American Governement History

Prejudential is a concise, authoritative exploration of America’s relationship with race and Black Americans through the lens of the presidents who have been elected to represent all of its people.

In this outstanding continuation of The Kennedy Men, his powerful American epic of the Kennedy family, Laurence Leamer chronicles the lives of the Kennedy sons and grandsons after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and their struggle to fulfill the family legacy. These lives make for a book of overwhelming drama full of exalted aspirations, notable achievements, and the most spectacular mishaps, excesses, and tragedies. For the most part, these Kennedy men fell far short of the great vision that Joseph P. Kennedy had for his sons and grandsons.

The history and future of our democracy's ultimate sanction, presidential impeachment, and a guide to how it should be used now. To End a Presidency addresses one of today's most urgent questions: when and whether to impeach a president. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz provide an authoritative guide to impeachment's past and a bold argument about its proper role today. In an era of expansive presidential power and intense partisanship, we must rethink impeachment for the 21st century.

Few topics are as timely as the growth of government. To understand why government has grown, Robert Higgs asserts, one must understand how it has grown. This book offers a coherent, multi-causal explanation, guided by a novel analytical framework firmly grounded in historical evidence. More than a study of trends in governmental spending, taxation, and employment, Crisis and Leviathan is a thorough analysis of the actual occasions when and the specific means by which Big Government developed in the United States.

Jesse J. Holland's The Invisibles is the first book to tell the story of the executive mansion's most unexpected residents: the African American slaves who lived with the US presidents who owned them. Interest in African Americans and the White House are at an all-time high due to the historic presidency of Barack Obama and the soon-to-be-opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American Culture and History.

Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms. Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.

For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America's military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, to prepare our forces for military operations in far-flung regions, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned gospel.

Oliver North offers an inspiring, first-hand account of the extraordinary young American volunteers defending us against radical Islamic terror.

Since 9-11-01, North and his War Stories documentary team have made a dozen extended trips to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, covering U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen, and Marines. American Heroes offers a close-up of this generation's "citizen-soldiers" who have chosen the path of the patriot and gone into harm's way for their countrymen.

Drawing comparisons to empires past, Johnson explores in vivid detail the likely consequences of US dependence on a permanent war economy, and what it will mean when the globe's sole "hyperpower" is no longer capable of paying for the vaulting ambitions of its leaders - and becomes the greatest hyper-debtor of all time. In his stunning conclusion, Johnson suggests that the crisis of a financial breakdown could ultimately prove to be the only path to a renewed nation.

Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul explores American culture's inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black deaths feed a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning.

The Fall of Wisconsin is a deeply reported, searing account of how the state’s progressive tradition was undone and turned into a model for national conservatives bent on remaking the country. Dan Kaufman, a Wisconsin native who has been covering the story for several years, traces the history of progressivism that made Wisconsin so widely admired. Kaufman reveals how the “divide-and-conquer” strategy of Governor Scott Walker and his allies pitted Wisconsin’s citizens against one another, so powerful corporations and donors could effectively take control of state government.

“What happened to the America I thought I knew?” Brokaw writes. “Have we simply wandered off course, but only temporarily? Or have we allowed ourselves to be so divided that we’re easy prey for hijackers who could steer us onto a path to a crash landing? ... I do have some thoughts, original and inspired by others, for our journey into the heart of a new century.”

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".

On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, was bombed, killing four young girls. Who were the perpetrators? Due to reluctant witnesses and racial prejudice, the FBI closed the case without any indictments. But as Martin Luther King, Jr., claimed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Bending Toward Justice is a detailed account of this key moment in our national struggle for equality and the long road to prosecuting those responsible for the tragedy, related by an author who played a major role in the investigation.

In Created Equal, Dr. Carson uses his own personal experiences as a member of a racial minority, along with the writings and experiences of others from multiple backgrounds and demographics, to analyze the current state of race relations in America. Instead of using race as an excuse to remake America into something completely antithetical to the Constitution, Dr. Carson suggests ways to enhance and bring great success to our nation and all multiethnic societies by magnifying America's incredible strengths instead of her historical weaknesses.

The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth.

The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people's collective choices and moral failings. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes listeners on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued.

Is America destined to always be a violent nation? This sweeping history by U.S. senator Chris Murphy explores the origins of our violent impulses, the roots of our obsession with firearms, and the mythologies that prevent us from confronting our national crisis. In many ways, the United States sets the pace for other nations to follow. Yet on the most important human concern - the need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from physical harm - America isn’t a leader.

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures cannot obscure a number of notable accomplishments, with decisive long-term consequences for American life.

In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed then too controversial to publish), Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of “evil-doers?”