Keeping the Republic, 4th Brief Edition

It happens too often—well-regarded authors write an excellent full-length text, only to have it sliced and diced into a brief edition whose narrative bears little resemblance to the original. Thankfully, you have a choice—KTR Brief is carefully condensed by Barbour and Wright, giving your students the continuity and consistency of the full version, just in a more concise package.

Serving as a true aid to teachers, each chapter’s discussion of “who gets what and how” is designed to build students’ analytical abilities. By introducing them to the seminal work in the field and showing them how to employ the themes of power and citizenship, this proven text builds confidence in students who want to take an active part in their communities and government.

In this fourth edition, students will find discussion of the Obama administration’s early successes and setbacks, of how Congress fared under Democratic majorities, of the 2010 midterm election results, and of the lasting and lingering affects of the Great Recession, health care reform passage, two ongoing wars, the BP oil spill, and a fast-changing mass media climate.

Barbour and Wright have carefully crafted each sidebar, box, and profile to develop students’ critical thinking skills:

• vignettes bookend each chapter asking students to think about what people are struggling to get from politics.
• Consider the Source unpacks a method for assessing different types of political information: look for bias, lay out the argument, uncover evidence, and sort out political implications.
• Profiles in Citizenship feature advice about the various ways students can enter public life and make a difference from figures like Sandra Day O’Connor, Bill Richardson, and Bill Maher.

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 about Clued in to Politics, 3rd edition, click here. 

Keeping the Republic, 4th Brief edition 

New annotated section headings reinforce the book's main points. Twice the photos than in the previous edition.

• Chapter 1 features a new What's at Stake? on turnout and political engagement by young voters in the 2008 election. 
• The chapter on the founding includes a new What's at Stake? that looks at citizens' frustration with government and their expression of this  through the Tea Party Movement. 
• The federalism chapter features extended discussion of unfunded mandates, including the controversial 2005 REAL ID Act.
• The new What's at Stake? in the civil liberties chapter examine a state attorney general's effort to prosecute a professor for what he saw as fradulent scientific research. New and updated coverage of health care reform, reproductive rights, and the Obama administration is woven throughout the chapter.
• The civil rights chapter features expanded discussion of African American voter turnout and the election of Obama, along  with updates addressing gender discrimination and sexual orientation.
• In the chapter on Congress, the new What's at Stake? addresses the use of the filibuster in the Senate to stymie Obama's presidential ambitions and also examines Congress's role as a watchdog, looking in particular at the SEC and the financial crisis. There is expanded discussion on increasing political polarization and congressional oversight and regulation concerning the oil industry.
• The presidency chapter features the Obama administration throughout, streamlines information on executive agreements, and looks at Obama's picks for the judiciary. A revised examination of public approval looks at how changes in the economy precipitated Obama's approval rating drop.
• A thoroughly revised bureaucracy chapter addresses the politicization of the bureaucracy and differing views on regulation.
• The courts chapter focuses on the contentious confirmation process and the role of partisanship in stalling monimations and also discusses new Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
• The public opinion chapter has been reorganized, with examination of the sources of division in public opinion and the connection of this division to partisanship and ideology.
• National health care reform leads off the parties and interest groups chapter with updates regarding the Tea Party movement and the Citizens United case.
• The significance of the Citizens United ruling is examined in the new What's at Stake? in the voting and elections chapter. Reorganized discussions on voting and reform and on voter turnout attitudes are also included.
• The growing role of the internet as a news source is explored in the media chapter's new What's at Stake?
• The policy chapter includes new discussion of national health care reform, the Dodd-Frank bank reform bill, and the federal stimulus bill, along with an updated What's at Stake? that examines the BP oil spill within the context of the debate over offshore drilling.

Clued in to Politics, 3rd Edition

This updated edition provides students with around 80 brief selections—36 new to this edition—through which Barbour and Streb train students to use their popular CLUES method to Consider the source, Lay out the argument, Uncover the evidence, Evaluate the conclusion, and Sort out the political implications.

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To view the table of contents for Keeping the Republic, 4th brief edition, click here.

To view the table of contents for Clued in to Politics, 3rd edition, click here. 

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 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 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.