As the 2008 election season reaches its peak, media pundits will speak gravely of the deep ideological divisions reflected in a political map of red and blue states, but according to Gelman (statistics & political science, Columbia Univ.), much of the analysts' glib assessments is misguided and does little to advance our understanding of why Americans have voted as they have. He crunched U.S. survey and election data as far back as 1952; compared his data where appropriate to similar data from Mexico, Canada, and other countries; and discovered that the economic status of individuals and the economic conditions of each state as a whole lead to two different conclusions: on the one hand, the less wealthy a voter is, the more likely the voter is to cast a ballot for a Democrat; the better-off the voter, the more likely he or she is to vote Republican. Yet states with a higher average income are more likely to support a Democratic presidential candidate. He discovered that wealthy voters in a poor state (e.g., Mississippi, with many poor) consistently support Republicans, while Connecticut, with many wealthy, regularly backs Democrats. Ohio is near the center of income distribution and alternates between the parties. This seeming paradox is lost on the media's talking heads because they focus only on the state-level data, leading them to the simplistic red-blue paradigm, ignoring the importance of individual voters' decisions. Gelman finds that the above relationships hold on a county level as well. After examining other factors such as religiosity and cultural values for clues to explain voting behavior, he offers suggestions about how the Democratic Party can improve its chances in the 2008 election. This is a fascinating, well-written, and thoroughly researched work that deserves a wide audience. Highly recommended for all libraries.—Thomas J. Baldino, Wilkes Univ., PA

Neisser (politics, SUNY, Potsdam) here calls for the practice and celebration of political disagreement. What our constitutional democracy needs, he argues, especially in this presidential election year, is more disagreement, not less. According to Neisser, electoral inertia and democratic dyspepsia can be overcome not by endorsing the beguiling notion of nonpartisanship but rather by embracing an ethic of disagreement, what he calls "disagreement democracy." Disagreement is not simply a state of affairs, Neisser contends, but a process, a crucial activity in a country composed of citizens rather than subjects. In the political science tradition of democratic and communitarian theory, Neisser offers a compelling, provocative, and timely critique of American democracy; he rejects such myths as the melting pot and provides instead a vision in which American democracy, as a way of life entailing much more than merely voting or blogging, reclaims its soul through what he calls "cross-border communication," where we move beyond boundaries of race, class, ethnicity, religion, and political party affiliation. Neisser's work is an illuminating contribution to dialogic democratic theory and belongs especially in university libraries and on scholar's shelves. Highly recommended.—Stephen K. Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Univ., Nampa, ID