Download or read book America and the Mythology of Greatness written by Joseph Aprile and published by . This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States, with its wealth of natural resources, expansive frontiers and diverse populations, has always been endowed with great potential. The possibilities inherent in the American nation are being squandered, however, by the arrogance of power. Those in power regard the free and vital political expression of the vast majority of people as a threat to their authority. Any real movement for a change in the political, social and economic order is seen as a threat to the status quo. The members of Congress have themselves been corrupted by both power and the corporate interests that they have become dependent upon. In this book, the mythology of greatness that is used so effectively in support of an extremist national agenda, is examined and challenged. The delusional self image of America's moral superiority in the world is countered with an honest appraisal of its actual behavior. An alternative national image is suggested, if there is to be hope for resolving the political, social and economic imbalances between the rich and poor nations that feed the ever expanding violence in the world.
Download or read book America Again written by Stephen Colbert and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book store nation, in the history of mankind there has never been a greater country than America. You could say we're the #1 nation at being the best at greatness. But as perfect as America is in every single way, America is broken! And we can't exchange it because we're 236 years past the 30-day return window. Look around--we don't make anything anymore, we've mortgaged our future to China, and the Apologist-in-Chief goes on world tours just to bow before foreign leaders. Worse, the L.A. Four Seasons Hotel doesn't even have a dedicated phone button for the Spa. You have to dial an extension! Where did we lose our way?! It's high time we restored America to the greatness it never lost! Luckily, America Again will singlebookedly pull this country back from the brink. It features everything from chapters, to page numbers, to fonts. Covering subject's ranging from healthcare ("I shudder to think where we'd be without the wide variety of prescription drugs to treat our maladies, such as think-shuddering") to the economy ("Life is giving us lemons, and we're shipping them to the Chinese to make our lemon-flavored leadonade") to food ("Feel free to deep fry this book-it's a rich source of fiber"), Stephen gives America the dose of truth it needs to get back on track.
Download or read book A Call to Heroism written by Peter H. Gibbon and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “engaging and provocative” exploration of American history’s heroic figures—from how we define a hero to the monuments we build to honor them (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.). Heroic ideals are fundamental to the enterprise of American liberty and to the fabric of our nation’s culture. Throughout history, men and women such as George Washington, Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King Jr., and Lucretia Mott have brought together our society of dreamers and achievers. In A Call to Heroism, Harvard research associate Peter H. Gibbon surveys the lives, struggles, and accomplishments of these and other great individuals. It also considers the meaning of seven monuments and artworks dedicated to heroes, examining what these memorials say about the America of their time—and what they mean for us today. The result forges an enlightening understanding of what it means to be a hero. With a foreword by Peter J. Gomes “Fascinating and inspiring . . . Gibbon’s book emphasizes the importance of guiding young people to more realistic definitions of hero.” —The Christian Science Monitor “A concise history of the hero in America and a realistic formula for determining who deserves the accolade.” —The Tampa Tribune “This book is a delightful Grand Tour, taking us from war to sports to great literature. You will enjoy it.” —Jay Mathews, The Washington Post “Lively fare for classrooms and board rooms throughout the country.” —Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
Download or read book The Price of Greatness written by Jay Cost and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive account of the tumultuous relationship between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison and of the origins of our wealthy yet highly unequal nation In the history of American politics there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison's bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born they broke over the meaning of its founding document. Hamilton emphasized economic growth, Madison the importance of republican principles. Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right -- and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment. He shows that each man in his own way came to accept corruption as a necessary cost of growth. The Price of Greatness reveals the trade-off that made the United States the richest nation in human history, and that continues to fracture our politics to this day.
Download or read book The End of Greatness written by Aaron David Miller and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Presidency has always been an implausible—some might even say an impossible—job. Part of the problem is that the challenges of the presidency and the expectations Americans have for their presidents have skyrocketed, while the president's capacity and power to deliver on what ails the nations has diminished. Indeed, as citizens we continue to aspire and hope for greatness in our only nationally elected office. The problem of course is that the demand for great presidents has always exceeded the supply. As a result, Americans are adrift in a kind of Presidential Bermuda Triangle suspended between the great presidents we want and the ones we can no longer have. The End of Greatness explores the concept of greatness in the presidency and the ways in which it has become both essential and detrimental to America and the nation's politics. Miller argues that greatness in presidents is a much overrated virtue. Indeed, greatness is too rare to be relevant in our current politics, and driven as it is by nation-encumbering crisis, too dangerous to be desirable. Our preoccupation with greatness in the presidency consistently inflates our expectations, skews the debate over presidential performance, and drives presidents to misjudge their own times and capacity. And our focus on the individual misses the constraints of both the office and the times, distorting how Presidents actually lead. In wanting and expecting our leaders to be great, we have simply made it impossible for them to be good. The End of Greatness takes a journey through presidential history, helping us understand how greatness in the presidency was achieved, why it's gone, and how we can better come to appreciate the presidents we have, rather than being consumed with the ones we want.
Download or read book The Myth of American Exceptionalism written by Godfrey Hodgson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that the United States is destined to spread its unique gifts of democracy and capitalism to other countries is dangerous for Americans and for the rest of the world, warns Godfrey Hodgson in this provocative book. Hodgson, a shrewd and highly respected British commentator, argues that America is not as exceptional as it would like to think; its blindness to its own history has bred a complacent nationalism and a disastrous foreign policy that has isolated and alienated it from the global community. Tracing the development of America’s high self regard from the early days of the republic to the present era, Hodgson demonstrates how its exceptionalism has been systematically exaggerated and—in recent decades—corrupted. While there have been distinct and original elements in America’s history and political philosophy, notes Hodgson, these have always been more heavily influenced by European thought and experience than Americans have been willing to acknowledge. A stimulating and timely assessment of how America’s belief in its exceptionalism has led it astray, this book is mandatory reading for its citizens, admirers, and detractors.
Download or read book The Race for America written by R. J. Boutelle and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Manifest Destiny took hold in the national consciousness, what did it mean for African Americans who were excluded from its ambitions for an expanding American empire that would shepherd the Western Hemisphere into a new era of civilization and prosperity? R. J. Boutelle explores how Black intellectuals like Daniel Peterson, James McCune Smith, Mary Ann Shadd, Henry Bibb, and Martin Delany engaged this cultural mythology to theorize and practice Black internationalism. He uncovers how their strategies for challenging Manifest Destiny's white nationalist ideology and expansionist political agenda constituted a form of disidentification—a deconstructing and reassembling of this discourse that marshals Black experiences as racialized subjects to imagine novel geopolitical mythologies and projects to compete with Manifest Destiny. Employing Black internationalist, hemispheric, and diasporic frameworks to examine the emigrationist and solidarity projects that African Americans proposed as alternatives to Manifest Destiny, Boutelle attends to sites integral to US aspirations of hemispheric dominion: Liberia, Nicaragua, Canada, and Cuba. In doing so, Boutelle offers a searing history of how internalized fantasies of American exceptionalism burdened the Black geopolitical imagination that encouraged settler-colonial and imperialist projects in the Americas and West Africa.
Download or read book Teaching What Really Happened written by James W. Loewen and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2018-09-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled "Truth" that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery. Book Features: An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education. Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography. Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened. Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools.
Download or read book The Fate of America written by Michael Gellert and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Fate of America" examines the national character of the United States against the backdrop of its history, popular culture, and media. Michael Gellert suggests that the deterioration of America's "heroic ideal," the heart of its national character, is responsible for the country's deepening social ills and the erosion of its vital institutions. He calls for a spiritual and intellectual renaissance and a renewed sense of national purpose in order to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Rise to Greatness written by Conrad Black and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 1146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterful, ambitious, and groundbreaking, this is a major new history of our country by one of our most respected thinkers and historians -- a book every Canadian should own. From the acclaimed biographer and historian Conrad Black comes the definitive history of Canada -- a revealing, groundbreaking account of the people and events that shaped a nation. Spanning 874 to 2014, and beginning from Canada's first inhabitants and the early explorers, this masterful history challenges our perception of our history and Canada's role in the world. From Champlain to Carleton, Baldwin and Lafontaine, to MacDonald, Laurier, and King, Canada's role in peace and war, to Quebec's quest for autonomy, Black takes on sweeping themes and vividly recounts the story of Canada's development from colony to dominion to country. Black persuasively reveals that while many would argue that Canada was perhaps never predestined for greatness, the opposite is in fact true: the emergence of a magnificent country, against all odds, was a remarkable achievement. Brilliantly conceived, this major new reexamination of our country's history is a riveting tour de force by one of the best writers writing today.
Download or read book American Hero myths written by Daniel Garrison Brinton and published by Johnson Reprint Corporation. This book was released on 1882 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Twelve Most Amazing American Myths and Legends written by Anita Yasuda and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amazing America celebrates the most incredible aspects of the United States. This volume features the fascinating myths and legends of the United States.
Download or read book Greek Gods Human Lives written by Mary R. Lefkowitz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insightful and fun, this new guide to an ancient mythology explains why the Greek gods and goddesses are still so captivating to us, revisiting the work of Homer, Ovid, Virgil, and Shakespeare in search of the essence of these stories. (Mythology & Folklore)
Download or read book American Mythology written by Don Nardo and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores some of the popular myths of the modern United States and discusses their role in the culture and the values they reflect. Readers are introduced to American frontier heroes, both real and imaginary, such as Davy Crockett and Paul Bunyon. The book covers details about legendary ghost ships, haunted houses, pirate treasure, monsters, and lost cities, and relates these stories to the experiences and values of American culture.
Download or read book American Hero Myths written by Daniel G. Brinton and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: American Hero-Myths by Daniel G. Brinton
Download or read book The Myth of the American Dream written by D. L. Mayfield and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affluence, autonomy, safety, and power—the central values of the American dream. But are they compatible with Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves? In essays grouped around these four values, D. L. Mayfield asks us to pay attention to the ways they shape our own choices, and the ways those choices affect our neighbors.
Download or read book Being Catholic Being American 1934 1952 written by Robert E. Burns and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
