A Novel Approach to Politics: Introducing Political Science through Books, Movies, and Popular Culture

Textbooks seldom inspire accolades, particularly the dry behemoths often used in survey courses. A Novel Approach to Politics turns conventional wisdom on its head. This is a textbook your students will want to read! Douglas A. Van Belle delivers all of the core concepts and real-world political examples you expect from an introductory book, gives students a solid grounding in political institutions, ideologies, economics and more―all while referencing examples from 1984 to Game of Thrones to The Avengers.

New material includes coverage of the Obama administration and other changes in administrations and regimes worldwide; current policy debates about things like reproductive rights, whether corporations are people, and the effect of partisanship; international happenings such as the Arab Spring and the Euro crisis; and other assorted intergalactic matters. Throughout, Van Belle adds a wealth of new and recent movies and books to the book, drawing from current pop culture.