- Table View
- List View
American Artillery: From 1775 to the Present Day
by Michael GreenAn extensively illustrated history covering the artillery weaponry of the United States military from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.The first regiment of artillery in the American Continental Army was formed in 1775. During the American Civil War almost a century later, artillery evolved from the employment of individual batteries to massed fire of grouped batteries.In 1907, the US Army Artillery Corps was reorganized into the Field Artillery and the Coast Artillery Corps. During the First World War, a lack of American-made weapons saw the adoption of foreign artillery pieces. The Second World War demanded the introduction of many new field artillery pieces by the US Army. General Patton later commented, “I don’t have to tell you who won the war, you know our artillery did.”American artillery firepower also took a heavy toll of the enemy during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. During the Cold War American artillery continued to develop, as the military embraced new weapons systems including tactical nuclear missiles, which thankfully never had to be used. Conventional artillery continued to prove highly effective in the country’s twenty-first century wars. This superbly illustrated and authoritative work covers the full range of artillery weaponry that has been in service with US armed forces.“Full of technical details on cannon, rocket and missile launchers, munitions, and fire-direction equipment. There is also considerable information on how new ordnance was developed and adopted into service over time.” —Military Heritage Magazine
American Artists Engage the Built Environment, 1960-1979 (Routledge Research in Art History)
by Susanneh BieberThis volume reframes the development of US-American avant-garde art of the long 1960s—from minimal and pop art to land art, conceptual art, site-specific practices, and feminist art—in the context of contemporary architectural discourses. Susanneh Bieber analyzes the work of seven major artists, Donald Judd, Robert Grosvenor, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Smithson, Lawrence Weiner, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Mary Miss, who were closely associated with the formal-aesthetic innovations of the period. While these individual artists came to represent diverse movements, Bieber argues that all of them were attracted to the field of architecture—the work of architects, engineers, preservationists, landscape designers, and urban planners—because they believed these practices more directly shaped the social and material spaces of everyday life. This book’s contribution to the field of art history is thus twofold. First, it shows that the avant-garde of the long 1960s did not simply develop according to an internal logic of art but also as part of broader sociocultural discourses about buildings and cities. Second, it exemplifies a methodological synthesis between social art history and poststructural formalism that is foundational to understanding the role of art in the construction of a more just and egalitarian society. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, architecture, urbanism, and environmental humanism.
American Association Milwaukee Brewers, The (Images of Baseball)
by Bob Koehler Rex HamannMany people know of Milwaukee's famous beer brewers, such as Schlitz, Pabst, and Miller, but these pages contain the story of the original baseball Brewers. The Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association spent 51 seasons (1902-1952) on the city's near north side. To have had the opportunity to stretch out in the sun-soaked stands of Borchert Field during that era was to witness minor league baseball at its best. The Brewers were the second-winningest franchise in the league's history, and names like Tom "Sugar Boy" Dougherty and Nick "Tomato Face" Cullop were once household words throughout the city. This book stands as a tribute to the colorful history of this team and to all the former players, coaches, and managers who ever wore the woolens for Milwaukee.
American Avant-Garde Theatre: A History (Theatre Production Studies)
by Arnold AronsonThis stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s. American Avant-Garde Theatre offers a definition of the avant-garde, and looks at its origins and theoretical foundations by examining: *Gertrude Stein *John Cage *The Beat writers *Avant-garde cinema *Abstract Expressionism *Minimalism There are fascinating discussions and illustrations of the productions of the Living Theatre, the Wooster Group, Open Theatre, Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and Performance Group. among many others. Aronson also examines why avant-garde theatre declined and virtually disappeared at the end of the twentieth century.
American Axe: The Tool That Shaped a Continent
by Brett McLeodFrom bronze axes of the Viking conquests to the American homesteader&’s felling axe, this is a tool that has shaped human history like few others. American Axe pays tribute to this iconic instrument of settlement and industry, with rich history, stunning photography, and profiles of the most collectible vintage axes such as The Woodslasher, Keen Cutter, and True Temper Perfect. Combining his experiences as a forester, axe collector, and former competitive lumberjack, author Brett McLeod conveys the allure of this deceptively simple woodcutting implement and celebrates the resurging interest in its story and use.
American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile
by Richard John NeuhausChristians are by their nature a people out of place. Their true home is with God; in civic life, they are alien citizens "in but not of the world. " InAmerican Babylon, eminent theologian Richard John Neuhaus examines the particular truth of that ambiguity for Catholics in America today. Neuhaus addresses the essential quandaries of Catholic life-assessing how Catholics can keep their heads above water in the sea of immorality that confronts them in the world, how they can be patriotic even though their true country is not in this world, and how they might reconcile their duties as citizens with their commitment to God. Deeply learned, frequently combative, and always eloquent,American Babylonis Neuhaus'smagnum opus-and will be essential reading for all Christians.
American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Politics and Society in Modern America #37)
by Robert O. SelfA gripping portrait of black power politics and the struggle for civil rights in postwar OaklandAs the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt, California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of suburbs and the decline of cities, a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined. American Babylon tells this story through Oakland and its nearby suburbs, tracing both the history of civil rights and black power politics as well as the history of suburbanization and home-owner politics. Robert Self shows that racial inequities in both New Deal and Great Society liberalism precipitated local struggles over land, jobs, taxes, and race within postwar metropolitan development. Black power and the tax revolt evolved together, in tension.American Babylon demonstrates that the history of civil rights and black liberation politics in California did not follow a southern model, but represented a long-term struggle for economic rights that began during the World War II years and continued through the rise of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This struggle yielded a wide-ranging and profound critique of postwar metropolitan development and its foundation of class and racial segregation. Self traces the roots of the 1978 tax revolt to the 1940s, when home owners, real estate brokers, and the federal government used racial segregation and industrial property taxes to forge a middle-class lifestyle centered on property ownership.Using the East Bay as a starting point, Robert Self gives us a richly detailed, engaging narrative that uniquely integrates the most important racial liberation struggles and class politics of postwar America.
American Barns
by Jan ArnettThe heart of every working farm and ranch, the barn is an icon of rural America. This book chronicles - and celebrates - all the main types, and looks at how these treasures of early American architecture developed. It explains how a wealth of immigrant construction methods and range of environments and climates resulted in a fascinating variety of barn styles in the United States, from the earliest rare Dutch examples to simpler English types and others in more surprising shapes (round or even polygonal) crafted by the Shakers in the 1800s. It highlights the most notable, famous and historic barns that the reader can visit, and features highlights the efforts of conservation groups to preserve America's barns and find innovative ways to repurpose these glorious old structures as homes and studios--and as living monuments of rural heritage.
American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492-1700 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)
by Molly A. WarshPearls have enthralled global consumers since antiquity, and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella explicitly charged Columbus with finding pearls, as well as gold and silver, when he sailed westward in 1492. American Baroque charts Spain's exploitation of Caribbean pearl fisheries to trace the genesis of its maritime empire. In the 1500s, licit and illicit trade in the jewel gave rise to global networks, connecting the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the pearl-producing regions of the Chesapeake and northern Europe.Pearls—a unique source of wealth because of their renewable, fungible, and portable nature—defied easy categorization. Their value was highly subjective and determined more by the individuals, free and enslaved, who produced, carried, traded, wore, and painted them than by imperial decrees and tax-related assessments. The irregular baroque pearl, often transformed by the imagination of a skilled artisan into a fantastical jewel, embodied this subjective appeal. Warsh blends environmental, social, and cultural history to construct microhistories of peoples' wide-ranging engagement with this deceptively simple jewel. Pearls facilitated imperial fantasy and personal ambition, adorned the wardrobes of monarchs and financed their wars, and played a crucial part in the survival strategies of diverse people of humble means. These stories, taken together, uncover early modern conceptions of wealth, from the hardscrabble shores of Caribbean islands to the lavish rooms of Mediterranean palaces.
American Battles & Campaigns: A Chronicle from 1622-2010
by Chris McNabRaids and sieges; trench warfare and air campaigns; guerrilla warfare, naval engagements, and colonial wars—American Battles & Campaigns covers every major campaign and battle fought in North America or by United States’ forces overseas, from the Pequot War of 1634 to the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Arranged chronologically, American Battles & Campaigns: A Chronicle, from 1622-Present includes hundreds of entries, ranging from the 1770 Boston Massacre through the Alamo (1836) and the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), to Chateau-Thierry (1918), Midway (1942) and Hue (1969). Major battles, such as Yorktown, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, and D-Day, are illustrated with full-color annotated 3-dimensional maps and detailed text explaining the course of the engagement. Stuffed with black and white and color photographs, battle maps, paintings and other artwork, American Battles & Campaigns contains expert accounts and analysis from thirty leading military historians.
American Beauty
by Edna FerberOriginally published in 1931, this bestselling American family saga from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Ferber shares the story of the Oakes family, as their relationships and property encounter numerous struggles over the course of hundreds of years.In the early 18th century, the Oakes family was one of many working to settle their land in the Connecticut Valley, facing harsh winters and land disputes. Their attempts over the years to tame the land and produce a properous tobacco farm prove more difficult than expected, and when the family takes on Polish immigrants to work the farm, cultures clash, and relationships become complicated. American Beauty follows the goings-on at the Oakes estate from 1700 through 1930, and whether in times of family turmoil or hopeful prosperity, Edna Ferber's cast of fascinating characters and pitch-perfect take on American life rings true.
American Beginnings You're Right There!
by Alison Adams Alan Kramer Richard KoldingFind out about the amazing people and key events that led to American Independence.
American Behavioral History: An Introduction
by Peter N. StearnsFrom his founding of The Journal of Social History to his groundbreaking work on the history of emotions, weight, and parenting, Peter N. Stearns has pushed the boundaries of social history to new levels, presenting new insights into how people have lived and thought through the ages. Having established the history of emotions as a major subfield of social history, Stearns and his collaborators are poised to do the same thing with the study of human behavior. This is their manifesto. American Behavioral History deals with specific uses of historical data and analysis to illuminate American behavior patterns, ranging from car buying rituals to sexuality, and from funeral practices to contemporary grandparenting. The anthology illustrates the advantages and parameters of analyzing the ways in which people behave, and adds significantly to our social understanding while developing innovative methods for historical teaching and research. At its core, the collection demonstrates how the study of the past can be directly used to understand current behaviors in the United States. Throughout, contributors discuss not only specific behavioral patterns but, importantly, how to consider and interpret them as vital historical sources. Contributors include Gary Cross, Paula Fass, Linda Rosenzweig, Susan Matt, Steven M. Gelber, Peter N. Stearns, Suzanne Smith, Mark M. Smith, Kevin White.
American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism: The Politics of Objectivity from William F. Albright to William G. Dever
by Brooke Sherrard KnorrThis book examines the relationship between several of the most prominent American biblical archaeologists and Zionism. While these scholars have been studied and historicized to some extent, little work has been done to understand their role in the history of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Two defining differences in the archaeologists’ arguments were their understanding of culture and their views on objectivity versus relativism. Brooke Sherrard Knorr argues that relativist archaeologists envisioned the ancient world as replete with cultural change and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, while those who believed in scholarly objectivity both envisioned the ancient world’s ethnic boundaries as rigid and favored Zionism. Combining readings of the archaeologists’ writings with archival research, this book studies the views of William Foxwell Albright, Millar Burrows, Nelson Glueck, George Ernest Wright, Paul Lapp, and William G. Dever regarding the establishment of an ethno-national state in Palestine in detail. The volume culminates with an epilogue commenting on the relevance of this topic in the present regarding the political ramifications of archaeology in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism is of interest to students and scholars of Biblical and Near Eastern archaeology, American religious history, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly its role in regional archaeology.
American Big Business in Britain and Germany: A Comparative History of Two "Special Relationships" in the 20th Century
by Volker R. BerghahnWhile America's relationship with Britain has often been deemed unique, especially during the two world wars when Germany was a common enemy, the American business sector actually had a greater affinity with Germany for most of the twentieth century. American Big Business in Britain and Germany examines the triangular relationship between the American, British, and German business communities and how the special relationship that Britain believed it had with the United States was supplanted by one between America and Germany.Volker Berghahn begins with the pre-1914 period and moves through the 1920s, when American investments supported German reconstruction rather than British industry. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to a reversal in German-American relations, forcing American corporations to consider cutting their losses or collaborating with a regime that was inexorably moving toward war. Although Britain hoped that the wartime economic alliance with the United States would continue after World War II, the American business community reconnected with West Germany to rebuild Europe’s economy. And while Britain thought they had established their special relationship with America once again in the 1980s and 90s, in actuality it was the Germans who, with American help, had acquired an informal economic empire on the European continent.American Big Business in Britain and Germany uncovers the surprising and differing relationships of the American business community with two major European trading partners from 1900 through the twentieth century.
American Biodefense: How Dangerous Ideas about Biological Weapons Shape National Security
by Frank L. Smith IIIBiological weapons have threatened U.S. national security since at least World War II. Historically, however, the U.S. military has neglected research, development, acquisition, and doctrine for biodefense. Following September 11 and the anthrax letters of 2001, the United States started spending billions of dollars per year on medical countermeasures and biological detection systems. But most of this funding now comes from the Department of Health and Human Services rather than the Department of Defense. Why has the U.S. military neglected biodefense and allowed civilian organizations to take the lead in defending the country against biological attacks? In American Biodefense, Frank L. Smith III addresses this puzzling and largely untold story about science, technology, and national security. Smith argues that organizational frames and stereotypes have caused both military neglect and the rise of civilian biodefense. In the armed services, influential ideas about kinetic warfare have undermined defense against biological warfare. The influence of these ideas on science and technology challenges the conventional wisdom that national security policy is driven by threats or bureaucratic interests. Given the ideas at work inside the U.S. military, Smith explains how the lessons learned from biodefense can help solve other important problems that range from radiation weapons to cyber attacks.
American Bison: A Natural History
by Dale F. LottThis book, sixth in the series of 'Organisms and environments', presents a peek at the rich and unique ways of life that evolved in the heart of America and dismantles many of the myths about these ways of life, and about the bison in particular, to reveal the animal itself: ruminating, reproducing, and rutting in its full glory. He portrays the bison with an element of appeal to conserve its wildness and consider the importance of the wild in our lives. A beautifully written book by a recognized expert on one of the great icons of the American West.
American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder (Sign, Storage, Transmission)
by Charles R. AclandBen-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the 1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to normalize the ideologies of our technological age.
American Bloods: The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation
by John Kaag"American Bloods is an unflinching history of our nation . . . This is a breakout book for John Kaag—the natural extension of his genre-defining writing.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Leadership: In Turbulent Times"Kaag has a knack of stumbling upon treasures . . . The result is a thrilling and illuminating tale." —John Banville, The New StatesmanA history of a family spanning centuries and continents—one that unfolds into a new portrait of America.The Bloods were one of America’s first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual—that would become the very core of the United States. John Kaag’s American Bloods is the account of a remarkable American family, of its participation in the making of a nation, and of how its members embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an old Massachusetts farmhouse, Kaag follows eight members of this family from the British Civil Wars in the seventeenth century through the founding of the colonies, the American Revolution, transcendentalism, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, and the rise of first-wave feminism, all the way to the beginning of the twentieth century.The Bloods were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with everyone from Emerson and Thoreau to John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called “wildness,” an original untamed spirit that would recede in the making of America but would never be extinguished entirely. American Bloods is an enduring reminder of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States, and a composite portrait of America like no other.
American Bloomsbury
by Susan CheeverEven the most devoted readers of nineteenth-century American literature often assume that the men and women behind the masterpieces were as dull and staid as the era's static daguerreotypes. Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden, and Little Women. Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian types, at odds with the establishment. These remarkable men and women were so improbably concentrated in placid Concord, Massachusetts, that Henry James referred to the town as the "biggest little place in America." Among the host of luminaries who floated in and out of Concord's "American Bloomsbury" as satellites of the venerable intellect and prodigious fortune of Ralph Waldo Emerson were Henry David Thoreau -- perpetual second to his mentor in both love and career; Louisa May Alcott -- dreamy girl and ambitious spinster; Nathaniel Hawthorne -- dilettante and cad; and Margaret Fuller -- glamorous editor and foreign correspondent. Perhaps inevitably, given the smallness of the place and the idiosyncrasies of its residents, the members of the prestigious circle became both intellectually and romantically entangled: Thoreau serenaded an infatuated Louisa on his flute. Vying with Hawthorne for Fuller's attention, Emerson wrote the fiery feminist love letters while she resided (yards away from his wife) in his guest room. Herman Melville was, according to some, ultimately driven mad by his consuming and unrequited affection for Hawthorne. Far from typically Victorian, this group of intellectuals, like their British Bloomsbury counterparts to whom the title refers, not only questioned established literary forms, but also resisted old moral and social strictures. Thoreau, of course, famously retreated to a plot of land on Walden Pond to escape capitalism, pick berries, and ponder nature. More shocking was the group's ambivalence toward the institution of marriage. Inclined to bend the rules of its bonds, many of its members spent time at the notorious commune, Brook Farm, and because liberal theories could not entirely guarantee against jealousy, the tension of real or imagined infidelities was always near the surface. Susan Cheever reacquaints us with the sexy, subversive side of Concord's nineteenth-century intellectuals, restoring in three dimensions the literary personalities whose work is at the heart of our national history and cultural identity.
American Blues: A Novel
by Polly Hamilton HilsabeckA week after Easter 1973—following the lynching of Black church sexton Sam Jefferson—Lily Vida Wallace is dropped like an immigrant into Greenville, South Carolina. After returning home to Manhattan, Lily continues theological studies in anticipation of the overturn of a centuries-old, males-only priesthood and simultaneously struggles with her erratic engagement. When her fiancé flees following discovery of professional impropriety and Atlanta attorney Rodney Davis lands in her path, a new love grows—accelerating Lily’s understanding even as it challenges her naïveté about race. Some two decades later, high-profile interracial nuptials in Oakland, California, become the occasion for a reunion between the now Reverend Vida and Lucius Clay, the fiery journalist she met in South Carolina. Within weeks of their re-meeting, Lucius is dispatched to cover Black church burnings—beginning with Lily’s hometown in Texas. Writer Hilton Als recently commented: “We need to wake up to the fact that America is not one story. It is many, many, many stories.” American Blues offers no neat resolution. Instead, its timely story invites, as it tangles with, readers’ own assumptions and complex experiences of race and gender in America.
American Bomber Crewman 1941-45
by Gregory Barnes Sean O'BrogainGregory Fremont-Barnes examines the lives of the American Bomber Crewmen of the Eighth Air Force, "The Mighty Eighth", who crewed, maintained and repaired the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and the B-24 Liberators that flew from the airfields of Norfolk and Suffolk and other counties of England during World War II (1939-1945). He highlights the physical and psychological strain placed on these brave men. Long bombing missions called for brute strength to control the aircraft and extraordinary endurance to fly for hours at 20,000 feet at temperatures below freezing in unheated, unpressurized cabins. Then there were Luftwaffe fighters and anti-aircraft fire to contend with and it required incredible skill and some luck to return from a mission unscathed. This book is a fitting tribute to these often uncelebrated heroes who took the war deep into the Third Reich, as well as a fascinating historical account of the experiences they went through.
American Boundaries: The Nation, The States, The Rectangular Survey
by Bill Hubbard Jr.For anyone who has looked at a map of the United States and wondered how Texas and Oklahoma got their Panhandles, or flown over the American heartland and marveled at the vast grid spreading out in all directions below, American Boundaries will yield a welcome treasure trove of insight. The first book to chart the country's growth using the boundary as a political and cultural focus, Bill Hubbard's masterly narrative begins by explaining how the original thirteen colonies organized their borders and decided that unsettled lands should be held in trust for the common benefit of the people. Hubbard goes on to show--with the help of photographs, diagrams, and hundreds of maps--how the notion evolved that unsettled land should be divided into rectangles and sold to individual farmers, and how this rectangular survey spread outward from its origins in Ohio, with surveyors drawing straight lines across the face of the continent. Mapping how each state came to have its current shape, and how the nation itself formed within its present borders, American Boundaries will provide historians, geographers, and general readers alike with the fascinating story behind those fifty distinctive jigsaw-puzzle pieces that together form the United States.
American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life
by Jennifer LundenA Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was “just depressed.”After suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of brothers Henry James, the novelist, and William James, the father of psychology. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a “fashionable illness.”In this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice’s, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.Although science—and the politics behind its funding—has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet.
American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us
by David BromwichHow Trump got to the Oval Office—and how both parties and the mainstream media are keeping him thereDonald Trump’s residency in the White House is not an accident of American history, and it can’t be blamed on a single cause. In American Breakdown, David Bromwich provides an essential analysis of the forces in play beneath the surface of our political system. His portraits of political leaders and overarching narrative bring to life the events and machinations that have led America to a collective breakdown.The political conditions of the present crisis were put in place over fifty years ago, with the expansion of the Vietnam War and the lies and coverups that brought down Nixon. Since then, every presidency has further centralized and strengthened executive power. The truly catastrophic event in American life was the invention by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney of the War on Terror, designed to last for generations. Barack Obama’s practice of “reconciliation without truth”—sparing CIA torturers and Wall Street bankers—deepened the distrust and anger of an electorate that has rallied around Trump.An unsparing account of the degradation of US democracy, American Breakdown is essential to our evaluation of its prospects. Arguing that Trump’s re-election seems just as likely as impeachment, Bromwich turns his attention to the new struggles within the Democratic Party on immigration, foreign policy, and the Green New Deal.American Breakdown will be a crucial reference point in the political debate around the upcoming presidential election—a contest in which the forces that created Donald Trump show no sign of letting up.