A call to arms by the former presidential candidate that combines personal anecdotes and cultural critiques to remind liberals of their ideological compass and restore confidence. George McGovern has been a leading figure of the Democratic Party for more than fifty years. From this true liberal comes a thoughtful examination of what being a Democrat really means. McGovern admonishes current Democratic politicians for losing sight of their ideals as they subscribe to an increasingly centrist policy agenda. Applying his wide- ranging knowledge and expertise on issues ranging from military spending to same-sex marriage to educational reform, he stresses the importance of creating policies we can be proud of. Finally, with 2012 looming, McGovern's What It Means to Be a Democrat offers a vision of the Party's future in which ideological coherence and courage rule.
In this book, George McGovern lays out a workable and affordable five-point program to end world hunger. And in the midst of this heated debate one compelling moral issue is clear--every major religion and ethical formulation commands its adherents to feed the hungry. We feed the hungry because it is right. McGoven contends that it will also be economically beneficial to all.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Raw and riveting . . . A compassionate reminder that every alcoholic was once somebody’s baby.”—USA Today Just before Christmas 1994 Terry McGovern was found frozen to death in a snowbank in Madison, Wisconsin, where she had stumbled out of a bar and fallen asleep in the cold. Just forty-five years old, she had been an alcoholic most of her life. Now, in this harrowing and intimate reminiscence, her father, former Senator George McGovern, examines her diaries, interviews her friends and doctors, sifts through medical records, and searches for the lovely but fragile young woman who had waged a desperate, lifelong battle with her illness. What emerges is the portrait of a woman who was loved by everyone but herself. Surrounded by devoted parents, caring siblings, and two young daughters of her own, Terry maintained an appearance of control but was haunted by the twin demons of alcohol and depression. Her story is a heartbreaking tale of her attempts at sobriety, the McGovern family’s efforts to help her—and the failure of both. With courage and compassion, George McGovern addresses a private tragedy with an honesty rarely achieved by a public figure, looking candidly at his inability to save his child. A primer for other families who live with addiction, McGovern’s book is filled with wisdom and an understanding that can come only from sharing his tremendous loss with others. Praise for Terry “Harrowing, riveting . . . A family drama of love and loss.”—The New York Times Book Review “An agonized cry from the heart . . . McGovern’s abiding love for his daughter, and his anguish at the thought of failing her, scorch these pages.”—Newsweek “Haunting . . . speaks for all families engaged in the private struggles of addiction.”—Washington Post “The loving chronicle of a daughter who lost her life and a father who could not keep her alive . . . a simple, moving story that would touch the heart of any parent.”—Houston Chronicle
Liberalism is the oldest and most enduring American tradition, a philosophy and way of life we inherited from the Founding Fathers. This is the central idea of The Essential America by George McGovern, America's best-known (and most consistent) liberal. Referring us to our moral and spiritual foundations, McGovern not only presents a resounding defense of liberalism as "the most practical and hopeful compass to guide the American ship of state" but offers specific proposals for keeping the tradition vibrant. The Essential America proposes programs for feeding the world's malnourished children. Rather than sending our armies abroad, McGovern spells out policies that confront the causes of terrorism. He proposes cutting our military budget (echoing Dwight D. Eisenhower's powerful warning about the military-industrial complex). He condemns preemptive war, criticizes tax cuts for the rich, and warns against government for the powerful minority. Americans have traditionally stood for progress, generosity, tolerance, and protection of the needy, McGovern states -- as well as for multi- lateralism in foreign policy and "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." He reminds us that while creative tension between liberalism and conservatism is the genius of American politics, it is the liberals who have been responsible for every forward step in our national history. They built "the Essential America.
In his provocative and compelling new book, America’s most widely read and most influential commentator casts his gimlet eye on our singular nation. Moving far beyond the strict confines of politics, George F. Will offers a fascinating look at the people, stories, and events–often unheralded–that make the American drama so endlessly entertaining and instructive. With Will’s signature erudition and wry wit always on display, One Man’s America chronicles a spectacular, eclectic procession of figures who have shaped our cultural landscape–from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., from Victorian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from cotton picker— turned—country singer Buck Owens to actor-turned-president Ronald Reagan. Will crisscrosses the country to illuminate what it is that makes America distinctive. He visits the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and ponders its enduring links to the present. He travels to Milwaukee to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of an iconic brand, Harley-Davidson. In Los Angeles he finds the inspiring future of education, while in New York he confronts the dispiriting didacticism of the avant-garde. He ventures to the Civil War battlefields of Virginia to explore what we risk when we efface our own history. And on the outskirts of Chicago he investigates one of the darkest chapters in American history, only to discover a shining example of resilience and grace–the best the country has to offer. Will’s wide lens takes in much more as well–everything from the “most emblematic novel of the 1930s” (and no, it is not about the Joads) to the cult of ESPN to Brooks Brothers and Ben & Jerry’s. And of course, One Man’s America would not be complete without the author’s insights on the national pastime, baseball–the icons and the cheats, the hapless and the greats. Finally, in a personal and reflective turn, Will writes movingly of his thirty-five-year-old son Jon, born with Down syndrome, and pays loving and poignant tribute to his mother, who died at the age of ninety-eight after a long struggle with dementia. The essays in One Man’s America, even when critiquing American culture, reflect Will’s deep affection and regard for our nation. After all, he notes, when America falls short, it does so only as compared to “the uniquely high standards it has set for itself.” In the end, this brilliantly informative and entertaining book reminds us of the enduring value of “the simple virtues and decencies that can make communities flourish and that have made America great and exemplary.”
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography* *Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography* *Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize* "Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it."--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review "By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself."--David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.
The 1960s were a colorful, tumultuous age that transformed American society. Ever since the decade ended, Americans have debated the changes that it unleashed. While most liberals argue that the era’s eff ects were mainly positi ve and long overdue, conservati ves perceive the 1960s as a disastrous ti me that has left ruinous legacies for us. Stuck in the Sixti es analyzes conservati ves’ views about the 1960s era and its legacies by examining their discourse about such sixti es fi gures and movements as John F. Kennedy, Marti n Luther King, Jr., the civil-rights movement, the Warren Court, the Great Society, the Vietnam War, the anti war movement, the New Left , and the counterculture. The book reveals that, for a generati on, a focus on att acking and reversing the legacies of the 1960s has been essenti al to the conservati ve Republican agenda.
When George Bristol first saw the mountains surrounding East Glacier, Montana, in the early summer of 1961, he was, in his own words, awed to his depths. Thus began a love affair with nature and public parks that has endured for more than fifty years. This same love affair would lead Bristol to become a crusader for America’s national parks and, later, to be largely credited for the rescue of the ailing public park system in his home state. In On Politics and Parks, Bristol tells his own story in lively prose that includes many intriguing peeks at behind-the-scenes events in Washington, Austin, and elsewhere. Beginning with his upbringing by a widowed young mother with a passion for music and literature, he narrates the converging of influences that led him to an influential political career, including active involvement in national campaigns for Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Lloyd Bentsen, and Jimmy Carter. After working for the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, Bristol was asked to join President Clinton’s administration. However, what he really wanted was a place on the board of the National Park Foundation (NPF). With decades-old images of Glacier still burning brightly in his memory, he helped spearhead efforts to elevate the image of the National Park Service and helped establish a highly successful fundraising strategy for the NPF, giving both organizations greater national awareness and stature. Having acquired a well-earned reputation for fundraising and effective advocacy, Bristol soon began to do for his home state what he had done for the NPF: solidify support and funding for the Texas park system. Over ten years and five legislative sessions, Bristol, through the Texas Coalition for Conservation, the nonprofit organization he founded, fought for the full claim of Texas state parks to the sporting goods tax. Utilizing his many contacts, his well-honed political sense, and his dogged patience, he forged an alliance that would win the day for everyone who loves the state’s public lands. In 2007, in the last bill passed on the last day of the session, the Texas legislature nearly doubled the operating budget for parks. On Politics and Parks is at once a lesson in conservation history and a captivating personal memoir that will inform, entertain, and inspire all those who share Bristol’s love for the unspoiled beauty of the outdoors and his commitment to preserve that beauty for future generations. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.
America has long been viewed as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. After all, it's the home of the American dream, democracy, and capitalism. Yet over the years, our society has slowly moved down the path of socialism by members of our own government. Our elected members of Congress no longer serve the people, only themselves and their personal agenda. It's time we put a stop to their intentional abuse and reset the system. But how? We've Lost Our Way attempts to answer this question. George Damroth points out how this nation has gone astray, puts the issues in perspective, and offers some reasonable solutions. It's not one political party that is the cause of our problems-it's the system and the people who control it. The struggle to keep the American dream alive is not lost. Change is possible, and the ideas offered in this book are straightforward and relatively easy to implement-less members in the House of Representatives, more technologically advanced voting strategies, an increased focus on states' rights, to name a few. We might have lost our way, but we can find it again-all we have to do is take the first step.
America knew George Zimmer for one of the most famous slogans in television advertising history: “I guarantee it.” Zimmer rode his promise to lead the Men’s Wearhouse to unimagined success as a retail giant. Now, years removed from his stunning dismissal as leader of the company he founded, I Guarantee It recounts the journey of Zimmer’s rise, the fall of the Men’s Wearhouse, and his personal renewal. For forty-one years, George Zimmer forged a relationship with American men who wanted to like the way they looked without getting too fussy about it. He made them a promise that came straight from the shoulder: “I guarantee it,” he said, and it was ironclad. By the millions, customers walked into The Men’s Wearhouse stores in all fifty states and Canada, where they received “quality, service, and a good price,” where they bought suits, ties, sports coats, and slacks by the tens of billions of dollars. Then a backstabbing — the handpicked board of directors fired Zimmer from the company he had created and developed into the most successful men’s specialty store in world history. Eight years later, Zimmer is back to tell his story: a man raised by a prosperous and loving family, a fun-loving son of the sixties, a merchant, an entrepreneur, a pitchman for the ages. Zimmer’s ouster devastated but did not destroy him. His is a story of hard work and resilience, about a life in business that succeeded beyond belief and followed the Golden Rule. It’s a story that will teach and inspire. He guarantees it.
In the beginning of Michael Row Your Boat Ashore Mickey Durrence has been a fugitive from justice for twenty years after a botched bomb explosion killed several people. He had met and fallen in love with a woman with whom he had been living for two years under the alias of Michael McGinnis, when he believes he has been recognized. He tells Jeannie of his previous life and why he must run again; however, they both confess their love for each other which makes it impossible for him to go. She persuades him to contact two of his radical student leader friends, Bart Jamison, now a wealthy business man and Congressman Tom Cosgrove, to see if they would be willing to help him if he turns himself in. He contacts Grace, another from the movement and Barts wife, who promises to help if she can, but she fails to convince her husband, who is in some trouble with federal regulators over some of his questionable business practices, to use his influence. However Tom promises to help. When Greta, his wife another of the group and the political brain behind his success, learns of it she conspires with Bart to stop him by betraying Mickey. They also start an affair, one of many for both of them. When Mickey is surrounded by the FBI, he becomes enraged, charges out of the house brandishing a poker and is killed. The story is a sensation in all the national media. The last member of the group, Hank Stackpole, who had been the comic in the group and the one to everyone had turned for counsel, is a psychologist in Central Florida and a widower with two children. He learns of the tragedy and is deeply troubled. Mickeys companion, Jeannie contacts him and asks him to come to Maine for the funeral. He goes and is very impressed with Jeannie and offers to help her any way he can. Grace and Bart have a huge fight over Mickeys death, even though she knows nothing of his betrayal. Bart heads for Washington, but he is waylaid by a drinking bout in a motel on the way. In the meantime Tom is called up to his son Morgans school in Connecticut to learn that the boy is heavily involved with drugs. The headmaster helps get him into a drug abuse rehabilitation facility in Virginia near Washington. Bart gets to DC and meets Greta in a motel, where they make love and she agrees to help him with his legal problems by sharing with him information about some of the influential people in the government. They both mock their respective spouses for their constantly hankering for those wonderful days in the movement. Grace has become despondent over Mickeys death and her failure to help. This aggravates an already disturbing depression. She is living in luxury because of Bart, and she feels guilty because she never followed through on her desire to utilize her social work degree and help poor people. In her despair she contacts their old friend Hank for help. He is delighted, because he had once been in love with his roommates girlfriend, and they arrange for her to come to Florida to see him. At about the same time Jeannie learns that the authoritys finding Michael was not accidental, because they had found out about Toms way of contacting them through a personals ad in the New York Times, which read Michael Row Your Boat Ashore. She reasons that it must have been Tom who betrayed him. She calls Hank with her suspicions, and he gets her to promise not to do anything until he had a chance to deal with the situation, because he doesnt believe that Tom would betray his old friend. Hank calls Tom, who says that he had wanted to contact Hank to talk. They arrange for Tom to come to Florida to see Hank. It is to be at the same time as Grace is coming. In the meantime, since Grace is going to be out of town, Bart arranges to meet with Greta at their home in Georgetown. Morgan runs
Optical character recognition (OCR) is the most prominent and successful example of pattern recognition to date. There are thousands of research papers and dozens of OCR products. Optical Character Rcognition: An Illustrated Guide to the Frontier offers a perspective on the performance of current OCR systems by illustrating and explaining actual OCR errors. The pictures and analysis provide insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current OCR systems, and a road map to future progress. Optical Character Recognition: An Illustrated Guide to the Frontier will pique the interest of users and developers of OCR products and desktop scanners, as well as teachers and students of pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, and information retrieval. The first chapter compares the character recognition abilities of humans and computers. The next four chapters present 280 illustrated examples of recognition errors, in a taxonomy consisting of Imaging Defects, Similar Symbols, Punctuation, and Typography. These examples were drawn from large-scale tests conducted by the authors. The final chapter discusses possible approaches for improving the accuracy of today's systems, and is followed by an annotated bibliography. Optical Character Recognition: An Illustrated Guide to the Frontier is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course on pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, and information retrieval, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.
Southeast Asia: A Testament covers the tragic history of post war Indonesia from its successful struggle against the Dutch to Suharto's bloody overthrow of Sukarno in 1965. It also gives a personal account of the US involvement in Indochina, where George Kahin was an early critic of the Vietnam war and struggled to open the eyes of policy makers to the historical, political and military realities of the Vietnamese situation. Kahin also witnessed the reluctant involvement of Cambodia in the conflict, and the 1970 coup against Prince Sihanouk which paved the way for the Communist accession to power. This book will be of interest to students of American diplomatic and foreign policy, Asian studies, and international relations. It is an engagingly written, often poignant personal account of George Kahin's experiences in Southeast Asia, ad as such will also appeal to the general reader.
The ability to kill without thought or remorse was bred into Rory from a very young age. Forced to live all alone by bigotry and ignorance he was isolated from the society of the day, with only a grandmother as support. He was born into the world with a German father and Scottish mother just after the First World War. His father’s subsequent death meant he was forced to raise himself in a wild place high in the Scottish mountains, where just surviving was extremely difficult. It was just before the outbreak of World War II that he came in contact with other male company as troops were sent into the mountains for training. Attracted to their disciplines and comradeship Rory was drawn into their world. He gained their respect and trust and felt for the first time in his life, needed. Once the conflict was over however he had felt lost. He had been unable to return to his former life and eventually he decided to enlist. With his raw talents for survival, including killing without regret and with his physical attributes far above the norm, he rose quickly into a person to be respected in this new life. Forming a close association with another recruit, they slowly became noted as something different and were soon promoted. This bond grew through years of service with the SAS and close encounters with enemy forces in many parts of the world. It was extremely valuable deep in enemy jungle and fighting as a small team, harassing much larger forces in the post war military struggle in Burma. Only when he was tested to the limit in frightening circumstances, which resulted in the death of his friend, did Rory crack. He was pitted against horrendous physical odds in a cruel jungle, which brought him to the edge of death. It was the unexpected appearance of the dreaded enemy leader who was to blame for Rory’s tragic killing of his friend that snapped him back to reality determined to seek revenge. The stalking and planning of this Russian’s execution, brings Rory back to earth.
From Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will, whose “thinking is stimulating, erudite, and makes for great reading” (The Boston Globe) comes a “biting, humorous, and perceptive” (The New York Times Book Review) argument for the necessity of term limits in Congress. The world’s oldest democracy—ours—has an old tradition of skepticism about government. However, the degree of dismay about government today is perhaps unprecedented in our history. Americans are particularly convinced that Congress has become irresponsible, either unwilling or incapable of addressing the nation’s problems—while it spends its time and our money on extending its members’ careers. Many Americans have come to believe fundamental reform is needed, specifically limits on the number of terms legislators can serve. In Restoration, George Will makes a compelling case, drawn from our history and his close observance of Congress, that term limits are now necessary to revive the traditional values of classical republican government, to achieve the Founders’ goal of deliberative democracy, and to restore Congress to competence and its rightful dignity as the First Branch of government. At stake, Will says, is the vitality of America’s great promise self-government under representative institutions. At issue is the meaning of representation. The morality of representative government, Will argues, does not merely permit, it requires representatives to exercise independent judgment rather than merely execute instructions given by constituents. However, careerism, which is a consequence of the professionalization of politics, has made legislators servile and has made the national legislature incapable of rational, responsible behavior. Term limits would restore the constitutional space intended by the Founders, the healthy distance between the electors and the elected that is necessary for genuine deliberation about the public interest. Blending the political philosophy of the Founders with alarming facts about the behavior of legislative careerists, Restoration demonstrates how term limits, by altering the motives of legislators, can narrow the gap between the theory and the practice of American democracy.
The son of a celebrated Hollywood director emerges from his father's shadow to claim his own place as a visionary force in American culture. George Stevens, Jr. tells an intimate and moving tale of his relationship with his Oscar-winning father and his own distinguished career in Hollywood and Washington. Fascinating people, priceless stories and a behind-the-scenes view of some of America's major cultural and political events grace this riveting memoir. George Stevens, Jr. grew up in Hollywood and worked on film classics with his father and writes vividly of his experience on the sets of A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). He explores how the magnitude of his father's talent and achievements left him questioning his own creative path. The younger Stevens began to forge his unique career when legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow recruited him to elevate the Motion Picture Service at the United States Information Agency in John F. Kennedy's Washington. Stevens' trailblazing efforts initiated what has been called the "golden era" of USIA filmmaking and a call to respect motion pictures as art. His appointment as founding director of the American Film Institute in 1967 placed him at the forefront of culture and politics, safeguarding thousands of endangered films and training a new generation of filmmakers. Stevens' commitment to America's cultural heritage led to envisioning the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors and propelled a creative life of award-winning films and television programs that heightened attention to social justice, artistic achievement, and the American experience. Stevens provides a rare look at a pioneering American family spanning five generations in entertainment: from the San Francisco stage in the 19th century to silent screen comedies, Academy Award-winning films, Emmy Award-winning television programs and a Broadway play in the 21st century. He reveals the private side of the dazzling array of American presidents, first ladies, media moguls, and luminaries who cross his path, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Poitier, the Kennedys, Yo-Yo Ma, Cary Grant, James Dean, Bruce Springsteen, Barack and Michelle Obama, and many more. In My Place in the Sun, George Stevens, Jr. shares his lifelong passion for advancing the art of American film, enlightening audiences, and shining a spotlight on notable figures who inspire us. He provides an insightful look at Hollywood's Golden Age and an insider's account of Washington spanning six decades, bringing to life a sparkling era of American history and culture.
For freshman/sophomore-level survey courses in 20th Century U.S. History. Written in a lively, narrative style, this comprehensive survey of 20th century U.S. history from the late 19th century through the late 20th century focuses on the public life of American people, on American political history, and the history of American public policy. It intertwines political, demographic, economic, social, and cultural history throughout.
An account of the 1915 capsizing of the steamer Eastland in the Chicago River, an accident that killed more than eight hundred people, details the role of safety measures instituted after the sinking of the Titantic and examines the civil and criminal court proceedings which followed it.
While historians have devoted an enormous amount of attention to documenting how African Americans gained access to formal politics in the mid-1960s, very few have scrutinized what happened next, and the small body of work that does consider the aftermath of the civil rights movement is almost entirely limited to the Black Power era. In Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, Derek Musgrove pushes much further, presenting a powerful new historical framework for understanding race and politics between 1965 and 1996. He argues that in order to make sense of this recent period, we need to examine the harassment of black elected officials - the ways black politicians were denied access to seats they'd won in elections or, after taking office, were targeted in corruption probes. Musgrove's aim is not to evaluate whether individual allegations of corruption had merit, but to establish what the pervasive harassment of black politicians has meant, politically and culturally, over the course of recent American history. It's a story that takes him from California to Michigan to Alabama, and along the way covers a fascinating range of topics: Watergate, the surveillance state, the power of conspiracy theories, the plunge in voter turnout, and even the strange political campaigns of Lyndon LaRouche"--Provided by publisher.
Fifty documents, including Vietnam's declaration of independence in 1945, the final declaration of the 1954 Geneva Conference, CIA reports, US presidential addresses, anti-war leaflets, thoughts by Vietnamese and American intellectuals, and statements by the Vietnamese government and NLF. Paper edit
The Leadership Classic, Discover Your True North, expanded for today's leaders Discover Your True North is the best-selling leadership classic that enables you to become an authentic leader by discovering your True North. Originally based on first-person interviews with 125 leaders, this book instantly became a must-read business classic when it was introduced in 2007. Now expanded and updated to introduce 48 new leaders and new learning about authentic global leaders, this revisited classic includes more diverse, global, and contemporary leaders of all ages. New case studies include Warren Buffett, Indra Nooyi, Arianna Huffington, Jack Ma, Paul Polman, Mike Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others. Alongside these studies, former Medtronic CEO Bill George continues to share his personal stories and his wisdom by describing how you can become the leader you want to be, with helpful exercises included throughout the book. Being a leader is about much more than title and management skills—it's fundamentally a question of who we are as human beings. Discover Your True North offers a concrete and comprehensive program for becoming an authentic leader, and shows how to chart your path to leadership success. Once you discover the purpose of your leadership, you'll find the true leader inside you. This book shows you how to use your natural leadership abilities to inspire and empower others to excellence in today's complex global world. Discover Your True North enables you to become the leader you were born to be, and stay on track of your True North.
This informative and engaging addition to the Childhood of Famous Americans series provides a fascinating look at the boyhood and background of Teddy Kennedy, who, in addition to being the youngest brother of former President John F. Kennedy and the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, grew up to be a revered and beloved senior Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
In this absorbing book, George McKenna ranges across the entire panorama of American history to track the development of American patriotism. That patriotism—shaped by Reformation Protestantism and imbued with the American Puritan belief in a providential “errand”—has evolved over 350 years and influenced American political culture in both positive and negative ways, McKenna shows. The germ of the patriotism, an activist theology that stressed collective rather than individual salvation, began in the late 1630s in New England and traveled across the continent, eventually becoming a national phenomenon. Today, American patriotism still reflects its origins in the seventeenth century. By encouraging cohesion in a nation of diverse peoples and inspiring social reform, American patriotism has sometimes been a force for good. But the book also uncovers a darker side of the nation’s patriotism—a prejudice against the South in the nineteenth century, for example, and a tendency toward nativism and anti-Catholicism. Ironically, a great reversal has occurred, and today the most fervent believers in the Puritan narrative are the former “outsiders”—Catholics and Southerners. McKenna offers an interesting new perspective on patriotism’s role throughout American history, and he concludes with trenchant thoughts on its role in the post-9/11 era.
About the Book Immigrant Soldier is the story of one immigrant’s struggle from undergoing Soviet bombings in Tallinn, Estonia, to the devastation of the Dresden, Germany bombing in 1944 by the Allies. Then the uncertain years of living in a displaced persons camp after World War II in Germany. Born in Tartu, Estonia at the start of World War II in 1937, Raunam describes the struggle to understand the reason for all the random death and the fear of the unknown and for losing everything, almost. He finds a new life in America and military service as well as new meaning in friends, love, fun, and the sheer joy of working for a country that he chose. He enlists as a private in the National Guard at age seventeen, then serves in combat, is decorated with a Silver Star and retires as a lieutenant colonel, aide de camp to General of the Army Omar N Bradley. His lifelong desire to find his family takes on a new meaning with the fall of the Iron Curtain. The odyssey takes six trips to Germany, Estonia, and Russia to locate family members who did not know the status of each other’s survival after World War II. He discovers the feeling of unbelievable joy to find out that one has a brother and sister and the celebration of finding each other. About the Author George J Raunam lives in Texas. He has five children, fifteen grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. He sees his family frequently and has hosted European family members in California and Texas to share their love for America. This is his first book about how to find lost family members and the Immigrant Spirit.
“Durham’s account is modest and straightforward . . . has many lessons for anyone interested in the history of the Old West, leadership or law enforcement.” —American West Review Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip. In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly’s recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farm boy in his teens when he joined the “Little McNellys,” as the Captain’s band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving “McNelly Ranger,” who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland. In Durham’s account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Strip—succeeded so well that they antagonized certain “upright” citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits’ operations. “The reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly
A compelling book on budget-balancing, past and present. Not only is it a useful historical reference work but it is amazingly relevant to today's headlines." --Business Week Why did it take twenty-five years to balance the federal budget? And why did that goal seem politically impossible up until the last possible moment? Why hasn't the nation achieved a single budget surplus since 1969? Why did the first Republican Congress since the 1950s fail so miserably to redeem its most important promise to voters? In Balancing Act, George Hager and Eric Pianin, two of the country's top political journalists, provide fascinating answers. The question of the deficit is the reigning obsession of modern politics. Never simply a quarrel over numbers, the deficit has always been a moral issue as well as a fiscal one--a bitter fight to the political death over competing ideas about the right to shape the nation's values and to proclaim publicly what those values are. Bringing key political players like Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and George Mitchell vividly to life, Hager and Pianin provide a gripping and revealing look at what goes on behind the closed doors of Capitol Hill. "Vivid . . . provocative . . . rich in anecdote and drama, [Balancing Act] is a useful primer on the history of deficit spending" --Los Angeles Times
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