American Doctrines

For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa's photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war.

In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.

Among the unsettling social shifts in the wake of 9/11 was the global attention paid to Islam. Here in the United States, we became divided, often sadly along partisan lines, between those who believed every Muslim was a potential threat and those who believed no Muslim could do wrong. For conservative Wisconsin native and former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, these radical times meant facing a new reality as a devout Muslim and a patriot - a certain betrayal within his faith.

Although the thoughts and ideas of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud have no doubt greatly impacted modern civilization, still many of their central doctrines remain shrouded in ambiguity, imprecision, and lack of evidence. The fact that they all shamelessly engaged in continuous revisions, denials, and withdrawals of multiple aspects and even key features of their core doctrines during their lifetimes makes concise and authentic descriptions of these doctrines exceedingly difficult, if not untenable. Yet bounteous homage, fervent respect, and near-sacred reverence of these ...

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.

Best-selling author, former White House speechwriter, and Atlantic columnist and media commentator David Frum explains why President Trump has undermined our most important institutions in ways even the most critical media has missed, in this thoughtful and hard-hitting book that is a warning for democracy and America's future. Quietly, steadily, Trump and his administration are damaging the tenets and accepted practices of American democracy, perhaps irrevocably.

Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”.

Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood.

In No Apology, Mitt Romney asserts that American strength is essential—not just for our own well-being, but for the world’s. Governments such as China and a newly-robust Russia threaten to overtake us on many fronts, and Islam continues its dangerous rise. Drawing on history for lessons on how great powers collapse, Romney shows how and why our national advantages have eroded.

In search of an explanation for the crisis that reached an unsettling crescendo in 2020 - a year of pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil - National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Evan Osnos returned to three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Reported over the course of six years, Wildland follows ordinary individuals as they navigate the varied landscapes of 21st-century America. Through their powerful, often poignant stories, Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution.

The United States is an exceptional place to call home thanks to the character of the American people. With conviction and urgency, Ed Feulner and Brian Tracy affirm our core tenets - from patriotism and optimism to faith and generosity - and challenge all of us to live out the timeless principles of citizenship. Packed with engaging stories, insightful profiles, and eye-opening statistics, The American Spirit serves as an indispensable primer on the bedrock belief that an indomitable spirit does exist.

America is in crisis. Happiness is falling, loneliness and despair are rising, too many schools are riddled by fights and failure, crime is unacceptably high, and the American Dream is out of reach for millions. The problems are visible to us all, but virtually no one is talking about the solution that matters most: Marriage. New research by University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox shows that Americans who get married and have children today are leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless.

In this reappraisal of racial politics in modern America, Kevin Kruse explains the causes and consequences of "white flight" in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, White Flight moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. In the end, Kruse finds that segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the civil rights movement, nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.

Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly - the first gathering of a representative governing body in America - came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America.

The best-selling Politically Incorrect Guide series provides an unvarnished, unapologetic overview of controversial topics every American should understand. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the American Revolution is a myth-busting review of America's violent struggle for independence.

Listeners will find here not only the country’s leading conservative thinker offering a pas­sionate defense of limited government, but also a highly independent mind whose views - on feminism, evolution and the death penalty, for example - defy ideological convention. Things That Matter also features several of Krautham­mer’s major path-breaking essays - on bioeth­ics, on Jewish destiny and on America’s role as the world’s superpower - that have pro­foundly influenced the nation’s thoughts and policies.

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet. Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and more.

Hyperpartisanship has gridlocked the American government. Congress' approval ratings are at record lows, and both Democrats and Republicans are disgusted by the government's inability to get anything done. In It's Even Worse Than It Looks, Congressional scholars Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein present a grim picture of how party polarization and tribal politics have led Congress - and the United States - to the brink of institutional failure.

Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth. But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril. And he is curious: What the hell happened?

Howard Fineman, one of our most trusted political journalists, shows that every debate, from our nation’s founding to the present day, is rooted in one of thirteen arguments that–thankfully–defy resolution. It is the very process of never-ending argument, Fineman explains, that defines us, inspires us, and keeps us free. At a time when most public disagreement seems shrill and meaningless, Fineman makes a cogent case for nurturing the real American dialogue.