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AmGov
Long Story Short

Fourth Edition
October 2025 | 416 pages | CQ Press
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All the fundamentals. No fluff. Learn more with less!

AmGov: Long Story Short helps students learn the nuts and bolts of American Government. Unlike competitors, this bestseller responds to the need for quick studying and skimming with ten succinct chapters that make it easy to read, revisit, and return to content quickly. Reading aids like bullets, annotations, and arrows walk students through important facts and break up the material in short, engaging bites of information.

Though brief, the Fourth Edition of this core book is still robust and current enough to provide everything that students need to be successful in their American Government course. Whether for the on-the-go student who doesn’t have time to read and digest a lengthy chapter, or for the instructor who wants a book that will stay out of their way and leave room for plenty of supplementary reading and activities, AmGov provides a perfectly simplified foundation.

This text is offered in Sage Vantage, an intuitive learning platform that integrates quality Sage textbook content with assignable multimedia activities and auto-graded assessments to drive student engagement and ensure accountability. Unparalleled in its ease of use and built for dynamic teaching and learning, Vantage offers customizable LMS integration and best-in-class support.

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Acknowledgments
 
Read This First (or Nothing Else Will Make Sense)
 
1: Politics and Citizenship
1.1 Coming to Terms: Politics, Government, and Economics

 
1.2 Political-Economic Systems

 
1.3 POV: When Your Textbook Makes Certain Assumptions About the World That May Be Different from Your Own

 
1.4 American Political Culture

 
1.5 American Political Ideologies

 
1.6 Political Narratives and the Media

 
1.7 Mediated Citizenship

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
2: The United States’ Founding
2.1 Classical Liberalism, the Social Contract, and the Declaration of Independence

 
2.2 The Articles of Confederation

 
2.3 The Constitutional Convention

 
2.4 Ratification

 
2.5 Translating Basic Constitutional Principles Into a New Government

 
2.6 Federalism

 
2.7 The Evolution of Federalism

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
3: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
3.1 The Bill of Rights

 
3.2 Civil Liberties–Understanding the First Amendment

 
3.3 Civil Liberties–Understanding Due Process Rights

 
3.4 Civil Liberties–Understanding the Right to Privacy

 
3.5 Civil Rights–Battling Political Inequality

 
3.6 Civil Rights–The Case of Race

 
3.7 Civil Rights–The Case of Gender

 
3.8 The Persistence of Inequality in America

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
4: The Legislative Branch
4.1 How the Constitution Structures Congress

 
4.2 How Congress Organizes Itself

 
4.3 The Congressional Role in Checks and Balances

 
4.4 Doing the Hard Work of Making Laws

 
4.5 Tensions That Challenge Congress’s Ability to Do Its Job

 
4.6 Congressional Elections

 
4.7 Who Runs and Who Wins?

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
5: The Executive Branch
5.1 The Job of the American President

 
5.2 The Evolution of the American Presidency

 
5.3 Presidents, Popularity, and Congress

 
5.4 What Is Bureaucracy, and Why Do We Need It?

 
5.5 The Purpose and Organization of the White House Bureaucracy

 
5.6 The Purpose and Organization of the Federal Bureaucracy: The Rest of the Executive Branch

 
5.7 Power Plays in the Bureaucracy

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
6: The Judicial Branch
6.1 Kinds of Laws

 
6.2 The American Legal System

 
6.3 Who’s Who and What’s What in a Court of Law?

 
6.4 Equality and the Criminal Justice System

 
6.5 The Constitution, Congress, and the Dual Court System

 
6.6 The Supreme Court

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
7: Parties and Interest Groups
7.1 Parties and Interest Groups Defined

 
7.2 The Role of Parties in a Democracy

 
7.3 Party Organization and Decision Making

 
7.4 The Parties Today

 
7.5 Interest Group Basics

 
7.6 Interest Group Politics

 
7.7 Was Madison Right to Worry?

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
8: Public Opinion, Campaigns, and Elections
8.1 The Quality of Public Opinion

 
8.2 How Do We Know What Americans Think?

 
8.3 How Do We Form Our Opinions?

 
8.4 The Ultimate Poll–Voting in U.S. Elections

 
8.5 Presidential Elections

 
8.6 The General Election and the Electoral College

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
9: Media and Political Communication
9.1 Where We Get Our Information

 
9.2 Media Ownership and Government Regulation

 
9.3 What Do Journalists Do?

 
9.4 How Those in the Media Can Shape Political Narratives

 
9.5 The Stakeholders Strike Back

 
9.6 Imagine: How Citizens Can Reclaim the Narrative

 
Key Terms

 
 
10: Domestic and Foreign Policy
10.1 Making Public Policy

 
10.2 Social Policy

 
10.3 Policy Making for Health Care

 
10.4 Economic Policy

 
10.5 Foreign Policy

 
Big Think

 
Key Terms

 
 
Afterword
 
Glossary

Supplements

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