Download or read book Heirs of the Founders written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

Download or read book Heirs of the Founders written by H. W. Brands and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes “a historical spellbinder” (The Christian Science Monitor) about a trio of political giants in nineteenth-century America—and their battle to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy. In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

Download or read book Heirs of the Founders written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes “a historical spellbinder” (The Christian Science Monitor) about a trio of political giants in nineteenth-century America—and their battle to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy. In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

Download or read book The Zealot and the Emancipator written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed historian and bestselling author: a page-turning account of the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin. John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery in 1854, Brown raised a band of followers to wage war. His men tore pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Three years later, Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm slaves with weapons for a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery. Brown’s violence pointed ambitious Illinois lawyer and former officeholder Abraham Lincoln toward a different solution to slavery: politics. Lincoln spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path back to Washington and perhaps to the White House. Yet his caution could not protect him from the vortex of violence Brown had set in motion. After Brown’s arrest, his righteous dignity on the way to the gallows led many in the North to see him as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded with anger and horror to a terrorist being made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle between the opposing voices of the fractured nation and won election as president. But the time for moderation had passed, and Lincoln’s fervent belief that democracy could resolve its moral crises peacefully faced its ultimate test. The Zealot and the Emancipator is the thrilling account of how two American giants shaped the war for freedom.

Download or read book The General vs the President written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. "A highly readable take on the clash of two titanic figures in a period of hair-trigger nuclear tensions.... History offers few antagonists with such dramatic contrasts, and Brands brings these two to life." —Los Angeles Times At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world, when he suggested that General Douglas MacArthur, the willful, fearless, and highly decorated commander of the American and U.N. forces, had his finger on the nuclear trigger. At a time when the Soviets, too, had the bomb, the specter of a catastrophic third World War lurked menacingly close on the horizon. A correction quickly followed, but the damage was done; two visions for America’s path forward were clearly in opposition, and one man would have to make way. The contest of wills between these two titanic characters unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of a faraway war and terrors conjured at home by Joseph McCarthy. From the drama of Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin to the daring landing of MacArthur’s forces at Inchon to the shocking entrance of China into the war, The General and the President vividly evokes the making of a new American era.

Download or read book Heirs of the Reformation written by James McGoldrick and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book These Truths A History of the United States written by Jill Lepore and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

Download or read book Dreams of El Dorado written by H. W. Brands and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope" (Hampton Sides), this masterfully told account of the American West from a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist sets a new standard as it sweeps from the California Gold Rush and beyond. In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame-and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East. Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

Download or read book Preparing Heirs written by Roy Orville Williams and published by Author's Choice Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preparing Heirs discloses the surprising findings from the authors' research into the legacies of 3,250 wealthy families. With extraordinary insight, they reveal what the relatively small number of successful families had in common-how they achieved and maintained family harmony, and ensured the smooth transition of their wealth to well-adjusted heirs. They also warn of the wide range of factors that cause the majority of wealthy families to fail in their transition. Preparing Heirs offers clear, concise, well-organized, and easy-to-follow instructions that will enable you to evaluate your plan for transitioning family wealth. Preparing Heirs is an assessment tool that can be used in conjunction with the services of qualified professionals such as attorneys and accountants. It addresses the major causes for the 70% failure rate in estate transitions, which lie within the family itself and are within the family's control. This book can help you develop a plan to transmit the family values underlying the accumulation of wealth and prepare your heirs to be good stewards and thoughtful administrators of that wealth.

Download or read book American Dialogue written by Joseph J. Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning author of Founding Brothers and The Quartet now gives us a deeply insightful examination of the relevance of the views of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams to some of the most divisive issues in America today. The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts. He discusses Jefferson and the issue of racism, Adams and the specter of economic inequality, Washington and American imperialism, Madison and the doctrine of original intent. Through these juxtapositions--and in his hallmark dramatic and compelling narrative voice--Ellis illuminates the obstacles and pitfalls paralyzing contemporary discussions of these fundamentally important issues.

Download or read book What Would the Founders Do written by Richard Brookhiser and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-08-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would George Washington do about weapons of mass destruction? How would Benjamin Franklin feel about unwed mothers? What would Alexander Hamilton think about minorities in the military? Examining a host of issues from terrorism to women's rights, acclaimed historian Richard Brookhiser reveals why we still turn to the Founders in moments of struggle, farce, or disaster. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams and all the rest have an unshakable hold on our collective imagination. We trust them more than today's politicians because they built our country, they wrote our user's manuals-the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution-and they ran the nation while it was still under warranty and could be returned to the manufacturer. If anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, it must be the Founders. Brookhiser uses his vast knowledge to apply their views to today's issues. He also explores why what the Founders would think still matters. Written with Brookhiser's trademark eloquence and wit, while drawing on his deep understanding of American history, What Would the Founders Do? sheds new light on the disagreements and debates that have shaped our country from the beginning. Now, more than ever, we need the Founders-inspiring, argumentative, amusing know-it-alls-to help us work through the issues that divide us.

Download or read book Empire of Pain written by Patrick Radden Keefe and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing. "A real-life version of the HBO series Succession with a lethal sting in its tail…a masterful work of narrative reportage.” – Laura Miller, Slate The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, but the source of the family fortune was vague—until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Empire of Pain is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Empire of Pain is a ferociously compelling portrait of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

Download or read book Illusion written by Martina Boone and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Barrie must rescue her beloved and her family from evil spirits that cursed Watson Island centuries ago"--

Download or read book William Howard Taft written by Jeffrey Rosen and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only man to serve as president and chief justice, who approached every decision in constitutional terms, defending the Founders’ vision against new populist threats to American democracy William Howard Taft never wanted to be president and yearned instead to serve as chief justice of the United States. But despite his ambivalence about politics, the former federal judge found success in the executive branch as governor of the Philippines and secretary of war, and he won a resounding victory in the presidential election of 1908 as Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor. In this provocative assessment, Jeffrey Rosen reveals Taft’s crucial role in shaping how America balances populism against the rule of law. Taft approached each decision as president by asking whether it comported with the Constitution, seeking to put Roosevelt’s activist executive orders on firm legal grounds. But unlike Roosevelt, who thought the president could do anything the Constitution didn’t forbid, Taft insisted he could do only what the Constitution explicitly allowed. This led to a dramatic breach with Roosevelt in the historic election of 1912, which Taft viewed as a crusade to defend the Constitution against the demagogic populism of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Nine years later, Taft achieved his lifelong dream when President Warren Harding appointed him chief justice, and during his years on the Court he promoted consensus among the justices and transformed the judiciary into a modern, fully equal branch. Though he had chafed in the White House as a judicial president, he thrived as a presidential chief justice.

Download or read book Calhoun written by Robert Elder and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession—the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today. John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition," which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union—and arguably set the nation on course for civil war. Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest, and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.

Download or read book The Mongol Empire written by John Man and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genghis Khan is one of history's immortals: a leader of genius, driven by an inspiring vision for peaceful world rule. Believing he was divinely protected, Genghis united warring clans to create a nation and then an empire that ran across much of Asia. Under his grandson, Kublai Khan, the vision evolved into a more complex religious ideology, justifying further expansion. Kublai doubled the empire's size until, in the late 13th century, he and the rest of Genghis’s ‘Golden Family’ controlled one fifth of the inhabited world. Along the way, he conquered all China, gave the nation the borders it has today, and then, finally, discovered the limits to growth. Genghis's dream of world rule turned out to be a fantasy. And yet, in terms of the sheer scale of the conquests, never has a vision and the character of one man had such an effect on the world. Charting the evolution of this vision, John Man provides a unique account of the Mongol Empire, from young Genghis to old Kublai, from a rejected teenager to the world’s most powerful emperor.

Download or read book The Libraries Leadership Legacy of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson written by Robert C. Baron and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about two special men and their time. But it is also about friendship, books and libraries, reading, understanding the wisdom of the past, and acting on this knowledge. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were among the great library builders of their age. They used the information in their books to guide them and, in their retirement, they articulated the role of books and ideas in their lives. Their lives were intertwined; they documented in letters and other writings what they felt, thought, and did. Except for the few years when they were political enemies, they were friends who shared ideas and engaged in one of the most distinguished correspondences in American history or letters. Introspective, reflective, and remarkably informed, these men tested each other's understanding of the previous half century of the nation's political, economic, and social development at the same time that they shared credit as founding fathers for much of what America had become. The year 2009 marked the bicentennial of Thomas Jefferson leaving the presidency and returning to Monticello-and also the start of the rebuilding of the friendship between Adams and Jefferson. Jefferson wrote to Adams in 1815, "I cannot live without books." And Adams wrote, "We ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other." And so they did in their correspondence as they reviewed the Revolution, the Constitution, and ideas on democracy from the Greeks to the Enlightenment. In June 2009, a weeklong conference called "John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Libraries, Leadership, and Legacy" was held initially in Boston and then in Charlottesville. Thirty-two scholars presented papers on these two great Americans and the ideas they shared. Speakers came from twenty institutions in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The conference was sponsored by seven national organizations, including the Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello. Book jacket.