Keeping the Republic, 3rd Brief Edition
Too often, brief texts sacrifice the flavor of the full edition with an outside author condensing material on the altar of fewer pages. Once examples are cut, what’s left is a drabber book heavy on concepts and devoid of color. This brief is different. Authors Christine Barbour and Gerald Wright have kept the same strong, cohesive narrative and focus on core concepts that form the basis of Keeping the Republic—and do the streamlining and writing themselves. The themes of power and citizenship so crucial to the full text are found here in abundance, along with an array of engaging stories and cases to keep students reading.
To learn more about Keeping the Republic, 3rd Brief Edition, click here.
Clued in to Politics, 2nd Edition
How do you get students to move beyond merely describing an author’s point of view? How do you get them to dig deeper, to actually uncover evidence and evaluate conclusions? The answer is to model critical thinking and close reading. Barbour and Streb have created an effective and simple device that pushes students to actively engage with readings and tease out each writer’s argument. Through a series of probing questions, students are trained—systematically—to read through a selection and:
Consider the source,
Lay out the argument,
Uncover the evidence,
Evaluate the conclusion,
Sort out the political implications.
To learn more about Clued in to Politics, 2nd Edition, click here.
Bio(s)
Christine Barbour, Indiana University
Christine Barbour teaches in the political science department and the Honors College at Indiana University, where she has become increasingly interested in how teachers of large classes can maximize what their students learn. 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 Freshmen 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 on developing ways to integrate newspaper reading into the undergraduate curriculum. She has won several teaching awards at Indiana, but the two that mean the most to her were awarded by her students: the Indiana University Student Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Faculty (1995-6) and the Indiana University Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists Brown Derby Award (1997). She is currently working on a book about local politics, development and the fishing industry in Apalachicola, Florida.
Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University
Gerald C. Wright has taught political science at Indiana University since 1981. He is an accomplished scholar of American politics—his books include Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion, and Policy in the American States with co-authors Robert S. Erikson and John P. McIver, and he has published over 40 articles on elections, public opinion, and state politics. He has long studied the relationship between citizens, their preferences and public policy. He is currently conducting research with a grant from the National Science Foundation on what influences the character of policy representation in the states and the U.S. Congress, and he is writing a book about representation in the American legislatures. He has been a consultant for Project Vote Smart in the last several elections. Professor Wright is a member of the Freshmen Learning Project at Indiana University, a university-wide effort to improve the first year undergraduate experience by focusing on how today’s college students learn and how teachers can adapt their pedagogical methods to best teach them.
Matthew J. Streb, Loyola Marymount University
Matthew J. Streb is assistant professor in the political science department at Northern Illinois University. He is editor or co-editor of Law and Election Politics: The Rules of the Game, Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy, and Clued in to Politics and author of The New Electoral Politics of Race. He specializes and teaches in the areas of parties, elections, polling and public opinion, Congress, civil rights movements, and research methods.
