For several generations of readers, Samuel Lubell served as a vivid chronicler and analyst of the complex and varied currents of the American electoral scene. The first of Lubell's books, The Future of American Politics, was his most famous and went through several revised and updated editions, the last in 1965. When the book first appeared in the spring of 1952, V. O. Key, Jr., immediately hailed it in The Saturday Review, writing that “Mr. Lubell has produced by a wide margin the most perceptive general analysis of American politics of the Roosevelt Revolution and the Fair Deal.” (April 12, 1952, p. 31).

Lubell wrote four more books in this field, each in its own way charting the course of American politics from the Eisenhower years (The Revolt of the Moderates in 1956), through the turbulent Sixties (White and Black: Test of a Nation in 1964, revised in 1966, and The Hidden Crisis in American Politics in 1970), ending with President Nixon's triumphal re-election (The Future While It Happened in 1973).