This history of early American political thought examines the emergence, evolution, and manipulation of public opinion. In the early American republic, the concept of public opinion was a recent-and ambiguous-invention. While appearing to promise a new style of democratic politics, the concept was also invoked to limit self-rule, cement traditional prejudices, stall deliberation, and marginalize dissent. As Americans contested the meaning of this...

"The news media and its role in society are topics of conversation and debate in today's world. News Literacy looks inside newsrooms, exploring key moments in the history of journalism and explaining how today's journalists work. Examine how news is presented, and learn how advertising, online algorithms, and other modern trends affect the way we experience news. Investigate the phenomenon of 'fake news,' and discover the tools that can be used to...

"A leading expert's exploration of the past, present, and future of public monuments in America. An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? And who gets to decide which ones should stay up and which should come down? Erin L. Thompson, the country's leading...

Today, Abraham Lincoln is a beloved American icon, widely considered to be our best president. It was not always so. Larry Taggs The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln is the first study of its kind to concentrate on what Lincoln's contemporaries thought of him during his lifetime, and the obstacles they set before him. Be forewarned: your preconceived notions are about to be shattered. Torn by civil war, the era in which our sixteenth president lived...

How is Donald Trump's presidency likely to affect the reputation and popular standing of the Republican Party? Profoundly, according to Gary C. Jacobson. From Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama, every postwar president has powerfully shaped Americans' feelings, positive or negative, about their party. The effect is pervasive, influencing the parties' reputations for competence, their perceived principles, and their appeal as objects of personal identification....

Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews....

Prize-winning historian Peter Novick illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long -- how dwelling on German crimes interfered with Cold War mobilization; how American Jews, not wanting to be thought of as victims, avoided the subject. He explores in absorbing detail the decisions that later moved the Holocaust to the center of American life: Jewish leaders invoking its memory to muster support for Israel and to come out on top...

From the beginning of the colonial period to the recent conflicts in the Middle East, encounters with the Muslim world have helped Americans define national identity and purpose. Focusing on America's encounter with the Barbary states of North Africa from 1776 to 1815, Robert Allison traces the perceptions and mis-perceptions of Islam in the American mind as the new nation constructed its ideology and system of government. "A powerful ending that...

Explores how American Indian businesses and organizations are taking on images that were designed to oppress them. How and why do American Indians appropriate images of Indianness for their own purposes? How do these representatives promote and sometimes challenge sovereignty for indigenous people locally and nationally? American Indians have recently taken on a new relationship with the hegemonic culture designed to oppress them. Rather than protesting...

Winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies Recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual & Cultural History It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis. In this compelling work, Hasia R. Diner shows the assumption of silence to be categorically false....