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Showing 141 - 160 of 36777 items
By Lt. Col. Allen B. West. 2020
A retired US Army lieutenant colonel and former congressman shows how black America can improve itself through conservative values. Something…
has happened to the black community. Over the past decades, black America stopped believing that &“we shall overcome.&” Instead, they began accepting handouts from the government, turning away from the values of family, selfless military service, and business ownership that have been pillars of black America from the beginning. Progressive socialism has bound them in what amounts to economic enslavement. In his third book, Lt. Col. Allen B. West (Ret.) takes readers back through the political history of the black community, highlighting the history of public service, self-reliance, ingenuity, strong families, and religious involvement that pulled black Americans through the horrors of slavery, Reconstruction, and decades of Jim Crow laws. These are the values that enabled them to improve their lives—to overcome.We Can Overcome: An American Black Conservative Manifesto urges black America to return to the conservative principles that once had entire neighborhoods building wealth and thriving on Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It&’s time black Americans remember the strength they possess. In this age of escalating black-on-black violence and increasing government dependency, the sons and daughters of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King Jr. must stand up. We are not victims. We are victors. We can overcome.By Carl Sandburg. 2015
Writings on the American Civil War selected from the Pulitzer Prize–winning presidential biography Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, with illustrations…
and maps. Drawn from Carl Sandburg&’s magisterial biography of the sixteenth US president, this volume focuses in on the War Between the States, bringing the author&’s trademark clarity and vivid style to this dark and dramatic period in the nation&’s history. Moving from Sumter to Shiloh, Antietam to Gettysburg, Storm Over the Land is a classic chronicle of this bloody conflict, richly illustrated with halftones and drawings.By Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. 2021
"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.&” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick MirrorIn…
place-names lie stories. That&’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City&’s streets and parks, boroughs and bridges, playgrounds and neighborhoods.Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city&’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor&’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated eight hundred languages now spoken in New York.As recent arrivals continue to find new ways to make New York&’s neighborhoods their own, the names that stick to the city&’s streets function not only as portals to explore the past but also as a means to reimagine what is possible now.By David E. Sanger. 2018
NOW AN HBO® DOCUMENTARY FROM AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR JOHN MAGGIO • &“An important—and deeply sobering—new book about cyberwarfare&” (Nicholas Kristof, New York…
Times), now updated with a new chapter.The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran&’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump&’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend the 2016 U.S. election from interference by Russia, with Vladimir Putin drawing on the same playbook he used to destabilize Ukraine. Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target.&“Timely and bracing . . . With the deep knowledge and bright clarity that have long characterized his work, Sanger recounts the cunning and dangerous development of cyberspace into the global battlefield of the twenty-first century.&”—Washington PostBy David E. Sanger. 2009
Readers of The New York Times know David Sanger as one of the most trusted correspondents in Washington, one to…
whom presidents, secretaries of state, and foreign leaders talk with unusual candor. Now, with a historian’s sweep and an insider’s eye for telling detail, Sanger delivers an urgent intelligence briefing on the world America faces. In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office.Sanger takes readers into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran’s nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, in his last year, to secretly step up covert actions in a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy–while receiving billions in American military aid. Now the new president faces critical choices: Is it better to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or risk overt or covert confrontation? Is it worth sending U.S. forces deep into Pakistani territory at the risk of undermining an unstable Pakistani government sitting on a nuclear arsenal? It is a race against time and against a new effort by Islamic extremists–never before disclosed–to quietly infiltrate Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. “Bush wrote a lot of checks,” one senior intelligence official told Sanger, “that the next president is going to have to cash.”The Inheritance takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence apparatus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington was bogged down in the Middle East. Yet Sanger, a former foreign correspondent in Asia, sees enormous potential for the next administration to forge a partnership with Beijing on energy and the environment. At once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunities they create, The Inheritance is vital reading for anyone trying to understand the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead.By Peter Novick. 2000
This “courageous and thought-provoking book” examines how the Holocaust came to hold its unique place in American memory (Foreign Affairs).Prize–winning…
historian Peter Novick explores in absorbing detail the decisions that moved the Holocaust to the center of American life. He illuminates how Jewish leaders invoked its memory to muster support for Israel, and how politicians in turn used it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments, their meaning, and their consequences. Does the Holocaust really teach useful lessons and sensitize us to atrocities, or, by making the Holocaust the measure, does it make lesser crimes seem “not so bad”? Have American Jews, by making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience, given Hitler a posthumous victory, tacitly endorsing his definition of Jews as despised pariahs? What are we to make of the fact that while Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars for museums recording a European crime, while comparatively little is done to memorialize American slavery?A New York Times Notable BookBy Kent Garrett, Jeanne Ellsworth. 2019
The untold story of Harvard’s class of ’63, whose Black students fought to craft their own identities on the cusp…
between integration & affirmative action.In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented eighteen “Negro” boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, would begin to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant.Garrett and his partner Jeanne Ellsworth recount how these eighteen youths broke new ground, with ramifications that extended far past the iconic Yard. By the time they were seniors, they would have demonstrated against national injustice and grappled with the racism of academia, had dinner with Malcolm X and fought alongside their African national classmates for the right to form a Black students’ organization.Part memoir, part group portrait, and part narrative history of the intersection between the civil rights movement and higher education, this is the remarkable story of brilliant, singular boys whose identities were changed at and by Harvard, and who, in turn, changed Harvard.An “illuminating” account of the largest act of civil disobedience in US history “that resonates today, when our democracy is again…
being challenged” (Larry Tye, New York Times–bestselling author of Demagogue).They surged into Washington by the tens of thousands in the spring of 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to end America’s war in Vietnam: a blockade of the nation’s capital. And the White House, headed by an increasingly paranoid Richard Nixon, was determined to stop it.Washington journalist Lawrence Roberts, drawing on dozens of interviews, unexplored archives, and newfound White House transcripts, recreates these largely forgotten events through the eyes of dueling characters. Woven into the story too are now-familiar names including John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers. It began with a bombing inside the US Capitol—a still-unsolved case to which Roberts brings new information. To prevent the Mayday Tribe’s guerrilla-style traffic blockade, the government mustered the military. Riot squads swept through the city, arresting more than 12,000 people. As a young female public defender led a thrilling legal battle to free the detainees, Nixon and his men took their first steps down the road to the Watergate scandal and the implosion of the presidency. Mayday 1971 is the ultimately inspiring story of a season when our democracy faced grave danger, and survived.“Award–winning investigative reporter Lawrence Roberts tells the story superbly from start to finish . . . presents a lot of new and overlooked material.” —The Wall Street Journal“Fast-moving, and fascinating.” —Christian Science MonitorBy Jeff Guinn. 2023
&“Impressively researched and written with storytelling verve&” (The Wall Street Journal), this is the definitive account of the disastrous siege…
at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative reporter Jeff Guinn, bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown.For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, Waco raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. The revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies&’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new and stunning. Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. His you-are-there narrative continues to the final assault and its momentous consequences. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, revealing &“gripping&” (Houston Chronicle) new details about a story that we thought we knew.The Address was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday,…
November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant.Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.By Brian O’Donovan. 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2021The riveting story of a nation at a crucial crossroadsFrom the start of his…
stint as RTÉ's Washington Correspondent Brian O'Donovan's lively and authoritative reporting of a tumultuous period in American life has been must-watch TV.Four Years in the Cauldron is his account of four busy years working in the US. He draws a compelling picture, full of telling colour and detail, of covering its fractured politics, particularly the extraordinary presidency of Donald Trump and the knife-edge election of Joe Biden. And he gives his unique perspective on big stories such as the Covid emergency, the Capitol riot, the murder of George Floyd and trial and conviction of his police killer.He also provides a visceral sense of what it's like living in a country shaped by guns, God, far-fetched conspiracy theories and the running sore of racism. Yet, drawing on his network of contacts, neighbours, friends and family connections outside the white-hot heat of Washington politics, he writes about the lives of ordinary American people with nuance and understanding.Four Years in the Cauldron is a must-read for getting to grips with the US at a moment of profound reckoning.______'[O'Donovan] captures well both the frenetic life of a reporter . . . and the Punch and Judy period in American politics that was the Trump presidency' Irish Times'An intriguing look at an extraordinary time . . . the book brings us to some fascinating places' Ryan Tubridy'A great read' The Last Word With Matt CooperBy Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay. 1987
Written at a time when furious arguments were raging about the best way to govern America, The Federalist Papers had…
the immediate pratical aim of persuading New Yorkers to accept the newly drafted Constitution in 1787. In this they were supremely successful, but their influence also transcended contemporary debate to win them a lasting place in discussions of American political theory. Acclaimed by Thomas Jefferson as 'the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written', The Federalist Papers make a powerful case for power-sharing between State and Federal authorities and for a Constitution that has endured largely unchanged for two hundred years.By Fanny Trollope. 1997
When Fanny Trollope set sail for America in 1827 with hopes of joining a Utopian community of emancipated slaves, she…
took with her three of her children and a young French artist, leaving behind her son Anthony, growing debts and a husband going slowly mad from mercury poisoning. But what followed was a tragicomedy of illness, scandal and failed business ventures. Nevertheless, on her return to England Fanny turned her misfortunes into a remarkable book. A masterpiece of nineteenth-century travel-writing, Domestic Manners of the Americans is a vivid and hugely witty satirical account of a nation and was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.By Alexis Tocqueville. 2003
One of the most influential political texts ever written on America, and an indispensable authority on the nature of democracy…
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through eastern America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation's evolving politics. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing its egalitarian ideals reflected the spirit of the age. This edition, the only one that contains all Tocqueville's writings on America, includes the rarely translated 'Two Weeks in the Wilderness', an evocative account of Tocqueville's travels among the Iroquois and Chippeway, and 'Excursion to Lake Oneida'. Translated by Gerald Bevan with an Introduction and Notes by Isaac KramnickMeet extraordinary black heroes throughout history—biographies for kids ages 8 to 12 You're invited to meet ancient Egyptian rulers, brilliant…
scientists, legendary musicians, and civil rights activists—all in the same book! Black Heroes introduces you to 51 black leaders and role models from both history and modern times. This black history book for kids features inspirational biographies of trailblazers from the United States, Egypt, Britain, and more. Discover where in the world they lived and what their lives were like growing up. Learn about the obstacles they faced on the way to making groundbreaking accomplishments. You'll find out how these inspirational figures created lasting change—and paved the way for future generations. Black Heroes: A Black History Book for Kids features: Fascinating biographies—Read about famous icons like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman, as well as lesser-known pioneers like aviator Bessie Coleman and astronomer Benjamin Banneker. Ways to learn more—Every biography includes an idea for a new way to explore the person and their work, like a book to read, website to visit, or a video to watch. Colorful portraits—Bring the historical heroes to life in your imagination with the help of full-color illustrations. Black Heroes goes beyond other black history biographies for kids to highlight people from around the world and across time. Who will your new hero be?By Jonathan Green. 2018
Nominated for an Edgar Award “Exceptionally authentic.”—Jill Leovy, The New York Times Book Review In the late 1980s and early…
1990s, the Bronx had one of the country’s highest per capita homicide rates. As crack cocaine use surged, dealers claimed territory through intimidation and murder, while families were fractured by crime and incarceration. Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the era’s most notorious gangs, reporter Jonathan Green creates a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough and the dedicated detectives and prosecutors struggling to stem the tide of violence. Drawing on years of research and extraordinary access to gang leaders, law enforcement, and federal prosecutors, Green delivers an engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers a unique perspective on the violence raging in modern-day America and the battle to end it.By James Cooper, R. J. Richardson, Bailey Schwab. 2024
Forty years after Ronald Reagan’s successful re-election campaign, this book explores the significance of the year 1984 in the making…
of Reagan’s presidential record and the shaping of his legacy. The authors examine the broader context of how Reagan impacted the nature of the US presidency and international relations during the Cold War, and how this in turn interacted with American popular culture. Serving as an introduction to academics, students and the interested public into what is a rapidly increasingly Reagan scholarship, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in US elections, the evolving nature of the US presidency, and American culture more generally.By Lori Rogers-Stokes, Marion Rust, Nicholas K. Mohlmann, Daniel Diez Couch, Keri Holt, John Saillant, D. Berton Emerson, Laurel Hankins, Lisa West, Amy Morris. 2024
The essays in this pathbreaking collection consider the significance of varied early American fragmentary genres and practices—from diaries and poetry,…
to almanacs and commonplace books, to sermons and lists, to Indigenous ruins and other material shards and fragments—often overlooked by critics in a scholarly privileging of the “whole.” Contributors from literary studies, book history, and visual culture discuss a host of canonical and non-canonical figures, from Edward Taylor and Washington Irving to Mary Rowlandson and Sarah Kemble Knight, offering insight into the many intellectual, ideological, and material variations of “form” that populated the early American cultural landscape. As these essays reveal, the casting of the fragmentary as aesthetically eccentric or incomplete was a way of reckoning with concerns about the related fragmentation of nation, society, and self. For a contemporary audience, they offer new ways to think about the inevitable gaps and absences in our cultural and historical archive.The 4-mile-long, 550-acre Hudson River Park is nearing completion and is the largest park built in Manhattan since Central Park…
opened more than 150 years ago. It has transformed a derelict waterfront, protected the Hudson River estuary, preserved commercial maritime activities, created new recreational opportunities for millions of New Yorkers, enhanced tourism, stimulated redevelopment in adjacent neighborhoods, and set a precedent for waterfront redevelopment. The Park attracts seventeen million visitors annually. Creating the Hudson River Park is a first-person story of how this park came to be. Working together over three decades, community groups, civic and environmental organizations, labor, the real estate and business community, government agencies, and elected officials won a historic victory for environmental preservation, the use and enjoyment of the Hudson River, and urban redevelopment. However, the park is also the embodiment of a troubling trend toward the commercialization of America’s public parks. After the defeat of the $2.4 billion Westway plan to fill 234 acres of the Hudson in 1985, the stage was set for the revitalization of Manhattan’s West Side waterfront. Between 1986 and 1998 the process focused on the basics like designing an appropriate roadway, removing noncompliant municipal and commercial activities from the waterfront, implementing temporary improvements, developing the Park’s first revenue-producing commercial area at Chelsea Piers, completing the public planning and environmental review processes, and negotiating the 1998 Hudson River Park Act that officially created the Park. From 1999 to 2009 planning and construction were funded with public money and focused on creating active and passive recreation opportunities on the Tribeca, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Hell’s Kitchen waterfronts. However, initial recommendations to secure long term financial support for the Park from the increase in adjacent real estate values that resulted from the Park’s creation were ignored. City and state politicians had other priorities and public funding for the Park dwindled. The recent phase of the project, from 2010 to 2021, focused on “development” both in and adjacent to the Park. Changes in leadership, and new challenges provide an opportunity to return to a transparent public planning process and complete the redevelopment of the waterfront for the remainder of the 21st-century. Fox’s first-person perspective helps to document the history of the Hudson River Park, recognizes those who made it happen and those who made it difficult, and provides lessons that may help private citizens and public servants expand and protect the public parks and natural systems that are so critical to urban well-being.By Daniel Widener. 2024
In Third Worlds Within, Daniel Widener expands conceptions of the struggle for racial justice by reframing antiracist movements in the…
United States in a broader internationalist context. For Widener, antiracist struggles at home are connected to and profoundly shaped by similar struggles abroad. Drawing from an expansive historical archive and his own activist and family history, Widener explores the links between local and global struggles throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He uncovers what connects seemingly disparate groups like Japanese American and Black communities in Southern California or American folk musicians and revolutionary movements in Asia. He also centers the expansive vision of global Indigenous movements, the challenges of Black/Brown solidarity, and the influence of East Asian organizing on the US Third World Left. In the process, Widener reveals how the fight against racism unfolds both locally and globally and creates new forms of solidarity. Highlighting the key strategic role played by US communities of color in efforts to defeat the conjoined forces of capitalism, racism, and imperialism, Widener produces a new understanding of history that informs contemporary social struggle.