Political Science Reading Lists for Undergraduates

According to Anderson's theory of imagined communities, the main causes of nationalism are the increasing importance of mass vernacular literacy, the movement to abolish the ideas of rule by divine right and hereditary monarchy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_Communities

The object of this book is to put some of the current theoretical controversies into long term perspective by tracing their historical antecedents. A connected object is to interpret some of the doctrinal divisions in the modern debate by showing that they spring from profound disagreements about what economics is and what questions the economist ought to be trying to answer.

This now-classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is a major and enduring contribution to modern political analysis.

"Mr. Johnson's research on the Chinese Communists' wartime expansion, according to the documentation recorded by Japanese intelligence and his comparison of it with that of the Yugoslav Communists, is a pathbreaking work in comparative history."--John K. Fairbank. Google Books

This widely influential book reexamined the military and economic interests of state and non-state actors, and in an argument made before the end of the Cold War, the authors broadened the prevailing realist worldview of the time and anticipated many of the developments in our modern era of globalization.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on american politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power. New Foreword by Joseph Blotner for this fiftieth anniversary edition.

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.

Part historical evocation, part travelogue, and part personal quest, An Unexpected Light is the account of Elliot's journey through Afghanistan, a country considered off-limits to travelers for twenty years.

Moby Dick is the saga of Captain Ahab and his unrelenting pursuit of Moby Dick, the great white whale who maimed him during their last encounter. A novel blending high-seas romantic adventure, symbolic allegory, and the conflicting ideals of heroic determination and undying hatred, Moby Dick is also revered for its historical accounts of the whaling industry of the 1800's.

Belew gives us the history of a movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in Waco and Ruby Ridge and with the Oklahoma City bombing and is resurgent under President Trump.

The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, published in 1978, is Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński's analysis of the decline and fall of Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia. ... It is said that this book is intended to be allegorical of the government of Poland, especially Edward Gierek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_(book)

Under what conditions will strong party organizations emerge? What influences the character of parties--in particular, their reliance on patronage? In what circumstances will the parties that formerly dominated politics in a nation or city come under attack? Shefter's work exemplifies the "new institutionalism" in political science, arguing that the reliance of parties on patronage is a function not so much of mass political culture as of their relationship with public bureaucracies.

Fromkin describes the events leading to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and the drastic changes that took place in the Middle East as a result, which he claims led to a new world war that's still going on today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Peace_to_End_All_Peace

The waves of protest ignited by the self-immolation of Muhammad Bouazizi in Tunisia in late 2010 highlighted for an international audience the importance of contentious politics in the Middle East and North Africa. John Chalcraft's ground-breaking account of popular protest emphasizes the revolutionary modern history of the entire region.

In the first collection of interviews with the most prominent scholars in comparative politics since World War II, Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder trace key developments in the field during the twentieth century.

In 1983, Jean-Francois Le Pen's National Front candidates made a startling electoral gain in the Dreux region. Its liberal traditions had ended abruptly. With the radical right controlling the municipal council and the deputy mayor's office, Dreux became the forerunner of neofascist advances all across the nation.

Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the puzzle: rural political consciousness and the resentment of the "liberal elite." Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more fundamental: who we are as people and how closely a candidate's social identity matches our own.

A bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.

"Political clientelism" is a term used to characterize the contemporary relationships between political elites and the poor in Latin America in which goods and services are traded for political favors.

Deeply divided between North and South, the Italy of the 1980s represents an unparalleled example of dualistic development, counterposing two profoundly different models of society and politics.

A powerful, clear and inspiring distillation of Chimamanda's observations about contemporary feminism in fifteen suggestions to a friend, the new mother of a baby girl.