Hundreds of police officers were required from 10 UC campuses across the state to protect his speech, which was -- ironically -- about the necessity for free speech and rational debate. He came to argue that Western Civilization is in the midst of a crisis of purpose and ideas. Our freedoms are built upon the twin notions that every human being is made in God’s image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God’s world. We can thank these values for the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. Jerusalem and Athens built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty and gave billions spiritual purpose. Jerusalem and Athens were the foundations of the Magna Carta and the Treaty of Westphalia; they were the foundations of Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.Civilizations that rejected Jerusalem and Athens have collapsed into dust. The USSR rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, substituting a new utopian vision of “social justice” – and they starved and slaughtered tens of millions of human beings. The Nazis rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, and they shoved children into gas chambers. Venezuela rejects Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, and citizens of their oil-rich nation have been reduced to eating dogs.  We are in the process of abandoning Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, favoring instead moral subjectivism and the rule of passion. And we are watching our civilization collapse into age-old tribalism, individualistic hedonism, and moral subjectivism. We believe we can reject Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law and satisfy ourselves with intersectionality, or scientific materialism, or progressive politics, or authoritarian governance, or nationalistic solidarity. We can’t.The West is special, and in The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro bravely explains that it’s because too many of us have lost sight of the moral purpose that drives us each to be better, or the sacred duty to work together for the greater good, or both. A stark warning, and a call to spiritual arms, this book may be the first step in getting our civilization back on track.

     But Charles Goodrich does not just focus upon the more famous of the fifty-signers as he draws evidence from a wide variety of sources to shine light upon even the most obscure of the Declaration’s signatories. Indeed some of the most fascinating of the lives within this work are those that have more frequently been forgotten. Goodrich begins the work with a short history of why the Declaration of Independence came into being. It provides an excellent grounding for his biographies of all fifty-six signers and lives that they led, both before and after they had added their names to this famous document. “The same intrepidity and genius which had raised them to be leaders of the nation at that crisis, carried them forward in the career of glory through a long period of public life. … we are convinced these biographies will be read with pleasure.” The North American Review This book is worthy reading for anyone interested in how the United States was founded and for people wishing to learn more about the figures that shaped its history in those early years. Charles Augustus Goodrich was an American author and Congregational minister, who popularized the motto "a place for everything and everything in its place". His book Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of independence was first published in 1829 and he passed away in 1862.

    His career in baseball spanned forty years and two eras—from the game’s raucous early days to its emergence as big business.Charles C. Alexander, a professor of history at Ohio University, Athens, and the author of Ty Cobb, calls John McGraw “perhaps the single most significant figure in baseball’s history before Babe Ruth transformed the game with his mammoth home runs and unparalleled showmanship.”

    

    Those ex-slaves were in their declining years by the time of the Great Depression, but Elizabeth Sparks, Elige Davison, and others like them nonetheless provided a priceless record of life under the yoke: where slaves lived, how they were treated, what they ate, how they worked, how they adjusted to freedom. Here, Belinda Hurmence presents the interviews of 21 former Virginia slaves. This is a companion volume to Hurmence's popular collections of North Carolina and South Carolina slave narratives, My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slaveryand Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember.

    Millner has resurrected the lost history of a cult devoted to a utopian vision as pure as it was outlandish.”—Steve Almond, author of God Bless America: Stories   “A fascinating look at the American search for meaning and ultimate answers. Millner writes with grace and makes history an adventure.”—Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties   “Teed may have wanted a shiny new world, but what Millner provides is a guide to an old lost one, a picture of a vanished century when science, religion, journalism, and social movements collided in an unending, and totally fascinating, brawl.”—Madeleine Blais, author of In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle   “Those seeking an understanding of what makes otherwise sensible individuals willing to give up everything in service of the apparently outlandish notions of a charismatic true believer like Teed will find this carefully researched volume satisfying and memorable.”—Les Standiford, author of Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean   “A riveting tale of a long-neglected part of Florida’s history. Written with style and panache, this well-researched book is a terrific read.”—Susan and Martin Tolchin, coauthors of Pinstripe Patronage: Political Favoritism from the Clubhouse to the White House and Beyond   “Millner’s marvelous chronicle of the peripatetic and resolute Koreshans is provocative, intriguing, and so much stranger than fiction. You may pause, you may shake your head, you may throw up your arms, but you will not put down this book until you’re done.”—John Dufresne, author of No Regrets, Coyote: A Novel     For five days in December 1908 the body of Cyrus Teed lay in a bathtub at a beach house just south of Fort Myers, Florida. His followers, the Koreshans, waited for signs that he was coming back to life. They watched hieroglyphics emerge on his skin and observed what looked like the formation of a third arm. They saw his belly fall and rise with breath, even though his swollen tongue sealed his mouth. As his corpse turned black, they declared that their leader was transforming into the Egyptian god Horus.             Teed was a charismatic and controversial guru who at the age of 30 had been “illuminated” by an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. At the turn of the twentieth century, surrounded by the marvels of the Second Industrial Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led 200 people out of Chicago and into a new age. Or so he promised.             The Koreshans settled in a mosquito-infested scrubland and set to building a communal utopia inside what they believed was a hollow earth—with humans living on the inside crust and the entire universe contained within. According to Teed’s socialist and millennialist teachings, if his people practiced celibacy and focused their love on him, he would return after death and they would all become immortal.              Was Teed a visionary or villain, savior or two-bit charlatan? Why did his promises and his theory of “cellular cosmogony” persuade so many? In The Allure of Immortality, Lyn Millner weaves the many bizarre strands of Teed’s life and those of his followers into a riveting story of angels, conmen, angry husbands, yellow journalism, and ultimately, hope.

    McNamara is one of modern America's most controversial figures. His opinions, policies, and actions have led to a firestorm of debate, ignited most recently by Errol Morris's Academy Award-winning film, The Fog of War. In the companion book, editors James G. Blight and janet M. Lang use lessons from McNamara's life to examine issues of war and peace in the 20th century. McNamara's career spans some of America's defining events-from the end of World War I, through the course of World War II, and the unfolding of the Cold War in Cuba, Vietnam, and around the world. The Fog of War brings together film transcripts, documents, dialogues, and essays to explore what the horrors and triumphs of the 20th century can teach us about the future.

    "The best telling of the story of the past," writes George Marsden, "relies on a balance of the general and the particular." In this book, a sequel and companion to his widely acclaimed Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford, 1980), Marsden uses the history of Fuller Theological Seminary — a durable evangelical institution — as a lens through which to focus an examination of the broader story of evangelicalism and fundamentalism since the 1940s. In fact, at the time of the school's founding in 1947, "evangelicalism" and "fundamentalism" were not considered separate entities. Though Fuller Seminary later became so thoroughly identified with the "new evangelicalism" (or neo- evangelicalism) that its fundamentalist roots are sometimes overlooked, in the school's early years it was in striking ways a fundamentalist institution with a thoroughly fundamentalist constituency. Marsden's detailed history relies heavily on primary sources: personal recollections and correspondence of the seminary's founders, and discussions with students and staff from throughout the seminary's history. Although the story of Fuller Seminary provides the framework for this fascinating look at a segment of American religious history, Marsden's careful and knowledgeable attention to the surrounding worlds of mainline denominations and stricter fundamentalism makes this book a major contribution to the study of a movement that has played an important role in shaping American culture.

    Nuns were the first feminists, argues Fialka. They became the nation's first cadre of independent, professional women. Some nursed, some taught, and many created and managed new charitable organizations, including large hospitals and colleges. In the 1800s nuns moved west with the frontier, often starting the first hospitals and schools in immigrant communities. They provided aid and service in the Chicago fire, cared for orphans and prostitutes in the California Gold Rush and brought professional nursing skills to field hospitals run by both armies in the Civil War. Their work was often done in the face of intimidation from such groups as the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1900s they built the nation's largest private school and hospital systems and brought the Catholic Church into the civil rights movement. As their numbers began to decline in the 1970s, many sisters were forced to take professional jobs as lawyers, probation workers, managers and hospital executives because their salaries were needed to support older nuns, many of whom lacked a pension system. Currently there are about 75,000 sisters in America, down from 204,000 in 1968. Their median age is sixty-nine. In "Sisters, "Fialka""reveals the strength of the spiritual capital and the unprecedented reach of the caring institutions that religious women created in America.

    In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy, and the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His responses to the crises were sometimes effective but often tragic, and LBJ's refusal to seek re-election underscores his recognition of the challenges facing the country in 1968. As much a biography of a single year as it is of LBJ, LBJ's 1968 vividly captures the tumult that dominated the headlines on a local and global level.

    America faces looming inflation, climate change, a national credit crisis, war in the Middle East, threats to security and liberty at home, and skyrocketing oil and gas prices. With all of these threats to our security, prosperity and freedom on the horizon, it has never been more important to choose the right leader for America."If a man's faith is sincere, it is the most important thing about him, and it is impossible to understand who he is and how he will lead without first understanding the religious vision that informs his life," writes Mansfield.Mansfield holds back nothing to share that vision and explain its roots, including: Obama's upbringing in a non-Christian homethe influence on his life from his agnostic mother and Muslim fatherhis remarkable turn to Christianity after working in the inner cities of Chicagohis years at the controversial Trinity United Church of Christhis association to the radical teachings of Rev. Jeremiah Wrightthe source of Obama's relentless optimism and hope for AmericaEvery American voter concerned to know more about Obama's beliefs, both religious and political, and how the two intertwine should read this book, as should every thinking person who continues to shape and evolve his or her religious beliefs. Barack Obama, according to Mansfield, is "raising the banner of what he hopes will be the faith-based politics of a new generation . . . and he will carry that banner to whatever heights of power his God and the American people allow."

    He warns that fundamentalists are deliberately blurring the lines between politics and religion. As a believing Christian, Carter takes on issues that are under fierce debate -- women's rights, terrorism, homosexuality, civil liberties, abortion, the death penalty, science and religion, environmental degradation, nuclear arsenals, preemptive war, and America's global image.

    In this first installment of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear, Kennedy tells how America endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of that unprecedented calamity. Kennedy vividly demonstrates that the economic crisis of the 1930s was more than a reaction to the excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before the Crash, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, consuming capital and inflicting misery on city and countryside alike. Nor was the alleged prosperity of the 1920s as uniformly shared as legend portrays. Countless Americans eked out threadbare lives on the margins of national life. Roosevelt's New Deal wrenched opportunity from the trauma of the 1930s and created a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, but it was afflicted with shortcomings and contradictions as well. With an even hand Kennedy details the New Deal's problems and defeats, as well as its achievements. He also sheds fresh light on its incandescent but enigmatic author, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Marshalling unforgettable narratives that feature prominent leaders as well as lesser-known citizens, The American People in the Great Depression tells the story of a resilient nation finding courage in an unrelenting storm.

    John Bell Hood and his Army of Tennessee had dreams of capturing Nashville and marching on to the Ohio River, but a small Union force under Hood's old West Point roommate stood between him and the state capital. In a desperate attempt to smash John Schofield's line at Franklin, Hood threw most of his men against the Union works, centered on the house of a family named Carter, and lost 30 percent of his attacking force in one afternoon, crippling his army and setting it up for a knockout blow at Nashville two weeks later. With firsthand accounts, letters and diary entries from the Carter House Archives, local historian James R. Knight paints a vivid picture of this gruesome conflict.

    Carter's unpopularity helped Republicans win seats in the House and gain control over the Senate for the first time in over 20 years. The Reagan Era had begun, ushering in a generation of conservative power. Democrats blamed Carter for this catastrophe and spent the next decade pretending he had never existed. Republicans cheered his demise and trotted out his name to scare voters for years to come. Carter and his wife Rosalynn returned to their farm in the small town of Plains, Georgia. They were humiliated, widely unpopular, and even in financial debt. 35 years later, Carter has become the most celebrated post-president in American history. He has won the Nobel Peace Prize, written bestselling books, and become lauded across the world for his efforts on behalf of peace and social justice. Ex-presidents now adopt the Carter model of leveraging their eminent status to benefit humanity. By pursuing diplomatic missions, leading missions to end poverty and working to eradicate disease around the world, Carter has transformed the idea of what a president can accomplish after leaving the White House.This is the story of how Jimmy Carter lost the biggest political prize on earth--but managed to win back something much greater. Jordan Michael Smith is a contributing writer at Salon and the Christian Science Monitor. His writing has appeared in print or online for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, BBC, and many other publications. Born in Toronto, he holds a Master's of Arts in Political Science from Carleton University. He lives in New York City. www.jordanmichaelsmith.typepad.com.Cover design by Adil Dara.