Tables and Figures. Preface (John Gastil, Peter Levine). About the Editors. About the Contributors. PART ONE: BACKGROUND. 1. A Nation That (Sometimes) Likes to Talk: A Brief History of Public Deliberation in the United States (John Gastil, William M. Keith). 2. What Can We Learn from the Practice of Deliberative Democracy? (Mark Button, David Michael Ryfe). PART TWO: DELIBERATION AND PUBLIC JUDGMENT. 3. National Issues Forums: A Network of Communities Promoting Public Deliberation (Keith Melville, Taylor L. Willingham, John R. Dedrick). 4. Electoral Deliberation and Public Journalism (Michelle Charles, Harris Sokoloff, Chris Satullo). 5. Deliberative Polling: From Experiment to Community Resource (James Fishkin, Cynthia Farrar). 6. Consensus Conferences and Planning Cells: Lay Citizen Deliberations (Carolyn M. Hendriks). 7. Citizens Juries: Creating a Trustworthy Voice of the People (Ned Crosby, Doug Nethercut). 8. Adapting and Combining Deliberative Designs: Juries, Polls, and Forums (Lyn Carson, Janette Hartz-Karp). PART THREE: DELIBERATIVE GOVERNANCE. 9. Bringing the Public and the Government Together Through On-Line Dialogues (Patricia A. Bonner, Robert Carlitz, Rosemary Gunn, Laurie E. Maak, Charles A. Ratliff). 10. A Town Meeting for the Twenty-First Century (Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Joe Goldman, Steven Brigham). 11. Collaborative Learning and the Public's Stewardship of Its Forests (Antony S. Cheng, Janet D. Fiero). 12. Participation and Public Policies in Brazil (Vera Schattan P. Coelho, Barbara Pozzoni, Mariana Cifuentes Montoya). 13. Deliberative City Planning on the Philadelphia Waterfront (Harris Sokoloff, Harris M. Steinberg, Steven N. Pyser). PART FOUR: COMMUNITIES AND DELIBERATIVE CULTURE. 14. Study Circles: Local Deliberation as the Cornerstone of Deliberative Democracy (Patrick L. Scully, Martha L. McCoy). 15. e-thePeople.org: Large-Scale, Ongoing Deliberation (G. Michael Weiksner). 16. Learning Democracy Centers: Where the Public Works (Carole J. Schwinn, John T. Kesler, David R. Schwinn). 17. Disagreement and Consensus: The Importance of Dynamic Updating in Public Deliberation (Christopher F. Karpowitz, Jane Mansbridge). 18. Growing Governance Deliberatively: Lessons and Inspiration from Hampton, Virginia (William R. Potapchuk, Cindy Carlson, Joan Kennedy). PART FIVE: CONCLUSION. 19. Future Directions for Public Deliberation (Peter Levine, Archon Fung, John Gastil). Recommended Reading. Index.