Mario Cuomo is in many respects one of the most significant liberal politicians in the postwar era: a three-term governor of one the nation's largest states and an eloquent defender of the Democratic Party's progressive legacy during a period of conservative ascendancy. Yet in other respects he never lived up to his supporters' hopes. His gubernatorial record was spotty, and when he had the chance to seek the presidency, he equivocated, Hamlet-like,...

"A [...] political scientist traces the origins of urban-rural political conflict and shows how geography shapes elections in America and beyond. Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on...

"From Democratic Party rising star Jane Kleeb, an urgent and stirring roadmap showing how the Democratic Party can, and should, engage rural America"--

Bella Abzug's promotion of women's and gay rights, universal childcare, green energy, and more provoked fierce opposition from Republicans and a split within her own party. The story of this notorious force in the Democrats' "New Politics" insurgency is a biography for our times. Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, or Hillary Clinton, there was New York's Bella Abzug. With a fiery rhetorical style forged in the 1960s antiwar movement,...

Draws on interviews with major political leaders in an account of Ted Kennedy's 1980 campaign to secure the Democratic presidential nomination instead of incumbent Jimmy Carter that discusses how their rivalry reflected significant party changes.

"Most Americans know Andrew Jackson as a frontier rebel against political and diplomatic norms, a 'populis' champion of ordinary people against the elitist legacy of the Founding Fathers. Many date the onset of American democracy to his 1829 inauguration. Despite his reverence for the 'sovereign people, ' however, Jackson spent much of his career limiting that sovereignty, imposing new and often unpopular legal regimes over American lands and markets....

"Democrats have pulled a big con job on blacks in America. Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years. Where has that support gotten the black community? Democrats have let black incarceration rates rise and marriage rates drop. They've let entire neighborhoods become dependent on welfare, and they've let education and job opportunities dwindle. So why do black voters keep voting for progressive Democratic...

Seventy-five years ago, Henry Wallace, then the sitting Vice President of the United States, mounted a campaign to warn about the persisting "Danger of American Fascism." As fighting in the European and Japanese theaters drew to a close, Wallace warned that the country may win the war and lose the piece; that the fascist threat that the U.S. was battling abroad had a terrifying domestic variant, growing rapidly in power: wealthy corporatists and their...

In the fall of 2014, outspoken author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza found himself hauled into federal court for improperly donating money to an old friend's Senate campaign. D'Souza pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight months in a state-run confinement center. There he lived among hardened criminals--drug dealers, thieves, gangbangers, rapists, and murderers. Now the bestselling author explains how this experience not only changed his life, but...