The Wit & Humor of Political Science is the serendipitous product of two seniorpolitical science scholars working across the world from one another and who independently collected funny and satirical articles on political science over the years with the intent of someday publishing them for a wider audience.From the editors: This volume collects what in our opinions are the wittiest and funniest pieces about political science and political scientists. We are confident that even a small investment of the reader's time will be sufficient to disprove Baker's slur on our discipline. Like all good humor, much of the work we have chosen for inclusion has a serious point. It helps scholars keep an open and skeptical mind, it picks out our weak points in theory and methods, points out how research may be going wrong, and it pricks the balloon of bombast, pretentiousness, and jargon. And, not only that, it's fun... Its contents make essential reading for all political scientists, even the most senior, but it may be enjoyed by younger scholars, especially those without tenure (or worse yet, without a job), by other social scientists, and even-gasp-by readers unaffiliated with any academic discipline.

The Wit & Humour of Political Science is the serendipitous product of two senior scholars working across the world from one another and who independently collected funny and satirical articles on political science over the years with the intent of someday publishing them for a wider audience. The lead editors- Kenneth Newton (Professor Emeritus, University of Southampton, Visiting Professor, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, and Hertie School of Governance, Berlin) and the late Lee Sigelman (Columbian School of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Political Science, George Washington University) - learned by chance of each other's projects. Newton and Sigelman joined forces with Kenneth Meier (Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University) and Bernard Grofman (Jack W. Peltason (Bren Foundation) Endowed Chair in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine) to publish this collection under the joint imprint of APSA and ECPR. The collection includes previously published essays as well as original pieces never formally published. From the editors: This volume collects what in our opinions are the wittiest and funniest pieces about political science and political scientists. Like all good humour, much of the work we have chosen for inclusion has a serious point. It helps scholars keep an open and skeptical mind, it picks out our weak points in theory and methods, points out how research may be going wrong, and it pricks the balloon of bombast, pretentiousness, and jargon. And, not only that, it's fun...Its contents make essential reading for all political scientists, even the most senior, but it may be enjoyed by younger scholars, especially those without tenure (or worse yet, without a job), by other social scientists, and even-gasp-by readers unaffiliated with any academic discipline.

This second edition of Attack Politics updates Emmett Buell and Lee Sigelman's highly regarded study of negativity in presidential campaigns since 1960 with a substantial new chapter on the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. That campaign, the authors contend, proved to be the least negative in the last half century and reinforces their central argument that these campaigns have actually not grown "dirtier" and more negative since the election of JFK.

In this new edition, Buell and Sigelman address the same questions that guided their research in the original book. Who attacked whom? How frequently? On what issues? In what ways? And at what point in the race? They also update their analysis of whether presidential campaigns have gotten more negative since 1960, whether opposing sides addressed the same issues or avoided subjects "owned" by the other side, and whether trailing candidates wage more negative campaigns than leading candidates.

The authors expand their analysis well beyond their original research base-17,000 campaign statements extracted from nearly 11,000 news items in the New York Times-focusing on both presidential and vice-presidential nominees as sources and targets of attacks and examining the actions of surrogate campaigners. They also compare their findings with previously published accounts of these campaigns-including firsthand accounts by candidates and their confidants. Each chapter features "echoes from the campaign trail" that reflect the invective exchanged by rival campaigns.

Their new chapter shows that, rather than neatly resembling either of their typology's extremes ("runaways" or "dead heats"), the 2008 race began as a "dead heat" in late summer but began to take on all the characteristics of a "somewhat competitive" affair by the end of September. Campaign discourse that began with an anticipated focus on the Iraq War and other national security issues came to be dominated by concerns about the economic meltdown. As the campaign headed toward the home stretch, anxiety about the economy seemed to eclipse national security, health care, immigration, and other concerns. This shift of emphasis, they argue, doomed whatever chance McCain had of winning.

Like the first edition, this update of Attack Politics systematically analyzes negative campaigning, pinning down much that has previously been speculated on but left unsubstantiated. It offers the best overview yet of modern presidential races and remains must reading for anyone interested in the vagaries of those campaigns.

Few academic disciplines have recorded their own origins and development in an organized way. The American Political Science Association, in cooperation with Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society, and the University of Kentucky, have undertaken an extensive oral history project, the aim of which is to trace and record the growth of the discipline. The program has made it possible to amass hours of interviews with women and men who have influenced the study of political science. Political Science in America contains interviews with fifteen major figures who speak frankly about the intellectual and institutional roots of political science and trace its evolution. Through their words, we learn what it was like to be a part of the earliest Ph.D. programs and to work with early leaders. We discover how these leaders became interested in political science, what roles they played in building departments and research organizations, and what they learned from participation in government and politics. They discuss their own contributions and offer opinions on some of the major conflicts that have divided the discipline. Particularly enlightening are their varied perspectives on the growth of the behavioral movement in political science over the past fifty years. This book is of interest to all political scientists as a historical perspective on their discipline.

This book focuses on the impact of residential changes on the attitudes and behavior of African-Americans and whites. Will whites' attitudes about blacks and blacks' attitudes toward whites change if they are living in integrated neighborhoods rather than apart from one another? Are black suburbanites more likely to share the views of their fellow white suburbanites or of their fellow African-Americans in the central city? Will residential integration and new patterns of race in the suburbs break down divisions between blacks and whites in their views of local public services? These are the central questions of this book.

This book focuses on the impact of residential changes on the attitudes and behavior of African-Americans and whites. Will whites' attitudes about blacks and blacks' attitudes toward whites change if they are living in integrated neighborhoods rather than apart from one another? Are black suburbanites more likely to share the views of their fellow white suburbanites or of their fellow African-Americans in the central city? Will residential integration and new patterns of race in the suburbs break down divisions between blacks and whites in their views of local public services? These are the central questions of this book.

Although the opinions of whites on issues of race and inequality have been examined in depth, the perceptions of blacks about these issues have been largely ignored. This book is a path-breaking analysis of black opinions about the sources of their inequality in American society and the appropriate means for redressing this imbalance. Using the results of a variety of national surveys of blacks conducted during the past decade, Sigelman and Welch describe the range of opinion within the black population and account for different views by identifying key influences on opinion formation. They examine correlations among various personal characteristics, such as gender, age, socio-economic status, and educational attainment, and different explanations of inequality, focusing either on conditions within the black community or on exogenous factors, such as discrimination.

A fascinating contribution to the scholarship of both political science and literature, this book explores eight major genres of contemporary popular fiction generally assumed to be essentially devoid of political content--children's novels, Westerns, middle-class fiction, historical novels, small-town Americana, sports novels, American war fiction, and science fiction. By uncovering the often covert mythical themes and cultural symbols hidden in the plot formulas of these works--many of them bestsellers--the essays illustrate the debt of mass-market authors to cultural and political traditions that reach back to the origins of the American Republic.