Political Science

Robert’s Rules of Order: The Original Guide to Parliamentary Procedure

This definitive guide to parliamentary procedure is used daily by private, governmental, business and social organizations large and small. A historic reproduction edition, this paperback is easy to have for quick reference.

Oak Hill Cemetery is a unique gem: a premier example of a 19th century garden park cemetery hidden on a hillside in Washington DC’s oldest neighborhood: Georgetown. The hill that Oak Hill now calls home was once called Parrott’s Woods; a tree-covered park popular with Georgetown residents, and a favorite picnic location for the Fourth of July. In 1849, William Wilson Corcoran, a DC banker and philanthropist, purchased the land from a great-nephew of George Washington. Mr. Corcoran’s vision for Oak Hill Cemetery was that it was to be a place for families to bury and commemorate their loved ones while at the same time being in a place of great natural beauty and inspiration for all to enjoy.

Oak Hill was officially established by an act of Congress on March 3, 1849. W.W. Corcoran hired US Navy captain George de la Roche as master engineer to lay out the cemetery and design the Gatehouse. In 1850, Corcoran commissioned James Renwick Jr. to construct a small Gothic Revival Chapel; construction took three years. 

Oak Hill Cemetery is host to many notable historic figures and Washingtonians. Abolitionists, ambassadors, authors, artists, inventors, politicians, scholars, and soldiers rest safely in Oak Hill; and hundreds of stories have yet to be told. Today, Oak Hill is an active cemetery with a mission to serve the community, and preserve our historic grounds, structures, and records. 

New York City, one of the world's premier urban centers, is also home to the world's most famous and storied municipal law enforcement service: the NYPD.

Policing in New York is as old as the city itself, although much has changed since the first Dutch rattle watch patrolled streets in the 1620s. Technological improvements, advancing professional standards, and historical moments like the 1898 consolidation of New York City and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, have each profoundly changed the way New York City police officers do their jobs. Still, as New York City Police emphasizes, certain elements of the job remain true through the decades and centuries. Being a police officer in New York City has always involved a certain amount of danger, sacrifice, and public coordination.

Originally named Shangri-La by Franklin D. Roosevelt, today’s Camp David was a well-guarded secret until its existence was revealed after World War II. A US Naval facility set on a mountaintop, Camp David’s tight security has piqued the curiosity of Americans and foreigners. Prior to the outbreak of war, Roosevelt had access to the nearby presidential yacht as a “getaway” to escape the pressures of life in the White House. After a brief search of nearby locations, a site on Catoctin Mountain in Maryland was chosen as the place for the presidential retreat. It remained Shangri La until President

Eisenhower said the name was “just a little fancy for a Kansas farm boy” and renamed it Camp David after his father and grandson in 1953. It has served as retreat for each succeeding president and, in addition to providing rest and relaxation, has been the setting of several historic meetings.

Robert P. Savitt writes and lectures on a variety of historical subjects. He holds a doctoral degree from Georgetown University, served in the Departments of Defense and State, and was legislative director for a US senator. Savitt has authored three previous Arcadia Publishing titles.

This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before.--Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes

End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy.

In 2008, Geoghegan―then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer―embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in Congress, in a special election called when Rahm Emanuel stepped down to serve as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For ninety days leading up to the election, Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age sixty, knocked on doors, shook hands at train stations, and made fundraising calls. On election night he lost, badly.

But this humbling experience helped him develop a framework for reimagining American government in a way that is truly just, fair, and constitutional. Taking its title from Walt Whitman, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again, combines hilarious tales from his time on the campaign trail with an incisive vision of how we might be able to create an America that fulfills its great promise. In a polarized country, where 100 million citizens don't vote, and those who do are otherwise rarely politically engaged, he makes an impassioned case for the possibility of a truly representative democracy, one built on the ideals of the House of Representatives, the true chamber of the people, and inspired by the poet who gives the book its name.

At once an engaging memoir and a call to arms, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written will inspire and invigorate political veterans and young activists alike.

A startling rise and retreat

In the 1920s, a reborn Ku Klux Klan slithered into South Dakota. Bold at times, the group intimidated citizens in every county. KKK anti-Catholicism sentiment resulted in the murder of Father Arthur Belknap of Lead. Idealized Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore, operated as a white supremacist and KKK leader. In 1925, animosity between the KKK and Fort Meade soldiers came to a clash one night in Sturgis. The clatter of two borrowed .30 caliber Browning cooled machine guns split the air over the heads of a Klan gathering across the valley. Author Arley Fadness follows the Klan’s trail throughout the Rushmore state.

A fascinating history of law and power, Pennsylvania's Coal and Iron Police documents the law enforcement group which ruled these communities from 1865 to 1931.

Pennsylvania's Coal and Iron Police ruled small patch towns and industrial cities for their coal and iron company bosses from 1865 to 1931. Armed with a gun and badge and backed by state legislation, the members of the private police force were granted power in a practically unspecified jurisdiction. Set in Pennsylvania's anthracite and bituminous regions, including Luzerne, Schuylkill, Westmoreland, Beaver, Somerset, and Indiana Counties, at a time when labor disputes were deadly, the officers are the story behind American labor history's high-profile events and attention-grabbing headlines. Paid to protect company property, their duties varied but unfortunately often resulted in strikebreaking, intimidation, and violence.

A history of the division among state leaders surrounding secession, and those who opposed it before the Civil War.

This book tells the story of those state leaders in North Carolina who remained loyal to the Union, because they saw the potential for compromise with Northern states. William Alexander Graham helped broker the Compromise of 1850. John Motley Morehead and Jonathan Worth led the campaign against secession in early 1861.

Most, though, continued to serve their state under the Confederacy—even though Zebulon B. Vance opposed secession, he served in the Confederate army and as governor of the state during the Civil War.

Historian Steve M. Miller introduces the Tar Heel Unionists who bravely fought to steer their state away from the disastrous future they foresaw.

Now Including Donald J. Trump's 2025 Inaugural Address

This is an updated edition of The Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, Volume Two, beginning with the first inaugural address of Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, and concluding with the January 20, 2025 address of Donald J. Trump. Outlining the life of a nation through its most famous speeches, United States presidential vision and policy is seen here through the addresses of the Presidents. Included are the inaugural addresses of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Donald J. Trump.

Lincoln Steffens's Tweed Days in St. Louis, published in McClure's magazine in October 1902, is considered the first work of muckraking journalism, exposing corruption between businessmen, politicians, police officers and other municipal actor, as well as how apathetic citizens allow machine politics to proceed unfettered.

The article also highlights residents who do fight back, including civil rights lawyer Joseph W. Folk and the workers involved in the St. Louis Streetcar Strike of 1900. Tweed Days was so successful that Steffens traveled on to Minneapolis to report The Shame of Minneapolis, which appeared in the same 1903 issue of McClure's as another muckraking classic, Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company.

Steffens would go on to expose machine politics in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. In 1904, McClure's published the series as a book, The Shame of the Cities, which remains stubbornly timely and prescient more than a century later.

Farewell Address of the Presidents of the United States collects eleven addresses delivered by departing presidents, from George Washington in 1786 to Donald J. Trump in 2021. Other addresses include Andrew Jackson, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and more. Discover the iconic moments and recent speeches of departing presidents and their message to the nation.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt changed America with a government on the side of the people that put Americans back to work and inspired confidence that the nation could overcome the Great Depression.  This is the story of their progressive legacy when FDR was Governor during the era of Prohibition and the advent of radio in the Roaring Twenties, a decade that ended with the Great Depression upending life for most Americans. This is the story of how as Governor of New York he tried the programs that became the New Deal that transformed America. It was the place where his warm, easily relatable voice heard on the radio for the first time created a bond of trust with the public that inspired confidence at a time of great fear.Author Michael J. Burgess reveals the often overlooked history of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Albany at the helm of the Empire State.

Proudly printed in America, this definitive 1812 edition of Thomas Jefferson's landmark work continues to inform the rules and procedures of the United States House and Senate today.

As vice president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson presided over the Senate. To improve its procedures, he wrote A Manual of Parliamentary Practice. First published in 1801, Jefferson’s Manual has been the basis for the rules of Congress ever since. In 1812, a second edition of the Manual was published with Jefferson’s input, marking his final word on the book.  Now, for the first time, Jefferson’s Manual of 1812 is printed with all of Jefferson's additions, along with an introduction detailing the history of the text and tracing the discovery of Jefferson’s revisions. This new edition includes Jefferson’s additions that serve as the basis for changes to the “House Rules and Manual,” published by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2025.  Author Brian Alexander presents groundbreaking research using Jefferson’s own writings in this historic Manual of Parliamentary Practice, now in its definitive edition.

A Major Influence in Kentucky Life

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson had a strong but little-known connection with the constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He had personal and politically motivated influence on the 1792 charter and secretly wrote some controversial state resolutions. Author Denis Fleming draws on firsthand accounts from Jefferson, John Breckinridge and the rarely used papers of George Nicholas, the brain behind Kentucky’s first constitution, to uncover a huge influence from these men. He also demonstrates that modern reforms in job creation, education and the structure of government are rooted in parts of the document favored by Jefferson but dramatically interpreted by today’s governors, legislators and judges.

Temperance workers had their work cut out for them in the Upper Peninsula. It was a wild and woolly place where moonshiners, bootleggers and rumrunners thrived.

Al Capone and the Purple Gang came north to keep Canadian whiskey passing through Sault Ste. Marie to Chicago and Detroit. Federal enforcement agent John Fillion double-crossed both his office and the bootleggers. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island survived due to gambling and fine Canadian whiskey brought in by rumrunners, sometimes assisted by the Coast Guard. Author Russell M. Magnaghi dives into the raucous history of Yooper Prohibition.

Schenectady’s General Electric Realty Plot was formed in 1899 when the General Electric (GE) Company purchased 70 acres of land from prestigious Union College.

This move provided unique housing opportunities for its executives and scientists and attracted brilliant minds from around the world to work for GE. The original 178 homes were designed by leading architects from as far away as Boston, New York City, and Chicago. The neighborhood, colloquially known as “The Plot,” would also become home to political and religious leaders, businesspeople, and entertainment elite. Inhabited by luminaries such as Charles Proteus Steinmetz, 1932 Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir, Ernst Alexanderson, and William D. Coolidge, the GE Realty Plot was also home to many important historic firsts, including the first demonstration of radar in the United States and the first reception of a television signal in a house.

Renowned activist and orator Frederick Douglass delivered his “Composite Nation” speech throughout the country from 1869-1875, sharing his ardent vision of a future America that would draw strength from diversity.

Central to the speech is Douglass’s unambiguous support for Chinese immigration and citizenship. Other then-radical ideas examined in “Composite Nation”—universal human rights, religious liberty, and more—continue to resonate with modern activists.

Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) was an abolitionist, social reformer, orator, and writer. One of the most influential Americans of the nineteenth century, Douglass was known for his rhetorical brilliance. Douglass's speeches drew large audiences nationwide, and his first autobiography is considered the most famous narrative by a former slave.

David W. Blight is the author or editor of over a dozen books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies. At Yale University, Blight is Sterling Professor of History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

“The voice of civilization speaks an unmistakable language against the isolation of families, nations and races, and pleads for composite nationality as essential to her triumphs.” —Frederick Douglass

February 22, 1960, bore witness to an event that would forever change the social, political, and economic life of a city, a state, and millions of inhabitants.

The arrest of 34 Virginia Union University students during a sit-in protest at the most upscale department store in Richmond, Virginia, heralded the upending of a long-established way of life and a change of direction from which there would be no turning back. The students would see their actions galvanize a community into effecting wide-ranging reforms in desegregation and play a significant role in ending the nearly 70-year grip on power of one of the nation’s strongest political machines. Bafflingly, their achievement faded into obscurity, and only in recent years has its importance been recognized.

Dr. Kimberly A. Matthews is a professor of leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Matthews earned her doctorate in education at Virginia Commonwealth University (2012) and began teaching with Virginia Commonwealth University’s LEAD living-learning program. She is the author of a history of the Richmond Crusade for Voters. Dr. Raymond Pierre Hylton is professor of history at Virginia Union University. Dr. Hylton earned his doctorate in history at the University College Dublin, Ireland (1986), and first taught at Virginia Union as an adjunct instructor in 1988. He became a full-time faculty member in 1991 and served as dean and department chair. He is the author of a History of Virginia Union University.

“An in-depth look at the 1971 trial of a serial killer who’s been mostly forgotten — except to those who were forever impacted.”-The Seattle Times

In 1969, the body of a young woman was discovered in the woods of Renton, rocking the communities along Puget Sound.Three more brutal murders followed, drawing the attention of multiple police agencies as they tried to piece together the meager clues left behind.The seemingly unrelated cases challenged detectives, who struggled to realize they were all connected to one man: Gary Gene Grant.Before the term “serial killer” was even coined, Grant stalked his prey, destroying lives and families while walking unseen among the masses.Decades later, his crimes have all but been forgotten.

Join author and homicide investigator Cloyd Steiger as he uncovers the story of the murderer who slipped through the cracks of history.

Between 1824 and 1840, Florida’s government functioned out of several log cabins and rented rooms in the newly established territorial capital of Tallahassee. In 1839, the federal government gave $20,000 to construct a permanent capitol building; the bones of the structure were laid by enslaved craftsmen. The first session took place in 1841, and additional funds requested each year ensured the capitol was complete when Florida entered the Union as the 27th state on March 3, 1845. Over the years, four significant capitol expansions reflected the needs of a growing state until a new and modern Capitol Complex, designed by architect Edward Durrell Stone, was completed in 1977. The aging former capitol was slated for demolition until the people of Florida spoke out in a successful campaign to save the historic building and restore it to its 1902 appearance. Highlighting the photographic collection of the State Archives of Florida, Florida’s Historic Capitol Building reveals stories about the state’s political past, the development of a capital city, and the legacy of an iconic Florida building.

Author Robert Redd traces the pivotal moments of the fight for Civil Rights in Florida.  The rights of all people are the rock upon which our American society is grounded. The state of Florida has many important stories in the fight for equality for women, African Americans, the elderly, and the LGBTQ community. Revisit the heroic efforts of Mary McLeod Bethune, the integration of Major League Baseball, the tragic failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, the change in how hurricanes are named, Civil Rights violence in St. Augustine, and more. Florida has often made national headlines in regards to Civil Rights activities. There’s ample progress to celebrate, but the struggle continues. As the third most populous state in the country, actions here have an impact nationwide.

The civil rights movement in South Carolina has an epic and tumultuous history, beginning with the very first statewide meeting of the NAACP in 1939.

With stories of sit-ins, movements and the integration of state universities, this is the first comprehensive history of South Carolina's civil rights struggles. And behind every achievement are the major legal rulings that protected them, interspersed with the familiar names of Thurgood Marshall, Matthew Perry, Ernest A. Finney and Judge Waties Waring. Join former South Carolina NAACP president and activist James L. Felder as he recounts the epic struggle African Americans have faced, from fighting for the right to vote to the desegregation of public spaces and all the efforts in between.

Greenville: The well-kept gem of South Carolina.

Visitors from everywhere have hailed downtown Greenville as one of the best in America.  From its tree-lined Main Street to its bustling riverfront, the city inspired numerous other cities to try and duplicate its success. Using unique public-private partnerships, the revitalization of downtown Greenville was a true collaborative effort that helped to create a walkable and viable downtown. Once considered just a business-only town, Greenville has emerged as a metropolitan destination. In this updated edition, authors John Boyanoski and Mayor Knox White detail the toils and tribulations necessary to create a world-class city.

The stories in FBI Case Files Michigan are good enough to have been ripped straight from the headlines—and many were!  

Across the Mitten and through the Upper Peninsula, the Wolverine State has witnessed some thrilling and historic federal cases. In Detroit, FBI agents took point investigating the kidnapping (and safe return) of a GM executive's son and in a manhunt for an armed killer in the north woods near Escanaba. The Bureau was called in to discover who poisoned patients at the Ann Arbor Veterans Hospital and for a grisly double homicide solved by a persistent and determined fingerprint examiner. Michigan agents spearheaded the first ever investigation and prosecution of an internet threat, and legendary football coach Bo Schembechler inspired an epic international undercover operation targeting the illegal distribution of steroids. Local agents also helped identify the notorious Unabomber and played a hand in the bizarre fall of a Michigan militia movement founder.  

Retired Special Agent Greg Stejskal recalls these stories and others from more than thirty years as a G-man in Michigan.

The Nassau County Police Department was created in 1925 out of an urgent need for a professional law enforcement agency to provide swift, reliable, and trusted protection for its citizens

During those unprecedented times, Greater New York was rapidly encroaching on Nassau County's western border, and the escalating crime rate in this bucolic island setting was due in large part to the Volstead Act, which ushered in the mob-infused Roaring Twenties, with its related violent and turbulent unrest. After the rebellious 1920s and the Great Depression followed a long dark period of global hostilities and impending threats of homeland invasions from foreign enemies in World War II. The founding members of this department, equipped with little other than their dedication, bravery, fortitude, and self sacrifices, established a strong foundation for one of the finest police departments in the country today.

Food has been and continues to be an essential part of any movement for progressive change.

From home cooks and professional chefs to local eateries and bakeries, food has helped activists continue marching for change for generations. Paschal's restaurant in Atlanta provided safety and comfort food for civil rights leaders. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam operated their own farms, dairies and bakeries in the 1960s. The Sandwich Brigade organized efforts to feed the thousands at the March on Washington. Author Fred Opie details the ways southern food nourished the fight for freedom, along with cherished recipes associated with the era.

A vivid narrative of the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote, framed by the demonstration known as The Great Suffrage Parade.

The Great Suffrage Parade was the first civil rights march to use the nation's capital as a backdrop. Despite sixty years of relentless campaigning by suffrage organizations, by 1913 only six states allowed women to vote. Then Alice Paul came to Washington, D.C. She planned a grand spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration - marking the beginning of a more aggressive strategy on the part of the women's suffrage movement. Groups of women protested and picketed outside the White House, and some were thrown into jail. Newspapers across the nation covered their activities. These tactics finally led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Author Rebecca Boggs Roberts narrates the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote.

Massachusetts was at the center of the national struggle for women's rights, and the early activities there, described in this well-researched book, enabled the next generation of women to triumph over tradition.

Massachusetts was at the center of the national struggle for women's rights. Long before the Civil War, Lucy Stone and other Massachusetts abolitionists opposed women's exclusion from political life. They launched the organized movement at the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Worcester. After the war, state activists founded the Boston-based American Woman Suffrage Association and Woman's Journal to lead campaigns across the country. Their activities laid the foundation for the next generation of suffragists to triumph over tradition. Author Barbara Berenson gives these revolutionary reformers the attention they deserve in this compelling and engaging story.

Inman Park documents the rich and interesting history of this diverse suburb of Atlanta.

The story of Inman Park, Atlanta's first planned suburb, is one closely tied with transportation ingenuity, trade, and the progressive determination of its citizens. Situated two miles east of downtown Atlanta, Inman Park was farmland when the Civil War ravaged its rolling hills. In the 1890s, Inman Park bloomed into Atlanta's first residential park, the location of choice for Atlanta's social elite. The growth of Atlanta, however, struck a blow to the development of this utopian suburb. By the mid-20th century, the suburb fell into dilapidation, abandoned by the prominent families of Atlanta. It was not until the 1970s that the neighborhood, like Atlanta itself, was raised from its ashes to become the celebrated example of Victorian restoration that it is today and was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Discover the rambunctious early history of Roanoke, a Wild West town in Virginia’s Blue Ridge.

During the 1880s, the new city of Roanoke attracted a large and diverse workforce and a multitude of merchants and investors. But like the Western cow towns and mining camps of the same period, the city also attracted sex workers, professional gamblers, charlatans, and common thieves. By the early 1900s, Roanoke had become well known for its brothels, saloons, gambling halls, and rampant lawlessness.

Despite a campaign to clean up the city, Roanoke was unable to shake its unsavory image. This was particularly true after Virginia went dry in 1916. With easy access to the moonshine whiskey that had long been produced in the surrounding mountains, bootleg kingpins boldly transported illegal liquor into the city and used violence to protect their operations.

Author Phillip Andrew Gibbs explores Roanoke’s early criminal underworld and how civic leaders and law enforcement struggled to free the city from its wild, wicked, and unrepentant reputation.

Secondary education for African Americans in Washington, DC, marked a defining moment in the history of a people less than a decade removed from chattel slavery and legally prohibited from learning. In 1862, when legislation passed creating a “colored” school system, an educational foundation had been laid; by the decade’s end, thousands of people had received a basic education, and thousands more were in need.

A high school was needed to train grammar school graduates to teach in the rapidly growing system, which ultimately became a catalyst for academic excellence. When the first courses for Preparatory High School for Colored Youth were organized in a church basement in 1870, Black youth embarked on a journey of life-changing academic and personal growth. Many graduates not only became notable in fields ranging from arts to sciences, but even more helped to expand the city’s school system. Armstrong, Dunbar, and Cardozo High Schools emerged from this segregated system, each offering rigorous academic curriculums while shaping students’ civic, social, and physical development. 

Alice K. Thomas, educated in Washington, DC, holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism and a master’s degree and doctorate in sociology. She writes and lectures on topics related to the experiences of African Americans. Her encounters with DC graduates often lead to nostalgic stories of the “good old days.” 

Historic photographs tell the story of the illustrious New London Police Department from 1868 to today.

New London, Connecticut, established its first permanent police force in 1868 when a nightwatch and police station were approved by city council. In the late 1800s and into the early 1900s, the busy port of New London doubled in population, reaching almost 20,000 by 1910 with just 17 patrolmen keeping order. In January 1924, the council approved the hiring of a woman as a police officer. In the early 1960s, a police union was formed by members of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association to provide better working conditions. By the early 1990s, the department had moved into its current building and updated its computer-aided dispatch, added mobile computers in police cars, digitized its maps, and created a new records management system. The current department chief's office overlooks a bus and train depot, a busy deepwater port, and a city that draws thousands of people every summer.

Taking a stand for equality in the Land of Enchantment

Veterans returning to New Mexico after World War II found a home altered by more than just the explosion of the first atomic bomb. Former ranchers were forced to eke out a living in zinc mines, leading to protests of conditions that were memorialized in the movie Salt of the Earth, which both the film industry and the government tried to suppress. As the civil rights movement swept across the country in the 1960s, New Mexico found its own champions in activists like Reies López Tijerina, who denounced the widespread mistreatment and abuse of the helpless. Ray John de Aragón follows the heritage of protest in New Mexico, from folk heroes like Padre Don Antonio José Martínez to more contemporary battles against racism and prejudice.

Enjoy a fun look at behind-the-scenes politics and personalities in the history of Harrisburg and the Keystone State.

Pennsylvania, first home of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, has a tradition of political progress. However, along with the good, the political playground of Pennsylvania has also seen the brazenly bad behavior of its political leaders. For over twenty-five years, political columnist John Baer has had a front-row seat to the foibles and follies of the Keystone State's political system. Baer takes readers through his memories of covering state politics for the last quarter century, from Democratic governor Milton Shapp's short-lived run for president--in which he finished behind no preference in the Florida primary--to highlights of some of the game-changing campaign missteps and maneuvers that moved administrations in and out of the capital. With a delightfully gruff wit, Baer gives readers a behind-the-scenes view of the politics and personalities that have passed through Harrisburg.