History Nation State

Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, deserving the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland.

This book covers a period of a little more than three-quarters of a century. It begins with the first attempt at English colonization in America, in 1576, and ends with the year 1652, when the supremacy of Parliament was recognized throughout the English colonies. The most interesting period in the history of any country is the formative period; and through the mass of recently published original material on America the opportunity to tell its story well has been of late years greatly increased. In the preparation of this work I have endeavored to consult the original sources.

This is volume 3 of 27 in The American Nation: A History, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University. This volume begins with the detailed narrative of the founding and development of the communities now included within the United States of America, and the story necessarily goes back to the discovery of the American islands and continents. Professor Bourne in his earlier chapters summarizes and restates, with many original conclusions, the controverted points with regard to the discovery of America.

The importance of the volume in the American Nation series is that it includes colonies of the three types which persisted down to the Revolution—the crown colonies, the proprietary colonies, and the three New England charter colonies. On one side the volume emphasizes the variety of conditions and experiments in government. On the other side, it brings out that characteristic that gives the volume its name, the steady determination of the colonists in all three types of colonies to enjoy self-government in internal affairs.

The culmination of years of work on Abraham Lincoln's political thought, Michael Zuckert's A Nation So Conceived argues for a coherent center to Lincoln's political ideology. Zuckert provides invaluable guidance to understanding both Lincoln and the politics of the United States between 1845 and Lincoln's death in 1865 by focusing on roughly a dozen speeches that Lincoln made during his career. This listener-friendly chronological organization is motivated by Zuckert's emphasis on Lincoln as a practical politician who was always fully aware of the political context of the moment.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a landmark document in the history of human rights, and Eleanor Roosevelt played a significant role in its development. The UDHR was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, in Paris. It was drafted by representatives from different legal and cultural backgrounds, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

In this highly original approach to the history of the United States, James Moore focuses on the extraordinary role that prayer has played in every area of American life, from the time of the first settlers to the present day and beyond.

As a reminder of God's role in the history and future of America, Newt and Callista Gingrich give listeners a look into the architecture and beauty of the nation's capital in Rediscovering God in America. Listeners will take a walk through Washington, DC, to view the nation's monuments and memorials, including the National Archives, where Thomas Jefferson's immortal words jump off the page. But this is not simply a walking tour of the city; this is a tour of American history.

In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African American, with a little more than 100 families who were "other". Currently the African American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually "Americanize".

Where did writing, culture, and agriculture begin? The Middle East is the cradle of civilization - where humankind once roamed in small groups of hunter-gatherers and foraged for food and shelter, then learned to plant crops and build structures. Today, we are an advanced civilization that has conquered the skies, oceans, and even the moon. To understand how this transformation occurred, take a brief trip back into the history of the Middle East, where it all began.

Acclaimed historian Edward Gray offers the first comprehensive narrative of the America's defining border. Formalized in 1767, the Mason-Dixon Line resolved a generations-old dispute that began with the establishment of Pennsylvania in 1681. In 1780, Pennsylvania's Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery inaugurated the next phase in the Line's history. Proslavery and antislavery sentiments had long coexisted in the Maryland-Pennsylvania borderlands, but now African Americans faced a boundary between distinct legal regimes.

In 1789, as the French Revolution shook Europe to the core, the new United States was struggling for survival in the face of financial insolvency and bitter political and regional divisions. When the United States Spoke French explores the republic's formative years from the viewpoint of a distinguished circle of five Frenchmen taking refuge in America. When the French Revolution broke out, these men had been among its leaders.

In The Browns of California, journalist and scholar Miriam Pawel weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead 140 years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance.

This audiobook begins with a look at the ancient Israelites, Greeks, and Romans - as well as medieval feudalism and Calvin's Geneva, in laying the moral foundations for both feudal Virginia and Puritan New England. It looks at some early spiritual wanderings...and a great awakening that brought American back on course - in time to fend off a British effort to end America's spirit of independence. It covers the creation of the new republic, the growing divide over slavery, and the civil war that followed.

John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross's efforts to protect the tribe's interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees to remain neutral in a war they did not support—a position that became untenable when the US withdrew its forces from Indian Territory.

Among the pressing concerns of Americans in the first century of nationhood were day-to-day survival, political harmony, exploration of the continent, foreign policy, and - fixed deeply in the collective consciousness - hell and eternal damnation. The fear of fire and brimstone and the worm that never dies exerted a profound and lasting influence on Americans' ideas about themselves, their neighbors, and the rest of the world.

Lone Star Nation is the gripping story of Texas' precarious journey to statehood, from its early colonization in the 1820s to the shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad by the Mexican army, from its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by the Comanches to its day of liberation as an upstart republic.

Letters of a Nation is a unique and timeless collection of extraordinary letters spanning more than 350 years of American history, from the arrival of the Pilgrims to the present day. Many of the more than 200 letters are published here for the first time, and the correspondents are the celebrated and obscure, the powerful and powerless, including presidents, slaves, soldiers, prisoners, explorers, writers, revolutionaries, Native Americans, artists, religious and civil rights leaders, and people from all walks of life.

"I am in Birmingham because injustice is here," declared Martin Luther King, Jr. He had come to that city of racist terror convinced that massive protest could topple Jim Crow. But the insurgency faltered. To revive it, King made a sacrificial act on Good Friday, April 12, 1963: he was arrested. Alone in his cell, reading a newspaper, he found a statement from eight "moderate" clergymen who branded the protests extremist and "untimely." King drafted a furious rebuttal that emerged as the "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

A revealing biography of Dr. Benjamin Rush - fiery signer of the Declaration of Independence, prominent physician, ardent politician, zealous social reformer, passionate humanitarian, and dedicated educator. Known primarily as America's most influential and leading physician, Rush was also among the first to call for the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, free education and health care for the poor, slum clearance, citywide sanitation facilities, an end to child labor, and universal public education, among other causes.