29 Best History & Theory Books

From the time he arrived on the political scene in 1964 – throughout his presidency and beyond, Ronald Reagan – used his speeches to inspire and reinvigorate America. When he spoke, Reagan, said, he was preaching a sermon. The American people saw his vision of America and his dreams for the future and they overwhelmingly responded; he was re-elected in 1984 by the largest number of electoral votes in the nation’s history. Here in this collection of twenty-eight speeches spanning the Reagan era, readers can find inspiration in Reagan’s sermons. Ronald Regan’s words show a profound belief in God, freedom, individualism, limited government, and his great love for his country.

While the conflict over slavery was a factor in the Civil War, the abolition of slavery did not become a stated objective until Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863. Now, to commemorate the 150 year anniversary of the Proclamation, here is a new, unabridged audio recording of that historic document, freeing the slaves held in the still Confederate controlled states. Heralded as one of America’s most significant documents, this is a piece of history not to be missed.

El afamado escritor, politologo, y conferencista Agustin Laje presenta La batalla cultural: Reflexiones criticas para una Nueva Derecha – un manifiesto que informara, animara y facultara a los “guerrilleros culturales” para no bajar los brazos en la batalla que sigue perjudicando a nuestras familias y a la sociedad en general.

En el mundo contemporaneo, la sociedad y la cultura cambian a gran velocidad. La voluntad de dirigir esos cambios esta en la base de las batallas culturales que hoy se viven en todas partes. Bien investigado y argumentado inteligentemente, este libro define el concepto de batalla cultural y muestra hasta que punto la cultura ha llegado a ser el botin principal del poder, como se han desarrollado estas batallas desde los tiempos modernos hasta la actual posmodernidad y como enfrentarlas.

En este libro, Agustin Laje:

• Explica que es la batalla cultural, como darla, y cuales son su caracteristicas
• Analiza como la nueva izquierda entendio este fenomeno, frente a una derecha que menosprecio el poder de la cultura
• Examina como entendio este fenomeno la nueva izquierda, frente a una derecha que menosprecio el poder de la cultura
• Pretende brindar las herramientas necesarias para el nacimiento de una nueva derecha

Este libro esta dirigido a:

• Las familias que son el principal blanco de ataque en este momento, que se sienten fragmentadas, amedrentadas y que quieren hacer algo mas para convertirse en agentes de batalla cultural

• A los Jovenes que cursan sus estudios y que entienden que en sus universidades cada vez hay menos educacion y mas adoctrinamiento

• A todo aquel que se preocupa por los asuntos politicos y mundiales de gran magnitud que crean conflictos en la sociedad

“La lucha politica y la lucha cultural son las dos caras de una misma moneda. Si no hay politica sin hegemonia, entonces tampoco hay politica sin batalla cultural”, dice Laje. “La batalla cultural terminara mostrandose como la madre de todas las batallas.”

The Culture Battle

Famed writer, political scientist, and lecturer Agustin Laje presents The Culture Battle: Critical Reflections for a New Right – a manifesto that will inform, encourage and empower the “cultural guerrillas” not to give up in the battle that continues to harm our families and society in general.

In the contemporary world, society and culture are changing at great speed. The will to lead these changes is at the basis of the cultural battles that are being fought everywhere today. Well researched and intelligently argued, this book defines the concept of cultural battle and shows to what extent culture has become the main spoils of power, how these battles have developed from modern times to today’s postmodernity and how to face them.

In this book, Agustin Laje:

• Explains what the culture battle is, how to wage it, and what its characteristics are
• Analyzes how the new left understood this phenomenon, in the face of a right wing that underestimated the power of culture
• Examines how the new left understood this phenomenon, in the face of a right wing that underestimated the power of culture
• Aims to provide the necessary tools for the birth of a new right wing

Bestselling author and conservative icon Dr. Ben Carson lays out a hopeful and inspiring road map for how America can come together.

External physical characteristics that are genetically encoded are things over which no individual has control. But rather than appreciating the gift of diversity, some have chosen to use it to drive wedges between groups of people. Some of these external characteristics are associated with the past moral failing of slavery. Though slavery in America formally ended in the 1860s, the vestiges of that evil institution are still with us today, and those vestiges often inflict guilt on some and facilitate feelings of victimhood in others.

In Created Equal, Dr. Carson uses his own personal experiences as a member of a racial minority, along with the writings and experiences of others from multiple backgrounds and demographics, to analyze the current state of race relations in America. Instead of using race as an excuse to remake America into something completely antithetical to the Constitution, Dr. Carson suggests ways to enhance and bring great success to our nation and all multiethnic societies by magnifying America’s incredible strengths instead of her historical weaknesses.

Moises Naim’s The Revenge of Power is an urgent, thrilling, and original look at the future of democracy. It illuminates one of the most important battles of our time: the future of freedom and how to contain and defeat the autocrats mushrooming around the world.

In his New York Times bestselling book The End of Power, Moises Naim examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naim turns to the trends, conditions, and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three “P”s–populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today’s autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed.

The Revenge of Power connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naim reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail.

The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. These outcomes will, in turn, depend on the capacity of our democracies to survive the attacks and dirty tricks of autocratic leaders bent on weakening the checks and balances that limit their power. Naim addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: What are, in practice, those attacks and tricks? Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom?

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press

This classic work of political theory and practice offers an account of the modern Machiavellians, a remarkable group who have been influential in Europe and practically unknown in the United States. The book devotes a long section to Machiavelli himself as well as to such modern Machiavellians as Gaetano Mosca, Georges Sorel, Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto. Burnham contends that the writings of these men hold the key both to the truth about politics and to the preservation of political liberty.

Bestselling author Thomas Sowell brings his insight and erudition to bear on one of the key issues of our time–immigration–supplying context, insight, and reason to an inflamed debate that could very well dissolve the social fabric of our country.

Most commentators look at the issue of immigration from the viewpoint of immediate politics. In doing so, they focus on only a piece of the issue and lose touch with the larger picture. Now Thomas Sowell offers a sweeping historical and global look at a large number of migrations over a long period of time.Migrations and Culturesshows the persistence of cultural traits in particular racial and ethnic groups, and the role these groups’ relocations play in redistributing skills, knowledge, and other forms of “human capital.” This book answers the question: What are the effects of disseminating the patterns of the particular set of skills, attitudes, and lifestyles each ethnic group has carried forth–both for the immigrants and for the host countries, in social as well as economic terms?

A recognized classic and definitive account of its subject, The Origins of Totalitarianism traces the emergence of modern racism as an “ideological weapon for imperialism,” begining with the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe in the nineteenth century and continuing through the New Imperialism period from 1884 to World War I.

In her analysis of the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, Arendt focuses on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in the twentieth century: Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, which she adroitly recognizes as two sides of the same coin rather than opposing philosophies of the Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda, and the use of terror essential to this form of government. In her brilliant concluding chapter, she discusses the nature of individual isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

Political commentator and media personality Will Witt gives young conservatives the ammunition they need to fight back against the liberal media in this instant national bestseller.

Popular culture in America today is dominated by the left. Most young people have never even heard of conservative values from someone their age, and if they do, the message is often bland and outdated. Almost every Hollywood actor, musician, media personality, and role model for young people in America rejects conservative values, and Gen Zs and millennials are quick to regurgitate these viewpoints without developing their own opinions on issues.

So many young conservatives in America want to stand up for their beliefs in their classrooms, at their jobs, with their friends, or on social media, but they don’t have the tools to do so. In How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies, Will Witt arms Gen Zs and millennials with the knowledge and skills to combat the leftist narrative they hear every day.

Instant National Bestseller!

An unprecedented and original history of intellectual life throughout the past century

Thinking the Twentieth Century is the final book of unparalleled historian and indomitable public critic Tony Judt. Where Judt’s masterpiece Postwar redefined the history of modern Europe by uniting the stories of its eastern and western halves, Thinking the Twentieth Century unites the century’s conflicted intellectual history into a single soaring narrative. The twentieth century comes to life as the age of ideas—a time when, for good or for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the lives of the many. Judt presents the triumphs and the failures of public intellectuals, adeptly extracting the essence of their ideas and explaining the risks of their involvement in politics. Spanning the entire era and all currents of thought in a manner never previously attempted, Thinking the Twentieth Century is a triumphant tour de force that restores clarity to the classics of modern thought with the assurance and grace of a master craftsman. The exceptional nature of this work is evident in its very structure—a series of luminous conversations between Judt and his friend and fellow historian Timothy Snyder, grounded in the texts of their trade and focused by the intensity of their vision. Judt’s astounding eloquence and range of reference are here on display as never before. Traversing the century’s complexities with ease, he and Snyder revive both thoughts and thinkers, guiding us through the debates that made our world. As forgotten treasures are unearthed and overrated thinkers are dismantled, the shape of a century emerges. Judt and Snyder make us partners in their project as we learn the ways to think like a historian or even like a public intellectual. We begin to experience the power of historical perspective for the critique and reform of society and for the pursuit of the good and the true from day to day.

In restoring, and indeed exemplifying, the best of the intellectual life of the twentieth century, Thinking the Twentieth Century charts a pathway for moral life in the twenty-first. An incredible achievement, this book is about the life of the mind—and about the mindful life.

“Narrator David Colacci approaches this opinionated, engrossing audiobook with a practiced voice that lets its numerous stories tell themselves without fanfare…this audiobook is a monumental work.” — AudioFile Magazine

In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years.

The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense–economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.

How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Right spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood.

Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural “modernization” in the Tropics–the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?

In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not–and cannot–be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against “development theory” and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a “high-modernist ideology” that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

What is fascism? By focusing on the concrete: what the fascists did rather than what they said, the esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question for the first time. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up “enemies of the state,” through Mussolini’s rise to power, to Germany’s fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton shows clearly why fascists came to power in some countries and not others, and he explores whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged.

The Anatomy of Fascism will have a lasting impact on our understanding of modern European history, just as Paxton’s classic Vichy France redefined our vision of World War II. Based on a lifetime of research, this compelling and important book transforms our knowledge of fascism–“the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.”

The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.

Eric Foner brilliantly chronicles how Americans, black and white, responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the Civil War and the end of slavery. He provides fresh insights on a host of other issues, including,

The ways in which the emancipated slave’s quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction;The remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it;The evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations;Abraham Lincoln’s attitude toward Reconstruction;The role of “carpet-baggers” and “scalawags;” andThe role of violence in the period.

This “smart book of enormous strengths” (Boston Globe) has become the classic work on the wrenching post-Civil War period, an era whose legacy reverberates in the United States to this day.

The dramatic secret history of the undeclared, ongoing war between the US and Iran

For the past three decades, the United States and Iran have been engaged in an unacknowledged secret war. This conflict has frustrated five American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations to the brink of open warfare. Drawing upon unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several US administrations, David Crist, a senior historian in the federal government, breaks new ground on virtually every page of The Twilight War. From the Iranian Revolution to secret negotiations between Iran and the United States after 9/11 to Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions against it, Crist brings vital new depth to our understanding of “the Iran problem”–and what the future of this tense relationship may bring.

* Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award
* National Book Award Finalist
* Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year
* New York Times Notable Book
* Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017

This “epic history” (The Boston Globe) from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America–from the Puritan era to the 2016 election. “We have long needed a fair-minded overview of this vitally important religious sensibility, and FitzGerald has now provided it” (The New York Times Book Review).

The evangelical movement began in the revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known in America as the Great Awakenings. A populist rebellion against the established churches, it became the dominant religious force in the country.

During the nineteenth century white evangelicals split apart, first North versus South, and then, modernist versus fundamentalist. After World War II, Billy Graham attracted enormous crowds and tried to gather all Protestants under his big tent, but the civil rights movement and the social revolution of the sixties drove them apart again. By the 1980s Jerry Falwell and other southern televangelists, such as Pat Robertson, had formed the Christian right. Protesting abortion and gay rights, they led the South into the Republican Party, and for thirty-five years they were the sole voice of evangelicals to be heard nationally. Eventually a younger generation proposed a broader agenda of issues, such as climate change, gender equality, and immigration reform.

Evangelicals now constitute twenty-five percent of the American population, but they are no longer monolithic in their politics. They range from Tea Party supporters to social reformers. Still, with the decline of religious faith generally, FitzGerald suggests that evangelical churches must embrace ethnic minorities if they are to survive. “A well-written, thought-provoking, and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail” (The Wall Street Journal). Her “brilliant book could not have been more timely, more well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary” (The American Scholar).

Don‚Äôt miss syndicated radio host and author Mark Levin’s #1 New York Times acclaimed and longtime bestselling manifesto for the conservative movement.

When nationally syndicated radio host Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny appeared in the early months of the Obama presidency, Americans responded by making his clarion call for a new era in conservatism a #1 New York Times bestseller for an astounding twelve weeks. As provocative, well-reasoned, robust, and informed as his on-air commentary, with his love of our country and the legacy of our Founding Fathers reflected on every page, Levin’s galvanizing narrative provides a philosophical, historical, and practical framework for revitalizing the conservative vision and ensuring the preservation of American society.

In the face of the modern liberal assault on Constitution-based values, an attack that has resulted in a federal government that is a massive, unaccountable conglomerate, the time for reinforcing the intellectual and practical case for conservatism is now. In a series of powerful essays, Levin lays out how conservatives can counter the tyrannical liberal corrosion that has filtered into every timely issue affecting our daily lives, from the economy to health care, global warming to immigration, and more.

In a completely original analysis, prizewinning historian Alfred W. McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power–from the 1890s through the Cold War–and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, trade pacts, and military alliances. McCoy then analyzes the marquee instruments of US hegemony–covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.

Peeling back layers of secrecy, McCoy exposes a military and economic battle for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs of power. Can the United States extend the “American Century” or will China guide the globe for the next hundred years? McCoy devotes his final chapter to these questions, boldly laying out a series of scenarios that could lead to the end of Washington’s world domination by 2030.

A dual biography of Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger that offers a dire warning: republics collapse when partisanship overrides the common good.

In Uncommon Wrath, historian Josiah Osgood tells the story of how the political rivalry between Julius Caesar and Marcus Cato precipitated the end of the Roman Republic. As the champions of two dominant but distinct visions for Rome, Caesar and Cato each represented qualities that had made the Republic strong, but their ideological differences entrenched into enmity and mutual fear. The intensity of their collective factions became a tribal divide, hampering their ability to make good decisions and undermining democratic government. The men’s toxic polarity meant that despite their shared devotion to the Republic, they pushed it into civil war.

Deeply researched and compellingly told, Uncommon Wrath is a groundbreaking biography of two men whose hatred for each other destroyed the world they loved.

Bestselling historian Andrew Nagorski “brings keen psychological insights into the world leaders involved” (Booklist) during 1941, the critical year in World War II when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.

In early 1941, Hitler’s armies ruled most of Europe. Churchill’s Britain was an isolated holdout against the Nazi tide, but German bombers were attacking its cities and German U-boats were attacking its ships. Stalin was observing the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and Roosevelt was vowing to keep the United States out of the war. Hitler was confident that his aim of total victory was within reach.

But by the end of 1941, all that changed. Hitler had repeatedly gambled on escalation and lost: by invading the Soviet Union and committing a series of disastrous military blunders; by making mass murder and terror his weapons of choice, and by rushing to declare war on the United States after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Britain emerged with two powerful new allies–Russia and the United States. By then, Germany was doomed to defeat.

Nagorski illuminates the actions of the major characters of this pivotal year as never before. 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War is a stunning and “entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) examination of unbridled megalomania versus determined leadership. It also reveals how 1941 set the Holocaust in motion, and presaged the postwar division of Europe, triggering the Cold War. 1941 was “the year that shaped not only the conflict of the hour but the course of our lives–even now” (New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham).

An original collection of the most influential documents in American history from the bestselling authors of A Patriot’s History of the United States

Since 2005, A Patriot’s History of the United States has become a modern classic for its defense of America as a unique country founded on the principles of justice, equality, and freedom for all. The Patriot’s History Reader continues this tradition by going back to the original sources—the documents, speeches, and legal decisions that shaped our country into what it is today. The authors explore both oft-cited documents—the Declaration of Independence, Emancipation Proclamation, and Roe v. Wade—as well as those that are less famous. Among these are George Washington’s letter to Alexander Hamilton, which essentially outlined America’s military strategy for the next 150 years, and Herbert Hoover’s speech on business ethics, which examines the government’s role in regulating private enterprise.

By helping readers explore history at its source, this book sheds new light on the principles and personalities that have made America great.

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left and an editor of Ramparts, the magazine that set the intellectual and revolutionary tone for the movement. From his vantage point at the center of the action, he populates Radical Son with vivid portraits of people who made the radical decade, while unmaking America at the same time. We are introduced to an aged Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and godson of John Stuart Mill, who in his nineties became America’s scourge. There is Tom Hayden, the radical Everyman who promoted guerrilla warfare in America’s cities in the Sixties and became a Democratic state senator when his revolutions failed. We meet Huey Newton, a street hustler and murderer who founded the Black Panthers. A brutal murder committed by the Panthers prompts Horowitz’s profound “second thoughts” that eventually transformed him into an intellectual leader of conservatism and its most prominent activist in Hollywood.

Horowitz moved from one set of political convictions to another over the course of thirty years, and here he challenges listeners to consider how they came by their own convictions.

Change the world one trip at a time. In this illuminating collection of stories and lessons from the road, acclaimed travel writer Rick Steves shares a powerful message that resonates now more than ever.

With the world facing divisive and often frightening events, from Trump, Brexit, and Erdogan, to climate change, nativism, and populism, there’s never been a more important time to travel.

Rick believes the risks of travel are widely exaggerated, and that fear is for people who don’t get out much. After years of living out of a suitcase, he still marvels at how different cultures find different truths to be self-evident. By sharing his experiences from Europe, Central America, Asia, and the Middle East, Rick shows how we can learn more about own country by viewing it from afar.

With gripping stories from Rick’s decades of exploration, this fully revised edition of Travel as a Political Act is an antidote to the current climate of xenophobia. When we travel thoughtfully, we bring back the most beautiful souvenir of all: a broader perspective on the world that we all call home.

All royalties from the sale of Travel as a Political Act are donated to support the work of Bread for the World, a non-partisan organization working to end hunger at home and abroad.

The Founders’ vision, articulated first in the Declaration of Independence and carried out in the Constitution, gave the new republic a framework for government unique in world history. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and in human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat — both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. America has become an administrative state, while destructive trends have overtaken family life and higher education. Semi-autonomous executive agencies wield essentially unaccountable power. Congress has failed in its duty to exercise its legislative powers. And the executive branch has slipped the Constitution’s leash.

In the intellectual battle between the vision of Founding Fathers like James Madison, who advanced the notion of natural rights that pre-exist government, and the progressivism advanced by Woodrow Wilson, the Founders have been losing. It’s time to reverse America’s political fortunes.

Expansive, intellectually thrilling, and written with the erudite wit that has made Will beloved by millions of readers, The Conservative Sensibility is an extraordinary new book from one of America’s most celebrated political writers.

In this, the liveliest and most accessible one-volume life of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk has ingeniously combined the public and the private man into a living whole. He lucidly unfolds Burke’s philosophy and offers a fresh assessment of Burke, a statesman enjoying even greater influence today than in his own time.

Kirk defines four great struggles in the life of Burke: his work for conciliation with the American colonies; his involvement in cutting down the domestic power of George III; his prosecution of Warren Hastings, the governor general of India; and his resistance to Jacobinism, the French Revolution’s “armed doctrine.” In each of these great phases of his public life, Burke fought with passionate eloquence and relentless logic for his ideals of justice, ideals that continue to appeal today.

Written in the late eighteenth century as a reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man is unquestionably one of the great classics on the subject of democracy. A vindication of the French Revolution and a critique of the British system of government, it defended the dignity of the common man in all countries against those who would discard him as one of the “swinish multitude.”

Paine created a language of modern politics that brought important issues to the working classes. Employing direct, vehement prose, Paine defends popular rights, national independence, revolutionary war, and economic growth—all of which were considered, at the time, to be dangerous and even seditious issues. His vast influence is due in large measure to his eloquent literary style, noted for its poignant metaphors, vigor, and rational directness.

Following the centennial celebrations of women first winning the right to vote, this book documents the milestones in the hard-won struggle and reflects on women’s impact on politics since.

From the birth of our nation to the recent crushing defeat of the first female presidential candidate, this book highlights women’s impact on United States politics and government. It documents the fight for women’s right to vote, drawing on historic research, biographies of leaders, and such original sources as photos, line art, charts, graphs, documents, posters, ads, and buttons. It presents this often-forgotten struggle in an accessible, conversational, relevant manner for a wide audience.

Here are the groundbreaking convention records, speeches, newspaper accounts, letters, photos, and drawings of those who fought for women’s right to vote, all in their own words, arranged to convey the inherent historical drama. The accessible almanac style allows this entertaining history speak for itself.

It is full of little-known facts. For instance: When the Constitutional Convention of the thirteen colonies convened to draft the Constitution, Abigail Adams admonished her husband John Adams to “remember the ladies” (write rights for women into the Constitution!).

Important for today’s discussions, Remember the Ladies does not extract women’s suffrage from the inseparable concurrent historic endeavors for emancipation, immigration, and temperance. Its robust research documents the intersectionality of women’s struggle for the vote in its true context with other progressive efforts.