American Philosophy

This is your guide to personal secession. You are a free, autonomous human being, an adult, and you are neither legally nor morally obligated to be part of any nation-state at all. You can stay right where you are, but you can also radically alter your conception of your life, your status, and your style of living in the world. Why not declare your independence? It is up to you. This manifesto offers one hundred suggestions for conceptualizing, planning, and carving out a new way of life. You have nothing to lose but your discontent.

On April 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., shocked the nation. Later that month, the Reverend John Brooks, a professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross who shared Dr. King’s dream of an integrated society, drove up and down the East Coast searching for African American high school students to recruit to the school, young men he felt had the potential to succeed if given an opportunity. Among the twenty students he had a hand in recruiting that year were Clarence Thomas and Theodore Wells....

For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America's colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. Drawing on a decade of experience battling for freedom of speech on campus, First Amendment lawyer Greg Lukianoff reveals how higher education fails to teach students to become critical thinkers: by stifling open debate, our campuses are supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues.

Politics Reformed makes a provocative contribution to understanding foundational questions in an era of rising fundamentalism and emboldened secularism, inspiring listeners to rethink the importance of religion in political theory and practice, and the role of the covenant tradition in particular.

Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology recounts the rich history of the fossil site that gave the world the first evidence of the extinction of several mammalian species, including the American mastodon. Big Bone Lick has played many roles: nutrient source, hallowed ground, salt mine, health spa, and a rich trove of wonders. Stanley Hedeen presents a comprehensive narrative of Big Bone Lick from its geological formation forward, explaining why the site attracted animals, regional tribespeople, European explorers and scientists, and eventually American pioneers.

Written by an admired leader of the Republican party, Rally Point: Five Tasks to Unite the Country and Revitalize the American Dream looks past the 2016 election, past the finger pointing and conventional political thinking, to focus on clear primary principles that conservatives must debate and defend to protect the future of America.

Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of America and had an enormous impact on America as it is today. In addition to that, there are many little-known facts about the man who is Benjamin Franklin. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers, he started out in humble circumstances. From a young age, Benjamin Franklin fought for the rights of America at home and abroad. Yet, he bore the burdens of leadership and never shirked nor faltered in his mission. His greatest asset was his charm and friendliness, but he had his detractors as well and felt the emotional impact of that.

In the years after A Nation at Risk, conservatives' ideas to reform America's lagging education system gained much traction. Key items like school choice and rigorous academic standards drew bipartisan support and were put into practice across the country. Today, these gains are in retreat, ceding ground to progressive nostrums that do little to boost the skills and knowledge of young people. Far from being discouraged, however, conservatives should seize the moment to refresh their vision of quality K-12 education for today's America.

When George Yancy penned a New York Times op-ed entitled “Dear White America” asking white Americans to confront the ways that they benefit from racism, he knew his article would be controversial. In Backlash, Yancy expands upon the original article and chronicles the ensuing controversy as he seeks to understand what it was about the op-ed that created so much rage among so many white readers. He challenges white Americans to rise above the vitriol and to develop a new empathy for the African American experience.

For Henry David Thoreau, there was no separation between public politics and personal principle. "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" is his famous account of the night he spent in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government that supported slavery and waged war. His impassioned stand for justice later inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many other peaceful revolutionaries. This volume includes Thoreau's other important political writings: "A Plea for Captain John Brown", "Life Without Principle", and the poem "Independence".

In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America’s so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university - in states from California to Maine - Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation’s founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good?

From coronavirus lockdowns to critical race theory in the classroom, it has become crystal clear that America’s schools aren’t working for America’s students and parents. No one knows this better than Betsy DeVos. In Hostages No More, DeVos unleashes her candid thoughts about working in the Trump administration, recounts her battles over the decades to put students first, hits back at “woke” curricula in our schools, and details the reforms America must pursue to fix its long and badly broken education system.

A harsh and revealing political exposé of two beloved presidents. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano reveals how Teddy Roosevelt, a bully, and Woodrow Wilson, a constitutional scholar, each pushed aside the Constitution’s restrictions on the federal government and used it as an instrument to redistribute wealth, regulate personal behavior, and enrich the government. Theodore and Woodrow exposes two of our nation’s most beloved presidents and how they helped speed the Progressive cause on its merry way.

At 15, Victor Rios found himself a human target - flat on his ass amid a hail of shotgun fire, desperate for money and a place on the street. Faced with the choice of escalating a drug turf war or eking out a living elsewhere, he turned to a teacher, who mentored him and helped him find a job at an auto shop. That job would alter the course of his whole life - putting him on the road to college and eventually a PhD.

Rosenthal suggests that right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of xenophobic nationalism. In 2016, American right-wing populists migrated from the free marketeering Tea Party to Donald Trump's "hard hat," anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism. This was the most important single factor in Trump's electoral victory.

Root Awakening Poetry Book, by author Reneé Drummond-Brown, digs way down deep causing the author to wrestle within. Though the book lacks handsome colored flowers, and bears spines it plants a ray of faith, hope, and love in a concealed rainbow. Nonetheless, the readers tears coupled with seeded underground poems have deep spreading roots that branch out to feed arid regions. Root Awakening is urbane and seasoned for a time such as this…The poetic filaments and fiber invigorate the readers’ mind’s eye conveying nourishment to the soul like a sun in need of A Son, and A Son in need ...

If, as historian Thomas Carlyle said, the history of the world is but the biography of great men, then it is also true that the story of the great men is a parable of their times, places, and generational aspirations. The life of Davy Crockett, one of the most cherished and remembered American frontiersmen, is an accurate representation of the United States as it stretched westward to become one of the largest nations in the world. Yet, David Crockett was not a mythical character but a very real person.

Cancel culture isn't just a moral panic: it erodes our ability to argue productively, listen generously and to be civil when we disagree. Whether on university campuses, in the workplace or on social media, it is a dysfunctional part of how individuals battle for power, status, and dominance. It's just one symptom of a much larger problem: why bother refuting your opponents, when you can just take away their platform or career? In this book, Lukianoff and Shlott analyze the pervasive effects of cancel culture and present a much-needed antidote for our dangerous and divisive times.

Colleges, universities, and seminaries do more than just transfer knowledge to students. They sell themselves as "experiences" that transform young people in unique ways. The conservative evangelical Protestant network of higher education has been no different. In Fundamentalist U, Adam Laats shows that these colleges have always been more than just schools; they have been vital intellectual citadels in America's culture wars. These unique institutions have defined what it has meant to be an evangelical and have reshaped the landscape of American higher education.

How Lincoln Learned to Read tells the American story from a fresh and unique perspective: how do we learn what we need to know? Beginning with Benjamin Franklin and ending with Elvis Presley, author Daniel Wolff creates a series of intimate, interlocking profiles of notable Americans that track the nations developing notion of what it means to get a good education.