"[This book] brings together over 40 selections of enduring intellectual value--classic articles, book excerpts, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions--that have shaped the study of American government and our contemporary understanding of it. [This book] provides the opportunity for readers to encounter many of the greatest thinkers in American government at first hand. The book includes carefully edited selections from the works of the most distinguished observers of American government, past and present, from James Madison and Richard F. Fenno, Jr., to Laurence H. Tribe, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Jane J. Mansbridge, and Aaron Wildavsky"--Back cover.