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"Brands, H. W"
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The heartbreak of Aaron Burr
\"An engaging and intimate portrait of the controversial early American politician Aaron Burr, by bestselling historian H. W. Brands\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Haiku History
For the past nine years, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands has been tweeting the history of the United States. But this has been no ordinary version of the American tale. Instead, Brands gives his 5,000-plus followers a regular dose of history and poetry combined: his tweets are in the form of haiku. Haiku History presents a selection of these smart, shrewd, and always informative short poems. “Shivers and specters / Flit over souls in Salem / As nineteen are hanged; describes the Salem witch trials, and “In angry war paint / Men board three Indiamen / And toss the cargo\" depicts the Boston Tea Party. “Then an anarchist / Makes one of the war heroes / The next president\" recalls the assassination of William McKinley and the accession of Teddy Roosevelt to the presidency, while “Second invasion: / Iraq, where Saddam is still / In troubling control\" returns us to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As he travels from the thirteen colonies to the 2016 election, Brands brings to life the wars, economic crises, social upheavals, and other events that have shaped our nation. A history book like no other, Haiku History injects both fun and poetry into the story of America—three lines at a time.
eBook
The Strange Death of American Liberalism
In this provocative book, H. W. Brands confronts the vital question of why an ever-increasing number of Americans do not trust the federal government to improve their lives and to heal major social ills. How is it that government has come to be seen as the source of many of our problems, rather than the potential means of their solution? How has the wordliberalbecome a term of abuse in American political discourse?From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government. This book succinctly traces this skepticism, demonstrating that it is only during periods of war that Americans have set aside their distrust and looked to their government to defend them. The Cold War, Brands shows, created an extended-and historically anomalous-period of dependence, thereby allowing for the massive expansion of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s, and the devastating blow dealt to Cold War ideology by America's defeat in Vietnam, Americans have returned to their characteristic distrust of government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Brands contends, the fate of American liberalism was sealed-and we continue to live with the consequences of its demise.
eBook
Bound to empire : the United States and the Philippines
From the day Commodore Dewey's battleships destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila to the closing of the Subic Bay naval base in 1992, America and the Philippines have shared a long and tangled history. It has been a century of war and colonialism, earnest reforms and blatant corruption, diplomatic maneuvering and political intrigue, an era colored by dramatic events and striking personalities. In Bound to Empire, acclaimed historian H.W. Brands gives us a brilliant account of the American involvement in the Philippines in a sweeping narrative filled with analytical insight. Ranging from the Spanish-American War to the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and beyond, Brands deftly weaves together the histories of both nations as he assesses America's great experiment with empire. He leaps from the turbulent American scene in the 1890s--the labor unrest, the panic of 1893, the emergence of Progressivism, the growing tension with Spain--to the shores of the newly acquired colony: Dewey's conquest of Manila, the vicious war against the Philippine insurgents, and the founding of American civilian rule. As Brands takes us through the following century, describing the efforts to \"civilize\" the Filipinos, the shaping of Philippine political practices, the impact of General MacArthur, and World War II and the Cold War, he provides fascinating insight into the forces and institutions that made American rule what it was, and the Republic of the Philippines what it is today. He uncovers the origins of the corruption and nepotism of post-independence Philippine politics, as well as the ambivalence of American rule, in which liberal principles of self-determination clashed with the desire for empire and a preoccupation first with Japan and later with communism. The book comes right up to the present day, with an incisive account of the rise and fall of Ferdinand Marcos,
the accession (and subsequent troubles) of Corazon Aquino, the Communist guerrilla insurgency, and the debate over the American military bases. \"Damn the Americans!\" Manuel Quezon once said. \"Why don't they tyrannize us more?\" Indeed, as Brands writes, American rule in the Philippines was more benign than that of any other colonial power in the Pacific region. Yet it failed to foster a genuine democracy. This fascinating book explains why, in a perceptive account of a century of empire and its aftermath.
eBook
Woodrow Wilson and the Irony of Fate
Every biography of Woodrow Wilson, and nearly every account of his foreign policy, includes a remark he uttered on the eve of his 1913 inauguration. \"It would be the irony of fate,\" Wilson said, \"if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.\" Yet the full extent of the irony is often overlooked.
Journal Article