Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz, and Travis N. Ridout, Political Advertising in the United States. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2016. $29.00. 240 pp.

The authors, co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project, draw from the latest data to analyze how campaign finance laws have affected the sponsorship and content of political advertising, how “big data” has allowed for more sophisticated targeting, and how the Internet and social media have changed the distribution of ads.

James E. Campbell, Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. $29.95. 336 pp.

Campbell, professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, examines how polarization has displaced pluralism and how this has affected American democracy and civil society. The author argues that since the 1960s politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not top down, and that Democrats and Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center.

Mary C. Waters and Marisa Gerstein Pineau, eds. The Integration of Immigrants into American Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2016. 520 pp.

This major report indicates that “Today, the 41 million immigrants in the United States represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S.-born children of immigrants, the second generation, represent another 37.1 million people, or 12 percent of the population. Thus, together the first and second generations account for one out of four members of the U.S. population. Whether they are successfully integrating is therefore a pressing and important question.” The report cites numerous measures of integration (e.g., health status, education, employment, income, etc.) (pdf available at http://www.nap.edu/21746).

Paul E. Gottfried, Fascism: The Career of a Concept. DeKalb, IL: NIU Press, 2016. $45.00. 226 pp.

Gottfried, professor emeritus of humanities at Elizabethtown College, examines the evolution of the concept of fascism since the 1930s. He outlines the specific historical meaning of the term and argues that it should not be used indiscriminately to describe those who hold unpopular opinions.

Akhil Reed Amar, The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era. New York, Basic Books, 2016. $29.99. 464 pp.

In The Constitution Today, Akhil Reed Amar, professor of law and political science at Yale University, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades and provides a passionate handbook for thinking constitutionally about today’s headlines. Amar shows how the Constitution’s text, history, and structure are a crucial repository of collective wisdom, providing specific rules and grand themes relevant to every organ of the American body politic.