Evan Gerstmann

The revised and expanded second edition of Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution makes the case that the Constitution has long protected the right to marry, and that this protection includes the right to marry a person of the same gender. No other book makes this argument. This book addresses other issues, such as why same-sex marriage is completely different, both practically and constitutionally, from polygamy and incest, and it debunks the myth that pro–same-sex marriage decisions have created a backlash against either gays and lesbians or the Democratic Party.

Daniel R. Pinello

America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage chronicles the evolution of the social movement for same-sex marriage in the United States and examines the political controversies surrounding gay people's quest for access to the civil institution of marriage. The book focuses on the momentous events that began in November 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared unequivocally that the state's conferral of marriage only on opposite-sex couples violated constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law. The decision both triggered a political backlash of national proportion and prompted officials in San Francisco, Multnomah County (OR), Sandoval County (NM), and New Paltz (NY) to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The volume relies on in-depth interviews to provide an insider account of how courts, politicians, and activists maneuver and deal with a cutting-edge social policy issue, as well as real-life narratives about everyday people whom the debate immediately affects.

Francis J. Beckwith

Defending Life is the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published. It is sophisticated, but still accessible to the ordinary citizen. Without high-pitched rhetoric or appeals to religion, the author offers a careful and respectful case for why the prolife view of human life is correct. He responds to the strongest prochoice arguments found in law, science, philosophy, politics, and the media. He explains and critiques Roe v. Wade, and he explains why virtually all the popular prochoice arguments fail. There is simply nothing like this book.

Hadley Arkes

Over the last thirty years the American political class has come to talk itself out of the doctrines of "natural rights" that formed the main teaching of the American Founders and Abraham Lincoln. With that move, they have talked themselves out of the ground of their own rights. But the irony is that they have made this transition without the least awareness, and indeed with a kind of serene conviction that they have been expanding constitutional rights. Since 1965, in the name of "privacy" and "autonomy," they have unfolded, vast new claims of liberty, all of them bound up in some way with the notion of sexual freedom, and yet this new scheme of rights depends on a denial, at the root, of the premises and logic of natural rights. Hadley Arkes argues that the "right to choose an abortion" has functioned as the "right" that has shifted the political class from doctrines of natural right. The new "right to choose" overturned the liberal jurisprudence of the New Deal, and placed jurisprudence on a notably different foundation. And so even if there is a "right" to abortion, that right has been detached from the logic of natural rights and stripped of moral substance. As a consequence, the people who have absorbed these new notions of rights have put themselves in a position in which they can no longer offer a moral defense of any of their rights.

Carol M. Swain

Debating Immigration presents 18 original essays, written by some of the world's leading experts and preeminent scholars, that explore the nuances of contemporary immigration and citizenship affecting the United States and Europe. The volume is organized around the following themes: religion and philosophy, law and policy, economics and demographics, race and ethnicity, and cosmopolitanism. Critical questions addressed include: What accounts for the disconnect between public attitudes about immigration and the policies produced by elected officials? Why has the United States not developed a well-articulated public philosophy of immigration?

Carol M. Swain

Over the past ten years, a new white nationalist movement has gained strength in America, bringing with it the potential to disrupt already fragile race relations. Eschewing violence, this movement seeks to expand its influence mainly through argument and persuasion directed at its target audience of white Americans aggrieved over racial double standards, race-based affirmative action policies, high black-on-white crime rates, and liberal immigration policies. The movement has also been energized, Swain contends, by minority advocacy of multiculturalism. Due to its emphasis on group self-determination, multiculturalism has provided white nationalists with justification for advocating a parallel form of white solidarity. In addition, as Swain illustrates, technological advances such as the Internet have made it easier than ever before for white nationalists to reach a more mainstream audience. Swain's study is intended as a wake-up call to all Americans who cherish the Civil Rights Era vision of an integrated America, a common humanity, and equality before God and the law.

Frank R. Baumgartner

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes -- mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented here through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

Marie Gottschalk

Over the last three decades the United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.

Tracy Sulkin

Do representatives and senators respond to the critiques raised by their challengers? This study, exploring how legislators' experiences as candidates shape their subsequent behavior as policymakers, demonstrates that winning legislators regularly take up their challengers' priority issues from the last campaign and act on them. This attentiveness to their challengers' issues reflects a widespread and systematic yet largely unrecognized mode of responsiveness in the U.S. Congress. Tracy Sulkin reveals the important benefits for these legislators as well as the health and legitimacy of the representative process.

Steven S. Smith

Party Influence in Congress challenges current arguments and evidence about the influence of parties in the U.S. Congress. Political scientists differ in their evaluations of the influence of congressional parties over policy outcomes. Steven S. Smith reviews the arguments and finds them deficient in many respects. In their place, he offers an enriched, more nuanced view of the way parties influence the behavior of legislators and shape legislative outcomes.

Anthony J. Nownes

This book offers a scholarly yet accessible overview of the role of lobbying in American politics. It draws upon extant research as well as original data gathered from interviews with numerous lobbyists across the United States. It describes how lobbyists do their work within all branches of government, at the national, state, and local levels. It thus offers a substantially broader view of lobbying than is available in much of the research literature. Although tailored for students taking courses on interest group politics, Total Lobbying offers an indispensable survey of the field for scholars and others concerned with this important facet of American politics.

Daniel N. Shaviro

What's in a word? Plenty, when it's a word such as "taxes," "spending," or "deficits" that pervades Washington political debate despite lacking coherent economic content. The United States is moving toward a possible catastrophic fiscal collapse. The country may not get there, but the risk is unmistakable and growing. The "fiscal language" of taxes, spending, and deficits has played a huge and underappreciated role in the decisions that have pushed the nation in this dangerous direction. This book proposes a better fiscal language for U.S. budgetary policy, rooted in economic fundamentals such as wealth distribution and resource allocation in lieu of "taxes" and "spending" and in the use of multiple measures (such as the fiscal gap and generational accounting) to replace misguided reliance on annual budget deficits.

Robert J. Lieber

The American Era makes a provocative argument about America's world role. It establishes the rationale for a grand strategy that recognizes American preponderance as necessary and desirable for coping with the perils of the post-9/11 world. First, militant Islamic terrorism plus weapons of mass destruction pose a threat of an entirely new magnitude and require us to alter the way we think about the preemptive and even preventive use of force. Second, the UN and other international bodies are habitually incapable of acting on the most urgent and deadly problems. Third, in an international system with no true central authority, other countries will inevitably look for leadership to the U.S. If America, as the world's foremost power, does not take the lead in confronting the most dangerous threats, no one else is likely to have the ability or the will to do so. Thus, at a time when threats from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are a reality, and when such values as human rights, liberty and stability cannot be reliably assured by institutions such as the UN and the European Union, active intervention on those issues that matter most becomes a necessity, not an option.

Steven Rosefielde

The United States will confront a series of fundamental challenges through the middle of the twenty-first century. Using a theory of economic systems to gauge present and future global conflicts, Steven Rosefielde and D. Quinn Mills see the challenges as posed sequentially by terrorism, Russia, China, and the European Union. In the cases of terrorism, Russia, and China, Western leaders appreciate aspects of these perils, but they are crafting unduly soft policies to deal with the challenges. The authors believe that ‘globalists’ notwithstanding, such views are myopic in an era where nuclear proliferation has invalidated the concept of mutually assured destruction. What America requires is a new security concept that the authors call ‘strategic independence’ to enable keeping the peace in dangerous times and foster new generations of leaders capable of acting sanely despite a current public culture addicted to wishful thinking.

Gary Rosen

To declare oneself a conservative in American foreign policy is to enter immediately into a fractious, long-standing debate. Should America retreat from the world, deal with the world as it is, or try to transform it in its own image? Which school of thought - traditionalist, realist, or neoconservative - is truest to the country's ideals and interests? With the dramatic shift in American foreign policy since 9/11, these differences have been brought into stark relief, especially by the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. This book brings together the most articulate and influential voices in the debate among conservatives over the tactics and strategy of America's engagement in Iraq. Its contribution run the gamut from protests to second thoughts to full-throated endorsements, and represent a vivid sampling of the ideological currents likely to influence the Bush administration in its ongoing efforts in Iraq and the wider Middle East.

Stefan Halper

Used wisely, America's immense military power can preserve freedom but used unwisely, it can fracture global stability. Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue, that as long as neo-conservative radicals dominate the nation's national security process, fracture is more likely. Assuming Americans will see increasing threats in the future, this book is important because it identifies the factions and agendas involved. It advocates an alternative approach based on a return to the mainstream principles that have successfully guided American diplomacy for half a century. years.

Archon Fung

Which SUVs are most likely to rollover? What cities have the unhealthiest drinking water? Which factories are the most dangerous polluters? What cereals are the most nutritious? In recent decades, governments have sought to provide answers to such critical questions through public disclosure to force manufacturers, water authorities, and others to improve their products and practices. Corporate financial disclosure, nutritional labels, and school report cards are examples of such targeted transparency policies. At best, they create a light-handed approach to governance that improves markets, enriches public discourse, and empowers citizens. But such policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on an analysis of eighteen U.S. and international policies, Full Disclosure shows that information is often incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to consumers, investors, workers, and community residents. To be successful, transparency policies must be accurate, keep ahead of disclosers' efforts to find loopholes, and, above all, focus on the needs of ordinary citizens.

Susan J. Carroll

Gender and Elections offers a systematic, lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2004 elections. This timely, yet enduring, volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2004 elections and providing a more long-term, in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding and interpreting presidential elections, voter participation and turnout, voting choices, congressional elections, the participation of African American women, the support of political parties and women's organizations, candidate communications with voters, and state elections. Without question, this book is the most comprehensive, reliable, and trustworthy resource on the role of gender in electoral politics.

Jennifer L. Lawless

This important work constitutes a systematic, nationwide empirical account of the effects of gender on political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey of 3,800 "potential candidates" conducted by the authors, it relates these findings: Women, even at the highest levels of professional accomplishment, are significantly less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to run for elective office; women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office; women are less likely than men to consider themselves "qualified" to run for office; women are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for a future office. According to the authors, this gender gap in political ambition persists across generations, despite contemporary society's changing attitudes towards female candidates.

Dean Baker

This provocative book describes the sharp right turn the United States has taken following the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980. The treatment details how the policies pursued by the Reagan administration were a break from both the policies pursued by prior administrations and those pursued in other wealthy countries. The Reagan administration policies had the effect of redistributing both before- and after-tax income upward, creating a situation in which the bulk of the economic gains over the last quarter century were directed to a small segment of the population. The analysis explains how both political parties have come largely to accept the main tenets of Reaganism, putting the United States on a path that is at odds with most of the rest of the world and is not sustainable.

Alan Ware

This book examines the dynamics of the American party system and explores how contemporary American politics was formed. Specifically, it asks how the Democrats could become sufficiently competitive in the American North as to be able to construct a national political majority. It rejects the conventional account, based on ‘realignment theory’, that between the end of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Revolution, the base level of support for the Democratic party varied greatly from one era to another. Instead, by distinguishing between the ‘building blocks’ available to the Democrats in coalition formation and the aggregation of those ‘blocks’ into an actual coalition, the author shows that there was much less variation over time in the available ‘blocks’ than is usually argued. Neither the economic depression of 1893 nor the New Deal had the impact on the party system that most political scientists claim.

John F. Reynolds

During the nineteenth century American political parties selected their candidates for elective offices in conventions. Around 1910 most states established a system of direct primaries whereby the voters selected their parties’ nominees for public office. The current study examines the transition from the indirect to the direct primary, as well as its implications for American politics. It offers a systematic analysis of the convention system in four states (New Jersey, Michigan, Colorado, and California) and the legislative history of the regulation of political parties during the Progressive Era. It argues that the major political parties themselves were chiefly responsible for doing away with the nominating convention. Candidates played a pivotal role in inaugurating the new nominating system as they became more open and aggressive in pursuit of their parties’ nominations. The convention system was never designed to withstand the pressures exerted on it by a more competitive nominating process.

Richard Franklin Bensel

Unlike modern elections, the American polling place of the mid-nineteenth century was thoroughly endowed with symbolic meaning for individuals who otherwise would not have had the least interest in politics. This made the polls exciting and encouraged men to vote at far higher rates than they do today. Men who approached a polling place were met by agents of the major political parties. They treated the voters with whiskey, gave them petty bribes, and urged that they should be loyal to their ethnic and religious communities. As reported in the eyewitness accounts of ordinary voters, the polls were almost always crowded, noisy, and often, violent.

Anthony Gill

Throughout history, governments have attempted to control religious organizations and limit religious freedom. However, over the past two hundred years the world has witnessed an expansion of religious liberty. What explains this rise in religious freedom? Anthony Gill argues that political leaders are more likely to allow religious freedom when such laws affect their ability to stay in power, and/or when religious freedoms are seen to enhance the economic well-being of their country.

James H. Hutson

This book describes American ideas about and policies toward the relationship between government and religion from the founding of Virginia in 1607 to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, 1829-1837. Four principles were paramount during this period: the importance of religion to the public welfare; the resulting obligation of government to support religion; liberty of conscience and voluntaryism; the requirement that churches be supported by free will gifts, not taxation. The relevance of the concept of the separation of church and state during this period is examined in detail.

Julian E. Zelizer

Thirty years after the "Watergate Babies" promised to end corruption in Washington, Julian Zelizer offers the first major history of the demise of the committee-era Congress and the rise of the contemporary legislative branch. Based on research in more than a hundred archival collections, this book tackles one of the most enduring political challenges in America: barring a wholesale revolution, how can we improve our representative democracy so as best to fulfill the promises of the Constitution? Whereas popular accounts suggest that major scandals or legislation can transform government institutions, Zelizer shows that reform is messy, slow, and involves many institutions coming together at the right time. The short period of reform in the 1970s--one that rivaled the Progressive Era--revolved around a coalition that had worked for decades, a slow reconfiguration of the relationship among political institutions, shifts in the national culture, and the ability of reformers to take advantage of scandals and elections. Zelizer presents a new look at the origins of the partisanship and scandal warfare that characterize today's politics. The book also offers a warning to the next generation of reformers by showing how a new political environment can radically transform the political impact of government reforms, as occurred when the conservative movement--during its rise to power in recent decades--took advantage of reforms that had ended the committee era.

Barry Rubin

The Middle East has changed clearly, substantially, and dramatically during the last decade. Yet scholarly and public understanding lags far behind recent events. Barry Rubin's historical and political summation of the region shows how events and ideas have both shaped and altered its character. Three interlinked themes are crucial to the book. First, a reinterpretation of the era of recent upheaval the Middle East has just passed through, which the author calls the Era of Radical Expectations. During that period, many Arabs believed that some leader, country, or radical movement would unite the region, solving all its problems. Second, an evaluation of how the historical experience of the period between the 1940s and the 1990s undermined the old system, making change necessary. Third, an analysis of the region today that explains future developments, in what the author terms the Era of Reluctant Pragmatism, as the Middle Eastern societies determine their relationships to the West.

L. Sandy Maisel

For a number of years, voters and academic observers have been dissatisfied with American campaigns. Contemporary races are seen as too negative, too superficial, and too unfair or misleading. Based on these complaints, a variety of reform organizations have targeted millions of dollars to improve the situation. This book seeks to evaluate whether these activities have improved the level of campaign discourse and conduct in U.S. House and Senate campaigns and argues that while individual reform efforts have achieved some of their stated objectives, the overall effect of these reform efforts has been disappointing. A different approach to campaign conduct and political discourse in American elections is clearly called for if improved campaigning is the goal.

Richard R. Lau

This book attempts to redirect the field of voting behavior research by proposing a paradigm-shifting framework for studying voter decision making. An innovative experimental methodology is presented for getting ‘inside the heads’ of citizens as they confront the overwhelming rush of information from modern presidential election campaigns. Four broad theoretically-defined types of decision strategies that voters employ to help decide which candidate to support are described and operationally-defined. Individual and campaign-related factors that lead voters to adopt one or another of these strategies are examined. Most importantly, this research proposes a new normative focus for the scientific study of voting behavior: we should care about not just which candidate received the most votes, but also how many citizens voted correctly - that is, in accordance with their own fully-informed preferences.

Zoltan L. Hajnal

Despite the hopes of the civil rights movement, researchers have found that the election of African Americans to office has not greatly improved the well-being of the black community. By shifting the focus to the white community, this book shows that black representation can have a profound impact. Utilizing national public opinion surveys, data on voting patterns in large American cities, and in-depth studies of Los Angeles and Chicago, Zoltan Hajnal demonstrates that under most black mayors there is real, positive change in the white vote and in the racial attitudes of white residents. This change occurs because black incumbency provides concrete information that disproves the fears and expectations of many white residents. These findings not only highlight the importance of black representation; they also demonstrate the critical role that information can play in racial politics to the point where black representation can profoundly alter white views and white votes.

Diana C. Mutz

‘Religion and politics’, as the old saying goes, ‘should never be discussed in mixed company.’And yet fostering discussions that cross lines of political difference has long been a central concern of political theorists. More recently, it has also become a cause célèbre for pundits and civic-minded citizens wanting to improve the health of American democracy. But only recently have scholars begun empirical investigations of where and with what consequences people interact with those whose political views differ from their own. Hearing the Other Side examines this theme in the context of the contemporary United States. It is unique in its effort to link political theory with empirical research. Drawing on her empirical work, Mutz suggests that it is doubtful that an extremely activist political culture can also be a heavily deliberative one.

Alan S. Zuckerman

People decide about political parties by taking into account the preferences, values, expectations, and perceptions of their family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. As most persons live with others, members of their households influence each other's political decisions. How and what they think about politics and what they do are the outcomes of social processes. Analyzing data from extensive German and British household surveys, this book shows that wives and husbands influence each other; young adults influence their parents, especially their mothers. Wives and mothers sit at the center of households: their partisanship influences the partisanship of everyone else, and the others affect them.

Markus Prior

The media environment is changing. Today in the United States, the average viewer can choose from hundreds of channels, including several twenty-four hour news channels. News is on cell phones, on iPods, and online; it has become a ubiquitous and unavoidable reality in modern society. The purpose of this book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and new survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behaviour.

C. Edwin Baker

Firmly rooting its argument in democratic and economic theory, the book argues that a more democratic distribution of communicative power within the public sphere and a structure that provides safeguards against abuse of media power provide two of three primary arguments for ownership dispersal. It also shows that dispersal is likely to result in more owners who will reasonably pursue socially valuable journalistic or creative objectives rather than a socially dysfunctional focus on the ‘bottom line’. The middle chapters answer those agents, including the Federal Communication Commission, who favor ‘deregulation’ and who argue that existing or foreseeable ownership concentration is not a problem. The final chapter evaluates the constitutionality and desirability of various policy responses to concentration, including strict limits on media mergers.

Philip N. Howard

The political campaign is one of the most important organizations in a democracy, and whether issue, or candidate, specific, it is one of the least understood organizations in contemporary political life. With evidence from ethnographic immersion, survey data, and social network analysis, Philip Howard examines the evolving act of political campaigning and the changing organization of political campaigns over the last five election cycles, from 1996 to 2004. Over this time, both grassroots and elite political campaigns have gone online, built multimedia strategies, and constructed complex relational databases.

Richard Johnston

Campaigns suddenly seem to matter, as do questions about the electoral process in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. The authors examine the U.S. electoral process as an integrated event spanning a full year, drawing upon the Annenberg 2000 Election Study. The scale of their fieldwork is such that they have been able to isolate key turning points and that dynamics can be studied within certain segments. Johnston, Hagen and Jamieson have also utilized candidate appearances, news coverage, and campaign advertising to provide this integrated account of a U.S. campaign.

Scott L. Althaus

Since so few people appear knowledgeable about public affairs, one might question whether collective policy preferences revealed in opinion surveys accurately convey the distribution of voices and interests in a society. Scott Althaus' comprehensive analysis of the relationship between knowledge, representation, and political equality (in opinion surveys) leads to surprising answers. Knowledge does matter, and the way it is dispensed in society can cause collective preferences to reflect opinions disproportionately. Accordingly, the study can help survey researchers, journalists, politicians, and concerned citizens better appreciate the problems and potentials of the usage of opinion polls to represent the people's voice.

Robert Huckfeldt

Without the experience of disagreement, political communication among citizens loses value and meaning. At the same time, political disagreement and diversity do not always or inevitably survive. This book, accordingly, considers the compelling issue of the circumstances that sustain political diversity, even in politically high stimulus environments where individuals are attentive to politics and the frequency of communication among citizens is correspondingly high.

Lawrence J. Grossback

Whether or not voters consciously use their votes to send messages about their preferences for public policy, the Washington community sometimes comes to believe that it has heard such a message. In this book the authors ask ‘What then happens?’ They focus on these perceived mandates - where they come from and how they alter the behaviors of members of Congress, the media, and voters. These events are rare. Only three elections in post war America (1964, 1980, and 1994) were declared mandates by the media consensus. These declarations, however, had a profound if ephemeral impact on members of Congress. They altered the fundamental gridlock that prevents Congress from adopting major policy changes. The responses by members of Congress to these three elections are responsible for many of the defining policies of this era. Despite their infrequency, then, mandates are important to the face of public policy.

Raymond M. Duch

This book proposes a selection model for explaining cross-national variation in economic voting: Rational voters condition the economic vote on whether incumbents are responsible for economic outcomes, because this is the optimal way to identify and elect competent economic managers under conditions of uncertainty. This model explores how political and economic institutions alter the quality of the signal that the previous economy provides about the competence of candidates. The rational economic voter is also attentive to strategic cues regarding the responsibility of parties for economic outcomes and their electoral competitiveness. Theoretical propositions are derived, linking variation in economic and political institutions to variability in economic voting. The authors demonstrate that there is economic voting, and that it varies significantly across political contexts, and then test explanations for this variation derived from their theory. The data consist of 165 election studies conducted in 19 different countries over a 20-year time period.

Richard Franklin Bensel

The 1896 Democratic National Convention simultaneously proposed a radically new trajectory for American industrial expansion, harshly repudiated its own incumbent president, and rudely overturned the party’s traditional regional and social hierarchy. The passion that attended these decisions was deeply embedded in the traditional alliances and understandings of the past, in the careers and futures of the party’s most prominent leaders and most insignificant ward heelers, and in the personal relations of men who had long served together in the halls of Congress. This passion was continuously on display in the Chicago Coliseum, shaped by the rhythm of parliamentary ritual and the physical architecture of the convention hall. William Jennings Bryan anticipated the moment when pathos would be at its height and chose that moment to give his “Cross of Gold” address, thus harnessing passion to his personal ambition and winning the presidential nomination.

Bert Useem

Within the past 25 years, the prison population in America shot upward to reach a staggering 1.53 million by 2005. This book takes a broad, critical look at incarceration, the huge social experiment of American society. The authors investigate the causes and consequences of the prison buildup, often challenging previously held notions from scholarly and public discourse. By examining such themes as social discontent, safety and security within prisons, and impact on crime and on the labor market, Piehl and Useem use evidence to address the inevitable larger question, where should incarceration go next for American society, and where is it likely to go?