Books

Edward I. Sidlow and Beth Henschen
American at Odds, 5th Edition
2006
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
ISBN: 0495001767

Known for its provocative and engaging issues approach and topical organization, AMERICA AT ODDS explores the current conflicts that truly define America as a nation while involving students in discussion and debate. The engaging content and pedagogical features throughout AMERICA AT ODDS support two main goals of the text: to make students genuinely passionate about learning the ins and outs of American politics and government, and to encourage them to think about the ways their lives are affected by decisions made in the political arena. In every chapter of the text, the foundations and systems of political history, behavior, institutions, and policy are presented within the framework of issues oriented debate, making AMERICA AT ODDS truly unique as an approach to teaching the Introduction to American Government course.
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Edward I. Sidlow
Challenging the Incumbent: An Underdog’s Undertaking
2003
Washington, DC: CQ Press
ISBN: 1-56802-820-2

Courage, commitment, determination, and ego make first-time candidates run… But what does it take to make them win? This new case study animates the scholarship on congressional elections as it tells an intimate, behind-the-scenes story of the 2000 congressional race in Illinois’ 8th district. Lance Pressl, a 42-year-old challenger takes on long-time incumbent Phil Crane in a political contest that epitomizes the trials and tribulations confronting those who dare to run against incumbents. Combining the most recent scholarship on campaigns and elections with an eye-witness account of the day-to-day dynamics of a race, Sidlow documents Pressl’s efforts as he tries to win the support and commitment of his core constituents and powerful political allies. The challenges he faces are legion: Will major demographic changes in the district bode well for Pressl, a moderate Democrat running in a well-established Republican stronghold? Will Pressl’s well-connected personal contacts bring the dollars so critical to his campaign? Will they attract enough media attention? To whom can he turn for sound strategic advice and support? Balancing key issues in electoral politics with a fascinating David-and-Goliath storyline, this study will give students context in which to understand the dynamics—and the vagaries—of House elections.
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Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark, Editors
Love and Saint Augustine
1996
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
ISBN 0-226-02596-9

Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine's concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt carried her dissertation into exile in France, and years later took the same battered and stained copy to New York. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as she was completing or reworking her most influential studies of political life, Arendt was simultaneously annotating and revising her dissertation on Augustine, amplifying its argument with terms and concepts she was using in her political works of the same period. The disseration became a bridge over which Arendt traveled back and forth between 1929 Heidelberg and 1960s New York, carrying with her Augustine's question about the possibility of social life in an age of rapid political and moral change. In Love and Saint Augustine, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark make this important early work accessible for the first time. Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents as well as the recollections of Arendt's friends and colleagues during her later years.
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George Cox and Raymond A. Rosenfeld
State and Local Government: Public Life in America
2001
Wadsworth Thomson Learning
ISBN: 053455542X

This lively book is intended to show what state and local governments actually do and especially how their role in American public life has grown over the past twenty years. Such chapters as "Capitol City Players: Everyday Politics in the States" make this material, which often appears dull in competing books, interesting and important.
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Laura A. Reese and Raymond A. Rosenfeld
The Civic Culture of Local Economic Development
2001
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
ISBN 0761916903

In this seminal work, the authors argue that there are distinct local factors that shape the environment of economic development decision-making. These factors, taken together, constitute a community’s local civic culture. Using survey and case study data from U.S. and Canadian cities, the authors make the case that different cultures will produce different types of economic development policies, and that local civic culture will effect the whole array of local policies. The focus on economic development policy provides a window on local decision-making and allows for the development of a theory, introduced by the authors, about the role of local civic culture in framing local decisions of <font size="+2"><span
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all types. This ultimately provides a theoretical vehicle for categorizing cities and predicting policy outcomes. The book concludes with an overview of what is known about the economic development process and highlights the questions raised about that knowledge by the analyses used here and the focus on civic cultures. New research questions are posed and new directions raised for continued application of a local civic culture approach toward understanding urban policy processes.
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Raymond A. Rosenfeld
Lectures On Public Policy
2002
Kyiv, Ukraine:  Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration.
ISBN: 966–7048–94–X

Public policy is a new field in Ukraine. A number of years ago
no one heard the words. Raymond Rosenfeld was a pioneer of the
introduction of this discipline in our country. This book is his course
of lectures. It is particularly useful for students of political science.
Public policy grew out of political science and found its own wings,
it now has very sophisticated methodologies, regressions, much
mathematics. But this book is useful because it shows us how the
discipline began. And ultimately, behind very sophisticated
methodologies there is something called the art of judgment. This
is a good guide to this most important of topics.

Dr. Bohdan Krawchenko
Vice Rector
Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration
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