American Political Science

This book restores a little-known advocate of Indian rights to her place in history. In June 1889 a widowed Brooklyn artist named Catherine Weldon traveled to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to help Sitting Bull hold on to land that the government was trying to wrest from his people. Her efforts were counterproductive; she was ordered to leave the reservation, and the Standing Rock Sioux were bullied into signing away their land. But she returned with her teenage son, settling at Sitting Bull's camp on the Grand River.

The United States' role in saving Europe's intellectual elite from the Nazis is often told as a tale of triumph, which in many ways it was. America welcomed Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse, Rudolf Carnap and Richard Courant, among hundreds of other physicists, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, chemists, and linguists who transformed the American academy. Yet for every scholar who survived and thrived, many, many more did not. In this rigorously researched book, Laurel Leff rescues from obscurity scholars who were deemed "not worth saving".

Ben Shapiro uncovers the simple strategy used by liberals and their friends in the media: bully the living hell out of conservatives. Play the race card, the class card, the sexism card. Use any and every means at your disposal to demonize your opposition - to shut them up. Then pretend that such bullying is justified because, after all, conservatives are the true bullies and need to be taught a lesson for their intolerance.

In this long-awaited successor to his #1 best seller The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam describes in fascinating human detail how the shadow of Cold War Vietnam still hangs over American foreign policy, and how domestic politics have determined our role as a world power.

The Far Right's rise to power has ignited a digital civil war that rages across multiple fronts and multiple platforms. It is waged with words and images that are designed to inflict psychological harm, to injure through verbal violence, to intimidate and incite, to wreak havoc with rhetoric. The combatants are citizens, activists, politicians, pundits, coders, conspiracists, trolls, agitators, hackers, and journalists. At stake are the nation's bedrock principles: equal rights, fair elections, freedom of speech, racial justice, and the rule of law.

In The Hunting of Hillary, presidential biographer Michael D’Antonio details the years of lies and insults heaped upon Hillary Clinton as she pursued a life devoted to politics and policy. The worst took the form of sexism and misogyny, much of it barely disguised. A pioneer for women, Clinton was burdened in ways no man ever was. Defined by a right-wing conspiracy, she couldn’t declare what was happening lest she be cast as weak and whiny

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democratic values of the Revolution.

Three and a half years ago, David Sanger’s book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power described how a new American president came to office with the world on fire. Now, just as the 2012 presidential election battle begins, Sanger follows up with an eye-opening, news-packed account of how Obama has dealt with those challenges, relying on innovative weapons and reconfigured tools of American power to try to manage a series of new threats.

Throughout the 1850s, the issues of slavery and states' rights had divided the nation. With the election of 1860, these issues finally came to a head, setting the stage for the American Civil War. Compelling, action-packed text, vivid sensory details, and primary source quotes bring the story to life so that listeners feel as if they were actually alive during the historical event.

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the US national anthem. By "taking a knee", Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick's simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America's persistent racial inequality.

From the best-selling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a wonderfully insightful and sardonic look at how the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism. Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change - or at least it's supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession's victims....

Twenty-nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln has spent his entire adult life running from his past - from the poverty of the dirt-floor log cabin where he was raised, from the dominion of his uneducated father, and from a failed early courtship. But now, Lincoln's past is racing back to haunt him. It is the summer of 1838, and Springfield is embroiled in a tumultuous, violent political season. All of Springfield's elite have gathered at a grand party to celebrate the Fourth of July. Spirits are high - until a prominent local politician is assassinated in the midst of fireworks.

The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn't come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society.

At the end of the summer of 1859, 22-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than 3,000 cases - including more than 25 murder trials - during his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him.

The best-selling Unholy Alliance is now in audio! Former leftist radical David Horowitz blows the lid off the dangerous liaison between U.S. liberals and Islamic radicals. With America's battle against the disastrous force of terrorism at hand, Horowitz takes us behind the curtain of the unholy alliance between liberals and the enemy - a force with malevolent intentions, and one that Americans can no longer ignore.

American soldiers serve willingly. They risk their lives so the rest of us can be safe. The one small thing they ask is that they not be sent into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary.

An engaging mix of cutting edge research and fair-minded analysis, Divided We Fall is an unblinking look at the true dimensions and dangers of the widening ideological gap, and what could happen if we don't take steps toward bridging it. French reveals chilling, plausible scenarios of how the United States could fracture into regions that will not only weaken the country but destabilize the world.

A journalist and author of The Influence of Soros examines the history of Jewish people in America and explores their ever-evolving relationship to the nation’s culture and identity—and each other. What does it mean to be a Bad Jew? Many Jews use the term “Bad Jew” as a weapon against other members of the community or even against themselves. You can be called a Bad Jew if you don’t keep kosher; if you only go to temple on Yom Kippur; if you don’t attend or send your children to Hebrew school; if you enjoy Christmas music; if your partner isn’t Jewish; if you don’t call your mother often enough. The list is endless.

The extraordinary authority of the US presidency has no parallel in the democratic world. Today, that authority resides in the hands of one man, Donald J. Trump. But rarely if ever has the nature of a president clashed more profoundly with the nature of the office. Unmaking the Presidency tells the story of the confrontation between a person and the institution he almost wholly embodies. From the moment of his inauguration, Trump has challenged our deepest expectations of the presidency. But what are those expectations, where did they come from, and how great is the damage?

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.