It is no exaggeration to say that American politics has become characterized by excessive partisanship and policy gridlock, leading many to question if the political institutions that were created in the eighteenth century are up to the task of governing in the modern era. In his provocative new book, The Senate: From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock, Daniel Wirls argues that the U.S. Senate is at the heart of much of this conflict and dysfunction. He marshals considerable historical evidence to dispel a wide variety of myths about the Senate while also highlighting many of the most serious problems and limitations of the “greatest deliberative body in the world” (3).

Unlike the vast majority of contemporary political science scholarship, Wirls presents a unique approach in discussing the Senate. “Distinct from the volumes of work that analyze various aspects of the Senate from a purely historical or empirical perspective—that is to say, from an explicitly or implicitly value-neutral perspective—this book is a normative evaluation of the Senate” (5). As such, this is less a book about the role that the Senate has played in history and more of a discussion about how the institution and the senators who have been elected to that body have contributed to the current crises we face in this country.

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