The book would serve admirably as a supplemental textbook for a course on US government or elections....[A]ll the chapters provide useful information and starting points for debate and discussion. Summing Up: Highly Recommended. All levels.

Choice Reviews

One of the biggest challenges for teachers of introductory U.S. government courses is the need to combat our students' misunderstandings about American politics. This informative book presents detailed information about some of the most pressing contemporary issues to explode popular myths about issues like youth turnout, media bias and the political divide between blue states and "Jesusland." Baumgartner and Francia do an excellent job making both historical evidence and recent political science research accessible to readers without any background in American government.

Renan Levine, University of Toronto

This book is a marvelous antidote for the misinformation that poisons the American bloodstream about our politics and government. Conventional wisdom is often wrong, whereas this sensible volume gets it right. Read it, and then you may not have to take two aspirin and call your spin doctor in the morning!

Larry J. Sabato, director, University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of The Kenneday Half-Century

Conventional Wisdom and American Elections takes on several common political myths occasionally spread in classrooms by those who should know better and which appear with frustrating regularity in the news media. Baumgartner and Francia condense a mountain of political science research into an engaging and very accessible text. I cannot wait to assign this book to my students.

Nathan Bigelow, Austin College