New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

New England and the Bavarian Illuminati
Author: Vernon Stauffer
Publisher: Good Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2019-11-25
Genre: History
ISBN:

"New England and the Bavarian Illuminati" by Vernon Stauffer is an academic text that examines the existence of hidden societies in the United States of America. These secret organizations have been the inspiration for countless stories throughout the years. While many are mere legends, others are very much based in fact, though they might be different than what people believe them to be.

Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876

Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876
Author: Nicholas Guyatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2007-07-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521867887

Nicholas Guyatt offers a completely new understanding of a central question in American history: how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations? Tracing the story of American providentialism, this book uncovers the British roots of American religious nationalism before the American Revolution and the extraordinary struggles of white Americans to reconcile their ideas of national mission with the racial diversity of the early republic. Making sense of previously diffuse debates on manifest destiny, millenarianism, and American mission, Providence and the Invention of the United States explains the origins and development of the idea that God has a special plan for America. This conviction supplied the United States with a powerful sense of national purpose, but it also prevented Americans from clearly understanding events and people that could not easily be fitted into the providential scheme.

Misinformation Nation

Misinformation Nation
Author: Jordan E. Taylor
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2022-10-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 142144450X

Fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the causes of the American Revolution and the pivotal role foreign news and misinformation played in driving colonists to revolt. Runner-up of the Journal of The American Revolution Book of the Year Award by the Journal of The American Revolution "Fake news" is not new. Just like millions of Americans today, the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century worried that they were entering a "post-truth" era. Their fears, however, were not fixated on social media or clickbait, but rather on peoples' increasing reliance on reading news gathered from foreign newspapers. In Misinformation Nation, Jordan E. Taylor reveals how foreign news defined the boundaries of American politics and ultimately drove colonists to revolt against Britain and create a new nation. News was the lifeblood of early American politics, but newspaper printers had few reliable sources to report on events from abroad. Accounts of battles and beheadings, as well as declarations and constitutions, often arrived alongside contradictory intelligence. Though frequently false, the information that Americans encountered in newspapers, letters, and conversations framed their sense of reality, leading them to respond with protests, boycotts, violence, and the creation of new political institutions. Fearing that their enemies were spreading fake news, American colonists fought for control of the news media. As their basic perceptions of reality diverged, Loyalists separated from Patriots and, in the new nation created by the revolution, Republicans inhabited a political reality quite distinct from that of their Federalist rivals. The American Revolution was not only a political contest for liberty, equality, and independence (for white men, at least); it was also a contest to define certain accounts of reality to be truthful while defining others as false and dangerous. Misinformation Nation argues that we must also conceive of the American Revolution as a series of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and uninformed overreactions. In addition to making a striking and original argument about the founding of the United States, Misinformation Nation will be a valuable prehistory to our current political moment.