Nina Sankovitch’s American Rebels explores, for the first time, the intertwined lives of the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families, and the role each person played in sparking the American Revolution. Before they were central figures in American history, John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Junior, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock had forged intimate connections during their childhood in Braintree, Massachusetts. Raised as loyal British subjects who quickly saw the need to rebel, their collaborations against the Crown and Parliament were formed years before the revolution and became stronger during the period of rising taxes and increasing British troop presence in Boston. Together, the families witnessed the horrors of the Boston Massacre, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and Bunker Hill; the trials and tribulations of the Siege of Boston; meetings of the Continental Congress; transatlantic missions for peace and their abysmal failures; and the final steps that led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. American Rebels explores how the desire for independence cut across class lines, binding people together as well as dividing them—rebels versus loyalists—as they pursued commonly-held goals of opportunity, liberty, and stability. Nina Sankovitch's new book is a fresh history of our revolution that makes readers look more closely at Massachusetts and the small town of Braintree when they think about the story of America’s early years.

From women’s suffrage to Civil Rights for African Americans, to the environment, and the gay and lesbian liberation movement, the American Left has achieved notable successes in the 20th and 21st centuries. Sometimes celebrated and sometimes reviled, the Left has taken on many forms and reinvented itself many times over the past century. In All-American Rebels, historian Robert C. Cottrell traces the rise and fall, ebb and flow of left-wing American movements. Following an overview of early 20th century movements, Cottrell focuses on the 1960s to today, offering readers a concise introduction and helping them to understand the political and ideological roots of the Left today. Cottrell includes chapters on the most recent versions of the American left, discussing community organizing, gay liberation, the women’s movement, the Campaign for Economic Democracy, the nuclear freeze movement, opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America, the anti-WTO campaign, Code Pink, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and more. The demand for and support of democracy and the quest for empowerment in various guises unifies these different lefts to one another and to the general unfolding of American history. Cottrell argues that democratic engagement has proven inconsistent and at times outright contradictory. The Left has been most successful when it fully embraces a democratic vision.

American Rebels is an anthology of specially commissioned essays by leading American writers that attempt to reconcile authentic patriotism with original artistic creation, unpopular opinion, and real moral principles that don't change with the winds. It includes rebels in politics, education, journalism, religion, literature, film, sports, music, law, popular culture, and social struggle. These are real rebels against conformity, commercialism, racism, oligarchy, the bogus conventional wisdom, stacked decks, and sacred cows. The Americans celebrated don't fit under any one ideology or party. They are too free-spirited to be categorized, belonging to a continuum of conviction and creation in our tangled national history. Some, like Walt Whitman, Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando, and Frank Sinatra, are famous. Others are less well known but have earned a broad appreciation; among them are Sam Fuller, Paul O'Dwyer, and Mike Harrington. Still others like Edward Abbey, Benjamin Mays, and Bill Hicks are almost cult figures—revered by a small, intense following. Others have faded from memory, like Margaret Sanger and Clarence Darrow, and deserve a new shaft of sunlight. This groundbreaking collection includes original essays by Pete Hamill, Stanley Crouch, Budd Schulberg, Danny Goldberg, J. Hoberman, Patricia Bosworth, Tom Hayden, Steve Earle, and others.

During the half century after 1650 that saw the gradual imposition of a slave society in England's North American colonies, poor white settlers in the Chesapeake sought a republic of equals. Demanding a say in their own destinies, rebels moved around the region looking for a place to build a democratic political system. This book crosses colonial boundaries to show how Ingle's Rebellion, Fendall's Rebellion, Bacon's Rebellion, Culpeper's Rebellion, Parson Waugh's Tumult, and the colonial Glorious Revolution were episodes in a single struggle because they were organized by one connected group of people. Adding land records and genealogical research to traditional sources, Noeleen McIlvenna challenges standard narratives that disdain poor whites or leave them out of the history of the colonial South. She makes the case that the women of these families played significant roles in every attempt to establish a more representative political system before 1700. McIlvenna integrates landless immigrants and small farmers into the history of the Chesapeake region and argues that these rebellious anti-authoritarians should be included in the pantheon of the nation's Founders.

Do you ever wonder why conservative pundits drop the word “faggot” or talk about killing and then Christianizing Muslims abroad? Do you wonder why the right’s spokespeople seem so confrontational, rude, and over-the-top recently? Does it seem strange that conservative books have such apocalyptic titles? Do you marvel at why conservative writers trumpeted the “rebel” qualities of George W. Bush just a few years back? There is no doubt that the style of the political right today is tough, brash, and by many accounts, not very conservative sounding. After all, isn’t conservatism supposed to be about maintaining standards, upholding civility, and frowning upon rebellion? Historian Kevin Mattson explains the apparent contradictions of the party in this fresh examination of the postwar conservative mind. Examining a big cast of characters that includes William F. Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Kevin Phillips, David Brooks, and others, Mattson shows how right-wing intellectuals have always, but in different ways, played to the populist and rowdy tendencies in America’s political culture. He boldly compares the conservative intellectual movement to the radical utopians among the New Left of the 1960s and he explains how conservatism has ingested central features of American culture, including a distrust of sophistication and intellectualism and a love of popular culture, sensation, shock, and celebrity. Both a work of history and political criticism, Rebels All! shows how the conservative mind made itself appealing, but also points to its endemic problems. Mattson’s conclusion outlines how a recast liberalism should respond to the conservative ascendancy that has marked our politics for the last thirty years.

This book "traces the historical roots of the secessionist spirit, and introduces us to the often radical, sometimes quixotic, and highly charged movements that want to decentralize and re-localize power"--P. [4] of cover.

Looking at the physical environments of cities as political catalysts, Carp contends that what began as interaction, negotiation, conflict, and compromise in churches, taverns, wharves, and city streets developed into a wider political awareness and collaborative political action.