The Almanac of American Politics is a reference work published biennially by Columbia Books & Information Services.

[2] It aims to provide a detailed look at the politics of the United States through an approach of profiling individual leaders and areas of the country.

The main editors were originally Michael Barone, now a writer at the Washington Examiner; Grant Ujifusa; and Douglas Matthews.

In 2010, Cook was a co-recipient of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams award to honor “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” For the spring semester of 2013, Cook served as a Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Barone is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

He is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again, and a number of other publications.