In the past decade, power controlling the nation's taxing and spending policies has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the affluent and exercised for the benefit of the affluent. Traditional liberal beliefs in tax equity and income redistribution have been replaced by theories justifying tax reductions in income concentrated among the very rich. In this book, Thomas Edsall, a Capitol Hill reporter for the Washington Post, examines the new power centers in the Democratic and Republican parties, the corporate lobbying community, and organized labor, and explores the changes in...

The rise of the presidential wing of the Republican party over the past generation has been driven by overlapping issues of race and taxes. The Republicans have capitalized on these two issues, capturing the White House in five of the last six elections.

This powerful examination of the present and future of American politics, by one of America's most distinguished political journalists, reveals how the Republican Party has gained a long-term institutional advantage that allows it to shrug off apparent setbacks like the 2006 elections. Building Red America takes us deeper than any previous book into the operations of the power brokers and issues that galvanize voters.

Named by the Boston Phoenix in 1988 one of the top ten political reporters in America, Thomas Byrne Edsall has a special talent for cutting through the camouflage of the political process to reveal power shifts in the U.S. political system. This collection of Mr. Edsall s newspaper and magazine reporting is grouped into five chapters: Baltimore and Maryland: Power, Money, Race, and Class American Politics Writ Small, The Conservative Rearmament, The Early Years of the Reagan Administration, Money and Connections in Washington, and Parties in Crisis: The Elusive Majority. "