American Democracy

Thomas E. Patterson is the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. For many years he taught at Syracuse University. He is the author of several other books on politics and the media, includingOut of Order,which won the American Political Science Association’s 2002 Doris Graber Award for the best book in the field of political communication, andThe Unseeing Eye,which was named one of the fifty most influential books of the past half century in the field of public opinion by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Gary Halter is a Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University in College Station. He is a native of Amarillo and Wichita Falls, Texas and his PhD is from the University of Maryland. He served as the Mayor of College Station, Texas for six years and as a council member for five years. He has worked as a consultant to many city councils in Texas and in other states on goal setting and policy making. With Harvey Tucker, is a co-author of theTexas Legislative Almanac.