United States Civics

The United States is an exceptional place to call home thanks to the character of the American people. With conviction and urgency, Ed Feulner and Brian Tracy affirm our core tenets - from patriotism and optimism to faith and generosity - and challenge all of us to live out the timeless principles of citizenship. Packed with engaging stories, insightful profiles, and eye-opening statistics, The American Spirit serves as an indispensable primer on the bedrock belief that an indomitable spirit does exist.

In The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide, award-winning author and constitutional scholar Linda R. Monk explores the remarkable history of the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, the Supreme Court's interpretation of each right, and the power of citizens to enforce those rights. Stories of the ordinary people who made the Bill of Rights come alive are featured throughout.

In 1964, as the polarizing Civil Rights Act made its way through the House and Senate, and Congress navigated one of the most tumultuous eras in American history, a Harris Poll put the institution's approval rating at 60%. Why then, 50 years later, has the public's approval of Congress eroded to an all-time low of 10%?

In The Second Amendment, Michael Waldman traces the ongoing argument on gun rights from the Bill of Rights to the current day. Now, in The Fight to Vote, Waldman takes a succinct and comprehensive look at an even more crucial struggle: the past and present effort to define and defend government based on "the consent of the governed". From the writing of the Constitution, and at every step along the way, as Americans sought the right, others have fought to stop them.

Americans of all political stripes are heading into the 2008 election with the sense that something has gone terribly wrong with American politics. But what exactly? The only thing everyone seems to agree on, in fact, is that the American people are entirely blameless. InJust How Stupid Are We?, best-selling historian and renowned myth-buster Rick Shenkman takes aim at our great national piety: the wisdom of the American people.

A work by the great Henry David Thoreau, originally published in 1849 as "Resistance to Civil Government". It is an essay in which Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

The history and future of our democracy's ultimate sanction, presidential impeachment, and a guide to how it should be used now. To End a Presidency addresses one of today's most urgent questions: when and whether to impeach a president. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz provide an authoritative guide to impeachment's past and a bold argument about its proper role today. In an era of expansive presidential power and intense partisanship, we must rethink impeachment for the 21st century.

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?

The United States in Crisis: Citizenship, Immigration, and the Nation State argues that to preserve our freedom Americans must mount a defense of the nation state against the progressive forces who advocate for global government. The Founders of America were convinced that freedom would flourish only in a nation state. A nation state is a collection of citizens who share a commitment to the same principles. Today, the nation state is under attack by the progressive left, who allege that it is the source of almost every evil in the world.

Citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States was an ever-moving target. The Constitution did not specify its exact meaning, leaving lawmakers and other Americans to struggle over the fundamental questions of who could be a citizen, how a person attained the status, and the particular privileges citizenship afforded. Black people suffered under this ambiguity, but also seized on it in efforts to transform their nominal freedom.

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.

This book explores the idea that table activities - the mealtime rituals of food preparation, serving, and dining - lay the foundation for a proper education on the value of civility, the importance of the common good, and what it means to be a good citizen. The arts of conversation and diplomatic speech are learned and practiced at tables, and a political history of food practices recasts thoughtfulness and generosity as virtues that enhance civil society and democracy.

U.S. exceptionalism, the idea that the United States of America is superior to other nations, is no more fact-based and no less harmful than racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. The purpose of this audiobook is to persuade you of that statement. This audiobook examines how the United States actually compares with other countries, how people think about the comparison, what damage that thinking does, and what changes we might want to consider making.