Public and private forms of violence have co-evolved rather than competed in America's political development since the nineteenth century.

American violence is schizophrenic. On the one hand, many Americans support the creation of a powerful bureaucracy of coercion made up of police and military forces in order to provide public security. At the same time, many of those citizens also demand the private right to protect their own families, home, and property. This book diagnoses this schizophrenia as a product of a distinctive institutional history, in which private forms of violence - vigilantes, private detectives, mercenary gunfighters - emerged in concert with the creation of new public and state forms of violence such as police departments or the National Guard. This dual public and private face of American violence resulted from the upending of a tradition of republican governance, in which public security had been indistinguishable from private effort, by the nineteenth-century social transformations of the Civil War and the Market Revolution.

Patented in 1836, the Colt pistol with its revolving cylinder was the first practical firearm that could shoot more than one bullet without reloading. Its most immediate impact was on the expansionism of the American west, where white emigrants and US soldiers came to depend on it, and where Native Americans came to dread it. In making the revolver, Colt also changed American manufacturing, and revolutionized industry in the United States. Rasenberger brings the brazenly ambitious and profoundly innovative industrialist and leader Samuel Colt to vivid life. During an age of promise and progress, and also of slavery, corruption, and unbridled greed, Colt not only helped to create this America, he completely embodied it.-- adapted from info provided

Many well-read students, historians, and loyal aficionados of Texas Ranger lore know the name of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones (1856-1893), who died on the Texas-Mexico border in a shootout with Mexican rustlers. In Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, Bob Alexander has now penned the first full-length biography of this important nineteenth-century Texas Ranger. At an early age Frank Jones, a native Texan, would become a Frontier Battalion era Ranger. His enlistment with the Rangers coincided with their transition from Indian fighters to lawmen. While serving in the Frontier Battalion officers' corps of Company D, Frank Jones supervised three of the four "great" captains of that era: J.A. Brooks, John H. Rogers, and John R. Hughes. Besides Austin Ira Aten and his younger brothers Calvin Grant Aten and Edwin Dunlap Aten, Captain Jones also managed law enforcement activities of numerous other noteworthy Rangers, such as Philip Cuney "P.C." Baird, Benjamin Dennis Lindsey, Bazzell Lamar "Baz" Outlaw, J. Walter Durbin, Jim King, Frank Schmid, and Charley Fusselman, to name just a few. Frank Jones' law enforcing life was anything but boring. Not only would he find himself dodging bullets and returning fire, but those Rangers under his supervision would also experience gunplay. Of all the Texas Ranger companies, Company D contributed the highest number of on-duty deaths within Texas Ranger ranks.

“In the world of black-op thrillers, Mitch Rapp continues to be among the best of the best” (Booklist, starred review), and he returns in the #1 New York Times bestselling series alone and targeted by a country that is supposed to be one of America’s closest allies. After 9/11, the United States made one of the most secretive and dangerous deals in its history—the evidence against the powerful Saudis who coordinated the attack would be buried and in return, King Faisal would promise to keep the oil flowing and deal with the conspirators in his midst. But when the king’s own nephew is discovered funding ISIS, the furious President gives Rapp his next mission: he must find out more about the high-level Saudis involved in the scheme and kill them. The catch? Rapp will get no support from the United States. Forced to make a decision that will change his life forever, Rapp quits the CIA and assembles a group of independent contractors to help him complete the mission. They’ve barely begun unraveling the connections between the Saudi government and ISIS when the brilliant new head of the intelligence directorate discovers their efforts. With Rapp getting too close, he threatens to go public with the details of the post-9/11 agreement between the two countries. Facing an international incident that could end his political career, the President orders America’s intelligence agencies to join the Saudis’ effort to hunt the former CIA man down. Rapp, supported only by a team of mercenaries with dubious allegiances, finds himself at the center of the most elaborate manhunt in history. With white-knuckled twists and turns leading to “an explosive climax” (Publishers Weekly), Enemy of the State is an unputdownable thrill ride that will keep you guessing until the final page.

A study of the changes initiated into the systems and culture of the plain dwellers

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A study of the last 100 years of American history.