Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people?

In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era.

Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.

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Steve Fraser, Gary Gerstle - Ruling America, A His tory of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (2005).pdf

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David A. Dalton - The Natural World of Lewis and C lark (2007).jpg

Enhanced with unusual and informative illustrations, biologist David Dalton s new book reexamines Lewis and Clark s observations of the new plants and animals they encountered in the light of modern science. He shows how advances like DNA research, modern understanding of proteins, and the latest laboratory methods shed new light on the expedition s findings. Introducing the tools and techniques of today s science in a way that won t intimidate nonspecialist readers, he expertly balances botanical and zoological information, with coverage ranging from the extinction of large animals in North America a few thousand years ago to the expected effects of invasive species and climate change in the coming centuries.
About the Author
David A. Dalton is Professor of Biology at Reed College and lives in Portland, Oregon.

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David A. Dalton - The Natural World of Lewis and C lark (2007).pdf

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Jeffrey R. Cooper - The CIA's Program for Improvin g Intelligence Analysis, Curing Analytic Pathologi es, Recruiting, Training, Educating, and Developin g (2005).jpg

USA Books - Jeffrey R. Cooper - The CIAs Program for Improving Int..., Recruiting, Training, Educating, and Developing 2005.jpg

Dr. Jeffrey R. Cooper, Vice President for Technology, Science Applications International Corporation - The CIA's Program for Improving Intelligence Analysis, Curing Analytic Pathologies, Recruiting, Training, Educating, and Developing (2005)

A new study published by the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence calls for a fundamental reconceptualization of the process of intelligence analysis in order to overcome the “pathologies” that have rendered it increasingly dysfunctional. This study is fundamentally about what I would call the intellectual professionalization of intelligence analysis. It is about standards and practices and habits of mind. It is about inductive (evidence-based) analytical reasoning balanced against deductive (hypothesis-based and evidence-tested) reasoning. It extols the value of truly scientific modes of thinking, including respect for the role of imagination and intuition, while warning against the pitfalls of "scientism," a false pretense to scientific standards or a scientific pose without a scientific performance. It talks about peer review and challenging assumptions and the need to build these therapeutic virtues into the analytical process.

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Jeffrey R. Cooper - The CIA's Program for Improvin g Intelligence Analysis, Curing Analytic Pathologi es, Recruiting, Training, Educating, and Developin g (2005).pdf

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6 mar 13 5:36

Brian McGinty - Lincoln and the Court (2008).jpg

In a meticulously researched and engagingly written narrative, Brian McGinty rescues the story of Abraham Lincoln and the Supreme Court from long and undeserved neglect, recounting the compelling history of the Civil War president's relations with the nation's highest tribunal and the role it played in resolving the agonizing issues raised by the conflict.

Lincoln was, more than any other president in the nation's history, a "lawyerly" president, the veteran of thousands of courtroom battles, where victories were won, not by raw strength or superior numbers, but by appeals to reason, citations of precedent, and invocations of justice. He brought his nearly twenty-five years of experience as a practicing lawyer to bear on his presidential duties to nominate Supreme Court justices, preside over a major reorganization of the federal court system, and respond to Supreme Court decisions--some of which gravely threatened the Union cause.

The Civil War was, on one level, a struggle between competing visions of constitutional law, represented on the one side by Lincoln's insistence that the United States was a permanent Union of one people united by a "supreme law," and on the other by Jefferson Davis's argument that the United States was a compact of sovereign states whose legal ties could be dissolved at any time and for any reason, subject only to the judgment of the dissolving states that the cause for dissolution was sufficient. Alternately opposed and supported by the justices of the Supreme Court, Lincoln steered the war-torn nation on a sometimes uncertain, but ultimately triumphant, path to victory, saving the Union, freeing the slaves, and preserving the Constitution for future generations.

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Brian McGinty - Lincoln and the Court (2008).pdf

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Daniel W. Howe - Making the American Self, Jonatha n Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (1997).jpg

What does it mean to be an American, and how have individual Americans consciously endeavored to create their own identity? "Self-improvement," "self-culture," "self-made man," to "make something of oneself"--all are terms that were used from colonial to Victorian times. The particular language that framed the quest has fallen out of fashion, but it was a powerful cultural imperative for hundreds of years. The quest, in all its "post" guises, continues. Daniel Howe considers the ideas Americans once had about a proper construction of the self. Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Bushnell, Horace Mann, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Dorothea Dix, Frederick Douglass, among others, engaged in discussion about the composition of human nature, the motivation of human behavior, and what can be done about the social problems these create. They shared a common model of human psychology, in which powerful but base passions must be mastered by reason in the service of virtue. How to accomplish this was often itself a subject of passionate controversy.

The story reveals that Americans both distrusted individual autonomy and were enthusiastic about it; passions, reason, and moral sense collided on how to manage it. Howe is empathetic to all the quests--for elites and artisans, blacks and women--seeing in them a basic pursuit of identity. The author demonstrates that aspirations for "self-control" and "self-discipline," grounded in conservatism and evangelical Christianity, also shaped movements that branched leftward to promote social welfare, feminism, and civil rights.

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Walter Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa ( 1981).jpg

Education here in the United States leaves much to the imagination concerning western societie's historic connection to Africa... This book takes into account the socio-economical, and political relationships that the western world has maintained with Africa and other parts of the eastern world since the 1400s, and is a must read in my opinion..... Why is Africa so far behind in so many ways? How does Europe and American achieve so much at the same time that Africa is languishing.... In this book the answers to these much pondered questions have been thoroughly answered....

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Walter Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa ( 1981).pdf

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John Shattuck - Freedom on Fire (2003).jpg

As the chief human rights official of the Clinton Administration, John Shattuck faced far-flung challenges.Disasters were exploding simultaneously-genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, murder and atrocities in Haiti, repression in China, brutal ethnic wars, and failed states in other parts of the world. But America was mired in conflicting priorities and was reluctant to act. What were Shattuck and his allies to do?

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John Shattuck - Freedom on Fire (2003).pdf

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Shane White - Stories of Freedom in Black New York (2002).jpg

New York abolition, which was formally granted in 1817 but not fully carried out until July, 4, 1827, complicated the social structure of the state and city during an awkward, staggered process. During this period a theater troupe called the African Company emerged. White, a professor of history at Australia's University of Sydney, reconstructs the vital life of this troupe in the New York of the 1820s, situating its struggles within the larger context of a sometimes exuberant yet uneasy time. Not only did the company perform Shakespeare's Richard III, one of the era's most popular dramas, as its first production, but the cast often rewrote dialogue and inserted elements from other sources. As played by former slave Charles Taft, the reworked lead role took on an added dimension, becoming a version of the trickster figure from African folklore. Many white critics and community figures were, not surprisingly, scandalized by the productions, and company members suffered harassment at the hands of local toughs and authorities alike. Taft was jailed for theft, and his successor James Hewlitt became the victim of changing audience tastes that doomed his career before he ended up imprisoned as a smalltime con artist. While the African Company's existence has previously been noted by scholars, it has generally been dismissed as a novelty or aberration. Drawing on extensive research, White emphasizes such achievements as the on-stage depiction of slavery, and vividly depicts powerful personalities like Taft and Hewlitt. He makes a persuasive case for the company's cultural importance, particularly as a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance that was still a century away.

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Shane White - Stories of Freedom in Black New York (2002).pdf

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John Fabian Witt - The Accidental Republic, Crippl ed Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law (2004).jpg

USA Books - John Fabian Witt - The Accidental Republic, Crippled W...stitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law 2004.jpg

In the five decades after the Civil War, the United States witnessed a profusion of legal institutions designed to cope with the nation's exceptionally acute industrial accident crisis. Jurists elaborated the common law of torts. Workingmen's organizations founded a widespread system of cooperative insurance. Leading employers instituted welfare-capitalist accident relief funds. And social reformers advocated compulsory insurance such as workmen's compensation.
John Fabian Witt argues that experiments in accident law at the turn of the twentieth century arose out of competing views of the loose network of ideas and institutions that historians call the ideology of free labor. These experiments a century ago shaped twentieth- and twenty-first-century American accident law; they laid the foundations of the American administrative state; and they occasioned a still hotly contested legal transformation from the principles of free labor to the categories of insurance and risk. In this eclectic moment at the beginnings of the modern state, Witt describes American accident law as a contingent set of institutions that might plausibly have developed along a number of historical paths. In turn, he suggests, the making of American accident law is the story of the equally contingent remaking of our accidental republic.

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John Fabian Witt - The Accidental Republic, Crippl ed Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law (2004).pdf

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Alan McPherson - Yankee No!, Anti-Americanism in U .S.-Latin American Relations (2003).jpg

Alan McPherson's monograph on the role of anti-Americanism in inter-American relations is a timely one. As the author correctly observes, the events and aftermath of September 11 added new urgency to the task of unraveling and understanding the roots of anti-Americanism throughout the world...Yankee No! exhibits both solid research and strong writing...As far as McPherson's writing is concerned, his prose is at once concise and engaging. The author has a good eye for the compelling quote, and the title of the first chapter, 'The Road to Caracas: Or, Richard Nixon Must Get Stoned,' combines humor and compelling historical analysis. Although the book is somewhat brief (170 pages of text), McPherson makes persuasive arguments and explains complex events and issues without resorting to jargon. In short, the book is both intellectually provocative and a good read...For both scholars and interested laypeople, it should be considered essential reading.
--Matthew Loayza (H-Net )

Alan McPherson has not only made a valuable contribution to the literature on U.S.-Latin American relations but, more importantly, he has provided a superb analysis of anti-Americanism by identifying its variability, its ambivalence, and the U.S. resilience in confronting the challenge during the critical years framed in this book. In his sophistication and in his writing he demonstrates all the attributes of a seasoned historian.
--Lester D. Langley, author of The Americas in the Modern Age (20040301)

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Alan McPherson - Yankee No!, Anti-Americanism in U .S.-Latin American Relations (2003).pdf

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Leonard Blusse - Visible Cities, Canton, Nagasaki, and Batavia and the Coming of the Americans (2008 ).jpg

The eighteenth century witnessed the rise of the China market and the changes that resulted in global consumption patterns, from opium smoking to tea drinking. In a valuable transnational perspective, Leonard Blussé chronicles the economic and cultural transformations in East Asia through three key cities. Canton was the port of call for foreign merchants in the Qing empire. Nagasaki was the official port of Tokugawa Japan. Batavia served as the connection site between the Indian Ocean and China seas for ships of the Dutch East India Company.
The effects of global change were wrenching. The monopolies suffered challenges, trade corridors shifted, and new players appeared. Yankee traders in their fast clipper ships made great inroads. As Dutch control declined, Batavia lost its premier position. Nagasaki became a shadow of its former self. Canton, however, surged to become the foremost port of East Asia. But on the horizon were new kinds of port cities, not controlled from above and more attuned to the needs of the overseas trading network. With the establishment of the free port of Singapore and the rise of the treaty ports—Hong Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama—the nature of the China seas trade, and relations between East Asia and the West, changed forever.

About the Author
Leonard Blussé is Professor of History and Asian-European Relations, Leiden University.

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Leonard Blusse - Visible Cities, Canton, Nagasaki, and Batavia and the Coming of the Americans (2008 ).pdf

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Derek Parker Royal - Philip Roth, New Perspectives on an American Author (2005).jpg

“The most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of essays available.... He has included work by some of the best Roth critics and scholars.... The essays are mostly each on a single work but written intertextually so that readers get a sense of Roth's development and growth as a novelist. This will be extremely useful for students at every level as well as for the general reader who wants to understand and appreciate Roth's fiction.”–Jay L. Halio, Professor of English Emeritus University of Delaware author of Philip Roth Revisited

“The first collection of essays that both illuminates and expands our critical understanding of all Roth's major and minor writings. It will be of equal interest to both the Roth specialist and the general reader.”–Ben Siegel, Professor of English California State Polytechnic University, Ponoma, author of Turning Up the Flame: Philip Roth's Later Novels

“Royal's collection is a broad ranging and timely critical reassessment of the Roth oeuvre by major scholars who examine with freshness and brilliance Roth's postmodern treatment of such contemporary issues as gender, ethnicity, Jewishness, metafiction, the problematics of the American dream, American history, the status of truth, and Roth's many-layered narrative masks. Lively, erudite, substantive, sophisticated and elegantly edited. This is a major contribution to the study of one of postmodern America's major living writers.”–Gloria L. Cronin, Editor: Saul Bellow Journal Executive Coordinator, American Literature Association Co-Director, Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Association

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Derek Parker Royal - Philip Roth, New Perspectives on an American Author (2005).pdf

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David R. Mets - The Long Search for a Surgical Str ike, Precision Munitions and the Revolution in Mil itary Affairs (2001).jpg

USA Books - David R. Mets - The Long Search for a Surgical Strike,...Munitions and the Revolution in Military Affairs 2001.jpg

Dr. David R. Mets’s The Long Search for a Surgical Strike: Precision Munitions and the Revolution in Military Affairs is a broad, thought-provoking examination of the relationship between the advancement in conventional weapons guidance technology and the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA). He defines an RMA as a rapid change in military technology, doctrine, and organization leading to a sweeping new way that wars are fought. Dr. Mets then considers whether the improvement in conventional air weapons accuracy since World War II is the foundation, the main pillar, one of the principal supports, or is irrelevant to the RMA—which is said to be afoot. Clearly, the air theorists of the 1920s were fully persuaded that indeed a revolution was afoot. Equally clearly, the visions of Giulio Douhet, William “Billy” Mitchell, and the Air Corps Tactical School were no more than partially fulfilled in World War II. Dr. Mets also explores the degree to which the shortcomings of aerial weapons were responsible for the denial of their visions and the degree to which those inadequacies were overcome in the conflicts that followed. He closes with an estimate as to whether their dreams of a revolution are about to be fulfilled.

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David R. Mets - The Long Search for a Surgical Str ike, Precision Munitions and the Revolution in Mil itary Affairs (2001).pdf

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John R Carter, Major, USAF - Airpower & the Cult o f the Offensive (1998).jpg

Dogmatic belief in the dominance of the land offensive influenced decisions that resulted in years of futile blood-letting on the Western Front in World War I. Termed the cult of the offensive by scholars of the Great War, faith in the offense became so unshakable in pre-1914 Europe that military organizations dismissed as irrelevant numerous indications of its waning power in the face of technological developments favoring the defense. As we know, the belief that airpower is inherently offensive is a recurrent theme in airpower history and doctrine. Given the predilections of airmen for offensive operations, could a cult of the offensive perniciously trap airpower doctrine and lead to similarly disastrous consequences? By drawing on selected historical experiences of the air forces of Great Britain, Israel, and the United States, Maj John R. Carter Jr. employs a comparative perspective and rigorous case study methodology to offer a detailed examination of that question. He begins by establishing the theoretical background necessary for case study analysis. Airpower defense is defined as those operations conducted to deny another force’s air operations in a designated airspace. Airpower offense consists of those operations in the airspace defended by another, or operations conducted outside of one’s own actively defended airspace. Major Carter dissects there lationship between offense and defense to discover that airpower defense enjoys neither an advantage of position nor of time. He thus concludes that traditional lausewitzian views relative to the power of the defense do not apply to airpower. The author next describes those factors that mayinject or reinforce a preferential bias for offense into airpower strategy and doctrine. Major Carter defines a cult of the offensive as an organizational belief in the power of the offense so compelling that a military organization no longer evaluates its offensive doctrine objectively, which leads to his examination of the ramifications postulated to result from an offensive ideology.

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John R Carter, Major, USAF - Airpower & the Cult o f the Offensive (1998).pdf

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Hall Gardner - American Global Strategy And the Wa r on Terrorism (2005).jpg

Contemporary international events, and indeed even the US presidential election, demonstrate the continuing need for debate and discourse over the direction and emphases of US foreign policy. American Global Strategy and the War on Terrorism, addresses a wide range of themes that are crucial to understanding the post-11 September, 2001 crisis and to formulating an effective American and global foreign and security policy to deal with that crisis. Hall Gardner seeks to re-conceptualize the 'war on terrorism' and to analyze the nature of American domestic and international policy-making within the context of historical and structural constraints upon US policy. The book contends that US strategy needs to shift gears and work more diligently to minimize the risks of even wider regional conflicts, possibly involving major powers, through engaging in truly multilateral strategies and through 'strengthening' the UN. This study should be read by contemporary policy makers and scholars of foreign policy.

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Hall Gardner - American Global Strategy And the Wa r on Terrorism (2005).pdf

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James C. Bradford - A Companion to American Milita ry History, 2 Volume Set (2009).jpg

With more than 60 essays, A Companion to American Military History presents a comprehensive analysis of the historiography of United States military history from the colonial era to the present.

• Covers the entire spectrum of US history from the Indian and imperial conflicts of the seventeenth century to the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Features an unprecedented breadth of coverage from eminent military historians and emerging scholars, including little studied topics such as the military and music, military ethics, care of the dead, and sports
• Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic
• Summarizes current debates and identifies areas where conflicting interpretations are in need of further study

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