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Author
Description
"From historian and author of the popular daily newsletter Letters From An American, a vital narrative that explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy -- and how we can turn back. In the midst of the impeachment crisis of 2019, Heather Cox Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing the historical background of the daily torrent of news. The essays soon turned into a newsletter and, spread by word...
Author
Description
Here's something true for almost every American. The democracy you live in today is different, completely different, than the democracy born into. Since 1980, the number of Americans legally barred from voting has more than doubled. Since the 1990s, odds of living in a competitive Congressional district have fallen by more than half. In the twenty-first century alone, the amount of money spent on Washington lobbying has increased by more than 100...
Author
Publisher
Random House
Pub. Date
[2021]
Description
"From the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, and a warning that the forces of autocracy unleashed by Trump remain as potent as ever. In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as...
Author
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Pub. Date
2024.
Appears on list
Description
"An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln's powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still relevant today--by best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize. Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know...
Author
Formats
Description
"Americans have disabled the government's ability to solve even basic problems, making us vulnerable to the most dangerous demagogue ever to pretend to the White House. Kurt Andersen shows how the masterminds of the economic right rode an unprecedented wave of nostalgia by dressing up their harsh new rich-get-richer system in patriotic old-time drag, making it their mission to take over the government for their purposes alone and convincing the country...
Author
Formats
Description
Eric Metaxas offers a thrilling review of America's uniqueness, and a sobering reminder that America's greatness cannot continue unless people truly understand what their founding fathers meant for them to be. The book includes a stirring call-to-action for every American to understand the ideals behind the 'noble experiment in ordered liberty' that is America. It also paints a vivid picture of the tremendous fragility of that experiment and explains...
Author
Pub. Date
[2019]
Formats
Description
"John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (and it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results, and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. John and...
Author
Publisher
W.W. Norton
Pub. Date
c1998
Description
"Over the course of our history, freedom has been a living truth for some Americans and a cruel mockery for others. In Eric Foner's stirring history, freedom's story is not the simple unfolding of a timeless truth, but an open-ended history of accomplishment and failure. Its impetus lies in the aspirations and sacrifice of millions of Americans, celebrated and anonymous, who have sought freedom's blessings. Its meaning is shaped not only in congressional...
Author
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub. Date
[2024]
Description
This meticulously researched account of assaults on democracy by five presidents who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy and committed crimes with impunity shows how citizens like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells and Daniel Ellsberg fought back against presidential abuses of power.
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Formats
Description
"Cuts through the hyperbole and hysteria that often distorts assessments of our republic, particularly at this time." - Alan Taylor, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History What-and who-is a demagogue? How did America's Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like-and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken? Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump's presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary...
Author
Publisher
Pegasus Books
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture--during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement--but have now come to fruition in the...
Author
Description
"From the prophetic author of the now-classic What's the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal, an eye-opening account of populism, the most important--and misunderstood--movement of our time. Rarely does a work of history contain startling implications for the present, but in The People, No Thomas Frank pulls off that explosive effect by showing us that everything we think we know about populism is wrong. Today 'populism' is seen as a frightening...
Author
Formats
Description
Political historian Wilentz traces an arc from the earliest days of the Republic to the opening shots of the Civil War, showing how the elitist young American republic became a rough-and-tumble democracy. He brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew...
Author
Publisher
Harper
Pub. Date
[2020]
Description
"A huge swath of Americans see the rest of the country building a future that doesn't have a place for them. It's no wonder they'd rather burn it all down. But the fire can be stopped by Americans who act now to protect their country and its democracy"--
Author
Description
"Donald Trump will be president again, whether he is on the ballot or not. That is because Trumpism is overtaking the Republican Party and will mount a vigorous comeback, potentially in the hands of a savvier successor--The Next Trump. This prophecy will come true, according to Miles Taylor, if we do not learn the lessons of the recent past. With the 2024 election approaching, the formerly "Anonymous" official is back with bombshell revelations and...
Author
Publisher
The University of Georgia Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Description
"This book brings together the author's personal and professional link to the long American Revolution in a narrative that spans more than 150 years and places the Revolution in multiple contexts -- from the local to the transatlantic and hemispheric and from racial and gendered to political, social, economic, and cultural perspectives. A descendant on his father's side from a long line of Kentuckians, the author grew up torn between a father who...
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