Search results for ""Author Bartholomew Sparrow""

The 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory was a watershed event for the fledgling United States. Adding some 829,000 square miles of territory, the Louisiana Purchase set a striking precedent of Presidential power and brought to the surface profound legal and constitutional questions. As the nation continued to expand westward and into the Pacific and Caribbean, critical social, political and constitutional questions arose that greatly tested American resolve and reshaped the nation's founding premises. In this exciting collection, Sanford Levinson and Bartholomew Sparrow bring together noted scholars in American history, constitutional law, and political science to examine role that the Louisiana Purchase played in shaping both the expansionist policies of the nineteenth century and critical interpretations of the Constitution. The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803–1898 provides a fascinating overview of how the U.S. Constitution and the American political system is inextricably tied to the Louisiana Purchase and the territorial expansion of the United States.

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What is the purpose of public talk in a democratic society? Do the American people interact with their government in distinctive ways? Are the nation’s mass media helpful or harmful to the democratic experience? In Politics, Discourse, and American Society, some of the nation’s best young scholars take us beyond conventional perspectives to present original work on how politics is transacted in American society and how public communication affects those transactions. They also lay out directions for future research, thereby putting fresh ideas on the scholarly agenda. The authors ask whether the American president is genuinely powerful, if lawsuits have become a way of changing the nation’s politics, whether public opinion polling is really objective, and whether politics can still be distinguished from pop culture.

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