Almanac of American Politics, 2006 Book

American politics has devolved into a grim battle between two approximately equal-size armies in a take-no-prisoners culture war. In 2000, those armies fought to a near-draw—out of more than 100 million ballots cast, the presidency of the United States hinged on a breathtakingly slim 537-vote margin in Florida. Four years later, despite the occurrence of a recession, two wars, and a devastating terrorist attack on American soil, the two adversaries remain fairly evenly divided.

In the wake of an acrimonious election where both political parties together spent roughly $4 billion on the federal elections, politicians, analysts, citizens, and scholars continue to turn to the book that George Will called the "Bible of American politics" to understand the American political landscape. The 2006 Almanac of American Politics remains the gold standard of accessible political information, relied upon by everyone involved, invested, or interested in American politics. As in previous editions, the 2006 Almanac includes profiles of every member of Congress and every governor; in-depth and completely up-to-date narrative profiles of all 50 states and 435 House districts, covering everything from economics to history to, of course, politics; and analyses of the 2004 presidential election, the 2004 congressional elections, and redistricting battles. Specific to this latest edition of the nation's leading political reference work is coverage of all special elections in the 108th Congress and the California gubernatorial recall; maps and district profiles of the newly redrawn Texas congressional districts; a state-by-state analysis of the 2004 presidential election; anational overview of the 2004 presidential election; and a statistical breakdown of the 2004 presidential vote by state and congressional district.

Full of maps, census data, and information on topics ranging from campaign
expenditures to voting records to interest group ratings, this latest edition of the Almanac of American Politics presents everything you need to know about current American politics in snappy prose framed by cogent analysis.

Foreign Affairs

The most important reference text on American politics is back in a new edition, complete with Barone's analysis of the 2004 election. With maps and capsule histories of every state and all 435 House districts, along with biographies, voting-record summaries, and political sketches of every senator and representative, this is the most comprehensive and accurate guide to the labyrinth of U.S. politics ever assembled. The capsule state histories alone make this book indispensable for any student of American life and politics; the 50 different political cultures of the 50 states in the Union play enormous but often unappreciated roles in national debates over foreign as well as domestic policy. Barone's analysis of the 2004 election sees a country tilting Republican. Unlike Ruy Teixeira and John Judis (authors of The Emerging Democratic Majority), Barone believes demographic trends continue to favor the GOP. The decline, moreover, of "old media" and the rise of new, antiestablishment media (the "right blogosphere") helped Bush, Barone maintains, by publicizing charges by Vietnam "swift boat" veterans against John Kerry and by rapidly discrediting a CBS report critical of Bush's service in the National Guard. (The "left blogosphere," meanwhile, helped Bush by pushing the Democrats leftward.) That advantage may not last. American media, says Barone, continue to evolve at a rapid pace, changing the rules of the political game in ways that even seasoned players cannot predict.