Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death. Battlefield America: The War on the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves, is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!—the police state has arrived.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The Christian Science Monitor • Southern Living Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail. Praise for The Soul of America “Brilliant, fascinating, timely . . . With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time.”—Walter Isaacson “Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s declaration of his faith in America.”—Newsday “Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately one of kindness and caring, not rancor and paranoia.”—USA Today
A “witty, entertaining, educational” blend of travel memoir and Civil War history (Scott L. Mingus, Sr, award-winning author of Flames beyond Gettysburg). Gettysburg is a small, charming city nestled in south central Pennsylvania—but its very name evokes passion and angst, enthusiasm and sadness. For about half the year its streets are mainly empty, its businesses quiet, the weather cold and blustery. For the other months, however, the place teems with hundreds of thousands of visitors, bustling streets and shops, and more than a handful of unique larger-than-life characters. And then, of course, there is the Civil War battle that raged there during the first days of July 1863 at the price of more than 50,000 casualties. Its monuments and guns and plaques tell the story of the colossal clash of arms and societies, just as its National Cemetery bears silent witness to at least part of the cost of that bloody event. Yet, the author explains, he did not fully appreciate the profound meaning of this mammoth battle, its influential characters (living and dead), its deep meaning to our society, until he visited this hallowed ground in person. In this travelogue, you can join him at a host of famous and off-the-beaten-path places on the battlefield, explore the historic town as it is today, and learn fascinating facts and stories. Also included are maps and caricatures provided by award-winning cartoonist Tim Hartman.
The bestselling, truly gripping account of 2008's landmark election, updated through 2009 The election of 2008 shattered political barriers and ignited an extraordinary battle among some of the most formidable political rivals ever to seek the presidency. Now, Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, two of America's most respected journalists, offer the first complete picture of the strategies-and singular personalities- that accompanied the candidates' first forays into Iowa and New Hampshire through Obama's historic victory on Election Night. Filled with insider details, this riveting, wholly nonpartisan account of the historic election will capture the attention of everyone who witnessed it, as well as future generations who wished they had. A Washington Post and L.A. Times Best Book of the Year.
A former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point. As an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and conservationist–all things that the firearms industry was built on–Ryan Busse chased a childhood dream and built a successful career selling millions of firearms for one of America’s most popular gun companies. But blinded by the promise of massive profits, the gun industry abandoned its self-imposed decency in favor of hardline conservatism and McCarthyesque internal policing, sowing irreparable division in our politics and society. That drove Busse to do something few other gun executives have done: he's ending his 30-year career in the industry to show us how and why we got here. Gunfight is an insider’s call-out of a wild, secretive, and critically important industry. It shows us how America's gun industry shifted from prioritizing safety and ethics to one that is addicted to fear, conspiracy, intolerance, and secrecy. It recounts Busse's personal transformation and shows how authoritarianism spreads in the guise of freedom, how voicing one's conscience becomes an act of treason in a culture that demands sameness and loyalty. Gunfight offers a valuable perspective as the nation struggles to choose between armed violence or healing.
Originally published in 1889 in 13 volumes, this brilliant, unequalled work by the most famous American historian of the age has now been skillfully edited into a single edition. The wonderfully readable result retains its sharp focus and wonderfully graceful style, while eliminating repetitions and archaic phrases. Playing out in the dramatic account is the struggle for a continent, and the brilliant men who dominated the conflict: Champlain, La Salle, Washington, Howe, and others. By ousting the French from the land, the British unwittingly set the stage for their own later defeat.
Central America was the final place where U.S. and Soviet proxy forces faced off against one another in armed conflict. In The Cold Wars Last Battlefield, Edward A. Lynch blends his own first-hand experiences as a member of the Reagan Central America policy team with interviews of policy makers and exhaustive study of primary source materials, including once-secret government documents, in order to recount these largely forgotten events and how they fit within Reagans broader foreign policy goals. Lynchs compelling narrative reveals a president who was willing to risk both influence and image to aggressively confront Soviet expansion in the region. He also demonstrates how the internal debates between competing sides of the Reagan administration were really an argument about the basic thrust of U.S. foreign policy, and that they anticipated, to a remarkable degree, policy discussions following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
This book is a first-hand account from the frontlines, and what it says will shock you. Jim Gilchrist teams up with Jerome Corsi, the co-author of Unfit for Command - the book that derailed John Kerry's presidential campaign - to describe in vivid detail how the nation's southern border has disintegrated into a Wild West of human trafficking, drug smuggling, and violent gangs. Readers of this disturbing and timely book will learn how: Mexico encourages the mass emigration of millions of impoverished peasants, and why the Mexican government will stop at nothing to keep the border open; The Catholic Church uses its power and influence to subvert immigration laws, and why Church leaders are speaking out in favor of amnesty; American taxpayers are forced to pay the staggering economic and cultural price tag of illegal immigration, and why our government wants to keep the true costs hidden from the public. Like their Revolutionary War predecessors who defended America against a hostile foreign power, today's Minutemen have risen up to answer their nation's call against another invasion. Minutemen is their story, as well as an urgent call to arms to all of their countrymen.
From the acclaimed creator of the award-winning documentary "Why We Fight" comes a deeply thought-provoking and revelatory examination of the deepest roots of American war-making and its troubling implications for the fate of American democracy.
Economic turmoil, rising crime, and unrest thrive in the news. When it comes to surviving disaster, remember the parable of ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–13). Five virgins were prepared, and five were not. There are people behind problems the world is facing today. Problems just do not arise. Elites use orchestrated problems to justify legislation that pushes their agenda. An influential cabal of elite wants you to believe in a business cycle, nations rise and fall naturally, and a st
