Ragsdale has co-authored two books:
The Elusive Executive: Discovering Statistical Patterns in the Presidency with
Gary King (1988), and
The American Nonvoter with Jerrold G. Rusk (2017). She has also been the sole author of two books. She published
Presidential Politics in 1993, and in 1996 she published
Vital Statistics on the Presidency, which has been published in four editions. The book is a reference text of data regarding the institution of the
President of the United States.
Vital Statistics on the Presidency won the
American Library Association's Choice Award and the
Richard Neustadt Best Reference Book Award from the
American Political Science Association. Ragsdale was the Dean of the Rice University School of Social Sciences from 2006 until 2016. She and William J. Dixon were the editors of
Political Research Quarterly from 1996 to 2000. Ragsdale won the 2019 Betty Moulds Lifetime Achievement Award from the Western Political Science Association. Ragsdale has been cited in
The New York Times,
The Boston Globe,
Bloomberg, and The
Salisbury Post. ==Selected works==