A Novel Approach to Politics ─ Introducing Political Science Through Books, Movies, and Popular Culture

A Novel Approach to Politics turns conventional textbook wisdom on its head by using pop culture references to illustrate key concepts and cover recent political events. This is a textbook you will want to read. Adopters of previous editions from schools all over the country are thanking author Douglas A. Van Belle for some of their best student evaluations to date.

With this Fifth Edition, Douglas A. Van Belle brings the book fully up to date with recent events such as Trump’s executive orders on immigration, the 2016 elections in the US, current policy debates including recent court decisions that may affect gerrymandering, international happenings such as Brexit, and other assorted intergalactic matters. Van Belle adds a wealth of new and recent movies and books to the text, as he illustrates key concepts in political science through examples that captivate you. Employing a wide range of references from 1984 to Game of Thrones to House of Cards, students are given a solid foundation in institutions, ideology, and economics. To keep things grounded, the textbook nuts and bolts are still there to aid students, including chapter objectives, chapter summaries, bolded key terms, and discussion questions.