Download or read book Last Refuge of Scoundrels written by Paul Lussier and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2001-02-08 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early critical acclaim from Pulitzer Prize-winning scholars and best-selling authors Studs Terkel, Jonathan Kozol, Robert Coles, Howard Zinn, John Ferling and Winston Groom: Last Refuge of Scoundrels is the bottom-up story of the American Revolution brought to life vividly, compellingly, suggestively. It's a story that gives America its past in a manner worthy of comparison to Tolstoy's effort to understand and render history and does so in a manner that's rich, rambunctious, exploding with vitality and bubbling with wild humor. A delightfully irreverent look at the Revolution, it tells the story of John Lawrence a naive young merchant's son who finds love and his life's purpose in Deborah Simpson, a spy working in collusion with George Washington to lead An unsung army of ordinary Americans against the self-interested Founding Fathers as much as the bumbling Brits. Last Refuge of Scoundrels weaves meticulous research and fantastical fable into a poetic tale that's at once a rollicking romp, a haunting love story and a revisionist historical epic.

Download or read book The Last Refuge written by David W. Orr and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels" -SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1775 Updated and revised following the 2004 elections, The Last Refuge describes the current state of American politics against the backdrop of mounting ecological and social problems, the corrosive influence of money, the corruption of language, and the misuse of terrorism as a political issue. Setting out an agenda that transcends conventional ideological labels, David Orr contends that partisan wrangling is only a symptom of a deeper dysfunction: The whole political machinery that connects Americans' fundamentally honorable ideals with public policy is broken. The book offers a withering critique of the failings of the Bush administration, supplemented by new essays that look at the national-level dominance of the Republican Party and examine the fallacy that the evangelical right represents a Christian majority. After analyzing the challenges of reforming the current system, Orr offers an empowering vision of a second American Revolution that peaceably achieves sustainability and charts a hopeful course for forward-looking citizens.

Download or read book The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel written by Wendell Howard and published by . This book was released on 1952 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Making Patriots written by Walter Berns and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-09-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Samuel Johnson once remarked that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels," over the course of the history of the United States we have seen our share of heroes: patriots who have willingly put their lives at risk for this country and, especially, its principles. And this is even more remarkable given that the United States is a country founded on the principles of equality and democracy that encourage individuality and autonomy far more readily than public spiritedness and self-sacrifice. Walter Berns's Making Patriots is a pithy and provocative essay on precisely this paradox. How is patriotism inculcated in a system that, some argue, is founded on self-interest? Expertly and intelligibly guiding the reader through the history and philosophy of patriotism in a republic, from the ancient Greeks through contemporary life, Berns considers the unique nature of patriotism in the United States and its precarious state. And he argues that while both public education and the influence of religion once helped to foster a public-minded citizenry, the very idea of patriotism is currently under attack. Berns finds the best answers to his questions in the thought and words of Abraham Lincoln, who understood perhaps better than anyone what the principles of democracy meant and what price adhering to them may exact. The graves at Arlington and Gettysburg and Omaha Beach in Normandy bear witness to the fact that self-interested individuals can become patriots, and Making Patriots is a compelling exploration of how this was done and how it might be again.

Download or read book Last Refuge of a Scoundrel written by Kelly Hennessy and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2020-11-06 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part epistolary novel laced with flights of magic realism escapist fantasy, part bellettrist polemic debating a shopping list of culture war topics, Last Refuge of a Scoundrel is an unusual, multifaceted and densely textured book meant to linger on your palate long after you put it down. Much of the action revolves around a bitter, protracted homeowners association dispute in north San Diego County, alternately, hilarious and enraging. It's a novel of ideas, ever strumming the

Download or read book America in the Twenties and Thirties written by Sean Dennis Cashman and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, the third volume of an interdisciplinary history of the United States since the Civil War, Sean Dennis Cashman provides a comprehensive review of politics and economics from the tawdry affluence of the 1920s throught the searing tragedy of the Great Depression to the achievements of the New Deal in providing millions with relief, job opportunities, and hope before America was poised for its ascent to globalism on the eve of World War II. The book concludes with an account of the sliding path to war as Europe and Asia became prey to the ambitions of Hitler and military opportunists in Japan. The book also surveys the creative achievements of America's lost generation of artists, writers, and intellectuals; continuing innovations in transportation and communications wrought by automobiles and airplanes, radio and motion pictures; the experiences of black Americans, labor, and America's different classes and ethnic groups; and the tragicomedy of national prohibition. The cast of characters includes FDR, the New Dealers, Eleanor Roosevelt, George W. Norris, William E. Borah, Huey Long, Henry Ford, Clarence Darrow, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, W.E.B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Orson Welles, Wendell Willkie, and the stars of radio and the silver screen. The first book in this series, America in the Gilded Age, is now accounted a classic for historiographical synthesis and stylisic polish. America in the Age of the Titans, covering the Progressive Era and World War I, and America in the Twenties and Thirties reveal the author's unerring grasp of various primary and secondary sources and his emphasis upon structures, individuals, and anecdotes about them. The book is lavishly illustrated with various prints, photographs, and reproductions from the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Download or read book Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes written by Steven B. Smith and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rediscovery of patriotism as a virtue in line with the core values of democracy in an extremist age The concept of patriotism has fallen on hard times. What was once a value that united Americans has become so politicized by both the left and the right that it threatens to rip apart the social fabric. On the right, patriotism has become synonymous with nationalism and an “us versus them” worldview, while on the left it is seen as an impediment to acknowledging important ethnic, religious, or racial identities and a threat to cosmopolitan globalism. Steven B. Smith reclaims patriotism from these extremist positions and advocates for a patriotism that is broad enough to balance loyalty to country against other loyalties. Describing how it is a matter of both the head and the heart, Smith shows how patriotism can bring the country together around the highest ideals of equality and is a central and ennobling disposition that democratic societies cannot afford to do without.

Download or read book The Patriots written by Sana Krasikov and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping multigenerational novel about idealism, betrayal, and family secrets set in the U.S. and Russia, from one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for a job in Moscow—and the promise of love and independence. But once in Russia, she quickly becomes entangled in a country she can’t escape. Many years later, Florence’s son, Julian, immigrates back to the United States, though his work in the oil industry takes him on frequent visits to Moscow. When he learns that Florence’s KGB file has been opened, he arranges a business trip to uncover the truth about his mother, and to convince his son, Lenny—trying to make his fortune in Putin’s cutthroat Russia—to return home. What Julian discovers is both chilling and heartbreaking: an untold story of a generation of Americans abandoned by their country, and the secret history of two rival nations colluding under the cover of enmity. The Patriots is a riveting evocation of the Cold War years, told with brilliant insight and extraordinary skill. Alternating between Florence’s and Julian’s perspectives, it is at once a mother-son story and a tale of two countries bound in a dialectic dance; a love story and a spy story; both a grand, old-fashioned epic and a contemporary novel of ideas. Through the history of one family moving back and forth between continents over three generations, The Patriots is a poignant tale of the power of love, the rewards and risks of friendship, and the secrets parents and children keep from one another. Praise for The Patriots “The Patriots is a historical romance in the old style: multigenerational, multi-narrative, intercontinental, laden with back stories and historical research, moving between scrupulous detail and sweeping panoramas, the first-person voice and a kaleidoscopic third, melodrama and satire, Cleveland in 1933 and Moscow in 2008.”—Nathaniel Rich, The New York Times Book Review “Dazzling and addictive . . . an outstanding family saga.”—The Spectator (U.K.) “Extraordinary . . . The Patriots has the weight of a classic."—Commentary Magazine “I found on every page an observation so acute, a sentence of such truth and shining detail, that it demanded re-reading for the sheer pleasure of it. The Patriots has convinced me that Krasikov belongs among the totemic young writers of her era.”—Khaled Hosseini, author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite Runner

Download or read book Nation Building written by Andreas Wimmer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and comprehensive look at the reasons behind successful or failed nation building Nation Building presents bold new answers to an age-old question. Why is national integration achieved in some diverse countries, while others are destabilized by political inequality between ethnic groups, contentious politics, or even separatism and ethnic war? Traversing centuries and continents from early nineteenth-century Europe and Asia to Africa from the turn of the twenty-first century to today, Andreas Wimmer delves into the slow-moving forces that encourage political alliances to stretch across ethnic divides and build national unity. Using datasets that cover the entire world and three pairs of case studies, Wimmer’s theory of nation building focuses on slow-moving, generational processes: the spread of civil society organizations, linguistic assimilation, and the states’ capacity to provide public goods. Wimmer contrasts Switzerland and Belgium to demonstrate how the early development of voluntary organizations enhanced nation building; he examines Botswana and Somalia to illustrate how providing public goods can bring diverse political constituencies together; and he shows that the differences between China and Russia indicate how a shared linguistic space may help build political alliances across ethnic boundaries. Wimmer then reveals, based on the statistical analysis of large-scale datasets, that these mechanisms are at work around the world and explain nation building better than competing arguments such as democratic governance or colonial legacies. He also shows that when political alliances crosscut ethnic divides and when most ethnic communities are represented at the highest levels of government, the general populace will identify with the nation and its symbols, further deepening national political integration. Offering a long-term historical perspective and global outlook, Nation Building sheds important new light on the challenges of political integration in diverse countries.

Download or read book The Scoundrel in Her Bed written by Lorraine Heath and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bastard son of a nobleman, Finn Trewlove was a shameful secret raised by a stranger. As Finn came of age he had secrets, too--the clandestine nights spent with an earl’s daughter. But her promise of forever ended in betrayal. Driven by a past that haunts her, Lady Lavinia Kent seeks redemption in London’s underworld, engaged in a daring cause inspired by the young man to whom she gave her innocence, and who then proved himself a scoundrel by abandoning her. When their paths cross again, they can’t deny the yearning and desire that still burns. As they discover the truth behind the deceptions that tore them apart, Finn and Lavinia must fight to reclaim what they’ve lost, no matter how dangerous—because love is worth the risk….

Download or read book The Biographical Treasury written by Samuel Maunder and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 918 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wounded Leaders written by Nick Duffell and published by Lone Arrow Press Limited. This book was released on 2016-08-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political leaders in Britain are consistently drawn from a class born to be educated away from their families in institutions - elite boarding schools. This has a direct effect on their ability to love, to relate, to make good judgments and to develop the necessary leadership qualities for today's world. In this controversial and highly acclaimed book, the author guides the reader along the elite path through boarding school and Oxbridge to government, unpacking what he calls the Entitlement Illusion. Central to the Illusion is a uniquely British phenomenon, an industrialised process for turning out servants of the Empire that has been unwilling to change with the times. It was deified in the Victorian Rational Man Project and normalised by the British public, who still buy into the trance. Up to date evidence from Neuroscience shows what a poor training for leadership this actually is.

Download or read book Samuel Johnson written by David Nokes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking portrait of Samuel Johnson, Nokes positions the great thinker in his rightful place as an active force in the Enlightenment, not a mere recorder or performer, and demonstrates how his interaction with life impacted his work.

Download or read book Essential Quotes for Scientists and Engineers written by Konstantin K. Likharev and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-27 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together about 2,500 quotations on various topics of interest to scientists and engineers, including students of STEM disciplines. Careful curation of the material by the editor provides the reader with far greater value than can be obtained by searching the internet. The quotes have been selected for various attributes including: importance of topic, depth of insight, and - not least - wit, with many of them satisfying all these criteria. To make sequential reading of the quotes more engaging, they are grouped into broad topical sections, and the entries within each section are organized thematically, forming quasi-continuous narrative threads. The text and authorship of each quote have been carefully verified, and the most popular cases of misquotation and misattribution are noted. The book represents a valuable resource for those writing science and engineering articles as well as being a joy to read in its own right.

Download or read book The Reconstruction of Patriotism written by Morris Janowitz and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A meticulous, well-tuned examination of what Janowitz says is the decline of civic thought in America, and what might be done to restore it. . . . The patriotism Janowitz proposes to reconstruct is not the sort of narrow nationalism your political science professor may have warned you about--patriotism as 'the last refuge of a scoundrel.' It is instead a patriotism that intelligently appreciates life in a (however imperfect) democratic land."--Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor "In The Reconstruction of Patriotism, Morris Janowitz . . . places a national-service program on the national agenda. . . . Like William James, Janowitz envisions government enrolling young people to work for a year or two at subsistence pay, doing jobs that benefit society--working with, say, 'conservation, health, or old-age problems.' He believes that we need a service program because since the end of the Second World War our citizens (and, indeed, citizens of almost all the advanced industrial nations) have become more keenly aware of their rights than of their obligations, and generations are growing up with little or no understanding that they are members of a national community and have responsibilities to it--that they must give as well as take. . . . Because it reopens discussion of our wider obligations and how to fulfill them, Mr. Janowitz's thoughtful book is in itself a national service."--Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker "Morris Janowitz examines an issue that seldom is subject to social and political analysis--patriotism. His thesis is clear: The long-term trend in politics has been to enhance citizen rights without effective articulation of citizen obligations. A meaningful balance between the two, he contends, must be restored. . . . The strength of this study lies in Janowitz's persuasive argument that the durability and vitality of democratic institutions require that a sense of community, or shared values, be preserved. Without civiz consciousness, he rightly observes, social and political fragmentation ensues. . . . A lucid and impressively researched polemic."--W. Wesley McDonald, American Political Science Review "Janowitz addresses a seminal issue: how to restore the sense of shared civic responsibility that has fallen victim in recent years to our growing preoccupation with individual rights and the rise of special-interest groups. . . . Central to his prescription is the revival of the concept of the citizen soldier, whose importance since pre-Revolutionary War days Janoqitz discusses at length. He concludes, 'There can be no reconstruction of patriotism without a system of national service.' . . . An important book. I highly recommend it."--Washington Monthly

Download or read book Anthropological Intelligence written by David H. Price and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-09 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVCultural history of anthropologists' involvement with U.S. intelligence agencies--as spies and informants--during World War II./div

Download or read book Crashed written by Adam Tooze and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK "An intelligent explanation of the mechanisms that produced the crisis and the response to it...One of the great strengths of Tooze's book is to demonstrate the deeply intertwined nature of the European and American financial systems."--The New York Times Book Review From the prizewinning economic historian and author of Shutdown and The Deluge, an eye-opening reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today. We live in a world where dramatic shifts in the domestic and global economy command the headlines, from rollbacks in US banking regulations to tariffs that may ignite international trade wars. But current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all—the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. With a historian’s eye for detail, connection, and consequence, Adam Tooze brings the story right up to today’s negotiations, actions, and threats—a much-needed perspective on a global catastrophe and its long-term consequences.