"From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the 1990s--one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape"--

Examines the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump. Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge. Mass media has encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan's first campaign...

This is the worst of times... but we've been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. As the twentieth century opened, America became more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during...

In this study, Mitch Kachun explores the multiple functions and contested meanings of African American emancipation celebrations, from the abolition of the slave trade to the fiftieth anniversary of U.S. emancipation." "Based on extensive research in African American newspapers and oration texts, this book retraces a vital if often overlooked tradition in African American political culture and addresses important issues about black participation in...

A history of the thinkers, writers, and artists who shaped intellectual culture in Cold War Europe and America --

A former chief Republican strategist and best-selling author examines the five driving forces on the Right-financers, propagandists, party support, legal theories to legitimize and shock troops-and makes clear how they are working in concert to end our democracy as we know it.

A narrative account of the twentieth president's political career offers insight into his background as a scholar and Civil War hero, his battles against the corrupt establishment, and Alexander Graham Bell's failed attempt to save him from an assassin's bullet.