Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

US abortion politics is unique for many reasons. Sanger's book dissects not just the law as it has evolved over 40 years but also how people talk and draw imagery and cultural battles to stake out positions. Her focus is on women's silence about their personal experiences with abortion because they fear being labeled or shunned. The failure to discuss thereby produces images of who gets abortions and for what motives, generating stereotypes often effectively used by those opposed to abortion to regulate and ban the practice. The overall thesis is to deconstruct the contemporary way abortion is debated, offering direction and suggestions for a new way to discuss it in the 21st century by removing the stigma silence produces. Sanger covers topics that include fetal imaging, parental consent, men and abortion, and assumptions about women who seek abortions. This is perhaps the best book ever written on the multiple facets surrounding abortion politics, law, and regulation. An excellent addition to collections on reproductive rights, gender politics, women and the law, and American politics.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.

This book covers the legal and psychological factors regarding domestic abuse survivors leaving the abusive relationship. Some chapters are told from the survivor's point of view regarding the family court case and mental health counselling. Other chapters guide mental health practitioners through the legal process and court dynamics, with explanations of how the case proceeds. For family law attorneys, this book offers a glimpse of how important their work can be. It also explains why domestic abuse survivors leaving this family dynamic need to be treated with sensitivity, patience, and understanding. This book is a must-read for those in the mental health field working with domestic abuse survivors engaged in family court matters, and for attorneys practicing in, or wanting to practice in, family law.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.

With rigor and balance, Brownlee (California-Santa Barbara) considers federal taxation from the British colonial system into the current fiscal paralysis and the early part of the 2016 presidential campaign. He focuses on the exploration of tax structure and the forces that produced the structure, explaining how business cycles, discretionary expenditure, entitlements, tax expenditures, and (occasionally) deficits drove tax discussions. His chronological coverage tracks development of tax structures through crisis (wars and economic calamities) and political disputes, with the biggest changes driven by crises. As in two earlier editions, the author views tax history as a pattern of tax regimes, the current "retro-liberal" policy (tax reduction and retreat from progressivity) having been shaped by the inflation of the 1970s, the 2007-2009 Great Recession, and the Reagan administration. The book's only limitation is the paucity of data for tracking impacts of system change on fiscal performance, particularly for the pre-1940 era, for which statistics are less easily available. But Brownlee's interest is historical development, and this omission does not make the book any less outstanding. For historians, economists, lawyers, and others, there is no better source for understanding the development of the federal tax system.Summing Up: Essential

The author presents an exhaustive review of New York's homeless policy over the last 40 years, beginning with the Callahan case, which resulted in a court ruling that all homeless New Yorkers were entitled to shelter, and continuing to the present. Through interviews with actors and analysis of court records, government records, and news accounts, Main presents an incredibly well research history of homeless policy in New York. The author notes that policy has gone through three stages: entitlement (with the city providing shelter to all who were eligible); paternalism (the idea that being homeless was caused by some sort of problem that must be "cured" as a condition of obtaining shelter); and post-paternalism (the "Housing First" approach of providing shelter without conditions). There have been times when policy makers accepted the perversity argument that their policies were enticing people into the shelter system. Many changes in policy came through 25 years of litigation brought by homeless advocates against the city. Main observes that the policy entrepreneurs, using political and legal processes, are responsible for the policy changes that have taken place. The book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the challenges of homeless policy in urban America.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.

Lee offers a provocative new perspective on the relationship between party competition and incentives to amplify partisan difference in the US Congress. The argument is that when partisan control is at stake, parties will close ranks to seize or maintain control of the chamber majority. The claim, based on observations from parliamentary systems, highlights the importance of the minority party and its strategy of forcing the majority to bear the burden of governing. An impressive array of empirical evidence, ranging from a systematic analysis of the institutionalization of partisan communications for messaging to a careful reexamination of news coverage and interviews with congressional insiders, is marshaled to support this contention. Additionally, a case study and an analysis of state legislatures are offered to illustrate the theory and demonstrate its transferability. This important book adds to the overlooked literature on minority parties in the US, bridges the gap between the congressional literature and work on legislatures around the world, and provides an alternate account for the polarization of Congress. Students interested in these topics will have to contend with this impressive piece of scholarship for years to come.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Barr offers a solid introduction to health care policy and delivery in the US. Beginning with a discussion of the politics behind the passage of the ACA, Barr examines how the market economy and American culture have influenced the development of health care, comparing US and Canadian culture to explain the differences between the health care systems. He then reviews virtually all aspects of US health care, giving a historical background and recent developments and ending every chapter with an analysis of the ACA's impact. Barr concludes that the ACA has reduced the number of uninsured and may yet change the structure of health care. However, he also raises the possibility that "we may either run out of the money or lose the political will to maintain our current system of care." He also notes that though the ACA may make access to care "a core principle," as President Obama called it, it is not exactly a right. Given the current debate about the future of the ACA, Barr's work is essential reading for those who wish to understand health care in the US.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Kreiss (North Carolina) wants to explain why parties and campaigns in the United States have adopted technologies in different ways since 2004. He demonstrates that campaigning has become technology-intensive as parties have invested heavily in digital media, technology, data, and analytics. In mixing historical sociology and institutional analysis, Kreiss argues that political campaign communications are the outcome of historical patterns of sociotechnical relations. This book explains why the Democrats currently are more technologically advanced than the Republicans. Kreiss bases his analysis on interviews with 55 political operatives and the mining of his new data set of 629 presidential campaign staffers from 2004 to 2012. The summary chapter, in which he develops his concept of "networked ward politics," is particularly theoretically rich and creative. The methodological appendix provides a thorough description of the methods used without interrupting the narrative of the text. The linking to different literature is impressive and the writing clear, although somewhat repetitive. This book is essential reading for scholars of campaign politics in our digital world. Solid scholarship and a significant contribution.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In a landmark study of political participation, Ragsdale and Rusk uncover several important explanations for nonvoting in US elections. Key variables are internal and external uncertainty employed in multivariate analyses of American National Election Studies surveys. The authors discover that uncertainty is "as pivotal to understanding the American nonvoter as psychological involvement, demographic characteristics, and the social connections of individual citizens and the campaign mobilization of candidates and parties." Also revealed are three types of nonvoters: the politically ignorant (poor candidates for mobilization), the indifferent, and those with personal hardships (all better candidates for mobilization). Though many analysts have noted the rise in nonvoting since a "high water mark" of turnout in 1960, the authors present a more thorough analysis of nonvoting through the lens of uncertainty, which reveals several peaks and valleys in turnout throughout US history. Wars, economic difficulties, and technological advances in communication boosted uncertainty and thus voting, but cable television, offering a range of distracting alternatives, increased nonvoting. An abundance of additional important findings--all derived from careful research--make this an essential volume for all scholars of US politics.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.

LeMay succeeds in authoring a monumental compendium of scholarship and punditry on the American two-party system, including material on the latest presidential election. He delineates six periods of party development, each marked by what he refers to as a "transformative" president. He devotes much attention to the era of hyper-partisanship in which voters and parties are "ideologically consistent." He parts with some newer work by asserting that primary voters put ideology ahead of pragmatism rather than placing a high priority on winning. Then again, he explains the appeal of "outsiders," specifically Trump and Sanders. LeMay sees gerrymandered congressional districts as keeping officeholders "pure" lest they jeopardize their reelection chances. Like Sides and Vavreck in The Gamble (Princeton, 2013), LeMay challenges the role of money in presidential elections: case in point--the Clinton versus Trump matchup. Nonetheless, there is a lengthy section on political action committees, super PACs, and party committees in addition to a chapter on major players in party politics. This work belongs at every reference desk; it is a veritable treasure trove of resources.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.