An enlightening overview of America’s misadventures in economic investment from the Revolutionary era to the Obama administration. From the days of George Washington through World War II to today, government subsidies have failed the American people time and again. Draining the Treasury of cash, this doomed attempt to “pick winners” only serves to impede economic growth—and hurt the very companies receiving aid. But why does federal aid seem to have a reverse Midas touch? In Uncle Sam Can’t Count, Burt and Anita Folsom argue that federal officials don’t have the same abilities or incentives as entrepreneurs. In addition, federal control always leads to politicization. And what works for politicians often doesn’t work in the marketplace. Filled with examples of government failures and free market triumphs, from John Jacob Astor to the Wright Brothers, World War II amphibious landing craft to Detroit, Uncle Sam Can’t Count is a hard-hitting critique of government investment that demonstrates why business should be left exclusively to private entrepreneurs.

Based on a rich array of sources that capture the voices of both political leaders and ordinary Americans, Uncle Sam Wants You offers a vivid and provocative new interpretation of American political history, revealing how the tensions of mass mobilization during World War I led to a significant increase in power for the federal government. Christopher Capozzola shows how, when the war began, Americans at first mobilized society by stressing duty, obligation, and responsibility over rights and freedoms. But the heated temper of war quickly unleashed coercion on an unprecedented scale, making wartime America the scene of some of the nation's most serious political violence, including notorious episodes of outright mob violence. To solve this problem, Americans turned over increasing amounts of power to the federal government. In the end, whether they were some of the four million men drafted under the Selective Service Act or the tens of millions of home-front volunteers, Americans of the World War I era created a new American state, and new ways of being American citizens.

Three children discover Daddy will leave on deployment. They learn fun ways to deal with separation anxiety and show they care while Dad is gone.

Extraordinary rendition—the practice of abducting criminal suspects in locations around the world—has been criticized as an unprecedented expansion of U.S. police powers. But America’s aggressive pursuit of fugitives beyond its borders far predates the global war on terror. Uncle Sam’s Policemen investigates the history of international manhunts, arguing that the extension of U.S. law enforcement into foreign jurisdictions at the turn of the twentieth century forms an important chapter in the story of American empire. In the late 1800s, expanding networks of railroads and steamships made it increasingly easy for criminals to evade justice. Recognizing that domestic law and order depended on projecting legal authority abroad, President Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1903 that the United States would “leave no place on earth” for criminals to hide. Charting the rapid growth of extradition law, Katherine Unterman shows that the United States had fifty-eight treaties with thirty-six nations by 1900—more than any other country. American diplomats put pressure on countries that served as extradition havens, particularly in Latin America, and cloak-and-dagger tactics such as the kidnapping of fugitives by Pinkerton detectives were fair game—a practice explicitly condoned by the U.S. Supreme Court. The most wanted fugitives of this period were not anarchists and political agitators but embezzlers and defrauders—criminals who threatened the emerging corporate capitalist order. By the early twentieth century, the long arm of American law stretched around the globe, creating an informal empire that complemented both military and economic might.

It is said that the inspiration for the character of Uncle Sam was a man named Sam Wilson, who provided food for the U.S. Army during the War of 1812. By the 1830s, the figure of Uncle Sam had become a personified image of America, commonly used by newspaper and magazine cartoonists to represent the U.S. government's decisions and policies. Perhaps the best-known image of Uncle Sam was created in 1917, during the First World War—a stern, white-haired man wearing star-spangled clothing, encouraging Americans to do their part to support their nation. Uncle Sam remains an important symbol of the United States and the policies and activities of our government.

Presents dozens of recipes and historical tidbits that have made their way into the National Archives collections.