“The problem in America isn’t so much what people don’t know; the problem is what people think they know that just ain’t so.” —Thomas E. Woods Most Americans trust that their history professors and high school teachers will give students honest and accurate information. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American Historymakes it quite clear that liberal professors have misinformed our children for generations. Professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. takes on the most controversial moments of American history and exposes how history books are merely a series of clichés drafted by academics who are heavily biased against God, democracy, patriotism, capitalism and most American family values. Woods reveals the truth behind many of today's prominent myths.... MYTH:The First Amendment prohibits school prayer MYTH: The New Deal created great prosperity MYTH:What the Supreme Court says, goes From the real American “revolutionaries” to the reality of labor unions, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is all you need for the truth about America—objective and unvarnished.

In a bygone era when twentieth-century Proper Bostonians mixed Beacon Hill formalities with countryside pleasures, Margaret Pearmain Welch (1893-1984) defied the mores of her social set and got away with it. She was the epitome of everything expected and much that was scandalous. Known as a debutante, dancer, world traveler, and hostess, she was also an indefatigable activist, writer, lecturer, lobbyist, fundraiser, and opinion shaper--grande dame as well as proverbial little old lady in combat boots (footwear more appropriate to confrontation than tennis shoes). A descendant of seventeenth-century dissenter Anne Hutchinson and just as independent, she embraced Quaker ideals of religious tolerance, conscientious objection, and civil liberties, as well as worship without the benefit of clergy. Margaret was the quintessential socialite who established Waltz Evenings in her Louisburg Square drawing room and also the beauty whose marriages and divorces caused ostracism. At the same time, she worked tirelessly on women's suffrage, reproductive rights, world peace, environmental protection, monetary reform, land conservation, and more. As the indomitable matriarch of an extended family and chronicler of its history, her efforts at self-fashioning produced a unique persona, blending insistence on proprieties with a keen awareness of twentieth-century social, cultural, political, and economic shifts.

Blending cultural, religious, and media history, Tona Hangen offers a richly detailed look into the world of religious radio. She uses recordings, sermons, fan mail, and other sources to tell the stories of the determined broadcasters and devoted listeners who, together, transformed American radio evangelism from an on-air novelty in the 1920s into a profitable and wide-reaching industry by the 1950s. Hangen traces the careers of three of the most successful Protestant radio evangelists--Paul Rader, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Charles Fuller--and examines the strategies they used to bring their messages to listeners across the nation. Initially shut out of network radio and free airtime, both of which were available only to mainstream Protestant and Catholic groups, evangelical broadcasters gained access to the airwaves with paid-time programming. By the mid-twentieth century millions of Americans regularly tuned in to evangelical programming, making it one of the medium's most distinctive and durable genres. The voluntary contributions of these listeners in turn helped bankroll religious radio's remarkable growth. Revealing the entwined development of evangelical religion and modern mass media, Hangen demonstrates that the history of one is incomplete without the history of the other; both are essential to understanding American culture in the twentieth century.

Broadcasting the Faith tells the riveting story of the American church’s embrace of radio in the early decades of the twentieth century. By investigating major radio personalities like Walter Maier, Aimee Semple McPherson, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Charles Fuller, this study considers the implications for theology in America when Christianity moved to the airwaves. In the heyday of radio, religious-radio preachers sought to use their programs to counter the secularization of American culture. Ultimately, however, their programs contributed to secularization by accelerating changes already evident in both the conservative and liberal streams of American Christianity. To reach a vast American audience, radio preachers transformed their sectarian messages into a religion more suitable to the masses, thereby altering the very religion it aimed to preserve. To make religion accessible to large and diverse audiences, radio preachers accommodated their messages in ways suited to the medium of radio. Although religious-radio preachers set forth to advance the influence of religion in American society, their choice to limit theological substance ironically promoted the secularization of the American church.