New York Politics: A Tale of Two States

by Edward V. Schneier, Brian Murtaugh

This book discusses the patterns of cleavage and division in New York—regional, partisan, economic, and political—. It facilitates the New York citizens' understanding of their government, what's right about it, what's wrong, and what the individual citizen can do.

432 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2001

Reviews

[Dr. A. Jacob W. Reinhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at NY Government. Sometimes the preference for progressive positions does come. Through, but on the whole has a lot of factual details.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the second edition of this book back in 2022 while, as I understand it, the authors were beginning work on this updated version. There are a great many changes here; most of which serve to update the book with more modern statistics, stories, and insights.

This is a textbook, first and foremost, but it is one that I think should be mandatory reading in New York politics. Some of what it offers is flatly boring, if you have any sort of preexisting knowledge of this world: how New York’s relationship with the federal government works, for example. Some other things are must read and are stories largely unknown to most New Yorkers: the battles over control of the assembly in the early 2000s, Al Smith and the complete overhaul of the state’s structure of government.

I hope that an eventual fourth edition will do more to talk about the state’s many executive agencies—each of which have their own diverse cultures and stories that demand to be told. For now, this third edition is a good starting place, and a monumental achievement.