"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of presidents including, besides Lincoln,...

At a moment of crisis over our national identity, journalist Dan Rather reflects on what it means to be an American. He reminds us of the principles upon which the United States was founded. Looking at the freedoms that define us, from the vote to the press; the values that have transformed us, from empathy to inclusion to service; the institutions that sustain us, such as public education; and the traits that helped form our young country, such as...

"In engaging and lucid prose, Volker Depkat offers general readers and students of American history an invaluable lens through which they can evaluate for themselves the merits of the many ways in which Americans have understood their country as exceptional"-- The idea that America is exceptional, whether because of its founding creed, natural abundance, or Protestant origins, has been fiercely debated since the nation's founding. Volker Depkat explores...

Governor William Bradford, an eyewitness, reported the landing of the Mayflower passengers on the American shore in mid-November 1620. Never had a Promised Land looked more unpromising. But within a century and a half -- even before the American Revolution -- this forbidding scene had become one of the more "civill" parts of the world. The large outlines of a new civilization had been drawn. How did it happen?

"For readers of Jill Lepore, Joseph J. Ellis, and Tony Horwitz comes a lively, thought-provoking intellectual history of the golden age of American utopianism--and the bold, revolutionary, and eccentric visions for the future put forward by five of history's most influential utopian movements"--Amazon.com. "For readers of Jill Lepore, Joseph J. Ellis, and Tony Horwitz comes a lively, thought-provoking intellectual history of the golden age of American...

The host of the NBC "Today Show" shares his favorite stories of citizens making a difference around the country.

From bestselling historian H. W. Brands, an incisive chronicle of the events and trends that guided--and sometimes misguided--our nation from the A-bomb to the iPhone. Ultimately Brands captures the national experience through the last six decades and reveals the still-unfolding legacy of dreams born out of a global cataclysm.

A collection of the best interviews from eight of Terkel's classic oral histories together with his introductions to each work.