The early death of a small town councilman reveals deep-rooted conflicts in the seemingly idyllic community of Pagford, which rapidly deteriorates in the face of cultural disputes, generation clashes, and a volatile election.

"It's the dead season in Leavenworth, Washington. The throngs of Oktoberfest crowds have headed home, and the charming Bavarian streets are quiet and calm--momentarily. Villagers use the reprieve to drink in the crisp fall mountain air and prepare for the upcoming winter light festival ... Brewer Sloan Krause and her partner in crime Garrett Strong are using the slowdown to stock up on a new line of their signature craft beers at Nitro ... Only that...

Local government is the hidden leviathan of American politics: it accounts for nearly a tenth of gross domestic product, it collects nearly as much in taxes as the federal government, and its decisions have an enormous impact on Americans' daily lives. Yet political scientists have few explanations for how people vote in local elections, particularly in the smaller cities, towns, and suburbs where most Americans live. Drawing on a wide variety of...

Staten Island is New York City's smallest yet fastest growing borough: a conservative, suburban community of nearly a half a million on the fringe of the nation's most liberal, global city. Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City chronicles how this "forgotten borough" has grappled with its uneasy relationship with the rest of the City of New York since the 1920s. Daniel C. Kramer and Richard M. Flanagan analyze the politics behind events...

Every four years presidential hopefuls and the national media travel the primary election circuit through Iowa and New Hampshire. Once the dust settles in these states, the nation's focus turns to South Carolina, the first primary in the delegate-rich South. Historically Iowa and New Hampshire have dominated the news because they are first, not because of their predictive ability or representativeness. In First in the South, H. Gibbs Knotts and Jordan...

Why did so many traditionally "blue" communities break for Donald Trump in 2016? Will they do so again in 2020? Will they become Republican strongholds? Looking for answers, Muravchik and Shields lived in three such "flipped" blue communities, finding that these voters still like the Democratic Party, but it's not the party many of this book's readers will recognize. In these communities, some of the most beloved and longest-serving Democratic leaders...

The remarkable story of the bloody conflict that erupted in 1841 Rhode Island over allowing non-property owners to vote. The portly Rhode Island aristocrat was hardly the image of the people's champion-but in 1841, Thomas Dorr became just that. At a time when only white male landowners could vote, the idealistic Dorr envisioned a more democratic state. In October of that year, the People's Convention ratified a new constitution that extended...