Founding Science

Beginning his writing career in 1928, Juza Unno took inspiration from Western authors like Jules Verne, and his own knowledge of electric engineering to write fiction integrating a broad spectrum of innovative ideas. His stories touch upon topics from facial reconstruction and gender reassignment surgery to video phones, multi-dimensional beings, and celestial body orbit adjustment (and of course, robots).

The Education of John Adams is the first biography of John Adams by a biographer with legal training. It examines his origins in colonial Massachusetts, his education, and his struggle to choose a career and define a place for himself in colonial society.

After 72 arduous years, the fate of the suffrage movement and its masterwork, the 19th amendment, rested not only on one state, Tennessee, but on the shoulders of a single man: 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn. Burn had previously voted with the anti-suffrage forces. If he did so again, the vote would be tied and the amendment would fall one state short of the 36 necessary for ratification. At the last minute, though, Harry Burn’s mother convinced him to vote in favor of the suffragist, and American history was forever changed.

Signing Their Rights Away chronicles a moment in American history when our elected officials knew how to compromise - and put aside personal gain for the greater good of the nation. These men were just as quirky and flawed as the elected officials we have today: Hugh Williamson believed in aliens, Robert Morris went to prison, Jonathan Dayton stole $18,000 from Congress, and Thomas Mifflin was ruined by alcohol. Yet somehow these imperfect men managed to craft the world’s most perfect Constitution.

The Federalist Papers is a series of 85 articles arguing in favor of ratification of the United States Constitution by the 13 original colonies. Federalist No. 74 discusses the powers of the president as commander-in-chief and to grant pardons and reprieves. Hamilton asserts that the role of commander-in-chief is inherent in the office itself and requires the speed and resolve of a single decision-maker.

For almost a century after the U.S. Constitution went into effect, few Americans seem to have questioned the legitimacy of the Revolution. Since the Progressive generation of historians began the work of serious criticism and revision, however, students of American life have largely learned to live with a more complicated understanding of the revolutionary legacy. Smith's treatment of the era charts space for libertarians to both criticize and revere the American heritage.

Millions of American families have turned to The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass by William J. Bennett for moral guidance in troubled times. Our Sacred Honor offers inspiration and instruction as well -- this time of a particularly American sort.

Brian Phillips Murphy follows the collaborations between political leaders and a group of unelected political entrepreneurs, including Robert R. Livingston and Alexander Hamilton, who persuaded legislative powers to grant monopolies corporate status in order to finance and manage civic institutions.

Historian Jay Sexton contends that our national narrative is not one of halting yet inevitable progress, but of repeated disruptions brought about by shifts in the international system. Sexton shows that the American Revolution was a consequence of the increasing integration of the British and American economies; that a necessary precondition for the Civil War was the absence, for the first time in decades, of foreign threats; and that we cannot understand the New Deal without examining the role of European immigrants and their offspring in transforming the Democratic Party.

How did people in our country, North and South, East and West, come to share a remarkably durable and consistent common vision of what it meant to be an American in the first 50 years after the Revolution? How did the nation respond to the problem of slavery in a republic?

As the world starts to recover from the zombie virus, three great cities—Plain’s Haven, Citadel, and Silver Spire—join forces to build a new future. Evercrest was to be a beacon of hope, a thriving settlement meant to break the isolation caused by survival. And for a time, it was, untouched by the chaos beyond its borders. No marauder invasions. No zombie attacks. Just peace.

How does the First Amendment really work? Is it a principle or a value? What is hate speech and should it always be banned? Are we free to declare our religious beliefs in the public square? What role, if any, should companies like Facebook play in policing the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and opinions? With clarity and power, Stanley Fish explores these complex questions in The First.

Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left. But the defenders of democracy are strong, too.

In this provocative biography, Mary Sarah Bilder looks to the Age of the Constitution to investigate the rise of a radical new idea in the English-speaking world: female genius. Bilder finds the perfect exemplar of this phenomenon in Eliza Harriot Barons O'Connor. Female Genius reconstructs Eliza Harriot's transatlantic life, paying particular attention to her lectures and the academies she founded, inspiring countless young American women to consider a college education and a role in the political forum.

In this remarkable culinary biography, Rae Katherine Eighmey presents Benjamin Franklin's experimentation with food throughout his life. At age 16, he began dabbling in vegetarianism. In his early 20s, citing the health benefits of water over alcohol, he convinced his printing press colleagues to abandon their traditional breakfast of beer and bread for "water gruel", a kind of porridge he enjoyed. Franklin is known for his scientific discoveries, including electricity and the lightning rod, and his curiosity and logical mind extended to the kitchen.

La idea de hacer este libro surgió de Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora por la necesidad de dejar una versión propia de su historia y contar en primera persona cómo se conocieron, cómo se organizaron, cómo se fueron construyendo. Muchas, la mayoría de las madres, ya no están con nosotros. Pero cada una de las que participan en este libro dio su testimonio y contó lo que recuerda de estos años junto a sus compañeras.

Published in 1791, Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man defended the French Revolution’s values of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. He argued that a government based on justice ought to support mankind’s civil rights relating to security and protection, as well as the natural rights to life, liberty, and freedom of conscience. He also proposed plans for universal education, pensions, poverty relief, and social welfare in this classic work that was widely read across the West.

The Accidental Billionaires is the inspiration behind the Oscar winning film, The Social Network, dramatising Zuckerberg’s success and proving you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies… Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg – an awkward maths prodigy and a painfully shy computer genius – were never going to fit in at elite, polished Harvard. Yet that all changed when master-hacker Mark crashed the university’s entire computer system by creating a rateable database of female students.

Common Sense, a pamphlet by Thomas Paine, was published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence. It is an impassioned call for America to free itself from British rule and set up an independent republican government. Paine criticized hereditary kingship and urged his adopted country to embrace personal freedom and social equality.

The novel blends fact, fiction, and speculation about Mercy Otis Warren, a self-educated 18th century woman and accomplished dramatist, poet, pamphleteer, historian, propagandist, and consummate letter writer, preparing a fictional journal of her life.