American Ideology

In his controversial New York Times best seller, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, Dinesh D’Souza answered the question on everyone’s mind: why is President Obama hell-bent on seeing America fail? The reason, D’Souza explained, is Obama’s fervent anticolonial ideology. Here, in his blockbuster follow-up, Obama’s America, D’Souza shows how President Obama is applying his anticolonial ideology to unmake America and turn it into a country our founders would hardly recognize.

The McCarthy-era witch hunts marked the culmination of an anticommunist crusade launched after the First World War. With Bolshevism triumphant in Russia and public discontent shaking the United States, conservatives at every level of government and business created a network dedicated to sweeping away the "spider web" of radicalism they saw threatening the nation. In this groundbreaking study, Nick Fischer shines a light on right-wing activities of the time, showing that the term "spider web" far more accurately described the anticommunist movement.

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.

These days it seems that nobody is satisfied with American democracy. Critics across the ideological spectrum warn that the country is heading toward catastrophe but also complain that nothing seems to change. At the same time, many have begun to wonder if the gulf between elites and ordinary people has turned democracy itself into a myth. The urge to defend the country’s foundations and to dismantle them coexist—often within the same people. How did we get here? Why does it feel like the country is both grinding to a halt and falling to pieces?

Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on US global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the 21st century into a dark time of despotism.

A redistricting crisis is now upon us. This surprising, compelling book tells the history of how we got to this moment—from the Founding Fathers to today’s high-tech manipulation of election districts—and shows us as well how to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote. Nick Seabrook has written an illuminating, urgently needed book on how our elections have been rigged through redistricting, beginning with the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and extending to today’s high-tech manipulations of districts.

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.

In the history of American politics, there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison's bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born, they broke over the meaning of its founding document. Hamilton emphasized economic growth; Madison the importance of republican principles. Author Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right - and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment.

Duca investigates and explains the issues at the root of our ailing political system and reimagines what an equitable democracy would look like. It begins with young people getting involved. This includes people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress; David and Lauren Hogg, two survivors of the Parkland, Florida shooting who went on to become advocates for gun control; Amanda Litman, who founded the nonprofit organization Run for Something, to assist progressive young people in down ballot elections; and many more.

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.

Editor and investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has been widely published in national periodicals and is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction work Our Man in Mexico. An eye-opening look at Washington’s first race riot, Snow-Storm in August also offers revealing profiles of Arthur Bowen, the slave blamed for the riot, and “Star Spangled Banner” lyricist Francis Scott Key, a defender of slavery who sought capital punishment for Bowen.

Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans questioned the fundamental tenets of capitalism and expressed openness to a socialist alternative. We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism-American Style offers a road map to making this alternative a reality, giving listeners a practical vision of a future that is more democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.

Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside the C Street House, the Fellowship residence known simply by its Washington, D.C., address. The house has lately been the scene of notorious political scandal, but more crucially, it is home to efforts to transform the very fabric of American democracy. And now, after laying bare its tenants' past in The Family, Sharlet reports from deep within fundamentalism in today's world.

More than ever, Americans are realizing that if we want to keep this country great, we must be citizen-patriots. And here’s the handbook every citizen-patriot needs: The Essential American, featuring the fundamental documents of our nation’s history.

In his first book, American Underdog, David Brat examines how we brought down the status quo by tapping in to moral and economic lessons as old as our civilization and discusses how Washington can learn from history instead of ignoring it. A fighter for children, he illuminates how our current fiscal policies are selling their future and outlines new ways to move forward with a conservative agenda that provides fairer treatment for all.

The child of an Irish man and an Irish American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hardworking single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon.

Beginning with the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the future of the nation and continuing through the Civil War, the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and Obama and the Tea Party, many pols have asked, "What would the founders do?" instead of "What is the common good today?" Recently both the right and the left have used the founders to sort through such issues as voting rights, campaign finance, free speech, gun control, taxes, and war and peace.

Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy.

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.

Since the eviction of Occupy protestors from encampments in many cities throughout the world, smaller and more targeted occupations have continued. Workers in a Chicago factory occupied - with the support of their union - to protest layoffs. Teachers and students in Tucson staged a walkout to protest the removal of Chicano history books from the curriculum. Home foreclosures were disrupted, even avoided, by direct community action. But what does it all mean? What do we talk about when we talk about "revolution", if we talk about it at all?