Public History

This comprehensive military biography of George Washington entertainingly examines Washington's capacity as a military leader. Acclaimed historian Edward G. Lengel, an associate editor of the University of Virginia's Papers of George Washington project, bases this engrossing work on the most extensive collection of Washington's personal correspondence.

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet. Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and more.

The legendary investor and bestselling author shares his unique template for how debt crises work and principles for dealing with them well. This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater Associates, to antic­ipate 2008’s events and navigate them well while others struggled badly. As he explained in his international best­seller Principles, Ray Dalio believes that almost everything happens over and over again through time, so that by studying patterns one can understand the cause-effect relationships behind events and develop principles for dealing with them well.

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.

Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth.

In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.

When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance, but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; and generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places.

Known in health care circles for his ability to fix ailing hospitals, Dr. David Shulkin was originally brought into government by President Obama, in an attempt to save the broken Department of Veterans Affairs. When President Trump made him VA secretary, Dr. Shulkin was as shocked as anyone. Yet this surprise was trivial compared to what Shulkin encountered as the VA secretary: a team of political appointees devoted to stopping anyone - including the secretary himself - who stood in the way of privatizing the organization and implementing their agenda.

In the 1930s, battered and humbled by the Great Depression, the US financial sector struck a grand bargain with the federal government. Bankers gained a safety net in exchange for certain curbs on their freedom: transparency rules, record-keeping and anti-fraud measures, and fiduciary responsibilities. By the free-market era of the 1980s and 90s, however, Wall Street argued that rules embodied in New Deal-era regulations to protect consumers and ultimately taxpayers were no longer needed - and government agreed.

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.

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.

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.

In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson distilled a leading idea in the early American republic and wrote of a wall of separation between church and state. That metaphor has come down from Jefferson to 21st-century Americans through a long history of jurisprudence, political contestation, and cultural influence. This book traces the development of the concept of separation of church and state and the Supreme Court's application of it in the law.

There is a lot of misinformation thrown around today, especially Online. Headlines tell us to do this, not that - all in the name of living longer, better, thinner, younger. In Hype, Dr. Nina Shapiro distinguishes between the falsehoods and the evidence-backed truth. In her work at Harvard and UCLA, with more than 20 years of experience in both clinical and academic medicine, she helps patients make important health decisions everyday. She’s bringing those lessons to life here with a blend of science and personal stories to discuss her new definition of “a healthy life”.

The "Godfather of Trumpmania", Michael Savage, examines the initial appointments, speeches, tweets, and history of Donald Trump and offers his insights and analysis. The man many consider to be the determining factor in driving Trump over the finish line by motivating millions of undecideds and the "Deplorables", who would have otherwise sat out the election, provides a crucial first look at the early direction of the Trump presidency.

On a Thursday in November of 2013, Guadalupe Morales waited anxiously with her sister-in-law and their four small children. Every Latino man who drove away from their shared apartment above a small auto repair shop that day had failed to return - arrested, one by one, by ICE agents and local police. As the two women discussed what to do next, a SWAT team clad in body armor and carrying assault rifles stormed the room. In Separated, William D. Lopez examines the lasting damage done by this daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan.

In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. But three women vehemently opposed the project. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, media, and Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career.

War-organized violence against an enemy of the state-seems part and parcel of the American journey. Indeed, the United States was established by means of violence as ordinary citizens from New Hampshire to Georgia answered George Washington's call to arms. Since then, war has become a staple of American history. Counting the War for Independence, the United States has fought the armed forces of other nations at least twelve times, averaging a major conflict every twenty years.

Like every other prospering democracy, the United States developed a mixed economy that channeled the spirit of capitalism into strong growth and healthy social development. In this bargain, government and business were as much partners as rivals. Public investments in education, science, transportation, and technology laid the foundation for broadly based prosperity.

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.