James M. Curry Bücher

To many observers, Congress has become a deeply partisan institution where ideologically-distinct political parties do little more than engage in legislative trench warfare. A zero-sum, winner-take-all approach to congressional politics has replaced the bipartisan comity of past eras. If the parties cannot get everything they want in national policymaking, then they prefer gridlock and stalemate to compromise. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom.In The Limits of Party , James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee challenge this conventional wisdom. By constructing legislative histories of congressional majority parties’ attempts to enact their policy agendas in every congress since the 1980s and by drawing on interviews with Washington insiders, the authors analyze the successes and failures of congressional parties to enact their legislative agendas.​Their conclusions will surprise many congressional Even in our time of intense party polarization, bipartisanship remains the key to legislative success on Capitol Hill. Congressional majority parties today are neither more nor less successful at enacting their partisan agendas. They are not more likely to ram though partisan laws or become mired in stalemate. Rather, the parties continue to build bipartisan coalitions for their legislative priorities and typically compromise on their original visions for legislation in order to achieve legislative success.

"The Man Who Sued the Governor" is the featured introduction to a collection of short stories told by Jim Curry, a 70-year native from the high country in northern New Mexico. Some of his stories are true personal experiences, some are nearly true, and he says the rest ought to be true. It is hard to tell where the truth ends and fiction begins. There is both humor and tragedy, sometimes side by side. There is an immigrant you wish could stay, and one who behaved badly. Prospectors, governors, doctors, lawyers, hustlers, farmers, simple folk and complicated people, all tell their tales in a distinctly multi-cultural setting. He spent a third of his life in New Mexico schools, and at least ten years just wandering. Mr. Curry claims famed New Mexico writers Mary Austin and Tony Hillerman as major influences, but he has a distinctive voice of his own. You will want to hear more of his stories, but be patient: he has two more books nearly done, and is still working away.

The 2009 financial stimulus bill ran to more than 1,100 pages, yet it wasn’t even given to Congress in its final form until thirteen hours before debate was set to begin, and it was passed twenty-eight hours later. How are representatives expected to digest so much information in such a short time. The answer? They aren’t. With Legislating in the Dark, James M. Curry reveals that the availability of information about legislation is a key tool through which Congressional leadership exercises power. Through a deft mix of legislative analysis, interviews, and participant observation, Curry shows how congresspersons—lacking the time and resources to study bills deeply themselves—are forced to rely on information and cues from their leadership. By controlling their rank-and-file’s access to information, Congressional leaders are able to emphasize or bury particular items, exploiting their information advantage to push the legislative agenda in directions that they and their party prefer. Offering an unexpected new way of thinking about party power and influence, Legislating in the Dark will spark substantial debate in political science.