Southern Nation

This ambitious book shows just how deeply entrenched white subjugation of blacks has been throughout southern political history. Southern Nation will bring new perspectives to younger generations about the seeds of racial inequality that persist in our nation today. --Wendy J. Schiller, coauthor of Electing the Senate: Indirect Democracy before the Seventeenth Amendment Southern Nation is the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis we have of how southern legislators rebuilt their power in Congress between 1880 and 1930 and, in the process, bent the entire country to their will. This revelatory and chilling tale compels us to reckon in new ways with the deep roots of America's political dysfunction. --Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present This book offers a major new interpretation of congressional politics and policymaking from the end of Reconstruction to the New Deal. Readers will be impressed by the sheer encyclopedic scope of the work as well as its profound implications for theories of congressional lawmaking and accounts of American political development. --Frances Lee, University of Maryland Southern Nation makes a major contribution to the history of Congress, casting new light on the development of its rules and its policy outputs. There is nothing quite like this book in scope, sophistication, and theme. --J. Morgan Kousser, author of Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction Southern Nation is a lively and engaging history of the American South's influence on national politics after Reconstruction. It is also an illuminating analysis of how congressional policies and procedures are exploited to advance factional agendas. Bateman, Katznelson, and Lapinski have written a book that will be of great value to historians, political scientists, and engaged citizens. --E. J. Dionne Jr., coauthor of One Nation after Trump