We the People: An Introduction to American Politics Essentials Edition

Politics is relevant and participation matters.

We the People, Eleventh Edition, sets a new standard for showing how government affects students lives and why it matters who participates. The Who Are Americans? theme has been expanded to highlight how Americans from different backgrounds experience politics, and new Who Participates? infographics get students thinking critically about who shapes American politics. The textbook, InQuizitive course, and free coursepack are organized around chapter learning goals to ensure students learn the nuts and bolts of American government.

Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science, Director of the Washington Center for the Study of American Government, and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or coauthor of 20 books including Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public, Politics by Other Means, The Consequences of Consent, and The Captive Public. Before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1992, Ginsberg was Professor of Government at Cornell University. His most recent book is The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. Ginsberg’s published research focuses on political development, presidential politics, participation, and money in politics.

Theodore J. Lowi was John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University. He was elected president of the American Political Science Association in 1990 and was cited as the political scientist who made the most significant contribution to the field during the decade of the 1970s. Among his numerous books are The End of Liberalism and The Pursuit of Justice, on which he collaborated with Robert F. Kennedy.

Caroline J. Tolbert is Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, where she regularly teaches American government and social media and politics. She was named a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for her research on voting and elections. She is coauthor of Accessible Elections: How the States Can Help Americans Vote and Choosing the Future: Technology and Opportunity in Communities, both with Oxford University Press. Accessible Elections examines absentee/mail voting, early voting, and same-day registration. She is coauthor of three other books on technology and politics: Digital Cities, Digital Citizenship, and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Digital Citizenship was ranked one of 20 best-selling titles in the social sciences by the American Library Association. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and other nonprofit and technology partners. She has served on the Council for the American Political Science Association. Her work is driven by an interest in strengthening American democracy and inclusive participation in politics, the economy, and society.

Margaret Weir is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She has written widely on social policy in Europe and the United States. She is the author of Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States and coauthor (with Ira Katznelson) of Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal. Weir has also edited (with Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol) The Politics of Social Policy in the United States.