Written by one of the country's foremost urban historians, "The Great Rent Wars" tells the fascinating but little-known story of the battles between landlords and tenants in the nation's largest city from 1917 through 1929. These conflicts were triggered by the post-war housing shortage, which prompted landlords to raise rents, drove tenants to go on rent strikes, and spurred the state legislature, a conservative body dominated by upstate Republicans, to impose rent control in New York, a radical and unprecedented step that transformed landlord-tenant relations. "The Great Rent Wars" traces the tumultuous history of rent control in New York from its inception to its expiration as it unfolded in New York, Albany, and Washington, D.C. At the heart of this story are such memorable figures as Al Smith, Fiorello H. La Guardia, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, as well as a host of tenants, landlords, judges, and politicians who have long been forgotten. Fogelson also explores the heated debates over landlord-tenant law, housing policy, and other issues that are as controversial today as they were a century ago.

The problems with wealthy landowners and the rent they charged the tenant farmers were brought to a climax stage with the killing of the undersheriff of Delaware County in August 1845.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A critical assessment of America's foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past four decades evaluates and connects regional engagements since 1990 while revealing their massive costs.

The First World War profoundly affected the American political system by transforming constitutional law and providing the predicate for the modern administrative state. In this groundbreaking study, William G. Ross examines the social, political, economic and legal forces that generated this rapid change. Ross explains how the war increased federal and state economic regulatory powers, transferred power from Congress to the President, and altered federalism by enhancing the powers of the federal government. He demonstrates how social changes generated by the war provided a catalyst for the expansion of personal liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the rights of women, racial minorities, and industrial workers. Through a study of constitutional law, gender, race, economics, labor, the prohibition movement, international relations, civil liberties, and society, this book provides a major contribution to our understanding of the development of the American Constitution.

For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.