"An eminent political scientist's brilliant synthesis of social and political trends over the past century that shows how we have gone from an individualistic society to a more communitarian society and then back again -- and how we can use that experience to overcome once again the individualism that currently weakens our country"--

"Beautifully wrought and impossible to put down, Daniel Sharfstein's Thunder in the Mountains chronicles with compassion and grace that resonant past we should never forget."—Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848–1877

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, a new struggle raged in the Northern Rockies. In the summer of 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard, a champion of...

"An indictment of the Republican party from one of the most successful Republican political operative of his generation"--

An examination of the early years of the American Republic analyzes the eventful last quarter of the eighteenth century, the accomplishments of the American founders, and the triumphs and failures that shaped the early nation and the American character.

Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their 'liberator' as a 'homely' man who did not hold himself apart; Southerners felt a nostalgia for Abraham Lincoln as a humble 'conciliator. ' Later, educators glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood to help assimilate poor immigrants. Monument makers focused not only on a gigantic body but also on a nationalist 'union,' downplaying 'emancipation. ' Among both black and white liberals...

After taking the Oath of Office, Richard Nixon announced that 'government will listen... Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in' and signed National Security Decision Memorandum 2. Using years of research and newly released NSC and administration documents, Ray Locker upends conventional wisdom about the Nixon presidency and shows how the creation of this secret, unprecedented, extra-constitutional government undermined U.S. policy...

A narrative account of the twentieth president's political career offers insight into his background as a scholar and Civil War hero, his battles against the corrupt establishment, and Alexander Graham Bell's failed attempt to save him from an assassin's bullet. James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired...

"From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States Founding Partisans is a lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were an existential threat to republican virtues....