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America for Americans

Author : Erika Lee

Publisher : Basic Books

Page : 432 pages

File Size : 48,12 MB

Release : 2019-11-26

Category : History

ISBN : 1541672593

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Book Description

This definitive history of American xenophobia is "essential reading for anyone who wants to build a more inclusive society" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist). The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. In America for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our nation from the colonial era to the Trump era. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their "strange and foreign ways." Americans' anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, and Mexicans deported. Today, Americans fear Muslims, Latinos, and the so-called browning of America. Forcing us to confront this history, Lee explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens America. Now updated with an epilogue reflecting on how the coronavirus pandemic turbocharged xenophobia, America for Americans is an urgent spur to action for any concerned citizen.



Exceptional America

Author : Mugambi Jouet

Publisher : Univ of California Press

Page : 373 pages

File Size : 14,41 MB

Release : 2017-04-03

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0520966465

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Book Description

Why did Donald Trump follow Barack Obama into the White House? Why is America so polarized? And how does American exceptionalism explain these social changes? In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war. Raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, Jouet then lived in the Bible Belt, Manhattan, and beyond. Drawing inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville, he wields his multicultural sensibility to parse how the intense polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has become a key dimension of American exceptionalism—an idea widely misunderstood as American superiority. While exceptionalism once was a source of strength, it may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts. They also shed light on the intriguing ideological evolution of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism. Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world—Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Exceptional America dissects the American soul, in all of its peculiar, clashing, and striking manifestations.



Of Men and Their Making

Author : John Steinbeck

Publisher : Allan Lane

Page : 456 pages

File Size : 26,48 MB

Release : 2002

Category : Literary Collections

ISBN :

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Book Description

Steinbeck's writing was fuelled by a need to observe things firsthand, whether as a journalist or novelist. The huge success of The Grapes of Wrath enabled him to travel the world, ceaselessly writing about the great events of each decade. This collection brings together the greatest of those dispatches - from countries as diverse as Vietnam, Britain, Morocco and Italy. In addition, it reproduces 'America and the Americans', a gripping account of the US in the 1960s based on Steinbeck's observations on racism, moral decline & the environment. The extremely enjoyable book makes an important point about Steinbeck's oeuvre, showing just how important journalism was to his career as a writer.



These Truths: A History of the United States

Author : Jill Lepore

Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company

Page : 733 pages

File Size : 32,53 MB

Release : 2018-09-18

Category : History

ISBN : 0393635252

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Book Description

“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.



Made in America

Author : Claude S. Fischer

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 523 pages

File Size : 30,54 MB

Release : 2010-05-15

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0226251454

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Book Description

Our nation began with the simple phrase, “We the People.” But who were and are “We”? Who were we in 1776, in 1865, or 1968, and is there any continuity in character between the we of those years and the nearly 300 million people living in the radically different America of today? With Made in America, Claude S. Fischer draws on decades of historical, psychological, and social research to answer that question by tracking the evolution of American character and culture over three centuries. He explodes myths—such as that contemporary Americans are more mobile and less religious than their ancestors, or that they are more focused on money and consumption—and reveals instead how greater security and wealth have only reinforced the independence, egalitarianism, and commitment to community that characterized our people from the earliest years. Skillfully drawing on personal stories of representative Americans, Fischer shows that affluence and social progress have allowed more people to participate fully in cultural and political life, thus broadening the category of “American” —yet at the same time what it means to be an American has retained surprising continuity with much earlier notions of American character. Firmly in the vein of such classics as The Lonely Crowd and Habits of the Heart—yet challenging many of their conclusions—Made in America takes readers beyond the simplicity of headlines and the actions of elites to show us the lives, aspirations, and emotions of ordinary Americans, from the settling of the colonies to the settling of the suburbs.



A First Book in American History

Author : Edward Eggleston

Publisher : Franklin Classics

Page : 234 pages

File Size : 13,59 MB

Release : 2018-10-12

Category :

ISBN : 9780342573820

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Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.



American Like Me

Author : America Ferrera

Publisher : Gallery Books

Page : 336 pages

File Size : 19,42 MB

Release : 2019-09-03

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 1501180924

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Book Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Academy Award–nominated actress and 2023 SeeHer award recipient America Ferrera comes a vibrant and varied collection of first-person accounts from prominent figures about the experience of growing up between cultures. America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents’ homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday-morning-salsa-dance-parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative. Now, in American Like Me, America invites thirty-one of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all. Ranging from the heartfelt to the hilarious, their stories shine a light on a quintessentially American experience and will appeal to anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up.



Forgotten Americans

Author : Isabel Sawhill

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 268 pages

File Size : 14,2 MB

Release : 2018-09-25

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0300241062

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Book Description

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.



American Hate

Author : Arjun Singh Sethi

Publisher : The New Press

Page : 150 pages

File Size : 30,17 MB

Release : 2018-08-07

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 1620973723

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Book Description

“Amid the ugly realities of contemporary America, American Hate affirms our courage and inspiration, opening a roadmap to reconciliation by means of the victims' own words.” —NPR Books “The collection offers possible solutions for how people, on their own or working with others, can confront hate.” —San Francisco Chronicle An NPR Best Book of 2018 A San Francisco Chronicle Books Pick One of Bitch Media's “13 Books Feminists Should Read in August” One of Paste Magazine's “The 10 Best Books of August 2018” A moving and timely collection of testimonials from people impacted by hate before and after the 2016 presidential election In American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, Arjun Singh Sethi, a community activist and civil rights lawyer, chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities. We hear from the family of Khalid Jabara, who was murdered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in August 2016 by a man who had previously harassed and threatened them because they were Arab American. Sethi brings us the story of Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented mother of four who took sanctuary in a Denver church in February 2017 because she feared deportation under Trump's cruel immigration enforcement regime. Sethi interviews Taylor Dumpson, a young black woman who was elected student body president at American University only to find nooses hanging across campus on her first day in office. We hear from many more people impacted by the Trump administration, including Native, black, Arab, Latinx, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, undocumented, refugee, transgender, queer, and people with disabilities. A necessary book for these times, American Hate explores this tragic moment in U.S. history by empowering survivors whose voices white supremacists and right-wing populist movements have tried to silence. It also provides ideas and practices for resistance that all of us can take to combat hate both now and in the future.



What Does It Mean to Be American?

Author : Rana DiOrio

Publisher : Little Pickle Press

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 37,42 MB

Release : 2019-03-15

Category : JUVENILE NONFICTION

ISBN : 9781492683803

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Book Description

An engaging picture book for children that celebrates what it means to be American--regardless of politics What does it mean to be American? Does it mean you like apple pie or fireworks? Not exactly. While politics seem to divide our country into the two opposing teams of red and blue, one truth remains: we are all Americans. But what does that mean? This continuation of the popular What Does It Mean to Be...? series provides a nonpartisan point of view perfect for any and all Americans who are proud of who they are--and where they come from, regardless of their political views. Other Titles in the What Does It Mean to Be...? Series: What Does It Mean to Be Present? What Does It Mean to Be Global? What Does It Mean to Be Kind?