Political parties in the United States were once real organizations. They were the vehicle that funneled people into political engagement and served as the forum to iron out policy disagreements and set governing priorities. Those days are as obsolete as the torchlight parades that the early Republican Party held throughout the country to rally support for Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Instead, the parties now exist mostly as mere legal vehicles that allow politicians to move money around and obtain ballot access. In their new book, The Hollow Parties, Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld try to diagnose how this happened and figure out what can be done to make political parties, if not great again, simply meaningful again.