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.

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1. Introduction to American Politics
1.1 New! The Rebirth of American Civic Life, Robert D. Putnam, The Boston Globe
1.2 New! McCain, Obama View Public Service Differently, Scott Horsley, All Things Considered, NPR
1.3 Inaugural Address, John F. Kennedy

2. Political Culture
2.1 New! Harmony and the Dream, David Brooks, New York Times
2.2 New! Zadie Smith, Speaking in Tongues, The New York Review of Books
2.3 New! The End of Multiculturalism: The US Must be a Melting Pot, Lawrence E. Harrison , The Christian Science Monitor
2.4 Get Out, but Leave the Quesadilla, Michael Skube, Los Angeles Times
2.5 I Have a Dream, Martin Luther King Jr.

3. Federalism and the Constitution
3.1 New! ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC
3.2 New! Stacking the Deck on Gay Marriage, Steve Champman, The Chicago Tribune
3.3 I Dissent! The Constitution Got Us Into This Mess, Sanford Levinson, Washington Post
3.4 Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws President Cites Powers of His Office, Charlie Savage, Boston Globe
3.5 Federalist No. 51, James Madison

4. Civil Liberties
4.1 Marching as to War, Alan Cooperman, Washington Post
4.2 Gay Marriage Looms as “Battle of Our Times,” Jane Lampman, Christian Science Monitor
4.3 At Guantanamo, Dying Is Not Permitted, Adam Zagorin, Time
4.4 New! Is Torture Ever Justifed? Terrorism and Civil Liberties, The Economist
4.5 Federalist No. 84, Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

5. Civil Rights
5.1 New! A Prom Divided, Sara Corbett, the New York Times
5.2 Nine Nonsense, Carrie Lukas, National Review Online
5.3 Same-Sex Marriage: Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy, Eugene F. Rivers and Kenneth D. Johnson, Weekly Standard
5.4 New! A More Perfect Union, Barack Obama

6. Congress
6.1 New! The Pelosi Factor, Julian E. Zelizer, Politico
6.2 New! Guns, Geysers, and Mr. Reid, Gail Collins, New York Times
6.3 New! Lawmakers Fried for Bringing Home Bacon—Hypocrisy charges hit GOP, S.A. Miller, Washington Times
6.4 New! No Country for Close Calls, Nate Silver and Andrew Gelman, New York Times
6.5 Declaration of Conscience, Margaret Chase Smith, Speech on the Senate Floor

7. The Presidency
7.1 The Real Agenda, Editorial, New York Times
7.2 Bush Moves by Refusing to Budge, Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times
7.3 New! The Presider, Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish
7.4 Excerpt from Speech to Congress, Abraham Lincoln

8. Bureaucracy
8.1 In Artist’s Freeway Prank, Form Followed Function. Unauthorized Addition to Sign Went Unnoticed for Months. No Charges Planned., Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times
8.2 New! Does That Trans-Fat Ban Grease a Slippery Slope?, Kate Stone Lombardi, New York Times
8.3 New! Man-Made Disaster: Six years on, the Department of Homeland Security is still a catastrophe, Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic
8.4 Special Message to the Congress Recommending the Establishment of a Department of National Defense, Harry S Truman

9. The Courts
9.1 The Souter Factor, Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
9.2 Obstruction of Judges, Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Magazine
9.3 New! No More Mr. Nice Guy: The Supreme Court’s Stealth Hard-liner, Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker 9.4 New! Whose Identity Politics?, Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post
9.5 Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton

10. Public Opinion
10.1 Party On, Dudes! Ignorance Is the Curse of the Information Age, Matthew Robinson, The American Spectator
10.2 New! In Poll Position: Opinion Polls Show that Barack Obama is Comfortably Ahead in the Race to be President. Are They Right?, The Economist
10.3 New! Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, Mark Mellman, TheHill.com
10.4 The Other War Room, Joshua Green, Washington Monthly
10.5 Will the Polls Destroy Representative Democracy?, George Horace Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy

11. Political Parties
11.1 New! Yes, Viriginia, There are Liberal Republicans, Robert J. Elisberg, The Huffington Post
11.2 New! His Crowd, Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
11.3 New! Be the Party of No: It’s the Route to Republican Landslides, Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard 11.4 Introducing the Purple Party, Kurt Anderson, New York Magazine
11.5 Farewell Address, George Washington

12. Interest Groups
12.1 “My Life Is Shaped by the Border”, Tanya Schevitz, San Francisco Chronicle
12.2 New! Inside the Higher Ed Lobby: Welcome to One Dupont Circle, where good education-reform ideas go to die, Ben Adler, Washington Monthly
12.3 New! Lobbyists ♥ Obama: It’s a golden age for the “advocacy” business, Gary Andres, Weekly Standard 12.4 Federalist No. 10, James Madison, The Federalist Papers

13. Voting and Elections
13.1 New! How Obama Really Won the Election, Nate Silver, Esquire
13.2 Electoral College: Keep It or Dump It?, Patrick McIlheran, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
13.3 New! There’s Value in Voter ID Requirement—If It’s Done Properly, Norman Ornstein, Roll Call
13.4 Concession Speech, Al Gore

14. The Media
14.1 New! Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, Clay Shirky, clayshirky.com
14.2 New! I Agree With You, Completely Honest. Just read my piece, Jack Shafer, Slate
14.3 New! Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, David Barstow, New York Times 14.4 Why Brian Keeler is a Netroots Hero, Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos
14.5 New! Mr. President, Iran Has a Question: How Obama is using the media to destroy and improve the traditional press conference, John Dickerson, Slate
14.6 Mr. Hearst Answers High School Girl’s Query, William Randolph Hearst

15. Domestic Policy
15.1 Zero Tolerance Lets a Student’s Future Hang on a Knife’s Edge, Barry Siegel, Los Angeles Times
15.2 New! How to Stop Socialized Health Care: Five arguments Republicans must make, Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal
15.3 New! Obama’s Risky Debt, Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post/Newsweek
15.4 Fireside Chat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt

16. Foreign Policy
16.1 New! Renewing American Leadership, Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs
16.2 New! Following a Different Map to a Similar Destination, Peter Baker, New York Times
16.3 The Case for Missile Defense, Steve Bonta, New American
16.4 Speech Before the National Association of Evangelicals, Ronald Reagan

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.

Matthew J. Streb is assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the department of political science at Northern Illinois University. He specializes and teaches in areas of political parties, elections, polling and public opinion, and Congress, and regularly teaches sections of Introduction to American Government. Streb is the author, editor, or co-editor of seven books, including The New Electoral Politics of Race (2002), Law and Election Politics (2005), and Academic Freedom at the Dawn of a New Century (2006), and has published articles in journals, including Political Research Quarterly, Public Opinion Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Election Law Journal, and Politics and Policy. His most recent research examines the role that political parties play in judicial elections. Streb received his PhD from Indiana University in 2000.