"This book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history decisively influenced the use of Scripture. It explores the rise of a strongly Protestant Bible civilization in the early United States that was then fractured by debates over slavery, contested by growing numbers of non-Protestant Americans (Catholics, Jews, agnostics), and torn apart by the Civil War. Scripture survived as a significant, though fragmented, force in the more religiously plural period from Reconstruction to the early twentieth century. Throughout, the book pays special attention to how the same Bible shone as hope for black Americans while supporting other Americans who justified white supremacy"--

Explores how people at the margins of American politics (America's middlemen) have historically shaped war, peace, expansion, and empire.

América Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don't look her In the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with América. So when América is offered the chance to work as alive-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester County, New York, she takes it as a sign that a door to escape has been opened. Yet even as América revels in the comparative luxury of her new life, daring to care about a man other than Correa, she is faced with dramatic proof that no matter what she does, she can't get away from her past.

Chronicles the lives of Africans as slaves in America through the eve of the Civil War.

The United States has shaped Latin American history, condemning it to poverty and inequality by intervening to protect the rich and powerful. America’s Backyard tells the story of that intervention. Using newly declassified documents, Grace Livingstone reveals the US role in the darkest periods of Latin American history, including Pinochet’s coup in Chile, the Contra War in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador. She shows how George W Bush’s administration used the War on Terror as a new pretext for intervention; how it tried to destabilise leftwing governments and push back the ‘pink tide’ washing across the Americas. America’s Backyard also includes chapters on drugs, economy and culture. It explains why US drug policy has caused widespread environmental damage yet failed to reduce the supply of cocaine, and it looks at the US economic stake in Latin America and the strategies of the big corporations. Today Latin Americans are demanding respect and an end to the Washington Consensus. Will the White House listen?

It is time for a new conversation. Amid the biggest economic transformation in a century, the challenge of our time is to make sure that all Americans benefit from the wave of digital revolutions around the world that have permeated and upended modern life. Yet today's economic arguments seem stuck. We need a new vision of a hopeful future and a new action agenda. So many Americans are uncertain about the future. How can there be so many paths to opportunity with so few people traveling them? As a nation, we have to understand what is required to help Americans succeed now, and how to prepare our country for what comes next. We have been here before. A hundred years ago, America experienced the greatest economic transformation and technological revolution in its history. The transformation of the past twenty years—as the world has moved through the information era into the digital age—has turned our life and work upside down once again. It is a time of tremendous change but also of tremendous possibility. Rework America is a group of American leaders who know from experience the challenges we face—and the potential solutions. In America's Moment they suggest a practical agenda for an exciting future. It is illustrated by people who are already showing the way and includes actions Americans can take today in their own communities: preparing people to succeed, using the reach of the Internet and data to innovate jobs and to reach new markets all over the world, using technology to match employers and workers, and transitioning to a "no-collar" working world— neither blue collar nor white collar. Set against the history of how Americans succeeded once before in remaking their country, America's Moment is about the future. It describes how the same forces of change—technology and a networked world—can become tools that can open opportunity to everyone.