About the Book
Not covering the policy chapters? Then order the Essentials Edition (excludes chapters 16–19) with its free supplement analyzing the midterm elections.
Coming in December, 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, 4th Edition, The Essentials
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.
California Politics: A Primer
Giving students the right level of detail, yet underscoring the essentials for understanding how the state’s political system works, author Renee Van Vechten delivers on the basics. Concise chapters offer up nuts-and-bolts information while showing how a unique set of rules and a rich political history are key to getting a handle on the Golden state. Photos, cartoons, maps, tables, and figures help to make this supplement a go-to resource.
About the Author :
Christine Barbour teaches in the Political Science Department at Indiana University, and directs the department’s IU POLS DC internship program. She is a faculty liaison for the University’s dual-credit program, which delivers an online version of her Intro to American Politics class to high school students across the state. At Indiana, Professor Barbour has been a Lilly Fellow, working on a project to increase student retention in large introductory courses, and a member of the Freshman Learning Project, a university-wide effort to improve the first-year undergraduate experience. She has served on the New York Times College Advisory Board, working with other educators to develop ways to integrate newspaper reading into the undergraduate curriculum. She has won multiple teaching honors, but the two awarded by her students mean the most to her: the Indiana University Student Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Faculty and the Indiana University Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists Brown Derby Award. When not teaching or writing textbooks, Professor Barbour enjoys traveling with her coauthor, blogging about food and travel, and playing with her dogs and cat. She contributes to Bloom Magazine of Bloomington and is a coauthor several cookbooks. She also makes jewelry from precious metals and rough gemstones. If she ever retires, she will open a jewelry shop in a renovated Airstream on the beach in Apalachicola, Florida, where she plans to write another cookbook and a book about the local politics, development, and fishing industry.
Gerald C. Wright taught political science at Indiana University from 1981 until his recent retirement. An accomplished scholar of American politics, and the 2010 winner of the State Politics and Policy Association’s Career Achievement Award, his work includes Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States (1993), coauthored with Robert S. Erikson and John P. McIver, and more than fifty articles on elections, public opinion, and state politics. Professor Wright’s research interests focus on representation – the fundamental relationship among citizens, their preferences, and public policy. He writes primarily about state politics, representation, political parties, and inequality.
He is currently working on a book about parties and representation in U.S. legislatures. He has been a consultant for Project Vote Smart for a number of years and was a founding member of Indiana University’s Freshman Learning Project. In retirement, Professor Wright grows vegetables, golfs, fishes, travels, and plays with his dogs and cat. He is an awesome cook.
Renée B. Van Vechten holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in American Politics and Policy at the University of Redlands where she is a professor of political science and chair of the public policy undergraduate program. She earned a BA in political science from the University of San Diego and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Van Vechten’s political science research examines legislative processes and behavior, including the impacts of political reforms such as term limits. In addition to teaching about California politics, her courses concentrate on American institutions such as Congress, as well as the politics of food, the environment, and political reform. Her expertise on state-level politics and policy is evident in her textbook, California Politics: A Primer, and her scholarship on pedagogy and instructional practices has extended to curricular planning, research methods, online discussion forums, simulations, and internships. She was the lead editor of and contributor to the open-source book and resource collection, Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices (APSA 2021: https://apsanet.org/internshipbook). Van Vechten has served as an executive board member for Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honors society, and on the American Political Science Association (APSA) Council and Executive Board as chair of the Teaching and Learning Policy Committee and as chair of the APSA Political Science Education organized member section. She has been a track moderator for the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) several times, and was a founding co-chair for the first TLC at APSA in 2018. Service to APSA includes membership on awards committees, working groups, and two Presidential Task Forces (on Technology, 2015–2016; on New Partnerships, 2017–2020) that helped establish APSA’s online teaching library, EDUCATE. Van Vechten is also active in the Western Political Science Association, having several times co-chaired a conference-within-a-conference on teaching and learning. She has received several teaching awards, including the Rowman and Littlefield Award for Innovative Teaching in Political Science (via APSA) in 2008, APSA’s only national teaching award at that time. A resident of San Diego County, she is frequently consulted by local media for commentary about state and national politics. Greg Giroux was previously a senior writer with CQ-Roll Call Group, specializing in politics and elections. He has been a major contributor to the past six editions of CQ’s Politics in America, the almanac that profiles all members of Congress and their constituencies. Giroux joined CQ in 1996 and served as editorial assistant and researcher at the CQ Weekly magazine prior to joining the political reporting staff in 1998. Giroux is a graduate of The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
