Public History

"The climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it is happening very quickly - and has become a true planetary emergency....[I]nconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are not responded to, their significance doesn't diminish; it grows." -Al Gore

As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time-from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach - public interest technology - that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems.

In Our National Forests, Greg Peters gives an inside look at America’s most important public lands and the people committed to protecting them and ensuring access for all. From the Forest Service growing millions of seedlings in the West each year, to their efforts to save the hellbender salamander in Appalachia, the story spans the breadth of the country and its diverse ecology. And people are at the center, whether the dedicated Forest Service members or the everyday citizens who support and tend to the protected lands near their homes.

The explosive narrative of the life, captivity, and trial of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was abducted by the Taliban and whose story has served as a symbol for America's foundering war in Afghanistan.

A true story of perseverance, unity, and hope, The Kindness of Color follows two immigrant families facing separate battles with racism in WWII-era Southern California. Unexpectedly, their paths intertwine, ultimately paving the way for the landmark court case Mendez, et. al v. Westminster and the desegregation of California public schools seven years before Brown v. Board of Education. In the face of discrimination, the Mendez and Munemitsu families are sustained by the acts of kindness extended to them by friends and strangers as they navigate their journeys toward justice.

The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. Over the course of four years, Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money.

Features Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Fireside Chats that were used to inform and build support for his presidency. From 1933 to 1945, families would gather around their living room radio to listen to the president explain everything from why he was closing banks to declaring war on Japan following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Produced by the Speech Resource Company and fully narrated by Robert Wikstrom.

At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy.

Prohibition has long been portrayed as a "noble experiment" that failed, a newsreel story of glamorous gangsters, flappers, and speakeasies. Now at last Lisa McGirr dismantles this cherished myth to reveal a much more significant history. Prohibition was the seedbed for a pivotal expansion of the federal government, the genesis of our contemporary penal state. Her deeply researched, eye-opening account uncovers patterns of enforcement still familiar today: the war on alcohol was waged disproportionately in African American, immigrant, and poor White communities.

In this powerful and prophetic audiobook, nationally syndicated columnist and trusted political commentator Cal Thomas offers a diagnosis of what exactly is wrong with the US by drawing parallels to once-great empires and nations that declined into oblivion. Citing the historically proven 250-year pattern of how superpowers rise and fall, he predicts America's expiration date is just around the corner and shows us how to escape their fate.

The High Cost of Good Intentions is the first comprehensive history of these federal entitlement programs. Combining economics, history, political science, and law, John F. Cogan reveals how the creation of entitlements brings forth a steady march of liberalizing forces that cause entitlement programs to expand. This process - as visible in the 18th and 19th centuries as in the present day - is repeated until benefits are extended to nearly all who could be considered eligible, and in turn establishes a new base for future expansions.

This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. Carroll proves a controversial thesis: The Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more.

In Putinomics, Chris Miller examines the making of Russian economic policy since Vladimir Putin took power in 1999. Miller argues that Putin's economic strategy has functioned far more effectively than most Westerners realize. While acknowledging that part of Putin's successes - above all, quadrupling per capita GDP in just a decade and a half - can be attributed to cashing in on high oil prices, Miller details the government policies that have also been fundamental to Russia's growth.

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.

Success in war ultimately depends on the consolidation of political order. Nadia Schadlow argues that the steps needed to consolidate a new political order are not separate from war. They are instead an essential component of war and victory.

From thriving Motor City to the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, Detroit has become the nation's cautionary tale. But what led to the fateful day of the filing, and how did the city survive this crisis? Journalist Nathan Bomey delivers the inside story of Detroit's decline and the people who fought to save it against impossible odds: Governor Rick Snyder, a self-proclaimed nerd; emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a lawyer with singular dedication; Judge Steven Rhodes, the city's conscience; and retirees who fought to ensure that Detroit kept its promises.

The author of the widely praised Age of Greed now gives us a bold indictment of some of our most accepted economic theories - why they’re wrong, the harm they’ve done, and the theories that would vastly improve them.

Horace Mann was the founder of the free public school movement in Massachusetts then America and, by inference, the whole world. This was his great mission, which he accomplished.

In recent years the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality.

In the first half of the 20th century, Dunbar was an academically elite public school, despite being racially segregated by law. By the 1950s, Dunbar High School was sending 80 percent of its students to college. Today, as with too many troubled urban public schools, the majority of Dunbar students struggle with reading and math. Journalist and author Alison Stewart, whose parents were both Dunbar graduates, tells the story of the school’s rise, fall, and path toward resurgence.