Who were the Progressive reformers arguing with? The answer might surprise you. Drawing together a veritable powerhouse of scholars from across the political spectrum, "In Defense of the Founders Republic" examines the historical roots of these critics as well as their potential contribution to current debates about government and role of politics and institutions in our constitutional republic. Profiles and debates across a variety of progressive-era dissenters including politicians, community activists, political scientists, and socialists create a more complete picture of the national conversation, and the development of this monumental American political era. With clear contemporary relevance, ""In Defense of the Founders Republic""is required reading for anyone interested in the complete progressive debate.

Who were the Progressive reformers arguing with? The answer might surprise you. Drawing together a veritable powerhouse of scholars from across the political spectrum, "In Defense of the Founders Republic" examines the historical roots of these critics as well as their potential contribution to current debates about government and role of politics and institutions in our constitutional republic. Profiles and debates across a variety of progressive-era dissenters including politicians, community activists, political scientists, and socialists create a more complete picture of the national conversation, and the development of this monumental American political era. With clear contemporary relevance, ""In Defense of the Founders Republic""is required reading for anyone interested in the complete progressive debate.

Forty-three years after the publication of "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System" in the "American Political Science Review, "John Kenneth White and Jerome M. Mileur place the "responsible parties" argument into historical perspective and assess its import over the last four decades for both the scholarly study of American political parties and the evaluation of American parties as democratic political institutions.

This book is the first systematic look at the "responsible parties" argument originally developed by E. E. Schattschneider and the Committee on Political Parties, a group sanctioned by the American Political Science Association. The contributors are among some of the most ardent fans of political parties, who view the party system, despite its continued decline, as potentially the most effective means of communication between voters and legislators. Yet, while each would like to see the resurgence of parties, most are pessimistic about the capacity of these institutions to assist in the governance of the country. Elections in which the party system fails to frame issues satisfactorily and the rise of an American state without the helping hand of parties to run it have contributed to a political crisis of confidence in government. How that crisis is resolved, and the fate that ultimately awaits the political parties, will shape much of American politics in the next century.

The contributors to "Challenges to Party Government "include some of the leading scholars on American political parties, such as Everett Carll Ladd, A. James Reichley, Wilson Carey McWilliams, Sidney M. Milkis, and John S. Jackson III, as well as the only two members of the House ofRepresentatives who are political scientists, Democrat David E. Price and Republican William M. Thomas. Both Price and Thomas have long records of party service, and each draws upon his scholarly expertise to compare what the literature says about political parties and what his own party experiences have been.

1942: Americans suddenly found themselves at war but were not about to be distracted from the National Pastime. The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees were looking to continue their World Series rivalry from the 1941 season, and a youthful team from St. Louis was determined to stop them.

With only one player older than thirty, the St. Louis Cardinals were the youngest team to win the National League pennant and World Series. Built on good pitching and tremendous speed on the base paths and in the field, the team featured rookie Stan Musial, future Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter, and ace pitcher Mort Cooper, the National League's Most Valuable Player of 1942. With their winningest season ever, posting 106 victories, the 1942 Redbirds have been called the greatest Cardinal team of all time.

Jerome Mileur was just a kid from downstate Illinois, but he well remembers his view of one game from the left-field grandstand--and the thrill of attending the second game of the World Series. In this book, he brings a sure and loving grasp of his subject to reconstructing one of the most remarkable pennant drives in modern baseball history, with the Cards winning forty-three of their last fifty-one games and clinching first place on the last day of the season.

Mileur provides a game-by-game account of the season with play-by-play action, not only capturing all the thrills on the Cards' way to the top but also conveying the physical and mental demands that the players endured. Counted out by nearly everyone but themselves in August, the Redbirds caught fire in the season's final weeks to pass the seemingly unbeatable Dodgers. And by winning four games out of five to defeat the New York Yankees for the championship, they handed Joe DiMaggio his only World Series defeat.

More than a recapitulation of a thrilling season, Mileur's book is a reminder of how major-league baseball in 1942 differed in so many ways from today's game--one startling example is Mileur's account of how the absence of outfield warning tracks contributed to a devastating injury to Brooklyn's star outfielder, Pete Reiser. The tenor of the times is reflected as well in the juxtaposition of the baseball season with the United States' first year in the Second World War.

The 1942 Cardinals were not only a remarkable team unto themselves but also the beginning of a new baseball dynasty--1942's pennant was the first of three in a row for the Cards, as well as the first of three World Series victories in a space of five seasons. This account of that tremendous season is a page-turner for anyone who loves the game and a must-read for Cardinals fans.

The Progressive era has long been viewed as the seedbed of the modern American state, a time when a powerful reformist impulse reshaped the nation's political life in what some have called a "second founding". Driven by a belief in executive-centered government yet devoted to the ideal of participatory democracy, Progressives sought to create self-rule on a grand scale and break the hold of localist parties and courts that had dominated American politics for decades.

In this wide-ranging appraisal of the legacy of Progressivism, a distinguished group of political scientists and historians reconsiders the achievements and failures of the "new democracy". The essays explore the impact of Progressivism on domestic as well as foreign affairs, on the theory as well as the practice of American government and politics. Taken together, the pieces offer an original, interdisciplinary critique of modern American political development, one that challenges traditional interpretations of the pivotal first decades of the twentieth century.

In addition to editors Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur, the contributors are Martha Derthick, John J. Dinan, Eldon J. Eisenach, Philip J. Ethington, Alonzo L. Hamby, Morton Keller, Eileen L. McDonagh, and Wilson Carey McWilliams.

The long era of liberal reform that began with the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century and continued with the New Deal, culminated in the 1960s with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Inspired by the example of his mentor, Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson sought to extend the agenda of the New Deal beyond the realm of economic security to civil rights, housing, education, and health care. In the end, however, his bold ambitions for a Great Society, initiated against the backdrop of an increasingly costly and divisive war, fueled a conservative backlash and undermined faith in liberalism itself. In this volume of original essays, a distinguished group of scholars and activists reassess the mixed legacy of this third major reform period of the last century. They examine not only the policies and programs that were part of LBJ's Great Society, but also the underlying ideological and political shifts that changed the nature of liberalism. Some of the essays focus on Lyndon Johnson himself and the institution of the modern presidency, others on specific reform measures, and still others on the impact of these initiatives in the decades that followed. Perspectives, methodologies, and conclusions differ, yet all of the contributors agree that the Great Society represented an important chapter in the story of the American republic and its ongoing struggle to reconcile the power of the state with the rights of individuals-a struggle that has continued into the twenty-first century.