Political Books/Articles Still Worth Reading

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

bumping this thread because we're obviously going through a politically dynamic era and it'll be good to keep record of good, lasting books to read which document it

Two books I've read in the last year(ish) which I think will be useful in different ways:

Katherine Cramer - The Politics of Resentment (2016)

Outstanding interview series with voters in Wisconsin during 2008 (I think) to 2015 or so. Lays a great intellectual framework down for rural and working class resentment towards elites, urban areas, state capitals, governments, and agencies, etc. This book was great for broadening my understanding of the collapse of the Democratic party in rural areas and how class and geographic consciousness is driving the realignment we're seeing right now. Also has the benefit of taking place in one of the most politically interesting states of the 2010s.

John Sides, Michael Tesler, Lynn Vavreck - Identity Crisis (2019)

Might be of limited interest to politics junkies after 2020 but this is a great analysis which uses survey data to reconstruct and contextualize the demographic shifts leading up to Trump winning the nomination and then the general. A lot of this opinion polling is longitudinal (I forget if it started before or after the 2008 election) and is based on issues and attitudes which align really well with the issues Trump used to differentiate himself from the field. There's also some other analysis on media coverage, the Republican party's inability to coalesce around an alternative, and Democratic primary polling which are rooted either in surveys or in poli-sci theory which make this worthwhile.

e: rereading the older posts here I guess the original intent of this thread was to highlight older books... but I've wanted to start a "what are the political books which will define/best chronicle this era" thread for a while and this thread is close enough