Signing Their Lives Away


Book Description

Presents the lives, deaths, and scandals involving the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, including John Adams, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson.




The Meaning of Independence


Book Description

In this updated edition, the author provides a new preface to address a few remaining concerns he has pondered in the quarter century since first publication.Tag: A classic work on the founding by the author of the bestselling Benjamin Frankli




The Soldier from Independence


Book Description

Revealing the little-known facts of Harry Truman's remarkable military performance, as a soldier and as a politician, The Soldier from Independence adds a whole new dimension to the already fascinating character of the thirty-third president of the United States. D. M. Giangreco shows how, as a field artillery battery commander in World War I, Truman was already making the hard decisions that he knew to be right, regardless of personal consequences. Truman oversaw the conclusion of the Second World War, stood up to Stalin, and met the test of North Korea's invasion of the South. He also had the fortitude to defy Gen. Douglas MacArthur, one of America's most revered wartime leaders, and ultimately fired the Far East commander, often characterized as the American Caesar. Filling in the details behind these world-changing events, this military biography supplies a heretofore missing--and critical--chapter in the story of one of the nation's most important presidents. The Soldier from Independence recounts the World War I military adventure that would mark a turning point in the life of a humble man who would go on to become commander in chief.




Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality


Book Description

“A tour de force.... No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Hurston Wright Legacy Award Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Selection Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy).




She Proclaims


Book Description

Take action and shatter the glass ceiling with this empowering and optimistic feminist guide from the #1 New York Timesbestselling author of Dear Madam President. In an era marked by a frustrating sense of stagnation for women, Jennifer Palmieri has found a way to move beyond the bounds of patriarchy. Building on the lessons shared in Dear Madam President, Palmieri argues that women have gone as far as they can in a world made for men, and it is time to break from it. She Proclaims declares what most women know in their souls but have yet to say out loud-that they deserve something better than a life where men hold a vast majority of power and women continue to be undervalued. It is a manifesto for the second century of feminism that no longer chases a man's elusive path but proclaims the value, ambition, and emotion women have had all along to change their world by changing how they engage in it. This book celebrates the accomplishments and history of the women's movement, and through personal reflections and stories of other inspirational female leaders, Jennifer shares concrete advice and insights she's learned from her journey out of a man's world that will inspire you to boldly chart your own course in life.




The Declaration of Independence


Book Description

In a stunningly original look at the American Declaration of Independence, David Armitage reveals the document in a new light: through the eyes of the rest of the world. Not only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow. Armitage examines the Declaration as a political, legal, and intellectual document, and is the first to treat it entirely within a broad international framework. He shows how the Declaration arose within a global moment in the late eighteenth century similar to our own. He uses over one hundred declarations of independence written since 1776 to show the influence and role the U.S. Declaration has played in creating a world of states out of a world of empires. He discusses why the framers’ language of natural rights did not resonate in Britain, how the document was interpreted in the rest of the world, whether the Declaration established a new nation or a collection of states, and where and how the Declaration has had an overt influence on independence movements—from Haiti to Vietnam, and from Venezuela to Rhodesia. Included is the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and sample declarations from around the world. An eye-opening list of declarations of independence since 1776 is compiled here for the first time. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world.




The Man of Independence


Book Description

Having worked closely with Harry S. Truman in the triumphant campaign of 1948, Jonathan Daniels believed that President Truman was an "everyday" American, an ordinary human who aspired to greatness and achieved it. Thus, it was Daniels's intention that The Man of Independence not be a conventional biography; rather, he wanted it to reveal in real terms "the Odyssey of the 'everyday' American through our times." As a result, this comprehensive work not only presents Truman's life, it also details the development of the America in which the president grew up. Truman spent his youth and his political life believing that old- fashioned, determined conservatism was vital to the preservation of personal liberty. Daniels re-creates Truman's remarkable journey through life--employing newspapers, letters, memos, family papers, as well as interviews with Truman, his family, and his close acquaintances. In the process, Daniels provides powerful evocations of the time during which Truman lived. Daniels tells this extraordinary story by following this simple farm boy from Missouri through his youth and his years as a farmer, a veteran, and a businessman, on to his early career in politics, and then his presidency. Along the way, Daniels deals with issues, events, and ideas that were part of Missouri and American politics in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s; ultimately, he gives us the Truman who was to become the legend. This inside account provides thought-provoking and personal information about Truman. His relationship with Thomas Pendergast, the seeming conflict between Truman's midwestern conservatism and his belief in equality for American blacks, and his momentous decision to use the atomic bomb to end the war--these are just a few of the topics touched on. Ending in 1949 when Truman was for the second time sworn in as president, The Man of Independence provides a fascinating and valuable look at one of America's most important and beloved presidents, as well as a crucial look at the America from which he emerged.




Brothers at Arms


Book Description

Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution 2016 Book of the Year Award At the time the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord the American colonists had little chance, if any, of militarily defeating the British. The nascent American nation had no navy, little in the way of artillery, and a militia bereft even of gunpowder. In his detailed accounts Larrie Ferreiro shows that without the extensive military and financial support of the French and Spanish, the American cause would never have succeeded. Ferreiro adds to the historical records the names of French and Spanish diplomats, merchants, soldiers, and sailors whose contribution is at last given recognition. Instead of viewing the American Revolution in isolation, Brothers at Arms reveals the birth of the American nation as the centerpiece of an international coalition fighting against a common enemy.




Day of Independence


Book Description

The Greatest Western Writer Of The 21st Century William Johnstone is acclaimed for his American frontier chronicles. A national bestseller, the legendary storyteller, along with J.A. Johnstone, has written a powerful new novel set in Texas--one century after the Revolutionary War. . . Liberty--Or Die For It One hundred years ago, American patriots picked up rifles and fought against British tyranny. That was Boston. There the enemy was King George III and his British troops. Now, In Last Chance, Texas, in the Big Bend River country, it's Abraham Hacker, a ruthless cattle baron who will slaughter anyone who tries to lay claim to the fertile land and everything on it. For Last Chance, freedom is under siege one violent act at a time. Until wounded Texas Ranger Hank Cannan arrives in town. Seeing the terrorized townfolk, Cannan is ready to start a second revolution. It's going to take a lot of guts. But one way or the other, Cannan is out to set Last Chance free--with bullets, blood, and a willingness to kill--or die--for the American right of freedom. . .




Inventing America


Book Description

From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society. "No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has . . . The results are little short of astonishing" —(Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books)