Even though congress people are adults, they still represent kids! Readers will gain the confidence to talk to all kinds of elected representatives, from local town council members to the President. Helpful tips about letter-writing skills, modern technology, and more give specific ideas to kids who want to be more involved in their communities.

A demagogue is a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This...

America's Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, Britain's Nigel Farage, and Greece's Alexis Tsipras all share a common trait: they claim that elites are part of the problem. But drawing together evidence and theory from across economics, political science, and even finance, Garett Jones says otherwise. In 10% Less Democracy, he makes the case that the richest, most democratic nations would be better off if they gave voters and their elected representatives...

"In the vein of On Tyranny and How Democracies Die, the bestselling author of Republic, Lost argues that our democracy no longer represents us and shows that reform is both necessary and possible"--

"An insider's account of how politicians representing a radical minority of Americans are using "the greatest deliberative body in the world" to hijack our democracy. Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively white, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on...

"Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand. Calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of American's voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the case that noneconomists...