Democracy and America's War on Terror. By Robert L. Ivie. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. 276p. $38.75 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In the Name of Terrorism: Presidents on Political Violence in the Post–World War II Era. By Carol K. Winkler. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 260p. $65.00.

Two recent books on the relation between the rhetoric of political discourse and American democratic politics explore the ways that language can shape political outcomes. Political culture has been a woolly subject for political scientists, specifically because explanatory models of political culture tend to oppose the more predominant institutional models of explanation. But both books convincingly make the claim that political culture can and is shaped by the rhetoric of political elites and that this has a deep impact on the ways in which political phenomena are interpreted and understood in a collective sense. Both analyze political discourse and seek to show how it impacts, shapes, and can even predict certain outcomes in political life.