Michael Madigan rose from the Chicago machine to hold unprecedented power as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. In his thirty-six years wielding the gavel, Madigan outlasted governors, passed or blocked legislation at will, and outmaneuvered virtually every attempt to limit his reach. Veteran reporter Ray Long draws on four decades ......
A central question in political science is who governs and how. Typically political scientists attempt to answer this question by relying upon either empirical analysis, which explains existing political practices, or normative analysis, which prescribes ideal political practices. Political scientist Paul Schumaker rejects this distinction ......
This one-stop reference work is a governors' hall of fame-a compendium of information about the 51 men who have held the chief executive post since the opening of the Kansas Territory in 1854. Using both primary and secondary sources, historian Homer Socolofsky sketches a concise biography of each governor and compares their roles in Kansas ......
Lucius Polk Brown was a professional chemist who became a bureaucrat in the field of public health during the Progressive era, when middle-class reformers first attempted to order American society through integrated systems. In his native state of Tennessee, between 1908 and 1915 Brown created a public health enforcement agency, began educating ......
Highways and American Political Development, 1891-1956
In The American Road Katherine M. Johnson develops a bold new theory for how the American highway system has taken on such outsized scale and complexity by emphasizing the emergence of a powerful administrative apparatus in the American federal system. Established in 1914 expressly to intervene in the congressional debates of the era, the American ......
Finalist, 2021 Writers' League of Texas Book Award For John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: "You've got to bloody your knuckles." It's a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite ......
Local government in the New England states has historically been regarded as a style of government that most closely embodies the spirit of American democracy. Although models of local government vary from one town to the next, the common thread which unites all New England towns is that the people are empowered to choose their own form of ......
The Struggle Over Race and Voting Rights in North Carolina
America is at war with itself over the right to vote, or, more precisely, over the question of who gets to exercise that right and under what circumstances. Conservatives speak in ominous tones of voter fraud so widespread that it threatens public trust in elected government. Progressives counter that fraud is rare and that calls for reforms such ......
