FACT: “Only 2.5 million Hispanics were registered to vote in 1972, with 2.1 million voting; these numbers increased to 9.4 million registered Hispanics in 2004, with 7.6 million voting.”

New Faces, New Voices: The Hispanic Electorate in America
by Marisa A. Abrajano & R. Michael Alvarez

Making up 14.2 percent of the American population, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States. Clearly, securing the Hispanic vote is more important to political parties than ever before. Yet, despite the current size of the Hispanic population, is there a clear Hispanic politics? Who are Hispanic voters? What are their political preferences and attitudes, and why? The first comprehensive study of Hispanic voters in the United States, New Faces, New Voices paints a complex portrait of this diverse and growing population.

Examining race, politics, and comparative political behavior, Marisa Abrajano and R. Michael Alvarez counter the preconceived notion of Hispanic voters as one homogenous group. The authors discuss the concept of Hispanic political identity, taking into account the ethnic, generational, and linguistic distinctions within the Hispanic population. They compare Hispanic registration, turnout, and participation to those of non-Hispanics, consider the socioeconomic factors contributing to Hispanics’ levels of political knowledge, determine what segment of the Hispanic population votes in federal elections, and explore the prospects for political relationships among Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Finally, the authors look at Hispanic opinions on social and economic issues, factoring in whether these attitudes are affected by generational status and ethnicity.

FACT: “When Tipu Sultan attacked Travancore, a British ally, in 1789, it led to war with the East India Company. For two years, Tipu held his own against the British forces until Charles, Lord Cornwallis, laid siege to Tipu’s capital. Hostilities were ended in 1792 by the Treaty of Srirangapattana, in which Tipu surrendered half his territories, paid thirty million rupees, and handed over two of his sons—Abdul Khaliq, age eight, and Muiz-ud-din, age five—as hostages to the British.”

The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power
by Partha Chatterjee

When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of “the black hole of Calcutta” was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the “civilizing” force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India.

FACT: “Although Ronald Reagan was the preferred candidate of the American people in 1980 and 1984, he was also the least popular candidate to win the presidency in the period from 1952 to 1988.”

The Strategic President:
Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership
by George C. Edwards III

How do presidents lead? If presidential power is the power to persuade, why is there a lack of evidence of presidential persuasion? George Edwards, one of the leading scholars of the American presidency, skillfully uses this contradiction as a springboard to examine—and ultimately challenge—the dominant paradigm of presidential leadership. The Strategic President contends that presidents cannot create opportunities for change by persuading others to support their policies. Instead, successful presidents facilitate change by recognizing opportunities and fashioning strategies and tactics to exploit them.

Edwards considers three extraordinary presidents—Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan—and shows that despite their considerable rhetorical skills, the public was unresponsive to their appeals for support. To achieve change, these leaders capitalized on existing public opinion. Edwards then explores the prospects for other presidents to do the same to advance their policies. Turning to Congress, he focuses first on the productive legislative periods of FDR, Lyndon Johnson, and Reagan, and finds that these presidents recognized especially favorable conditions for passing their agendas and effectively exploited these circumstances while they lasted. Edwards looks at presidents governing in less auspicious circumstances, and reveals that whatever successes these presidents enjoyed also resulted from the interplay of conditions and the presidents’ skills at understanding and exploiting them.

FACT: “Pandora Radio’s Tim Westergren studied piano and political science at Stanford, then worked as a nanny, ran an admissions office at Stanford, and started a rock band, touring with it for nearly a decade before deciding to move on to freelance composing. During his composing years, Tim had the idea to create a music database (which he called ‘the music genome project’) that categorized music based on a long list of attributes and that suggested to users new artists and songs that fit their tastes. In 1999, Tim met Jon Kraft, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The two decided to pursue Tim’s idea and formed Pandora (originally called Savage Beast), adding Will Glaser, a talented software engineer, as the third cofounder and CTO.”

The Founder’s Dilemmas:
Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup
by Noam Wasserman

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder’s Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team.

FACT: “Republican candidates won 51.7% of all the votes cast for major-party candidates in the fourteen presidential elections from 1952 through 2004; Democratic Candidates captured 48.3%.”

Unequal Democracy:
The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age
by Larry M. Bartels

“[I recommend] Larry M. Bartels’s Unequal Democracy. Especially at this time every thoughtful American needs to learn as much as possible about the relationship of politics to economics.”
—Bill Clinton, Daily Beast

Using a vast swath of data spanning the past six decades, Unequal Democracy debunks many myths about politics in contemporary America, using the widening gap between the rich and the poor to shed disturbing light on the workings of American democracy. Larry Bartels shows the gap between the rich and poor has increased greatly under Republican administrations and decreased slightly under Democrats, leaving America grossly unequal. This is not simply the result of economic forces, but the product of broad-reaching policy choices in a political system dominated by partisan ideologies and the interests of the wealthy.

Bartels demonstrates that elected officials respond to the views of affluent constituents but ignore the views of poor people. He shows that Republican presidents in particular have consistently produced much less income growth for middle-class and working-poor families than for affluent families, greatly increasing inequality. He provides revealing case studies of key policy shifts contributing to inequality, including the massive Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the erosion of the minimum wage. Finally, he challenges conventional explanations for why many voters seem to vote against their own economic interests, contending that working-class voters have not been lured into the Republican camp by “values issues” like abortion and gay marriage, as commonly believed, but that Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in timing income growth to cater to short-sighted voters.

FACT: “The Red Knot (Calidris canutus) is a High-Arctic breeder, with roosts often numbering in the hundreds. Their traditional stopovers on migration in late spring include the Delaware Bay, where they feed on horseshoe crabs, which have suffered a 90% decline in the last 20 years.”

The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds
by Richard Crossley

This stunningly illustrated book from acclaimed birder and photographer Richard Crossley revolutionizes field guide design by providing the first real-life approach to identification. Whether you are a beginner, expert, or anywhere in between, The Crossley ID Guide will vastly improve your ability to identify birds.

Unlike other guides, which provide isolated individual photographs or illustrations, this is the first book to feature large, lifelike scenes for each species. These scenes—640 in all—are composed from more than 10,000 of the author’s images showing birds in a wide range of views—near and far, from different angles, in various plumages and behaviors, including flight, and in the habitat in which they live. These beautiful compositions show how a bird’s appearance changes with distance, and give equal emphasis to characteristics experts use to identify birds: size, structure and shape, behavior, probability, and color. This is the first book to convey all of these features visually—in a single image—and to reinforce them with accurate, concise text. Each scene provides a wealth of detailed visual information that invites and rewards careful study, but the most important identification features can be grasped instantly by anyone.

FACT: “Several Founding Fathers engaged in extended debates on the place of education and schools in the national polity. Advocates of a strong federal government, such as George Washington, called for the establishment of a national university to help train future leaders, an idea that never gained support. In contrast, fellow Virginian and anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently on behalf of state-financed schools; in his plan, schools would help identify the best and the brightest, allowing some poor but bright boys to enjoy a subsidized education at his alma matter, William and Mary…”

The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American
Political History
Edited by Michael Kazin
Rebecca Edwards & Adam Rothman, associate editors

With 150 accessible articles written by more than 130 leading experts, this essential reference provides authoritative introductions to some of the most important and talked-about topics in American history and politics, from the founding to today. Abridged from the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, this is the only single-volume encyclopedia that provides comprehensive coverage of both the traditional topics of U.S. political history and the broader forces that shape American politics–including economics, religion, social movements, race, class, and gender. Fully indexed and cross-referenced, each entry provides crucial context, expert analysis, informed perspectives, and suggestions for further reading.

FACT: “Nearly a century after the first English settlement at Jamestown, and eighty years after the ‘pilgrims’ landed at Plymouth, there were still only two colleges in the American colonies, Harvard (founded in 1636) in the north, and William and Mary (1693) in the upper south.”

College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be
by Andrew Delbanco, Winner of the 2011 National Humanities Medal

As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past.

In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In arguing for what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America’s democratic promise.

To help kick off the election season, we’re moving our Book Fact Fridays to Election Tuesday facts. Be sure to check in every Tuesday for a new tidbit from our great selection of politically-minded books.

FACT: “In 1907, Congress passed legislation that prohibited corporations and national banks from contributing to candidates in federal elections. This prohibition grew out of the belief that large contributions inherently corrupted politics…”

Governing America: The Revival of Political History
by Julian E. Zelizer

In recent years, the study of American political history has experienced a remarkable renaissance. After decades during which the subject fell out of fashion and disappeared from public view, it has returned to prominence as the study of American history has shifted its focus back to politics broadly defined. In this book, one of the leaders of the resurgence in American political history, Julian Zelizer, assesses its revival and demonstrates how this work not only illuminates the past but also helps us better understand American politics today.

Governing America addresses issues of wide interest, including the rise of the welfare state, the development of modern conservatism, the history of Congress, the struggle over campaign finance, changing views about presidential power, and national security. Throughout, it addresses four big questions: How have interpretations of American political history changed over time? How have taxes and budgets constrained policymakers? How have changes in the political process defined historical eras? And how have policy and politics interacted on decisions like going to war?

FACT: “For much of its history Memphis was the first city of Egypt. Founded shortly before 3000 b.c., it was the Old Kingdom capital of the country from the time of the union of the two lands, serving as royal residence from the early second dynasty (from c. 2890 to 2173 b.c.). In a nodal position some 40 kilometers south of the Delta apex, Memphis lay at a key point on the Nile, the main artery of the country.”

Memphis Under the Ptolemies: Second Edition
by Dorothy J. Thompson

Drawing on archaeological findings and an unusual combination of Greek and Egyptian evidence, Dorothy Thompson examines the economic life and multicultural society of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis in the era between Alexander and Augustus. Now thoroughly revised and updated, this masterful account is essential reading for anyone interested in ancient Egypt or the Hellenistic world.

The relationship of the native population with the Greek-speaking immigrants is illustrated in Thompson’s analysis of the position of Memphite priests within the Ptolemaic state. Egyptians continued to control mummification and the cult of the dead; the undertakers of the Memphite necropolis were barely touched by things Greek. The cult of the living Apis bull also remained primarily Egyptian; yet on death the bull, deified as Osorapis, became Sarapis for the Greeks. Within this god’s sacred enclosure, the Sarapieion, is found a strange amalgam of Greek and Egyptian cultures.

FACT: “Congress’s 1819 Act Respecting Passenger Ships and Vessels (sometimes called the Steerage Act) limited the numbers of migrants traveling on any ship to two persons for every five tons of regular freight—thus creating an equation of commodities and living freight, with the added refinement of a measurable ratio. The act required ship captains to collect basic information about arriving foreigners, thus marking the beginning of U.S. efforts to count immigrants.”

Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective
by Donna R. Gabaccia

Histories investigating U.S. immigration have often portrayed America as a domestic melting pot, merging together those who arrive on its shores. Yet this is not a truly accurate depiction of the nation’s complex connections to immigration. Offering a brand-new global history, Foreign Relations takes a comprehensive look at the links between American immigration and U.S. foreign relations. Donna Gabaccia examines America’s relationship to immigration and its debates through the prism of the nation’s changing foreign policy over the past two centuries, and she highlights how these ever-evolving dynamics have influenced the lives of individuals moving to and from the United States.

FACT: “On the eve of the First World War, Krupp had been by far the largest German company, with assets of 599.5 million marks in 1912, although it was only one-fifth the size of the largest American corporation, the giant U.S. Steel, and half the size of the largest British firm, the thread and textile maker J. & P. Coats. Its owner, Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was listed as being, with assets of 283 million marks, the wealthiest person in Germany.”

Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm
by Harold James

The history of Krupp is the history of modern Germany. No company symbolized the best and worst of that history more than the famous steel and arms maker. In this book, Harold James tells the story of the Krupp family and its industrial empire between the early nineteenth century and the present, and analyzes its transition from a family business to one owned by a nonprofit foundation.

Krupp founded a small steel mill in 1811, which established the basis for one of the largest and most important companies in the world by the end of the century. Famously loyal to its highly paid workers, it rejected an exclusive focus on profit, but the company also played a central role in the armament of Nazi Germany and the firm’s head was convicted as a war criminal at Nuremberg. Yet after the war Krupp managed to rebuild itself and become a symbol of Germany once again—this time open, economically successful, and socially responsible.