The convenient stories we're told to make us think the U.S. is actually a force for good in the world. Did the U.S. really "save the world" in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and have more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news? American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we're told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force...

Discusses the founding fathers from the perspective of their horticultural and agricultural endeavors.

"In The Long Shadow of War, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War retains such a hold on our national psyche and identity. Though the drama and tragedy of the subject, from the war's scope and size--an estimated death toll of 750,000, far more than all the rest of the country's wars combined--to the nearly mythical individuals involved--Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson--help explain why the...

"America's current political divisions are backed by vitriolic anger on all sides--anger that is rooted in a long-term change in American character. A nation that once regarded unbridled anger as a personal weakness has become a nation that regards anger as self-empowerment and a tool for positive social change. But anger remains what it was always was: a force that can sweep away judgment and carry us, as individuals or groups, into foolish confrontations....

"From one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country. By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in The Truths We Hold a...

"This compelling approach to the immigration debate takes the reader behind the blaring headlines and into communities grappling with the reality of new immigrants and the changing nature of American identity. Ali Noorani, the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, interviews nearly fifty local and national leaders from law enforcement, business, immigrant, and faith communities to illustrate the challenges and opportunities they face....

"The nationally renowned Bard Prison Initiative demonstrates how the liberal arts can alter the landscape inside prisons by expanding access to the transformative power of American higher education. American colleges and universities have made various efforts to provide prisoners with access to education. However, few of these outreach programs presume that incarcerated men and women can rise to the challenge of a truly rigorous college curriculum....

"In this examination of landscape and memory, four sites of American history are revealed as places where historical truth was written over by oppressive fiction-with profound repercussions for politics past and present. Popular narratives of American history conceal as much as they reveal. They present a national identity based on harvesting the treasures that lay in wait for European colonization. In Whose Ruins tells another story: winding through...