A Novel Approach to Politics: Introducing Political Science through Books, Movies, and Popular Culture

Van Belle, Douglas A.

ISBN 10: 1452218226 / ISBN 13: 9781452218229

Published by CQ Press, 2012

About this Item

In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title!

Seller Inventory # Q-1452218226

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Novel Approach to Politics: Introducing Political Science through Books, Movies, and Popular Culture
• Publisher: CQ Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1452218226
• ISBN 13: 9781452218229
• Binding: paperback
• Edition: 3rd Edition
• Condition: New
• Weight: 26 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

Textbooks seldom inspire accolades, particularly the dry behemoths often used in survey courses. A Novel Approach to Politics turns the conventional textbook wisdom on its head. This is a textbook your students will want to read! Adopters of previous editions from schools all over the country are thanking Novel Approach for some of their best student evaluations to date.

With this new edition, Van Belle brings the book fully up-to-date with coverage of the Obama administration and other changes in administrations and regimes worldwide; current policy debates about issues like reproductive rights, whether corporations are people, and the important effects of partisanship; international happenings such as the Arab Spring and the Euro crisis, and other assorted intergalactic matters. Van Belle adds discussions of a wealth of new and recent movies and books to the text, as he illustrates key concepts in political science through examples that will captivate students. Employing a wide range of references from 1984 to Game of Thrones to The Avengers, students are given a very solid grounding in institutions, ideology, and economics.

Just so things don′t get way too crazy―the textbook bits and pieces are still there to aid students–chapter summaries, bolded key terms, and discussion questions. Retained for this edition, "The Thinkers in Boxes" feature calls out pivotal political philosophers, theorists, and assorted hipsters.

About the Author

Douglas A. Van Belle is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He is currently examining how science fiction as thought experiment shapes the conceptual space between science and society. Other areas of research include simulations of international politics, rational choice and revolutionary collective action, global media freedom, the social nature of science and SETI, Palaeontology and scientific progress in the Social Sciences, media’s influence on foreign aid bureaucracies, international information flows and the necessary conditions for the adoption of disaster risk reduction policies, the role of science fiction in society, and the use of science fiction to teach politics. His latest novel, A World Adrift, is set in the skies of Venus, 800 years after it was first colonized, and explores the human impact of the politics of extreme resource scarcity.