In a series of fascinating essays that explore topics in American politics from the nation's founding to the present day, The Democratic Experiment opens up exciting new avenues for historical research while offering bold claims about the tensions that have animated American public life. Revealing the fierce struggles that have taken place over the role of the federal government and the character of representative democracy, the authors trace the contested and dynamic evolution of the national polity.

The contributors, who represent the leading new voices in the...

"How much does it cost?" We think of this question as one that preoccupies the nation's shoppers, not its statesmen. But, as Pocketbook Politics dramatically shows, the twentieth-century American polity in fact developed in response to that very consumer concern.

In this groundbreaking study, Meg Jacobs demonstrates how pocketbook politics provided the engine for American political conflict throughout the twentieth century. From Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, national politics turned on public anger over the high cost of living.

An authoritative history of the energy crises of the 1970s and the world they wrought

In 1973, the Arab OPEC cartel banned the export of oil to the United States, sending prices and tempers rising across the country. Dark Christmas trees, lowered thermostats, empty gas tanks, and the new fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit all suggested that America was a nation in decline. -Don't be fuelish- became the national motto. Though the embargo would end the following year, it introduced a new kind of insecurity into American life--an insecurity that would only intensify when the...