. In 1963 Richard Hofstadter published his landmark book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Today, Matt Lewis argues, America's inclination toward simplicity and stupidity is stronger than ever, and its greatest victim is the Republican Party.

Enlightened Democracy traces the history of the Electoral College from the Constitutional Convention to the present. The Electoral College protects our republic and promotes our liberty. Americans should defend their unique presidential election system at all costs.

Nothing is more important to the health of a democracy than the right to vote. Yet less than half of eligible voters routinely show up to the polls. Part of the problem is that the basics of the process we use to choose our elected leaders remain shrouded in mystery for many Americans. In What You Need to Know About Voting - and Why, law professor and constitutional scholar Kimberly Wehle unravels that mystery, offering practical, useful advice on the mechanics of voting and an enlightening survey of its history and future.

In Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know Nolan McCarty takes listeners through what scholars know and don't know about the origins, development, and implications of our rising political conflicts, delving into social, economic, and geographic determinants of polarization in the United States. While the current political climate seems to suggest that extreme views are becoming more popular, McCarty also argues that, contrary to popular belief, the 2016 election was a natural outgrowth of 40 years of polarized politics, rather than a significant break with the past.

As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer.

In this rare, sweeping history, Michael Barone draws from deep within the political and social record of modern America, from election returns, political polls, news reports, census extracts, and statistical abstracts, to tell the story of how the country of our parents and of our grandparents became our country.

In The Court v. The Voters, law professor Josh Douglas takes us behind the scenes of significant cases in voting rights—some surprising and unknown and some familiar—to investigate the historic crossroads that have changed our elections, and therefore the nation, irrevocably. In crisp and accessible prose, Douglas tells the story of each case, sheds light on the intractable election problems we face as a result, and highlights the unique role the highest court has played in shaping not only our elections but the very essence of the right to vote.

America's political leaders have considered suffrage not a natural right but a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, residence, literacy, criminal conviction, and citizenship. Today, voter identification laws, political gerrymandering, registration requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and voter purges deny many millions of citizens the opportunity to express their views at the ballot box. We cannot blame the founders alone for America's embattled vote. Best-selling author Allan Lichtman notes that subsequent generations have failed to establish suffrage as a universal right.

Congress is the first branch of government in the American system, write Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, but now it is a broken branch, damaged by partisan bickering and internal rancor. The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional.

Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military.

Some people think Donald Trump makes it up as he goes along. On the contrary, he falls squarely in line with contemporary pragmatism. This book is a critical assessment of his policies and "solutions" and connects him to the common pool of philosophical ideas which influence our culture. A sobering assessment of how pragmatism fails to deliver.

As the 2012 presidential campaign begins: Profiles of 12 men who have run for the presidency and lost, but who, even in defeat, have had a greater impact on American history than many of those who have served as president - from Henry Clay to Stephen Douglas, William Jennings Bryan to Al Gore - Plus, mini-profiles on 22 "honorable mentions."

When Jeff Weaver hopped in a car with Bernie Sanders in the summer of 1986, he had no idea the Vermont backroads would lead them all the way to the 2016 presidential campaign. In How Bernie Won, Weaver shows listeners how Bernie built a movement that would sweep America and inspire millions. He vowed not to run a negative campaign. He would focus on policies, not personalities. He would not be beholden to big money. He would actually make America great. Weaver also shows how they overcame significant challenges.

Alan I. Abramowitz has emerged as a leading spokesman for the view that our current political divide is not confined to a small group of elites and activists but a key feature of the American social and cultural landscape. The polarization of the political and media elites, he argues, arose and persists because it accurately reflects the state of American society. Here, he goes further: The polarization is unique in modern US history. Today's party divide reflects an unprecedented alignment of many different divides: racial and ethnic, religious, ideological, and geographic.

From the man widely hailed as “the Dean of Moderators” comes a lively and revealing book that pulls back the curtain on more than 40 years of televised political debate in America. A veteran newsman who has presided over 11 presidential and vice-presidential debates, Jim Lehrer gives readers a ringside seat for some of the epic political battles of our time, shedding light on all of the critical turning points and rhetorical faux pas that helped determine the outcome of America’s presidential elections—and with them the course of history.

"Virtù contro a furore prenderà l'armi, e fia el combatter corto, che l'antico valor negli italici cor non è ancora morto." Nella vivida interpretazione di Enzo Decaro, il classico della dottrina politica italiana rivive grazie alla trasposizione dall'italiano antico di Paola Giovetti e alle ambientazioni sonore di Riccardo Cimino. "Coloro che desiderano acquistare meriti presso un principe sono soliti presentarsi a lui con le cose che sanno essergli più care, per cui si vede che molte volte gli sono presentati cavalli, armi, drappi d'oro, pietre preziose e simili ornamenti.

Channeling his 20 years of experience on the issue, Daniel Miller takes the listener through the historical and cultural foundations of Texit, as well as its impact on mainstream politics, and plainly lays out the grievances expressed by many Texans that drive their support for an independent Texas. Texit also addresses the most common objections by using facts and sheds light on what a future Republic of Texas could look like.

New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler takes us behind the speeches and press conferences, to the Situation Room debates and picnic-table lunches, where Obama and Clinton honed their two competing worldviews: his, cautious, inward-looking, suffused with a sense of limits; hers, muscular, optimistic, unabashedly old-fashioned.