Bah. I am still annoyed we had to read this terrible book for our course. We are not new to the government or understanding the branches of government. I think if you are a new federal employee you should check out this book. I was probably also not pleased because we had to hear an all day lecture about how Congress works (the House, the Senate), the Judiciary, and then the Executive Branch. My face was just a literal grimace when we finished. You know how hard it was for me to not jump up on the table and scream this isn't the way things work anymore!

"The Dance of Legislation" follows Eric Redman as a new staffer on the Hill trying to pass the National Health Services Bill in the 1970s while working for Senator Warren Magnuson. Redman seems so quaint now about how things work on the Hill when you realize that Mitch McConnell is the devil's own and is doing his best to break the government. Sorry, I had a lot of bile to spill since it became apparently some of my class was conservative leaning (not an issue) but it is when you have to hear people complaining about why can't people on both sides get along. Shut the hell up, kids are in cages, the Amazon is on fire, the President of the United States is a freaking racist. I got no patience anymore.

Ahem.

Back to the book, this was just very long. I got really bored. There's a foreword to the 2001 edition and then another one to the original edition, and then a freaking preface. I fell asleep reading this book several times until I made myself sit up and drink coffee. I hate books that make my brain angry because I really really wanted to DNF this book a bunch. I couldn't of course since this was part of our case study work. Stupid learning.

Redman is not a natural story teller. He jumps around. A lot. You want to yell get to the freaking point several times on. Also reading about how he had to work to get support for this bill started to bore me. I rather have watched Schoolhouse Rock sing to me about how a bill becomes a law on a loop for 24 hours. I say this as someone who loves history, but only when the person writing is can tell that history in such a way that compels me to want to read more. The history major in me went gah a few times. I even went to Wikipeida at one point to read a condense version of events since I just wanted to get to the end already.

There's an epilogue (which I skipped) and even a postscript that I also skipped. ( )