CAROL SWAIN is a former professor of political science at Princeton and Vanderbilt Universities, and a former professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States had become the world’s greatest economic power and an increasingly important actor on the world stage. Yet success presented a challenge to the country not to lose sight of its heritage of constitutional liberty and the virtues that had made its flourishing possible. That challenge remains for us today.
In the years following the Civil War, pioneers in the women’s rights movement, women’s medical education, and public-private charitable partnerships joined forces to reduce the incidence of abortion in America. As alumni of the abolitionist movement, they analyzed abortion in ways that resembled their earlier critiques of slavery.
In a fascinating blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary individuals—some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
New thinking about the principles of government —and open hostility to the American Constitution — led to a host of concrete changes in American political institutions. Our government today reflects these original Progressive innovations, even if they are often unrecognized as such because they have become ingrained in American political culture. This book shows the nature of these changes, both in principles and in the nuts and bolts of governing.
After the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin’s response: “A Republic—if you can keep it.” This book argues: we couldn’t keep it.
Through carefully selected stories and a clear, engaging writing style, Wilfred McClay invites students, teachers, and history enthusiasts alike to engage with America’s past and our ongoing quest for liberty and justice for all in Land of Hope.