U.S. Election Campaigns

Gr 9 Up—Election Campaigns is a chronological examination of approximately 60 documents that illustrate the development of the campaign system from the "anything goes" standard of Abraham Lincoln's time to today's complex, ever reforming political machine. Rules and regulations, interest groups, reformers, and party candidates are revealed in documents such as court decisions, tax laws, doctrines, speeches, and newspaper editorials, one of which, for example, coined the term "Gerry-Mander." A discussion of "soft money" is featured near the end in Justices Stevens and O'Connor's opinion regarding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). Foreign Policy provides documents related to expansionism, disarmament, treaties, manifest destiny, the war on terror, Afghanistan, and more. George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address and President Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize remarks exemplify the range of primary-source content that social studies and English-language-arts teachers will find valuable in meeting the knowledge-building and text-complexity portions of the Common Core standards. Each book opens with a helpful "Reader's Guide to Topics" and closes with a comprehensive index. Many entries in both titles are accompanied by sidebars clarifying terms such as "irredentism," "social Darwinism," and the "Teapot Dome scandal," and captioned black-and-white photos and political cartoons are peppered throughout.—Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY