We the People: An Introduction to American Politics

Politics is relevant.

The best book for engaging students in American politics is also the most effective for helping students study and learn. We the People emphasizes the ways that government and politics matter and the ways that people can get involved in politics and influence government. In the Eighth Edition, We the People offers a more contemporary approach to engage students in American politics with new features based on how today’s students study and learn. New pedagogical features, such as highly visual “Who Are Americans?” units and Focus Questions that recur throughout the chapter, help students engage with the material and succeed in the course.

Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or coauthor of 25 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; The Worth of War; and The Captive Public. Ginsberg received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1973. Before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1992, Ginsberg was Professor of Government at Cornell. His most recent books are The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters; What the Government Thinks of the People; and Analytics, Policy and Governance.

Theodore J. Lowi has been John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University since 1972. 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.

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.