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"In the early 19th century, a French sociologist and political scientist undertook a seven-month journey throughout the newly formed United States. Alexis de Tocqueville surveyed the young nation's religious, political, and economic character and reported his findings in two volumes, published in 1835 and 1840. Two centuries later, Democracy in America remains among the most astute and influential surveys of American politics and society. de Tocqueville...
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Here's something true for almost every American. The democracy you live in today is different, completely different, than the democracy born into. Since 1980, the number of Americans legally barred from voting has more than doubled. Since the 1990s, odds of living in a competitive Congressional district have fallen by more than half. In the twenty-first century alone, the amount of money spent on Washington lobbying has increased by more than 100...
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In previous books, Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, "Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn...
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With stunning, in-the-room detail, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns show how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden's first year in the White House. From Donald Trump's assault on the 2020 election and his ongoing campaign of vengeance against his fellow Republicans, to...
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"Americans have disabled the government's ability to solve even basic problems, making us vulnerable to the most dangerous demagogue ever to pretend to the White House. Kurt Andersen shows how the masterminds of the economic right rode an unprecedented wave of nostalgia by dressing up their harsh new rich-get-richer system in patriotic old-time drag, making it their mission to take over the government for their purposes alone and convincing the country...
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"A huge swath of Americans see the rest of the country building a future that doesn't have a place for them. It's no wonder they'd rather burn it all down. But the fire can be stopped by Americans who act now to protect their country and its democracy"--
"I don't take responsibility at all." Those words of Donald Trump at a March 13, 2020, press conference are likely to be history's epitaph on his presidency. A huge swath of America has put their...
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"In Trust, Pete Buttigieg demonstrates how trust will be essential in order to face the unique challenges of the decades ahead. Trust is essential to the foundation of America's democracy, asserts Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential candidate and South Bend mayor. Yet, in a century warped by terrorism, financial collapse, Trumpist populism, systemic racism, and now a global pandemic, trust has been squandered, sacrificed, abused, stolen, or never...
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"The Declaration of Independence identified "the pursuit of happiness" as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders--Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton--to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral...
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A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution--from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment--and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy.
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From the Publisher: A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degradation of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason. At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently...
15) On democracy
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"Anchored by an introduction by Jon Meacham, this concise collection of essays, letters, and poems from one of this country's most eminent literary voices sheds much-needed historical context on the state of the nation and offers a ray of hope for the future of our society; for "as long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman...the scene is not desolate.""--
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"In the first week of June 2013, the American people discovered that for a decade, they had abjectly traded their individual privacy for the chimera of national security. The revelation that the federal government has full access to all phone records and the vast trove of presumably private personal data posted on the Internet has brought the threat of a surveillance society to the fore. But the erosion of privacy rights extends far beyond big government....
20) Military service
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"Developed by literacy experts for students in kindergarten through grade three, this book introduces military service to young readers through leveled text and related photos"