CAROL SWAIN is a former professor of political science at Princeton and Vanderbilt Universities, and a former professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School.
Minding our own business, while leaving other peoples to mind theirs, was the basis of the United States’ successful foreign policy from 1815 to 1910. America’s Rise and Fall among Nations contrasts this original “America First” foreign policy with the principles and results of the following hundred years of “progressive” foreign policy which suddenly arrived with the election of Woodrow Wilson as president in 1912.
We all know the story of Thanksgiving. Or do we? This uniquely American holiday has a rich and little-known history beyond the famous Pilgrim feast of 1621.
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.
Americans often use the words progressive, liberal, and radical more or less interchangeably without understanding their place in American history. Kevin Slack describes the distinct aims of the movements they represent and weighs their consequences for the American republic.
In The Goodyear Story, Richard Korman has written a fascinating biography that also provides a panoramic view of America in the first light of its industrial revolution. Drawing on newly discovered archival records, Korman tells a suspenseful story of scientific experimentation and legal struggle in creating a portrait of an eminent American whose eccentricity anticipates the new economy pioneers of today.