American Democracy Now Fifth Edition

by Brigid Callahan Harrison, Jean Harris, Michelle D. Deardorff

Student performance sets the stage for learning. With American Democracy Now, students will perform better in American Government. Using a groundbreaking adaptive diagnostic tool to help students identify what they know and don’t know, American Democracy Now connects students to an individualized learning environment that builds confidence in content knowledge. Better performance leads to better student engagement and ultimately the kind of classroom where students apply critical thinking.

By individually guiding students through a learning plan and giving instructors assessment tools needed to ensure student understanding of American Government, American Democracy Now replicates a one-on-one learning environment. With relevant interactivities for each of the concrete learning objectives, students are challenged to apply their knowledge of content by critically analyzing American Government.

Learn, Engage, Apply...Perform

Genres: Textbooks

Paperback

First published December 19, 2008

Reviews

[Pearl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this book for my summer government class. It did a great job, explaining the U.S government and the ideologies of our framers.

[Charlee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read this textbook for my university National Government class, and was pretty unimpressed. Coming from someone who has moderate political views, I could tell that much of this book had a shadowed politically democratic bias; I even went further to look into the authors of the book, and low and behold all of them were active democrats. It sucks that political views are very separated now and included in literally everything, but I did not think that would include my school textbook.

Other than that I am still unimpressed. The language used was extremely excessive most of the time; there were way too many unnecessary words or "big words" added into the text. The online quizzes had questions that most of the time either did not pertain to any material in the chapter or was not in the textbook at all. Many chapters had material already covered in other chapters, so there was a lot of repetitiveness.

I did not enjoy reading this book at all, but I gave it 2 stars because I did learn some from it. If the bias and extra unnecessary content was removed then it would serve its purpose well.

[Marty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean... it's a textbook. What do you expect. I had to read most of this for my National Government class. It relatively boring and wayyyy too specific for my needs, but I'll give it credit for one thing: it read as though it was intended for functioning humans. That doesn't sound like much, but the vast majority of textbooks I've read either talk down to readers or read as though the authors got paid by the word. As tediously long as the chapters in this book could get, they were all informative. I feel like if this is a field you have interest in, or a class you're taking for reasons other than "I need one more social science credit before I graduate in a couple months," you'll enjoy it far more than I.

[Sydney Soto · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the class, but some of the chapters in here were really boring.😴 The 3 chapters on policy types had no need to be that long. I could have just been one short chapter. Also, chapters 10 and 11 were uneeded. I don't need 2 chapters of a textbook to tell me about the media and technology.

[Niki · Rating 1 out of 5]

It really didn’t need to be that long….

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Textbook! Woohoo! No comments, it was fine.

[Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the books that deserve a review and a five star rating this would be the one. This book has it all for the Political Science enthusiast! The book merges classical Political Science studies by integrating "recommended additional readings", with internet resources and movies of interest. Another amazing feature is that the book is imbedded with QR codes that allow you to immerse yourself in the entire American Democracy experience. This addition is full update through the 2012 presidential election, and includes modern takes on historical issues of government, along with contemporary philosophy of economical, foreign, and domestic policy. If you want to be an informed citizen than you need to read and experience this book now!

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book in my American Federal Government Class. Easy to read and focused on community/civic involvement. The added ideas, notes and participation suggestions make it simple for students to take a different look at the government.

[Allie Jurcak]

informative