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The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State
by Jill Lepore
Lepore is our best scholar of the culture of governance, and our most vital historian. Here she repudiates the prospect of AI as a replacement for democracy. This is the issue of our times, and Lepore is the voice of sanity.
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House of Fidelity: The Rise of the Johnson Dynasty and the Company That Changed American Investing
by Justin Baer
When Edward C. Johnson 2d founded Fidelity in 1946, investing was a pursuit reserved for the elite. Today, more than $15 trillion flows through Fidelity's customer accounts and investment funds--touching the lives of one in five American adults. Fidelity helped invent modern retail investing: democratizing access to mutual funds, introducing the 401(k), and upending the need for traditional brokers. But behind the scenes of this financial juggernaut is a family saga unlike any other. In House of Fidelity, veteran journalist Justin Baer tells the definitive story of the Johnsons--a New England dynasty that fiercely guarded control of their company while reshaping Wall Street. From the founder's bold leap into Boston's insular investing circles, to the meteoric rise of Peter Lynch, to behind-closed-doors battles over succession and legacy, Baer reveals a company and a family locked in a delicate balance of innovation, influence, and internal power struggles. House of Fidelity is a sweeping history of American investing--and the dynasty that came to define it.
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The Case for America: An Argument on Behalf of Our Nation by Bret BaierCan the Founders' ideals still inspire and unite the nation 250th years after the Declaration of Independence? The impossible dream of the United States of America began with a declaration. Years before the Revolution was won, long before the Constitution was created, we were a nation because of our decision to be free. Though the universal hunger for freedom that endures, these days our country often seems at cross purposes. Our very history is divisive. On one side, there are the unrelenting complaints about all the things we're getting wrong. Such critics seem intent on focusing on the darker chapters of our story. On the other side is a sanitized version of history that leaves little room for self-reflection. It's as if any admission of frailty or failure is an unpatriotic act. In The Case for America, Bret Baier argues that neither of these pictures reflects our reality. To make the case for the nation's enduring value, he underscores our fundamental character: unity, freedom, resilience. Baier shares his own reflections alongside those of numerous historians, commentators, and business leaders in a moving ode to a nation.
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An Inconvenient Widow: The Torment, Trial, and Triumph of Mary Todd Lincoln
by Lois Romano
Mary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society's expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary's early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness. But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies--influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve. Former Washington Post writer and columnist Lois Romano rectifies the tortured legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood--by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally, by history. Romano draws on hundreds of archives, letters, and memoirs to provide the most complete portrait--of not simply of an inconvenient widow, but of a brilliant and flawed woman, who possessed uncommon tenacity in the face of extraordinary adversity and personal torment, and helped launch one of America's greatest presidents.
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Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution
by Sarah M. S. Pearsall
In her powerful new history of the American Revolution, Sarah M. S. Pearsall argues that the American Founding Fathers did not have a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit. The thirteen colonies that became the United States, she reminds us, were not even half of the British colonies that existed in the eighteenth century. In her sparkling and original Freedom Round the Globe, Pearsall uncovers the insurgents, freedom lovers, and dreamers in India, West Africa, North America, Europe, China, and West Indian islands who shaped the nature of American rebellion and nationhood. In each fresh and compelling chapter of Freedom Round the Globe, Pearsall plucks a keyword from the Declaration of Independence--security, happiness, respect-- finding its spark in a far-flung place. In an Edinburgh club where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to women and men of all sorts. She traces how novel forms of slavery provoked a new use of the word liberty in Connecticut petitions as well as in cries of liberty or death. On a Kolkata street where Indians protested relentless taxes, Pearsall finds a critique of oppressive imperial government that galvanized Americans in their protests and parties against the tea of the English East India Company. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to being civilized in a brutal war. In telling the extraordinary tales of Friends of Liberty protesting tyranny around the world, Pearsall restores these individuals and movements to their rightful place in the vital story of the American Revolution and the nation it created. The result is a stirring and surprising revising of our history.
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New Hampshire and Independence: Rediscovered Writings from the Sons of the American Revolution
by William Edmund Fahey
Six groundbreaking essays by Sons of the American Revolution reveal the significance of New Hampshire's role in the RevolutionNew Hampshire is one of the oldest American colonies and one of the tiniest, but its small size obscures the mighty importance of its role in the American War of Independence. New Hampshire was one of the first colonies to assert control over its own militia and seize gunpowder from imperial control. It sent more men to Bunker Hill than any other colony, created a state constitution, and declared independence months before the rest of America. The Granite State provided heroes and generals in every major military campaign and cast the decisive votes for the ratification of the country's new constitution. William Fahey reveals six penetrating and inspiring essays from the archives and records of the Sons of the American Revolution to bring this rousing tale to life.
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