Las Animas - Bent County Library District

Compelled by recent events to consider all the remarkable qualities that make our country worth preservin, the author has fashioned thirty short essay-love letters in spirit-that, like all his writing, are sharp, original, funny, graceful, and wise.

""The American Dream" is one of the most familiar and resonant phrases in our national lexicon, so familiar that we seldom pause to ask its origin, its history, or what it actually means." "In this short history, Jim Cullen explores the meaning of the American Dream, or rather the several American Dreams that have both reflected and shaped American identity from the Pilgrims to the present. Cullen begins by noting that the United States, unlike most...

Examines how the educations of America's first four presidents, and in particular their scholarly devotion to ancient Greek and Roman classics, informed the beliefs and ideals that shaped the nation's constitution and government.

The columnist presents his reflections on everything from embryo research to entitlement reform, from Halley's Comet to border collies, from Christopher Columbus to Martin Luther King, from drone warfare to American decline. Features a special, highly autobiographical introduction.

""History," wrote James Baldwin, "does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do."" "Rarely has Baldwin's insight been more forcefully confirmed than in our current conflict-ridden times. History itself has become a matter of public controversy as Americans...

Despite tremendous interest in Abraham Lincoln and his place in one of America's most tumultuous historical periods, little has been written about his religious life. This truly fresh look at the nation's sixteenth president relates the outward events of Lincoln's life to his inner spiritual struggles and sets them both against the intellectual backdrop of his age Allen Guelzo's unique intellectual biography explores the role of ideas in Lincoln's...

"Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of never-before-published conversations with Howard Zinn, conducted by the distinguished broadcast journalist Ray Suarez in 2007, that covers the course of American history from Columbus to the War on Terror from the perspective of ordinary people--including slaves, workers, immigrants, women, and Native Americans. Viewed through the lens of Zinn's own life as a soldier, historian, and activist...

Neil Baldwin, one of the most exciting intellectual historians, has written extensively about the great thinkers and innovators who have shaped our unique American identity. In THE AMERICAN REVELATION, he turns his energies to the unfolding story of how the American spirit developed over 400 years. This inspiring examination of the ideals that have grown to inform our national identity and of the figures who set the course for our evolving self image...

General George S. Patton famously said, "Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!" Though Patton was a notoriously single-minded general, it is nonetheless a sad fact that war gives meaning to many lives, a fact with which we have become familiar now that America is once again engaged in a military conflict. War is an enticing elixir. It gives us purpose, resolve, a cause. It allows us to be...