"The present volume is the outgrowth of the authors' experience over many years in teaching large college classes in American Government at the University of Illinois. This experience has demonstrated the need of a book of documents and readings to supplement the textbook, since the size of the class renders it impracticable, even in the best equipped libraries, to send the students to the books and documents from which the material has been selected. The volume covers the whole field of American government, national, state, and local, and is designed for use in connection with, and supplementary to, any of the standard texts now available in this field"--Unedited summary from book preface.