David Eugene Price, "The Congressional Experience: An Institution Transformed" (Routledge, 2020)

With years of experience as the Representative of the Fourth District in North Carolina, as an educator, a writer, and a political scientist, David Price examines the last 45 years of politics in the United States Congress, in North Carolina, and in his life as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Representative Price currently serves as Chairman of the House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, and he is also the Chair of the House Democracy Partnership, which we discuss during the podcast interview. The Congressional Experience begins with Price’s personal anecdote of the progression of his career as a politician so as to provide a fuller look into the life of a member of Congress. Following the subtitle of the book, “an institution transformed,” Price opens the conversation about how the U.S. Congress has developed over time, through the Cold War, the economic successes of the 1990’s, international terrorism, recession, the Obama and Trump administrations, and through a global pandemic. Price also brings into focus the changes in the ways that Congress functions because of the increased political polarization in the United States.  The Congressional Experience: An Institution Transformed (Routledge, 2020) outlines the complex issues that the U.S. Congress, and the American government in general, regularly faces, in both the domestic and the international sphere. But Price’s approach to explaining these policy processes and complexities is through an intimate picture of how Congress works. Price unpacks the political polarization between executive and legislative government—especially during periods of divided government, and how that has drastically changed citizens’ opinion of the U.S. governmental system from admiration to contempt. In his efforts as a member of Congress, as a representative of the people in North Carolina’s 4th District, and as a political scientist, Price works to alter the perceptions of government in The Congressional Experience. His hope i