City on a Hill
City on a Hill

Author: Abram C. Van Engen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0300252315

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A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase “City on a Hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthrop’s speech, its changing status throughout time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon. This sermon’s rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how those tales continue to influence competing visions of the country—the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past.

Native America, Discovered and Conquered
Native America, Discovered and Conquered

Author: Robert J. Miller

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2006-09-30

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0313071845

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Manifest Destiny, as a term for westward expansion, was not used until the 1840s. Its predecessor was the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal tradition by which Europeans and Americans laid legal claim to the land of the indigenous people that they discovered. In the United States, the British colonists who had recently become Americans were competing with the English, French, and Spanish for control of lands west of the Mississippi. Who would be the discoverers of the Indians and their lands, the United States or the European countries? We know the answer, of course, but in this book, Miller explains for the first time exactly how the United States achieved victory, not only on the ground, but also in the developing legal thought of the day. The American effort began with Thomas Jefferson's authorization of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which set out in 1803 to lay claim to the West. Lewis and Clark had several charges, among them the discovery of a Northwest Passage—a land route across the continent—in order to establish an American fur trade with China. In addition, the Corps of Northwestern Discovery, as the expedition was called, cataloged new plant and animal life, and performed detailed ethnographic research on the Indians they encountered. This fascinating book lays out how that ethnographic research became the legal basis for Indian removal practices implemented decades later, explaining how the Doctrine of Discovery became part of American law, as it still is today.

Hatemonger
Hatemonger

Author: Jean Guerrero

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-08-11

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0062986732

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“A vital book for understanding the still-unfolding nightmare of nationalism and racism in the twenty-first century.” —Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River Stephen Miller was one of the most influential advisors in the White House. He crafted Donald Trump’s speeches, designed immigration policies that banned Muslims and separated families, and outlasted such Trump stalwarts as Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions. But he’s remained an enigma. Until now. Emmy- and PEN-winning investigative journalist and author Jean Guerrero charts the thirty-four-year-old’s astonishing rise to power, drawing from more than one hundred interviews with his family, friends, adversaries and government officials. After being radicalized as a teenager and attending Duke University, Miller served Tea Party congresswoman Michele Bachmann and nativist Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. Recruited to Trump’s campaign, Miller met his idol. Having dreamed of Trump’s presidency before he even announced his decision to run, Miller became his senior policy advisor and speechwriter. Together, they stoked dystopian fears about the Democrats, “Deep State” and “American Carnage,” painting migrants and their supporters as an existential threat to America. While Trump railed against illegal immigration, Miller crusaded against legal immigration. He targeted refugees, asylum seekers and their children, engineering an ethical crisis for a nation that once saw itself as the conscience of the world. Miller rallied support for this agenda, even as federal judges tried to stop it, by courting the white rage that found violent expression in tragedies from El Paso to Charlottesville. Hatemonger unveils the man driving some of the most divisive confrontations over what it means to be American—and what America will become.

Born Along the Color Line
Born Along the Color Line

Author: Eben Miller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-02

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0195174550

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This book chronicles the 1933 Amenia Conference in upstate New York which brought together a young group of African-American activists who would shape the ongoing civil rights movement during the Depression, World War II, and beyond.

Why Fish Don't Exist
Why Fish Don't Exist

Author: Lulu Miller

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1501160346

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Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

This Radical Land
This Radical Land

Author: Daegan Miller

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 022633631X

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“The American people sees itself advance across the wilderness, draining swamps, straightening rivers, peopling the solitude, and subduing nature,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835. That’s largely how we still think of nineteenth-century America today: a country expanding unstoppably, bending the continent’s natural bounty to the national will, heedless of consequence. A country of slavery and of Indian wars. There’s much truth in that vision. But if you know where to look, you can uncover a different history, one of vibrant resistance, one that’s been mostly forgotten. This Radical Land recovers that story. Daegan Miller is our guide on a beautifully written, revelatory trip across the continent during which we encounter radical thinkers, settlers, and artists who grounded their ideas of freedom, justice, and progress in the very landscapes around them, even as the runaway engine of capitalism sought to steamroll everything in its path. Here we meet Thoreau, the expert surveyor, drawing anticapitalist property maps. We visit a black antislavery community in the Adirondack wilderness of upstate New York. We discover how seemingly commercial photographs of the transcontinental railroad secretly sent subversive messages, and how a band of utopian anarchists among California’s sequoias imagined a greener, freer future. At every turn, everyday radicals looked to landscape for the language of their dissent—drawing crucial early links between the environment and social justice, links we’re still struggling to strengthen today. Working in a tradition that stretches from Thoreau to Rebecca Solnit, Miller offers nothing less than a new way of seeing the American past—and of understanding what it can offer us for the present . . . and the future.

Citizenship and National Identity
Citizenship and National Identity

Author: David l. Miller

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-31

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0745667937

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A good political community is one whose citizens are actively engaged in deciding their common future together. Bound together by ties of national solidarity, they discover and implement principles of justice that all can share, and in doing so they respect the separate identities of minority groups within the community. In the essays collected in this book, David Miller shows that such an ideal is not only desirable, but feasible. He explains how active citizenship on the republican model differs from liberal citizenship, and why it serves disadvantaged groups better than currently fashionable forms of identity politics. By deliberating freely with one another, citizens can reach decisions on matters of public policy that are both rational and fair. He couples this with a robust defence of the principle of nationality, arguing that a shared national identity is necessary to motivate citizens to work together in the name of justice. Attempts to create transnational forms of citizenship, in Europe and elsewhere, are therefore misguided. He shows that the principle of nationality can accommodate the demands of minority nations, and does not lead to a secessionist free-for-all. And finally he demonstrates that national self-determination need not be achieved at the expense of global justice. This is a powerful statement from a leading political theorist that not only extends our understanding of citizenship, nationality and deliberative democracy, but engages with current political debates about identity politics, minority nationalisms and European integration.

Texas vs. California
Texas vs. California

Author: Kenneth P. Miller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0190077395

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Texas and California are the leaders of Red and Blue America. As the nation has polarized, its most populous and economically powerful states have taken charge of the opposing camps. These states now advance sharply contrasting political and policy agendas and view themselves as competitors for control of the nation's future. Kenneth P. Miller provides a detailed account of the rivalry's emergence, present state, and possible future. First, he explores why, despite their many similarities, the two states have become so deeply divided. As he shows, they experienced critical differences in their origins and in their later demographic, economic, cultural, and political development. Second, he describes how Texas and California have constructed opposing, comprehensive policy models--one conservative, the other progressive. Miller highlights the states' contrasting policies in five areas--tax, labor, energy and environment, poverty, and social issues--and also shows how Texas and California have led the red and blue state blocs in seeking to influence federal policy in these areas. The book concludes by assessing two models' strengths, vulnerabilities, and future prospects. The rivalry between the two states will likely continue for the foreseeable future, because California will surely stay blue and Texas will likely remain red. The challenge for the two states, and for the nation as a whole, is to view the competition in a positive light and turn it to productive ends. Exploring one of the primary rifts in American politics, Texas vs. California sheds light on virtually every aspect of the country's political system.

American Power and Liberal Order
American Power and Liberal Order

Author: Paul D. Miller

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1626163421

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Paul D. Miller argues against recent calls for American restraint in international relations. Blending academic rigor with his experiences as former Director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council, he instead calls for active investment in the centuries-old grand strategy of liberal order.