Humanities Center Faculty Book Launch: Steering the Senate: The Emergence of Party Organization and Leadership, 1789-2024 by Gerald Gamm and Steven S. Smith

Join us for a lively discussion of Steering the Senate: The Emergence of party Organization and Leadership, 1789-2024 with author Gerald Gamm and moderator Liam Bethlendy, followed by a book sale and signing.

This event is co-sponsored by the Democracy Center.

Steering the Senate: The Invention of Senate Party Leadership

The Senate majority and minority leaders stand at the pinnacle of American national government—as important to Congress as the speaker of the House.  In their new book Steering the Senate, Gerald Gamm and Steven S. Smith provide a sweeping account of the emergence of party organization and leadership in the U.S. Senate. Drawing on the full history of the Senate, from 1789 to 2024, they identify, for the first time ever, the origins of the Senate party caucus, steering committees, and floor leadership.  This book details how the position of floor leader was invented in 1890, as part of a battle to defeat passage of a landmark civil rights bill, then strengthened through the 20th and 21st centuries.  Driving innovation, Gamm and Smith argue, are three forces: party competition, intraparty factionalism, and entrepreneurship.

Steering the Senate: The Emergence of Party Organization and Leadership, 1789-2024 will be available for purchase at this event. Please use one of the following links to purchase in advance:

Cambridge University Press

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

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Gerald Gamm is professor of political science and of history at the University of Rochester.  A native of Sharon, Massachusetts, he earned his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard.  At Rochester, Gamm served 13 years as chair (and one year as co-chair) of the Department of Political Science and six years as chair (or co-chair) of the Faculty Senate.  Gamm is the author or coauthor of Steering the Senate: The Emergence of Party Organization and Leadership, 1789–2024 (Cambridge), Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Harvard), and The Making of New Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and Realignment in Boston, 1920–1940 (Chicago).  Currently he is writing a book on party reform and the origins of abortion politics in the 1970s, and he is researching the rise of partisan polarization, the emergence of social issues in American politics, and the role that party competition has played in advancing the lives, educations, and incomes of ordinary Americans.