This book "challenges us to go beyond the headlines, which often focus on what politicians do (or say they'll do), and to concentrate instead on what's really important: what shapes our response. Shenkman argues that, contrary to what we tell ourselves, it's our instincts rather than arguments appealing to reason that usually prevail. Pop culture tells us we can trust our instincts, but science is proving that when it comes to politics our Stone-Age...

He argues that global trends decades and even centuries in the making have reduced a world of logic and fact into one driven by emotions--particularly fear and anxiety. This has ushered in an age of "nervous states," both in our individual bodies and our body politic. Eloquently tracing the history of accounting, statistics, science, and human anatomy from the Enlightenment to the present, Davies shows how we invented expertise in the seventeenth...

"A collection of political profiles and other reportage by Mark Leibovich, the author of This Town"-- "Author of the groundbreaking #1 New York Times bestseller This Town, Mark Leibovich returns with a masterly collection of portraits of Washington's elite, and wannabe elites. Hailed by The Washington Post as a 'master of the political profile, ' Leibovich has spent his career writing memorable, buzz-worthy, and often jaw-dropping features about...

"With Ballots & Bullets reveals disquieting relationships between mass partisanship and violence in the Civil War era. The book provides historical insights on the impact of ordinary people in the loyal states, but it also speaks to the nature of partisan conflict across time. It challenges and affirms historical and political scholarship with evidence from America's most costly and consequential conflict, a cataclysm that still resounds in our politics...