Current Events and Politics

Charting a mother’s journey from grief to gun safety advocacy.

What if gerrymandering were not just a hot button contemporary political issue but actually a deep story of how Texas came to be?

Gerrymandering Texas uses relevant legislation and court cases to tell the political history of the state of Texas. Writing out of decades of experience as an assistant attorney general, senate parliamentarian, expert consultant on redistricting, and law professor, Steve Bickerstaff traces the story of this political practice from 1836 up to the present and prognosticates what lies ahead for the 2020 census and 2021 redistricting.

Since redistricting is the story of boundaries, borders, and representation, Bickerstaff’s book also tells the story of Texas’s evolution over time. The various Texas constitutions are unpacked, and the changing racial makeup of the state comes into sharp relief. Democrat dominance in state governance gives way to the recent Republican dominance. Bickerstaff’s analysis of redistricting, always clear-headed and even-handed, gives new insight...

In Bronx Faces and Voices, sixteen men and women tell their personal, uncensored stories of the New York City borough—before, during, and after the troubled years of arson, crime, abandonment, and...

Although the United States is a nation founded by immigrants, Alberto R. Gonzales and David N. Strange believe that national immigration policy and enforcement over the past thirty years has been inadequate....

As drug violence mounts in border cities and increasing numbers of illegal migrants die from heat exhaustion in the Arizona desert, Robert Lee Maril argues how America’s border fence project may even be making an incendiary situation worse. Avoiding preconceived conclusions, he proposes new public policies that take into consideration human issues, political negotiation, and the need for compromise.

As the residents of McAllen, Texas, sleep soundly, a small number of agents of the U.S. Border Patrol wait in dark shadows on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. Those few, thinly spread watchers are...