As the Ch’ing government’s Inspector General of the Maritime Customs Service, Robert Hart was the most influential Westerner in China for half a century. These journal entries continue the sequence begun in Entering China’s Service and cover the years when Hart was setting up Customs procedures, establishing a modus operandi with the Ch’ing bureaucracy, and inspecting the treaty ports. They culminate in Hart’s return visit to Europe with the Pin-ch’un Mission and his marriage in Northern Ireland.

Richard Smith, John King Fairbank, and Katherine Bruner interleave the segments of Hart’s journals with lively narratives describing the contemporary Chinese scene and recounting Hart’s responses to the many challenges of establishing a Western-style organization within a Chinese milieu.

Few American politicians have enjoyed greater popularity than Ronald Reagan. Humor, charm, good looks, an intuitive feel for national concerns, and an extraordinary ability to speak persuasively to millions of people were major assets. But his fundamental appeal went deeper: a blend of Catholic and Protestant, small-town boy and famous entertainer, Horatio Alger and P. T. Barnum, traditional moralist and media celebrity, Reagan spoke for old values in current accents.

Robert Dallek presents a sharply drawn, richly detailed portrait of the man and his politics--from his childhood years through the California governorship to the first years of the presidency. It is an essential guide for all observers of the presidential election of 2000, and a starting point for anyone wanting to discover what the Reagan experience really meant.

Few American politicians have enjoyed greater popularity than Ronald Reagan. Humor, charm, good looks, an intuitive feel for national concerns, and an extraordinary ability to speak persuasively to millions of people were major assets. But his fundamental appeal went deeper: a blend of Catholic and Protestant, small-town boy and famous entertainer, Horatio Alger and P. T. Barnum, traditional moralist and media celebrity, Reagan spoke for old values in current accents.

Robert Dallek presents a sharply drawn, richly detailed portrait of the man and his politics--from his childhood years through the California governorship to the first years of the presidency. It is an essential guide for all observers of the presidential election of 2000, and a starting point for anyone wanting to discover what the Reagan experience really meant.

In his first term in office, Franklin Roosevelt helped pull the nation out of the Great Depression with his landmark programs. In November 1936, every state except Maine and Vermont voted enthusiastically for his reelection. But then the political winds shifted. Not only did the Supreme Court block some of his transformational experiments, but he also faced serious opposition within his own party. Conservative Democrats such as Senators Walter George of Georgia and Millard Tydings of Maryland allied themselves with Republicans to vote down New Deal bills.

Susan Dunn tells the dramatic story of FDR’s unprecedented battle to drive his foes out of his party by intervening in Democratic primaries and backing liberal challengers to conservative incumbents. Reporters branded his tactic a “purge”—and the inflammatory label stuck. Roosevelt spent the summer months of 1938 campaigning across the country, defending his progressive policies and lashing out at conservatives. Despite his efforts, the Democrats took a beating in the midterm elections.

The purge stemmed not only from FDR’s commitment to the New Deal but also from his conviction that the nation needed two responsible political parties, one liberal, the other conservative. Although the purge failed, at great political cost to the president, it heralded the realignment of political parties that would take place in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. By the end of the century, the irreconcilable tensions within the Democratic Party had exploded, and the once solidly Democratic South was solid no more. It had taken sixty years to resolve the tangled problems to which FDR devoted one frantic, memorable summer.

William Nelson reinterprets nineteenth-century American history as a struggle between majority rule and minority rights. From this fresh point of view, he traces the roots of American bureaucracy.

Nelson analyzes the majority–minority tension form the Jacksonian revolution of strong party rule and majoritarian decisionmaking through the abolitionist crisis, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of industrialism. He shows that ultimately political and legal pluralism emerged to protect minority and individual rights. The instrument of a professional bureaucracy with neutral political standards was fashioned. Personalities as seemingly disparate as Henry Adams, John W. Burgess, Charles W. Eliot, Christopher Columbus Langdell, and Theodore Roosevelt all contributed in an effort to stop the centralizing impact of democracy.

Nelson’s new way of thinking about the period puts into different perspective the actions of the three branches of federal government, its courts and administrative agencies, and even the states. All shifted toward bureaucratic or neutral standards, reliance on experts, and professionalization. Legal thought changed from an instrumental to a formal reasoning style, civil service tamped down partisan politics, and in Congress, seniority and the committee system check democratic tendencies.

A deeply researched account of how battles over civil rights in the 1960s shaped today’s partisan culture wars.

In the late twentieth century, gay rights, immigration, gun control, and abortion debates all burst onto the political scene, scrambling the parties and polarizing the electorate. Neil A. O’Brian traces the origins of today’s political divide on these issues to the 1960s when Democrats and Republicans split over civil rights. It was this partisan polarization over race, he argues, that subsequently shaped partisan fault lines on other culture war issues that persist to this day.

Using public opinion data dating to the 1930s, O’Brian shows that attitudes about civil rights were already linked with a range of other culture war beliefs decades before the parties split on these issues—and much earlier than previous scholarship realized. Challenging a common understanding of partisan polarization as an elite-led phenomenon, The Roots of Polarization argues politicians and interest groups, jockeying for power in the changing party system, seized on these preexisting connections in the mass public to build the parties’ contemporary coalitions.

Born on a farm near Anahuac, Texas, in 1875 and possessed of only a fourth-grade education, Ross Sterling was one of the most successful Texans of his generation. Driven by a relentless work ethic, he become a wealthy oilman, banker, newspaper publisher, and, from 1931 to 1933, one-term governor of Texas. Sterling was the principal founder of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, which eventually became the largest division of the ExxonMobil Corporation, as well as the owner of the Houston Post.

Eager to "preserve a narrative record of his life and deeds," Ross Sterling hired Ed Kilman, an old friend and editorial page editor of the Houston Post, to write his biography. Though the book was nearly finished before Sterling's death in 1949, it never found a publisher due to Kilman's florid writing style and overly hagiographic portrayal of Sterling.

In this volume, by contrast, editor Don Carleton uses the original oral history dictated by Ross Sterling to Ed Kilman to present the former governor's life story in his own words. Sterling vividly describes his formative years, early business ventures, and active role in developing the Texas oil industry. He also recalls his political career, from his appointment to the Texas Highway Commission to his term as governor, ending with his controversial defeat for reelection by "Ma" Ferguson. Sterling's reminiscences constitute an important primary source not only on the life of a Texan who deserves to be more widely remembered, but also on the history of Houston and the growth of the American oil industry.

Every ten years, the Texas legislature redistricts itself and the state’s congressional districts in an attempt to ensure equality in representation. With a richly textured cultural fabric, Texas often experiences redistricting battles that are heated enough to gain national attention. Collecting a variety of voices, including legislators themselves, in addition to lawyers, community organizers, political historians, and political scientists, Rotten Boroughs, Political Thickets, and Legislative Donnybrooks delivers a multidimensional picture of how redistricting works in Texas today, and how the process evolved.

In addition to editor Gary Keith’s historical narrative, which emphasizes the aftermath of the Warren Court’s redistricting decisions, longtime litigators David Richards and J. D. Pauerstein describe the contentious lines drawn from the 1970s into the 2000s. Former state legislator and congressman Craig Washington provides an insider’s view, while redistricting attorney and grassroots organizer Jose Garza describes the repercussions for Mexican Americans in Texas. Balancing these essays with a quantitative perspective, political scientists Seth McKee and Mark McKenzie analyze the voting data for the 2000 decade to describe the outcomes of redistricting. The result is a timely tour that provides up-to-date context, particularly on the role of the Voting Rights Act in the twenty-first century. From local community engagement to the halls of the Capitol, this is the definitive portrait of redistricting and its repercussions for all Texans.

Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize, Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey
Finalist, George Washington Prize
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015

Generations of students have been taught that the American Revolution was a revolt against royal tyranny. In this revisionist account, Eric Nelson argues that a great many of our “founding fathers” saw themselves as rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. The Royalist Revolution interprets the patriot campaign of the 1770s as an insurrection in favor of royal power—driven by the conviction that the Lords and Commons had usurped the just prerogatives of the monarch.

“The Royalist Revolution is a thought-provoking book, and Nelson is to be commended for reviving discussion of the complex ideology of the American Revolution. He reminds us that there was a spectrum of opinion even among the most ardent patriots and a deep British influence on the political institutions of the new country.”
—Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Wall Street Journal

“A scrupulous archaeology of American revolutionary thought.”
—Thomas Meaney, The Nation

“A powerful double-barrelled challenge to historiographical orthodoxy.”
—Colin Kidd, London Review of Books

“[A] brilliant and provocative analysis of the American Revolution.”
—John Brewer, New York Review of Books

Winner of the Doris Graber Award, American Political Science Association, 2013

Democracy is, by its very nature, often rude. But there are limits to how uncivil we should be. In the 2010 edition of Rude Democracy, Susan Herbst explored the ways we discuss public policy, how we treat each other as we do, and how we can create a more civil national culture. She used the examples of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama to illustrate her case. She also examined how young people come to form their own attitudes about civility and political argument. In a new preface for this 2020 paperback edition, the author connects her book to our current highly contentious politics and what it means for the future of democratic argument.

Drawing on early modern literature and historical documents, this study investigates the various political, discursive, and symbolic measures employed to negotiate and support female sovereignty by both early modern writers and the rulers themselves. The detailed analysis of the women's responses--or inability to respond--to these strictures underscores the relationship between early modern authors and sovereigns and the complex and vexed situation of European women rulers.

Contributors are Tracy Adams, Anne J. Cruz, Éva Deák, Mary C. Ekman, Catherine L. Howey, Elizabeth Ketner, Carole Levin, Sandra Logan, Magdalena S. Sánchez, Mihoko Suzuki, and Barbara F. Weissberger.

In this highly original work, Christopher Kelly paints a remarkable picture of running a superstate. He portrays a complex system of government openly regulated by networks of personal influence and the payment of money. Focusing on the Roman Empire after Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Kelly illuminates a period of increasingly centralized rule through an ever more extensive and intrusive bureaucracy.

The book opens with a view of its times through the eyes of a high-ranking official in sixth-century Constantinople, John Lydus. His On the Magistracies of the Roman State, the only memoir of its kind to come down to us, gives an impassioned and revealing account of his career and the system in which he worked. Kelly draws a wealth of insight from this singular memoir and goes on to trace the operation of power and influence, exposing how these might be successfully deployed or skillfully diverted by those wishing either to avoid government regulation or to subvert it for their own ends. Ruling the Later Roman Empire presents a fascinating procession of officials, emperors, and local power brokers, winners and losers, mapping their experiences, their conflicting loyalties, their successes, and their failures.

This important book elegantly recaptures the experience of both rulers and ruled under a sophisticated and highly successful system of government.

2023 Marysa Navarro Best Book Prize, New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS)

A study of the intersection of rural populations, state formation, and the origins of political conflict in Peru.

On the eve of the twentieth century, Peru seemed like a profitable and yet fairly unexploited country. Both foreign capitalists and local state makers envisioned how remote highland areas were essential to a sustainable national economy. Mobilizing Andean populations lay at the core of this endeavor. In his groundbreaking book, The Rural State, Javier Puente uncovers the surprising and overlooked ways that Peru’s rural communities formed the political nation-state that still exists today.

Puente documents how people living in the Peruvian central sierra in the twentieth century confronted emerging and consolidating powers of state and capital and engaged in an ongoing struggle over increasingly elusive subsistence and autonomies. Over the years, policy, politics, and social turmoil shaped the rural, mountainous regions of Peru until violent unrest, perpetrated by the Shining Path and other revolutionary groups, unveiled the extent, limits, and fractures of a century-long process of rural state formation. Examining the conflicts between one rural community and the many iterations of statehood in the central sierra of Peru, The Rural State offers a fresh perspective on how the Andes became la sierra, how pueblos became comunidades, and how indígenas became campesinos.

Since the fall of communism, Russia has witnessed a dramatic struggle between old and new, continuity and change. Corruption and violence have plagued society. Most people have benefited little from the new capitalist order. But positive changes are evident. Russians can speak and act more freely in a state that no longer intrudes on their privacy. They are able to travel abroad, enjoy unprecedented access to information from around the world, and organize and campaign for improvement in their living conditions.

In this engrossing account Robert Service traces the formation of the new Russia from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present. He paints a fascinating picture of a people in metamorphosis. In wide-ranging discussions on topics from Kremlin politics to rock music and macroeconomics to contemporary poetry, Service takes us inside to witness the changes from both the top down and the bottom up. He examines the reforms of the Yeltsin and Putin administrations in the context of the complex communist legacy, deftly interweaving political history, intellectual thought, and popular consciousness to illuminate the real difficulties Russia has faced on its rocky path to reform.

For the second time in less than a century, the Russians have been engaged in a fundamental reshaping of their society, and the results will prove of vital importance to the global community. Robert Service has provided a valuable and engaging guide to their recent remarkable journey.

In 1945, when the Red Army marched in, eastern Germany was not “occupied” but “liberated.” This, until the recent collapse of the Soviet Bloc, is what passed for history in the German Democratic Republic. Now, making use of newly opened archives in Russia and Germany, Norman Naimark reveals what happened during the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany from 1945 through 1949. His book offers a comprehensive look at Soviet policies in the occupied zone and their practical consequences for Germans and Russians alike—and, ultimately, for postwar Europe.

In rich and lucid detail, Naimark captures the mood and the daily reality of the occupation, the chaos and contradictions of a period marked by rape and repression, the plundering of factories, the exploitation of German science, and the rise of the East German police state. Never have these practices and their place in the overall Soviet strategy, particularly the political development of the zone, received such thorough treatment. Here we have our first clear view of how the Russians regarded the postwar settlement and the German question, how they made policy on issues from reparations to technology transfer to the acquisition of uranium, how they justified their goals, how they met them or failed, and how they changed eastern Germany in the process. The Russians in Germany also takes us deep into the politics of culture as Naimark explores the ways in which Soviet officers used film, theater, and education to foster the Bolshevization of the zone.

Unique in its broad, comparative approach to the Soviet military government in Germany, this book fills in a missing—and ultimately fascinating—chapter in the history of modern Europe.