Named by the Boston Phoenix in 1988 one of the top ten political reporters in America, Thomas Byrne Edsall has a special talent for cutting through the camouflage of the political process to reveal power shifts in the U.S. political system. This collection of Mr. Edsall’s newspaper and magazine reporting is grouped into five chapters: “Baltimore and Maryland: Power, Money, Race, and Class—American Politics Writ Small,” “The Conservative Rearmament,” “The Early Years of the Reagan Administration,” “Money and Connections in Washington,” and “Parties in Crisis: The Elusive Majority.”