House and Senate - Softcover

Ross K. Baker is a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University.  He is also a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Newsday and a frequent contributor to other popular and professional periodicals.

This is an informative and clearly written portrait of America's unique bicameral legislature. Baker, a political scientist and author of Friend and Foe in the U.S. Senate ( LJ 4/1/80), weaves into his text parts of numerous interviews he conducted with legislators, journalists, and lobbyists. He paints a complex picture of an adversarial House of Representatives struggling to satisfy the majority interests of its constituents and a consensus-seeking, compromising Senate focused on the so-called "national interest." He shows how each body is affected by size, length of term, history, constitutional limits, lobbyists, and journalists, and how they can be viewed as a microcosm of the American system of checks and balances. An unusually accessible synthesis of a topic that is of interest to general readers and students alike.
- Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.