America’s Congress: Actions in the Public Sphere, James Madison through Newt Gingrich. By David R. Mayhew. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. 257p. $30.00.

Abstract

America's Congress is a deceptively simple work. At its most basic, it is an exploration of the public moves of members of Congress over the course of American history. With a newly built database of 2,304 observations of members' publicly noted moves stretching back to 1789, Mayhew offers an innovative portrait of how and when American legislators have made their mark on the public record, as recorded by eminent historians of the middle to late twentieth century. What makes this a deceptively simple work? Mayhew's aim and effect in writing America's Congress go far beyond his perceptive reading of the fascinating patterns uncovered. Instead, the book is really a call for a new way of studying Congress and legislative politics more generally. It is a commentary, Mayhew says, on political scientists' treatment of Congress, and it is an appeal to legislative scholars to rethink the dominant modes and methods by which they typically approach the task of explaining legislative behavior and outcomes. To understand how America's Congress makes this contribution, a more detailed exploration of Mayhew's mode and methods of inquiry is in order.