American Doctrines

If You Can Keep It is at once a thrilling review of America's uniqueness, and a sobering reminder that America's greatness cannot continue unless we truly understand what our founding fathers meant for us to be. The book includes a stirring call-to-action for every American to understand the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is America. It also paints a vivid picture of the tremendous fragility of that experiment and explains why that fragility has been dangerously forgotten.

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.

In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of 20th-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases - the "American dream" and "America First" - that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality.

The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the 15 years before 1776.

The year 2020 was a tumultuous time in American politics. It brought a global pandemic, protests for racial justice, and a razor-thin presidential election outcome. It culminated in an attack on the US Capitol that attempted to deny Joe Biden's victory. The Bitter End explores the long-term trends and short-term shocks that shaped this dramatic year and what these changes could mean for the future. Ultimately, instead of the country coming together to face national challenges—the pandemic, George Floyd's murder, and the Capitol riot—the challenges only reinforced divisions.

As a biomedical sciences student, Isabel Brown never anticipated finding herself immersed in a world of leftism, silenced by the thought police, and afraid to speak up for conservative values, but this is the reality that defined her college experience. Isabel's story is a compelling memoir about the current state of affairs on America's college campuses - unveiling the truth that university administrators don't want you to hear - and a reminder of the need for true ideological diversity.

The American who shows a distaste for civic responsibility and whose great aim in life is comfort and ease is a greater threat to America than any terrorist. The American who mindlessly chants, “USA! USA! USA!” when a politician wraps themselves in the flag permits the highest of crimes. The American who votes for the politicians who steal, lie, and cheat should share a cell with the criminals they ignorantly empower.

In this ground-breaking analysis, author James Kurth (a Harvard student of Samuel Huntington) explains that the roots of America's current foreign policy crisis lie in contradictions of an American empire which attempted to transform traditional American national interests promoted by Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and FDR into a new American-led global order that has unsuccessfully attempted to promote supposedly universal, rather than uniquely American, ideals.

What if the American experiment is twofold, encompassing both democracy and tyranny? That is the question at the core of this book, which traces some of ways that Americans across the nineteenth century understood the perversions tyranny introduced into both their polity and society.

Six months ago, I had never heard the name Eugene Debs. Today, I believe he is one of the greatest orators in history, ranking alongside Napoleon, Robespierre, Lincoln, and Cicero. More importantly, he was a genuine hero, a man to believe in and follow into the fires of hell. His legacy has been unrightly ignored by the same powers that imprisoned and harassed him over his life. He should be an icon, but is unremembered, for reasons he himself goes into.

America is broken. America is divided. 80% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. And everything you need to know about the Divided States of America can be explained by two relentless forces: hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism. American Restraint explores how both hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism are what is fundamentally ripping our country apart. Traditional solutions and status quo politicians can’t help us.

Since Thomas Jefferson first recorded those self-evident truths in the Declaration of Independence, America has been a nation that has unfolded as much on the page and the podium as on battlefields or in statehouses. Here Stephen Prothero reveals which texts continue to generate controversy and drive debate. He then puts these voices into conversation, tracing how prominent leaders and thinkers of one generation have commented upon the core texts of another, and invites listeners to join in.

In this audacious recasting of the American Revolution, distinguished historian Gary Nash offers a profound new way of thinking about the struggle to create this country, introducing listeners to a coalition of patriots from all classes and races of American society. From millennialist preachers to enslaved Africans and disgruntled women to aggrieved Indians, the people so vividly portrayed in this book laid down ideas that have become part of our inheritance and ideals toward which we still strive today.

When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his 93rd year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his 80s.

Intellectual history has never been more relevant and more important to public life in the United States. In complicated and confounding times, people look for the principles that drive action and the foundations that support national ideals. American Labyrinth demonstrates the power of intellectual history to illuminate our public life and examine our ideological assumptions.

If you’re a never-Trumper, maybe you’d like to understand better your Trump-supporting relative at Thanksgiving dinner. Over 74 million of your fellow Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Despite all the things about him that make you crazy, they decided, "that’s my guy", and filled in the dot or pulled the lever. Why did they? How could they? Is there any way to bridge the gap between you and them?

In American Will, Governor Jindal brings to life some of the greatest lessons in our nation's history and explores how they have defined our current state of affairs - including the exciting story behind the Louisiana Purchase, the conflict between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, Reagan vs. Nixon's welfare fight, and how the Cold War was nearly lost. Each event relates back to a moment in Governor Jindal's career where he had to make an important decision for the people of Louisiana.

Americans live in a liberal democracy. Yet, although democracy is widely touted today, liberalism is scorned by both the right and the left. The United States stands poised between its liberal democratic tradition and the illiberal alternatives of liberalism's critics. John McGowan argues that Americans should think twice before jettisoning the liberalism that guided American politics from James Madison to the New Deal and the Great Society.

Bill Bradley believes that America is at a crossroads, a "teachable moment" in which we are compelled to reevaluate our political system and leadership. With clarity and urgency, Bradley outlines the story we are being told now about who we are and what is possible for our nation. He then offers a new story, including what changes need to be made, and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation.

From the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, a must-hear account of how America suffers from a “trust deficit” that has weakened its cornerstone institutions and divided our society.