General Works on the Origins and Development of the House

Peabody, Robert L., and Nelson W. Polsby. New Perspectives on the House of Representatives. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963, 1969, 1977; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

• A collection of significant articles published on the House of Representatives that came out in four editions.

Polsby, Nelson W. “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review 62 (March 1968): 144–168.

• Ground-breaking article that demonstrated how different the House was at different periods of time.

Price, H. Douglas. “The Congressional Career: Then and Now.” In Congressional Behavior. Edited by Nelson W. Polsby. New York: Random House, 1971.

• An exploratory essay that tracked how 19th century Representatives differed from their 20th century counterparts.

Price, H. Douglas. “Careers and Committees in the American Congress: The Problem of Structural Change.” In The History of Parliamentary Behavior. Edited by William O. Aydelotte. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

• An attempt to quantify how 19th century Representatives differed from their 20th century counterparts.

Remini, Robert V. The House: The History of the House of Representatives. New York: Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins, 2006.

• A narrative history, organized chronologically, commissioned by the House of Representatives.

Schickler, Eric. Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

• Utilizing a series of case studies of changes in House and Senate operations that relates how various factors affect different kinds of change.

Schickler, Eric, and Frances E. Lee. The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

• A collection of commissioned articles by contemporary scholars on various aspects of the House and Senate, organized topically.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., and Roger Bruns. Congress Investigates: A Documented History, 1792–1974. Five volumes. New York: Chelsea House, 1975.

• A series of case studies of House and Senate investigations commissioned from various historians supplemented by selections from the documentary record.

Sundquist, James L. The Decline and Resurgence of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1981.

• A wide-ranging analysis tracing Congressional loss of influence to the presidency along several lines–followed by how the House and Senate sought to reassert their authority during the 1970s.

U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on House Administration. History of the United States House of Representatives, 1789–1994. House doc. 103–324, 103d Congress, 2d session (1994).

• A revised and enlarged edition of the 1962 House publication written by George B. Galloway, arranged topically.

 Wilson, Woodrow. Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics. Reprint Edition. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1956.

• The ground-breaking analysis of Congress as it is rather than how it ought to be.

Zelizer, Julian E. The American Congress. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

• A collection of commissioned articles by contemporary scholars on various aspects of congressional history, organized chronologically.