Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Under the editorial direction of Pulitzer Prize -- winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr., special assistant to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, 25 of America's top scholars and historians have provided detailed interpretive essays on all the major and minor parties that have shaped the U.S. political system. A landmark in the study and understanding of American political history, the set provides information and insight on the origins, growth, defeats, and victories of the major parties and assesses the influence of the minor parties on America's political institutions and political thought. The substantial scholarly essays recreate the realities of the periods they cover: social, economic, and psychological factors that shaped the parties; the cultural context in which they thrived; and the forces that made for dissension or unity within them.