Bücher der Reihe The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series

Pundits and social observers have voiced alarm each year as fewer Americans involve themselves in voluntary groups that meet regularly. Thousands of nonprofit groups have been launched in recent times, but most are run by professionals who lobby Congress or deliver social services to clients. What will happen to U.S. democracy if participatory groups and social movements wither, while civic involvement becomes one more occupation rather than every citizen's right and duty? In Diminished Democracy, Theda Skocpol shows that this decline in public involvement has not always been the case in this country-and how, by understanding the causes of this change, we might reverse it.

James Madison presented his most celebrated and studied political ideas in his contributions to The Federalist. As Jack N. Rakove shows in A Politician Thinking, however, those essays do not illustrate the full complexity and vigour of Madison's thinking.

On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with fact. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson explains the rise of a world of "alternative facts" and the slow-motion cultural and political calamity unfolding around us.