Washington: A History of Our National City


Tom Lewis - 2012
    From the moment the federal government moved to the District of Columbia in December 1800, Washington has been central to American identity and life. Shaped by politics and intrigue, poverty and largess, contradictions and compromises, Washington has been, from its beginnings, the stage on which our national dramas have played out. In Washington, the historian Tom Lewis paints a sweeping portrait of the capital city whose internal conflicts and promise have mirrored those of America writ large. Breathing life into the men and women who struggled to help the city realize its full potential, he introduces us to the mercurial French artist who created an ornate plan for the city "en grande" members of the nearly forgotten anti-Catholic political party who halted construction of the Washington monument for a quarter century; and the cadre of congressmen who maintained segregation and blocked the city's progress for decades. In the twentieth century Washington's Mall and streets would witness a Ku Klux Klan march, the violent end to the encampment of World War I "Bonus Army" veterans, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the painful rebuilding of the city in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. "It is our national center," Frederick Douglass once said of Washington, DC; "it belongs to us, and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny." Interweaving the story of the city's physical transformation with a nuanced account of its political, economic, and social evolution, Lewis tells the powerful history of Washington, DC " the site of our nation's highest ideals and some of our deepest failures.

T. H. Elkman


Eric H. Heisner - 2014
    Where women are hard as the steel of a gun, and the sweet burn of whiskey eases the rough, ratted edges. Where death is a pill that must be swallowed, and senses are developed beyond true human comprehension . . .Honest work on the frontier was sometimes hard to acquire. Traveling independently on the expansive road through the west, cowboy and westerner Tomas H. Elkman is a man of the times. To ease the loneliness of the trail while searching for gainful employment, Elkman warily teams up with a fight-prone, good-timing gambler by the name of Jefferson McGredy. This strange pairing of men is hired to deliver an assemblage of horses to a ranch in the untamed northern territory. The rancher sends his young son, Kent Martin, to accompany the horsemen on their travels through mountains and rivers, across primitive landscapes, and into remnants of mining boomtowns. The journey becomes a constant challenge to their moral fiber as they face the overwhelming hardships of hostile weather, rustlers, and natives . . .T. H. Elkman is a story of frontier grit, moral simplicity, individuality and consequential violence in the American West.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Tales of the City Episode 1: Taking the Plunge


Armistead Maupin - 2012
    San Francisco 1976: a golden city of freedom, adventure and possibility. But, as na�ve small-town girl Mary Ann finds out, it can be hard to find your place in a strange new city - especially when the supermarket is a pick up joint and a Jockey Shorts dance contest can make or break a relationship. Luckily for Mary Ann, she finds the perfect home at 28 Barbary Lane where the dysfunctional residents form an unconventional family of waifs and strays. Mona the cynic, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver the romantic looking for love and DeDe the jaded debutante, all watched over by the eccentric and mysterious Anna Madrigal.Get addicted to these characters in six short, funny and heartbreaking episodes.Episode 1: Taking the Plunge Newly arrived from the Midwest, Mary Ann Singleton finds refuge at 28 Barbary Lane. Mona warns Mrs Madrigal about her naive new tenant and DeDe gets jealous.

Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could


Adam Schiff - 2021
    Trump, the vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, and a warning that the forces of autocracy unleashed by Trump remain as potent as ever.In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump’s Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within.In Midnight in Washington, Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years, requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step by step just how our democracy was put at such risk, and traces his own path to meeting the crisis - from serious prosecutor, to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship, to liberal lightning rod, scourge of the right, and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy.Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments, Schiff reveals the private struggles, the internal conflicts, and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless president - but also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiff’s fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time, told by the man who became the president’s principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him, taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiff’s account of January 6, 2021, and how the anti-democratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party, making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever.

The Conservative Sensibility


George F. Will - 2019
    Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily events in America. 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.

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities


Michael Shellenberger - 2021
    Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, and alternatives to jail and prison. But as homeless encampments spread, and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem.What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse not despite but because of progressive policies. San Francisco and other West Coast cities -- Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland -- had gone beyond merely tolerating homelessness, drug dealing, and crime to actively enabling them.San Fransicko reveals that the underlying problem isn't a lack of housing or money for social programs. The real problem is an ideology that designates some people, by identity or experience, as victims entitled to destructive behaviors. The result is an undermining of the values that make cities, and civilization itself, possible.

The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America


Nick Gillespie - 2011
    Everywhere, that is, except in our politics. There we are held hostage to an eighteenth century system, dominated by two political parties whose ever-more-polarized rhetorical positions mask a mutual interest in maintaining a stranglehold on power.The Declaration of Independents is a compelling and extremely entertaining manifesto on behalf of a system better suited to the future--one structured by the essential libertarian principles of free minds and free markets. Gillespie and Welch profile libertarian innovators, identify the villains propping up the ancien regime, and take aim at do-something government policies that hurt most of those they claim to protect. Their vision will resonate with a wide swath of frustrated citizens and young voters, born after the Cold War's end, to whom old tribal allegiances, prejudices, and hang-ups about everything from hearing a foreign language on the street to gay marriage to drug use simply do not make sense.

The Permanent Coup: How Enemies Foreign and Domestic Targeted the American President


Lee Smith - 2020
    Their efforts became even more fierce, more desperate, and more divisive, threatening to scar America permanently.In their zeal to bring down President Trump, Deep State conspirators had unwittingly revealed the origins of the anti-Trump operation and exposed corruption at the very highest levels of the Democratic party — including former Vice President Biden and his boss, Barack Obama.Lee Smith brings to this story the same incisive reporting and commentary that distinguished his runaway bestseller, The Plot Against the President. His investigation, identifying crimes and abuses committed by senior US officials, was later confirmed by a major Department of Justice report.For The Permanent Coup, Smith again enjoys unrivaled and exclusive access to the main players defending America and uncovering Deep State crimes — including Congressman Devin Nunes and the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Haunted Falls


Ken Farmer - 2013
    Marshal Bass Reeves in their first book, entitled "The Nations". The story continues in "Haunted Falls", the story of Bass Reeves as he joins other U.S. Marshals in pursuit of the infamous Dalton gang. It is full of adventure, romance, some history, excitement and a unique paranormal twist. You will not want to miss this sequel.

To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party


Heather Cox Richardson - 2014
    Yet while visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their attempts to use government to guard against the concentration of wealth have repeatedly been undone by the country’s moneyed interests and members of their own party. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of big business—and the ensuing financial crisis—is the latest example of this calamitous cycle, but it is by no means the first.In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession, showing how Republicans’ ideological vacillations have had terrible repercussions for minorities, the middle class, and America at large. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Men Free explains how a relatively young party became America’s greatest political hope—and, time and time again, its greatest disappointment.

Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches


John W. Dean - 2007
    Dean, an outspoken and perceptive critic of the current Bush administration and author of the New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse Than Watergate, faults Republican mismanagement for the current government crises.

Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America


Scott Borchert - 2021
    Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states--along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns--while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. The FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America in words and soon found itself embroiled in the day's most heated arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing--forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself.Scott Borchert's Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the experiences of key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We observe notable writers at their day jobs, including Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel; Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published Black woman in the country; and Richard Wright, who arrived in the FWP's chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory courtesy of the WPA. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, and other future literary stars found encouragement and security on the FWP payroll.By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation's very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book's lessons are urgent and strong.

Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution


Bernie Sanders - 2017
    Throughout the Presidential campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders promised voters a future to believe in through his progressive platform and a vision for America worth fighting for. This vision calls for an economic, environmental, health care, and social justice revolution beyond the stagnant agendas of Democrat and Republican politicians to build an equitable future for all Americans--especially the younger generation that will inherit the consequences of decisions made now.Inside this practical and inspiring guide to effecting change in today's world, you'll learn how to: - Understand and navigate the current system of policy and government- Work to change the system to reflect your values and to protect our society's most vulnerable- Organize for the causes you care about most- Resources for further reading and organizations to get involved withWith more than two decades of Washington D.C. insider knowledge and experience, Senator Sanders knows how to fight and change the system from within, a system desperately in need of reform in health care, immigration, taxes, higher education, climate change, and criminal justice.The political revolution is just beginning. What role will you play?

Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World


David Vine - 2015
    More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. still stations its troops at nearly a thousand locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken for granted or overlooked entirely, a little-noticed part of the Pentagon’s vast operations. But in an eye-opening account, Base Nation shows that the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills—and actually makes the nation less safe in the long run.As David Vine demonstrates, the overseas bases raise geopolitical tensions and provoke widespread antipathy towards the United States. They also undermine American democratic ideals, pushing the U.S. into partnerships with dictators and perpetuating a system of second-class citizenship in territories like Guam. They breed sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local economies. And their financial cost is staggering: though the Pentagon underplays the numbers, Vine’s accounting proves that the bill approaches $100 billion per year.For many decades, the need for overseas bases has been a quasi-religious dictum of U.S. foreign policy. But in recent years, a bipartisan coalition has finally started to question this conventional wisdom. With the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan and ending thirteen years of war, there is no better time to re-examine the tenets of our military strategy. Base Nation is an essential contribution to that debate.

American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World But Failed Its People


Jared Yates Sexton - 2020
     Recent years have brought a reckoning in America. As rampant political corruption, stark inequality, and violent bigotry have come to the fore, many have faced two vital questions: How did we get here? And how do we move forward?An honest look at the past--and how it's been covered up--is the only way to find the answers. Americans in power have abused and subjugated others since the nation's very beginning, and myths of America's unique goodness have both enabled that injustice and buried the truth for generations. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton blends deep research with stunning storytelling, digging into each era of growth and change that led us here--and laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of the American imagination.Stirring, unequivocal, and impossible to put down, American Rule tells the truth about what this nation has always been--and challenges us to forge a new path.