Heavy Lifting: The Job of the American Legislature

What makes for a good legislature? In Heavy Lifting, Alan Rosenthal traveled to five states, interviewing and shadowing legislators to find out the answer. Through this engaging narrative, the author first establishes the most important aspects of American state legislatures–what they are and how they do their jobs–and then graduates to the book’s central thesis: Rosenthal argues that, on the whole, the American legislature must be evaluated on the basis of its processes, not its products. He breaks down the legislative process into three principal functions: representing, lawmaking, and balancing the executive, and covers each in turn in the remainder of the book.