Not covering the policy chapters? Then order the Essentials Edition (excludes chapters 16–19) with its free supplement analyzing the midterm elections.

Coming in July, this valuable supplement will provide an insider’s guide to the 2010 midterm elections. When placing your order, be sure to use the ISBN on this page to ensure that your students receive the supplement packaged FREE with their textbook.

Keeping the Republic, The Essentials, 4th Edition

The 2008 election will go down in the history books for a number of reasons, including the first African American at the top of a national party ticket, the longest nomination fight in recent memory, and a viable female candidate for president for the first time ever, but one of its most striking hallmarks is the early and enthusiastic involvement of young voters. While the passion they bring is encouraging, the key to their lasting impact will be the extent to which they really understand the functioning of the American political system, leading to a deeper and more abiding engagement.

By using the themes of power and citizenship, Barbour and Wright encourage students to analyze “who gets what and how” and evaluate how well the political system is working. In order to “keep the republic,” students need to shoulder responsibilities as well as exercise their rights. In order to see where politics intersects their own roles as citizens, they need to absorb the ideas and theories that animate the study of political science and think critically about them. And in order to keep students reading, the prose needs to be clear, friendly, and relevant.

The key to this new fourth edition is thorough updating— including the 2008 elections—and the integration of subtle enhancements every class-tested, well-reviewed, and well developed book should offer. In addition to examining recent events and scholarship, more than half the photos are new, the figures and tables reflect current data, and new vignettes open a majority of chapters.

The themes of power and citizenship are touched on in every chapter, with each pedagogical feature extending the analytic and evaluative work of the text:

• Who, What, How, and WHEN. These stunning visual and rich textual timelines track change and show the impact of key issues in American political history, such as immigration, third parties, whistleblowers, and developments in the media and in federal-state relations.
• What’s at Stake? Chapter-opening vignettes vividly show what people are struggling to get from politics and how the rules affect who gets it. Acting as a bookend to the chapter, What’s at Stake Revisited reexamines the story to further evaluate who wins and who loses.
• Profiles in Citizenship. Based on personal interviews, profiles of such luminaries as Bill Richardson, Condoleezza Rice, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Bill Maher provide powerful examples of how students might also affect change in the political process.
• Consider the Source. With the aim of modeling critical thinking skills, these boxes do more than tell students to analyze political information; rather, the authors show them how to do it—a crucial step in getting students to think like political scientists.
• Who Are We? A wealth of figures and charts showcase important demographic data and reinforce the idea that politics is a complex endeavor among diverse groups with often divergent ideas of government’s role in individual lives.
• Who, What, How. Concise section summaries help orient students and reinforce analytic themes.
• The Citizens and… A designated chapter section that helps students evaluate the quality of democratic governance in America.
• Thinking outside the Box. Pointed questions get students to challenge their assumptions about American politics.

For more information about Keeping the Republic, The Essentials, 4th Edition, click here.

Clued in to Politics, 3rd Edition

Beyond asking students to analyze a reading, how do you actually get them to do it? With their popular CLUES method, Barbour and Streb train students to Consider the source, Lay out the argument, Uncover the evidence, Evaluate the conclusion, and Sort out the political implications. With their contextual headnotes and CLUES questions, every reading helps develop lasting habits of critical thinking. Around 80 brief selections—36 new to this edition—are drawn from the wide range of media from which students glean political information.

For more information about Clued in to Politics, 3rd Edition, click here.

Lone Star Politics

Texas is in a bit of a dilemma—it is a rapidly growing state saddled with a constitution that was written by conservative farmers in 1876. Texas’s government struggles to meet the needs of an increasingly diversified population and the challenges of an economy driven by large multi-national corporations, many on the cutting edge of the information age. How has Texas developed and flourished over the years, but failed to fully respond to these changes?

Lone Star Politics explicitly focuses on the disconnect between the outsized myth of Texas with its legendary political history and the reality of the state’s day-to-day governance to help explain who gets what resources and how they are distributed. The engaging and accessible writing style makes this a book that students of all levels will actually want to read. And when they do, they’ll get both description and analysis, a balance of institutions and behavior, as well as comparisons of Texas with other states.

“Texas vs. _______” feature boxes use narrative, tabular data, and critical thinking questions to show how Texas works differently from the rest of the country, while “Texas Legends” boxes show how certain celebrated figures and institutions influence Texans and their identity as well as shape Texas politics today.

For more information about Lone Star Politics, click here.