United States Politics

Democracy Matters is Cornel West's bold and powerful critique of the troubling deterioration of democracy in America in this threatening post-9/11 age of terrorist rage and imperial overreach, and an inspiring call for a resurgence of the deep democratic tradition in our country, which has waged war on the forces of imperialist corruption throughout our history.

From a hunting and gathering lifestyle to first contact with Europeans to land dispossession to claims cases, and much more, Wishart takes a wide-angle look at one of the most significant groups of people in the country. Myriad internal and external forces have profoundly shaped Indian lives on the Great Plains.

Food consumption is a significant and complex social activity - and what a society chooses to feed its children reveals much about its tastes and ideas regarding health. In this groundbreaking historical work, Amy Bentley explores how the invention of commercial baby food shaped American notions of infancy and influenced the evolution of parental and pediatric care. Until the late 19th century, infants were almost exclusively fed breast milk. But over the course of a few short decades, Americans began feeding their babies formula and solid foods....

First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys". Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle.

Professor Timothy R. Pauketat illuminates the riveting discovery of the largest pre-Columbian city on U.S. soil. Once a flourishing metropolis of 20,000 people in 1050, Cahokia had rotted away by 1400. Its earthen mounds near modern-day St. Louis reveal “woodhenges” and evidence of large-scale human sacrifice.

Will abortion be legal? Should people of the same sex be allowed to marry? May colleges prefer black applicants over white ones? These are among the most bitterly contested issues in the United States today. We answer these questions, and many more, by presenting them to nine lawyers—the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. No other nation commits so many important questions to its highest court. Stuart Banner’s The Most Powerful Court in the World is an authoritative history of the United States Supreme Court from the Founding era to the present.

The decline and fall of America's global empire is the central feature of today's geopolitical landscape, and the nature of our response to it will determine much of our future trajectory, with implications that reach far beyond the limits of one nation's borders. Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America challenges the conventional wisdom of empire, using a wealth of historical examples combined with groundbreaking original analysis.

In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily-white business world, he married a White woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally he set his White contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them.

Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.

This is the story of the NSA — the agency you weren’t supposed to know existed, quietly building the largest surveillance machine in human history, run by math nerds, funded by fear, and powered by your private life. From Cold War cables to smart phone wiretaps, secret courts to predictive policing, The NSA: The World’s Most Powerful Perverts is a sharp, sarcastic, and disturbingly true deep dive into how one agency went from “born bugged” to watching everyone, all the time, forever.

Acclaimed author Joseph J. Ellis penned the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers, a fixture on The New York Times best seller list for an entire year, and one of the most popular history books of all time. Now this master historian turns his attention to the most exalted American hero, Founding Father and first President George Washington.

In this fascinating work, Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and Red Lake Ojibwe Nation member Brenda J. Child spotlights the remarkable women of the Ojibwe Nation. A stunning look at a seldom explored subject in history, Holding Our World Together shows how American Indian women have profoundly influenced Native American life - from the days of the European fur trade to the present - in activism, community, and beyond.

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution - so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty - so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America".

Ever since the innocent people of Africa and other ports of call were heartlessly enslaved by profiteers, one of the greatest outrages in history has spread a legacy of violence and shame across the globe. In this stirring and evocative audio history, the actual voices of these poor souls are presented for close examination and study.

Filled with drama and anecdote, presenting familiar characters in a penetrating new light, The Roosevelts is a soaring tale of triumph over heartbreak and frailty. But it is also a daunting story of the vanity of human wishes.

In the bestselling tradition of The Presidents Club and Presidential Courage, White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents. Here are the riveting histories of myriad presidential friendships, among them: Abraham Lincoln and...

In 1944, the big top of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford caught fire during the middle of an afternoon performance. Nine thousand people were inside. In seconds, the big top was burning out of control. The toll of the fire, and its circumstances, haunt Hartford to the present day. But it is the intense, detailed narrative - before, after, and especially during the panic under the burning tent - that will remain with listeners long after they finish this book.

The definitive biography of the fiercely vigilant and politically astute First Lady who shaped one of the most consequential presidencies of the 20th century: Nancy Reagan. The made-in-Hollywood marriage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan is more than a love story—it’s the partnership that made him...

In the 1950s, the term "containment" referred to the foreign policy-driven containment of Communism and atomic proliferation. Yet in Homeward Bound May demonstrates that there was also a domestic version of containment where the "sphere of influence" was the home. Within its walls, potentially dangerous social forces might be tamed, securing the fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired.

“A splendid narrative about political power and mercy.” —David Grann, #1 bestselling author of The Wager The power of the presidential pardon has our national attention now more than ever before. This “thought-provoking and strenuously argued” (The Washington Post) book from New York...