Download or read book Inventing the People The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1989-09-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the origins of democratic government in England and the U.S. compares their approaches, and discusses elections and the philosophical background of political representation.
Download or read book Inventing the People written by Edmund Sears Morgan and published by New York : Norton. This book was released on 1988 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morgan argues, in effect, that representative democracy is a tool to bolster rule by the powerful few over the many; the majority are thus led to believe they control their own destiny. In this quietly subversive rereading of our history, American colonists perfected the fiction of popular rule by involving voters in extravagant electoral campaigns and by insisting that elected representatives derived their power from their constituents. Meanwhile, elitist colonial rulers who owned considerable property pulled strings to get their way. --from vendor description
Download or read book King and Congress written by Jerrilyn Greene Marston and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A persuasive reassessment of the nature of the institution that was in the forefront of the American revolutionary struggle with Great Britain--the Continental Congress. Providing a completely new perspective on the history of the First and Second Continental Congresses before independence, the author argues that American expectations regarding the proper functions of a legitimate central government were formed under the British monarchy, and that these functions were primarily executive. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Inventing the People The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1989-09-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best explanation that I have seen for our distinctive combination of faith, hope and naiveté concerning the governmental process." —Michael Kamman, Washington Post This book makes the provocative case here that America has remained politically stable because the Founding Fathers invented the idea of the American people and used it to impose a government on the new nation. His landmark analysis shows how the notion of popular sovereignty—the unexpected offspring of an older, equally fictional notion, the "divine right of kings"—has worked in our history and remains a political force today.
Download or read book Ruling America written by Steve Fraser and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people? In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era. Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.
Download or read book Roots of the Republic written by Stephen L. Schechter and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 1991-11-01 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roots of the Republic shows how the Constitution was a product, not simply of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, but of a legal and philosophical tradition almost two centuries old. The editors have selected eighteen key documents in the development of that tradition and reproduced them with essays that explain what they mean, why they were written, and why they are important today. Each key document is accompanied by an interpretive essay written by a contemporary scholar. These essays focus on the importance of each frame of government and include commentaries on why they are meaningful today. Intended to help readers learn how to read and understand these documents, the book is also a handy reference and a strong introduction to the development of political thought and the debates surrounding the formation of the state governments and the federal union.
Download or read book Religious Pluralism in America written by William R. Hutchison and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious toleration is enshrined as an ideal in our Constitution, but religious diversity has had a complicated history in the United States. Although Americans have taken justifiable pride in the rich array of religious faiths that help define our nation, for two centuries we have been grappling with the question of how we can coexist. In this ambitious reappraisal of American religious history, William Hutchison chronicles the country’s struggle to fulfill the promise of its founding ideals. In 1800 the United States was an overwhelmingly Protestant nation. Over the next two centuries, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others would emerge to challenge the Protestant mainstream. Although their demands were often met with resistance, Hutchison demonstrates that as a result of these conflicts we have expanded our understanding of what it means to be a religiously diverse country. No longer satisfied with mere legal toleration, we now expect that all religious groups will share in creating our national agenda. This book offers a groundbreaking and timely history of our efforts to become one nation under multiple gods.
Download or read book Benjamin Franklin written by Edmund Sears Morgan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on Franklin's extensive writings to provide a portrait of the statesman, inventor, and Founding Father.
Download or read book American Slavery American Freedom written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2003-10-17 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable."—New York Times Book Review In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. American Slavery, American Freedom is a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the keys to this central paradox, "the marriage of slavery and freedom," in the people and the politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the Revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.
Download or read book Sovereignty International Law and the French Revolution written by Edward James Kolla and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the introduction of popular sovereignty as the basis for government in France facilitated a dramatic transformation in international law in the eighteenth century.
Download or read book Self Rule written by Robert H. Wiebe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-03-27 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new analysis of American government over the last 200 years; political debate & a new viewpoint.
Download or read book The Two Faces of American Freedom written by Aziz Rana and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.
Download or read book Inventing Iraq written by Toby Dodge and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dodge offers a sobering look back at the first attempt by a Western power to remake Iraq in its own image.
Download or read book The Stamp Act Crisis written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Impressive! . . . The authors have given us a searching account of the crisis and provided some memorable portraits of officials in America impaled on the dilemma of having to enforce a measure which they themselves opposed.'--New York Times 'A brilliant contribution to the colonial field. Combining great industry, astute scholarship, and a vivid style, the authors have sought 'to recreate two years of American history.' They have succeeded admirably.'--William and Mary Quarterly 'Required reading for anyone interested in those eventful years preceding the American Revolution.'--Political Science Quarterly The Stamp Act, the first direct tax on the American colonies, provoked an immediate and violent response. The Stamp Act Crisis, originally published by UNC Press in 1953, identifies the issues that caused the confrontation and explores the ways in which the conflict was a prelude to the American Revolution.
Download or read book A Brilliant Solution written by Carol Berkin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting all the original documents and using her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century history and politics, Carol Berkin takes a fresh look at the men who framed the Constitution, the issues they faced, and the times they lived in. Berkin transports the reader into the hearts and minds of the founders, exposing their fears and their limited expectations of success.
Download or read book American Heroes Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wise, humane and beautifully written book." —Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal From the best-selling author of Benjamin Franklin comes this remarkable work that will help redefine our notion of American heroism. Americans have long been obsessed with their heroes, but the men and women dramatically portrayed here are not celebrated for the typical banal reasons contained in Founding Fathers hagiography. Effortlessly challenging those who persist in revering the American history status quo and its tropes and falsehoods, Morgan, now ninety-three, continues to believe that the past is just not the way it seems.
Download or read book The Genuine Article A Historian Looks at Early America written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005-08-17 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A masterly quarter-century of commentary on the discipline of American history."—Allen D. Boyer, New York Times Book Review "This book amounts to an intellectual autobiography....These pieces are thus a statement of what I have thought about early Americans during nearly seventy years in their company," writes historian Edmund S. Morgan in the introduction to this landmark collection. The Genuine Article gathers together twenty-five of Morgan's finest essays over forty years, commenting brilliantly on everything from Jamestown to James Madison. In revealing the private lives of "Those Sexy Puritans" and "The Price of Honor" on Southern plantations, The Genuine Article details the daily lives of early Americans, along with "The Great Political Fiction" that continues to this day. As one of our most celebrated historians, Morgan's characteristic insight and penetrating wisdom are not to be missed in this extraordinarily rich portrait of early America and its Founding Fathers.
