G. Elliott Morris

A new perspective on policy responsiveness in American government.   Scholars of American politics have long been skeptical of ordinary citizens’ capacity to influence, let alone control, their governments. Drawing on over eight decades of state-level evidence on public opinion, elections, and policymaking, Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw pos...

"How did Americans view Nazi Germany during World War II? How did the Roosevelt administration portray the Third Reich in its propaganda activities? What impact did public opinion have on U.S. policy between 1941 and 1945?" "In Cautious Crusade, author Steven Casey boldly challenges conventional wisdom about America's fight against Hitler. Drawing ...

A leading data visualization expert explores the negative—and positive—influences that charts have on our perception of truth.We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous—and easier to share than ever. While such v...

Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." One need not deny ...

The fascinating three-thousand-year history of the census, revealing why the true boundaries of today's nations aren't lines on a map, but columns in a census tabulationIn April 2020, the United States will embark on what has been called "the largest peacetime mobilization in American history": the decennial population census. It is part of a tradi...

CBS News’ Elections and Surveys Director Anthony Salvanto takes you behind the scenes of polling to show you how to think about who we are and where we’re headed as a nation.As Elections and Surveys Director for CBS News, it’s Anthony Salvanto’s job to understand you—what you think and how you vote. He’s the person behind so many of the poll number...

"America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy"--John Quincy Adams's famous words are often quoted to justify noninterference in other nations' affairs. Yet when he spoke them, Adams was not advocating neutrality or passivity but rather outlining a national policy that balanced democratic idealism with a pragmatic understanding of the y...

Most Americans believe the United States had been an isolationist power until the twentieth century. This is wrong. In a riveting and brilliantly revisionist work of history, Robert Kagan, bestselling author of Of Paradise and Power, shows how Americans have in fact steadily been increasing their global power and influence from the beginning. Drive...

A comprehensive account of the rise and fall of one of the major shapers of American foreign policyOn the eve of his inauguration as President, Woodrow Wilson commented, "It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs." As America was drawn into the Great War in Europe, Wilson used his scholarship, his p...

How a new American identity was forged by immigration and expansion a century ago.In Barbarian Virtues, Matthew Frye Jacobson offers a keenly argued and persuasive history of the close relationship between immigration and America's newly expansionist ambitions at the turn of the twentieth century. Jacobson draws upon political documents, novels, tr...