Historical Sociology on the Paradoxes of News Media This book deals with political crises and how to understand them in historical contexts. Through comparisons of two ground-breaking events in American political history, the book deals with how to understand all comparable events through a particular sociological lens. The author presents a method to understand two political crises, Watergate and Iran-Contra, and then shows us how we can use comparative sociology to untangle similar crises in the past and crises to come. As democratic systems have progressed, political crises are presented by the news media.