House and Senate / Edition 4

by Ross K. Baker

Overview

Drawing on interviews with United States senators who previously served in the House of Representatives as well as journalists and staff members, this volume provides a portrait of the two American Houses of Congress.

It describes the important distinctions that separate the House and the Senate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393930603
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/30/2008
Edition description:	Fourth Edition
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ross K. Baker is a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University.  He is also a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Newsday and a frequent contributor to other popular and professional periodicals.

Editorial Reviews

This is an informative and clearly written portrait of America's unique bicameral legislature. Baker, a political scientist and author of Friend and Foe in the U.S. Senate ( LJ 4/1/80), weaves into his text parts of numerous interviews he conducted with legislators, journalists, and lobbyists. He paints a complex picture of an adversarial House of Representatives struggling to satisfy the majority interests of its constituents and a consensus-seeking, compromising Senate focused on the so-called ``national interest.'' He shows how each body is affected by size, length of term, history, constitutional limits, lobbyists, and journalists, and how they can be viewed as a microcosm of the American system of checks and balances. An unusually accessible synthesis of a topic that is of interest to general readers and students alike.-- Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego

Library Journal