"A book that explores the disconnect between the ideals of the Great Awokening and the realities of fixing structural inequality. This book aims to explain how a new elite has risen to prominence and established a social order that is fundamentally premised on exclusion, exploitation and condescension even as its members define themselves in terms of their commitments to uplifting the marginalized and disadvantaged. The book will illustrate how this...

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and an admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he fought the corrupt political establishment. Then, four months after his inauguration, a deranged office-seeker shot him in the back. But the shot didn't kill him. What happened subsequently is a powerful...

"From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? THE AGE OF ACQUIESCENCE...

"It's striking how many of the presidents Americans venerate--Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, to name a few--oversaw some of the republic's bloodiest years. Perhaps it's because they looked out for important political causes. Or maybe they just looked out for themselves. This revealing and entertaining book puts some of America's greatest leaders under the microscope, showing how their calls for war,...