OER at UTSA

From Florida Atlantic university Department of Political Science comes an exciting new book that explores the role of government, politics, and policy ion American lives. Full of real life applications and scenarios, Lenz and Holmans provide a text intended to encourage and enable political thinking (a reflective stance toward the world that helps a person to critically consider and participate in politics). Numerous hyperlinks send students into real world websites for illumination and exploration.

Designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American Government course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American Government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them.

In covering American government and politics, our text introduces the intricacies of the Constitution, the complexities of federalism, the meanings of civil liberties, and the conflicts over civil rights;explains how people are socialized to politics, acquire and express opinions, and participate in political life; describes interest groups, political parties, and elections—the intermediaries that link people to government and politics; details the branches of government and how they operate; and shows how policies are made and affect people’s lives.

An introduction textbook that covers the purposes, functions, and roles of US politics and government from every level. The text covers the founding of the American government to modern and current movements in ten parts to encompass the information needed for an introductory course.

Existing textbooks on international relations treat history in a cursory fashion and perpetuate a Euro-centric perspective. This textbook pioneers a new approach by historicizing the material traditionally taught in International Relations courses, and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates and issues.
The volume is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the international systems that traditionally existed in Europe, East Asia, pre-Columbian Central and South America, Africa and Polynesia. The second part discusses the ways in which these international systems were brought into contact with each other through the agency of Mongols in Central Asia, Arabs in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, Indic and Sinic societies in South East Asia, and the Europeans through their travels and colonial expansion. The concluding section concerns contemporary issues: the processes of decolonization, neo-colonialism and globalization – and their consequences on contemporary society.

The project's genesis was as an online textbook designed to support state-mandated university instruction in the workings of Texas government and to aid all Texans in becoming more thoughtful and effective participants in their government. The Texas Politics Project's online textbook provided a clear and dynamic presentation of the story of Texas politics building on Web-accessible video, audio, graphical, and textual formats to foster student and citizen interest in Texas politics and to provide instructors and students with a comprehensive set of tools for teaching and learning. With improvements and a new platform, we have improved on the Texas Politics Webtext over time, adding new resources meant to foster student success. Course version is free to instructors with a $55 fee for students through Soomo Learning.