The first interpretive history that covers the antiwar movement in this country throughout the entire Vietnam era. Richly illustrated with compelling... photographs of the times, the book chronicles the war struggle that provoked a struggle about America.

1793, Philadelphia. The nation's capital and the largest city in North America is devastated by an apparently incurable disease, cause unknown . . . In... a powerful, dramatic narrative, critically acclaimed author Jim Murphy describes the illness known as yellow fever and the toll it took on the city's residents, relating the epidemic to the major social and political events of the day and to 18th-century medical beliefs and practices. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Murphy spotlights the heroic role of Philadelphia's free blacks in combating the disease, and the Constitutional crisis that President Washington faced when he was forced to leave the city--and all his papers--while escaping the deadly contagion. The search for the fever's causes and cure, not found for more than a century afterward, provides a suspenseful counterpoint to this riveting true story of a city under siege.Thoroughly researched, generously illustrated with fascinating archival prints, and unflinching in its discussion of medical details, this Newbery Honor-winning book offers a glimpse into the conditions of American cities at the time of our nation's birth while drawing timely parallels to modern-day epidemics. Bibliography, map, index.

The 83 most important documents of the American past are presented with commentary by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Henry Steele Commager, and other... distinguished historians. The selections span the spectrum of American history as it was made, and as it was lived.

An American Requiem is the story of one man's coming of age. But more than that, it is a coming to terms with the conflicts that disrupted many... families, inflicting personal wounds that were also social, political, and religious. Carroll grew up in a Catholic family that seemed blessed. His father had abandoned his own dream of becoming a priest to rise through the ranks of Hoover's FBI and then become one of the most powerful men in the Pentagon, the founder of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Young Jim lived the privileged life of a general's son, dating the daughter of a vice president and meeting the pope, all in the shadow of nuclear war, waiting for the red telephone to ring in his parents' house. He worshiped his father until Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights movement, turmoil in the Catholic Church, and then Vietnam combined to outweigh the bond between father and son. These were issues on which they would never agree. Only after Carroll left the priesthood to become a writer and husband with children of his own did he come to understand fully the struggles his father had faced. In this work of nonfiction, the best-selling novelist draws on the skills he honed with nine much-admired novels to tell the story he was, literally, born to tell. An American Requiem is a benediction on his father's lief, his family's struggles, adn teh legacies of an entire generation.

We were afraid of its impenetrable darkness. Afraid of its industrial smell. We were afraid of the things that lived beneath its surface and the things... that had died there. We were afraid of spotting a hand or a head bobbing in the rafts of garbage that floated by. We were afraid of submerged intake valves that sucked water into the factories along the banks. We were afraid of the river’s filth. It wasn’t the kind of filth that came from playing with your friends. It was grownup filth. The kind that scared the blue out of water and coated the riverbank with oily black goo. It was the kind of filth you could taste, the kind that could make you sick, maybe even kill you. We were afraid of getting splashed with river water or of touching river rocks. We were afraid of falling in or—God forbid—going under. We were afraid of the river’s anger at being so befouled, and afraid, most of all, of the revenge we felt certain the river would exact. New Jersey’s Passaic River rises in a pristine wetland and ends in a federal Superfund site. In An American River, author and New Jersey native Mary Bruno kayaks its length in an effort to discover what happened to her hometown river. The Passaic’s wildly convoluted course invites detours into the river’s flood-prone natural history, New Jersey’s unique geology, the corrupt practices of the Newark chemical plant that produced Agent Orange and poisoned the river with dioxin, and into the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters who have lived and worked along the Passaic and who are trying, even now, to save it. Part natural history, part personal history, part rollicking adventure, the book is a narrative meditation on the wonder of nature, the enduring ties of family, and the power of water and loss. “My great grandmother liked to say, ‘Don’t shit in the nest,’” writes Bruno. “The Passaic River is an object lesson in what can happen when we ignore that simple, salty advice.” "An American River is an intricate and satisfying braid of memoir, history, science, nature writing, and acute social observation. This is an invigorating and hopeful book, and its sense of wonder is infectious. It's not, I think, too great a stretch to say that it holds its own on the shelf alongside Walden, Silent Spring and A Sand County Almanac." Jonathan Raban Author of Driving Home: An American Journey

A profoundly courageous and insightful memoir, An American Story documents the events that have shaped journalist Debra Dickerson's conscience.The... daughter of former sharecroppers, Dickerson never imagined she would emerge from her squalid St. Louis neighborhood to become an acclaimed journalist with a Harvard Law degree. A constant reader and a straight-A student, nevertheless Dickerson's lack of confidence kept her from accepting the many colleges offers she received. Instead she enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, quickly rising through the ranks. In spite of her success, she recognized within herself deep-seated conflict at being a working class black woman living in a white man's world. Her path to self-acceptance is at the heart of this refreshing narrative.

An American Masterpiece Clyde Griffiths finds his social-climbing aspirations and love for a rich and beautiful debutante threatened when his... lower-class pregnant girlfriend gives him an ultimatum.

The classic depiction of the harsh realities of American life, the dark side of the American Dream, and one man's doomed pursuit of love and success...... "Mr. Dreiser is not imitative and belongs to no school. He is at heart a mysticist and a fatalist, though using the realistic method. He is, on the evidence of this novel alone, a power."-The New York Times Book Review

In 1938 few Americans knew about British-governed India or the nationalist movements then burgeoning there. Addressing this, a New York-based... foundation, the Institute of Current World Affairs, awarded 23-year-old Phillips Talbot a fellowship to spend several years in India learning about the country. This volume is a collection of Talbot s letters written between 1938 and 1950, on the buildup to the independence of India and Pakistan, and the early experiences of the new states. Talbot s letters and reports from the field, presented here in the original, include his first-hand observations on student life at Aligarh Muslim University, local life in a small Muslim community in Kashmir, a Vedic ashram in Lahore, Tagore s Shantiniketan, Gandhi s Sevagram, the Kodaikanal Ashram Fellowship, and Hindu and Muslim urban communities in Lahore and Bombay, and Afghanistan. Learning about Indian politics, Talbot attended crucial meetings of the Indian National Congress, including the Ramgarh Conclave at the beginning of World War II, and the All India Muslim League s Lahore session at which the Pakistan resolution was adopted in 1940, along with other assemblies such as the Asian Relations Conference in the spring of 1947. He came to know Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Jinnah and other leaders. A trained journalist, Talbot reports with flair, whether he is recounting the Lahore session of the Muslim League, or describing a walk with Gandhi in Noakhali district of East Bengal after "the great Calcutta killing" of 1946, or his last interview with Gandhi a few weeks before the latter s assassination. For anybody wishing to get a ground-level view of South Asian society in its decisive decade, these letters from an American observer will prove to be an enjoyable read.

Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory explores the political theology of Johann Baptist Metz to discover how Christian memory is prophetic both in its... revelation of extraordinary circumstances of injustice and the challenge and hope it poses to those who join in solidarity with the oppressed. Liturgical theologian Alexander Schmemann then elaborates how the liturgy reveals the kingdom of God and empowers believers to witness to it. The meeting of these theologies results in a rich eschatology, a life shaped y the vision of a future that fulfills the promises of the past.

This is a comprehensive modern dictionary of the major indigenous language of Mexico, the language of the Aztecs and many of their neighbors. Nahuatl... speakers became literate within a generation of contact with Europeans, and a vast literature has been composed in Nahuatl beginning in the mid-sixteenth century and continuing to the present.

In its efforts to control the use of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and other illegal drugs, the United States spends about $35 billion per year in public... funds. Almost half a million dealers and users are under incarceration. In this book, David Boyum and Peter Reuter provide an assessment of how well this massive investment of tax dollars and government authority is working.Boyum and Reuter show that America’s drug problem is mainly a legacy of the epidemics of heroin, cocaine, and crack use during the 1970s and 1980s, which left us with aging cohorts of criminally active and increasingly sick users. Newer drugs, such as Ecstasy and methamphetamine, perennially threaten to become comparable problems, but so far have not.Using a market framework, the book discusses the nature and effectiveness of efforts to tackle the nation’s drug problems. Drug policy has become increasingly punitive, with the number of drug offenders in jail and prison growing tenfold between 1980 and 2003. Nevertheless, there is strikingly little evidence that tougher law enforcement can materially reduce drug use. By contrast, drug treatment services remain in short supply, even though research indicates that treatment expenditures easily pay for themselves in terms of reduced crime and improved productivity.Boyum and Reuter conclude that America’s drug policy should be reoriented in several ways to be more effective. Enforcement should focus on reducing drug-related problems, such as violence associated with drug markets, rather than on locking up large numbers of low-level dealers. Treatment services for heavy users, particularly methadone and other opiate maintenance therapies, need more money and fewer regulations. And programs that coerce convicted drug addicts to enter treatment and maintain abstinence as a condition of continued freedom should be expanded.The AEI Evaluative Studies series aims to promote greater understanding and continuing review of major activities of the federal government. Each study focuses on a gov

Winner of the Philippine National Book Award, this pioneering volume reveals how the power of the country’s family-based oligarchy both derives from... and contributes to a weak Philippine state. From provincial warlords to modern managers, prominent Filipino leaders have fused family, politics, and business to compromise public institutions and amass private wealth—a historic pattern that persists to the present day.    Edited by Alfred W. McCoy, An Anarchy of Families explores the pervasive influence of the modern dynasties that have led the Philippines during the past century. Exemplified by the Osmeñas and Lopezes, elite Filipino families have formed a powerful oligarchy—controlling capital, dominating national politics, and often owning the media. Beyond Manila, strong men such as Ramon Durano, Ali Dimaporo, and Justiniano Montano have used “guns, goons, and gold” to accumulate wealth and power in far-flung islands and provinces. In a new preface for this revised edition, the editor shows how this pattern of oligarchic control has continued into the twenty-first century, despite dramatic socio-economic change that has supplanted the classic “three g’s” of Philippine politics with the contemporary “four c’s”—continuity, Chinese, criminality, and celebrity.