The most important documents in American history: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Emancipation Proclamation, presidential speeches, Supreme Court decisions, Acts and Declarations of Congress, essays, letters, and much more.
The Great Seal of the United States, which was first published in 1935, is a fascinating exposition of the history and spiritual symbolism of an important American emblem that embodies the principles and ideals of the founders of this country. In this book, American occultist, B.O.T.A. founder, teacher and author Dr. Paul Foster Case reveals the Great Seal to be a profound spiritual glyph created by the Founding Fathers as a representation of the ideals of the Novo Ordo Seclorum, the New World Order. A fascinating, thought-provoking read.
This edited volume examines the Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL), a relatively new policy initiative that has received little attention in scholarly and practical literature. The contributions seek to expand the literature by presenting case studies of policy implementation in diverse contexts across the United States. This book is organized into four sections: (1) introduction to the SoBL, including history of the policy initiative and national trends in policy design and implementation, (2) case studies of macro-level policy implementation, including a diverse array of contexts across the country that have approached the SoBL in unique ways (e.g., legislation v. educational code, prioritizing world v. home languages), (3) case studies of micro-level implementation, including schools and districts that award the SoBL to diverse student populations through various language programs (e.g., English-dominant v. linguistically diverse; world language v. dual-language programs), and (4) conclusions and future directions, including actionable next steps for policy makers, administrators, educators, and researchers. Members of various professional organizations will benefit from this text, including the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the American Council for Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), as well as participants in local affiliates for bilingual, English as a second language (ESL), and world language education.
"A historian who has been an actor in the events which he narrates, has peculiar advantages and disadvantages. He can write with more minuteness of detail, and with a fresher and more life-like coloring. He can write with more confidence, and, drawing from his own experience and observation, is in this respect more trustworthy. On the other hand, he is more liable to be warped by prejudice, to see only the excellences and none of the defects of those with whom he has been identified, and only the defects and none of the excellences of those to whom he has been opposed, to be a partizan rather than a judge, and to make his narration little more than the reflection of his personal opinions or his personal sympathy and affection, hostility and spite. "The Church History of Isaac Backus has all the above-named excellences. To a large extent he was an eye-witness of that which he describes; and where not an eye-witness, he placed himself in closest possible connection with it by personal acquaintance with the actors, and by immediate and most diligent and thorough examination of records and other evidence. While it may be too much to say that he absolutely avoided the defects above named, yet his sound judgment, his natural candor and honesty and his elevated Christian principle, have made him as nearly free from them as perhaps any author who has written in similar circumstances." --from the Editor's Preface
American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.
Seals and their Context in the Middle Ages offers an extensive overview of approaches to and the potential of sigillography, as well as introducing a wider readership to the range, interest and artistry of medieval seals. Seals were used throughout medieval society in a wide range of contexts: royal, governmental, ecclesiastical, legal, in trade and commerce and on an individual and personal level. The fourteen papers presented here, which originate from a conference held in Aberystwyth in April 2012, focus primarily on British material but there is also useful reference to continental Europe. The volume is divided into three sections looking at the history and use of seals as symbols and representations of power and prestige in a variety of institutional, dynastic and individual contexts, their role in law and legal practice, and aspects of their manufacture, sources and artistic attributes. Importantly and distinctively, the volume moves beyond the study of high status seals to consider such themes as the social and economic status of seal-makers, the nature and meaning – including reflections of deliberate wit and boastfulness – of specific motifs employed at various levels of society, and the distribution of seals in relation to the location of, for instance, religious institutions and along major routeways. In so doing, it sets out ways in which sigillography can open new pathways into the study of non-elites and their cultures in medieval society.