The Soul of America

The Soul of America
Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0399589813

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The Christian Science Monitor • Southern Living Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail. Praise for The Soul of America “Brilliant, fascinating, timely . . . With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time.”—Walter Isaacson “Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s declaration of his faith in America.”—Newsday “Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately one of kindness and caring, not rancor and paranoia.”—USA Today

Kill 'Em and Leave

Kill 'Em and Leave
Author: James McBride
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0679645624

“You won’t leave this hypnotic book without feeling that James Brown is still out there, howling.”—The Boston Globe From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, Deacon King Kong, and Five-Carat Soul Kill ’Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown embodied the contradictions of American life: He was an unsettling symbol of the tensions between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. After receiving a tip that promises to uncover the man behind the myth, James McBride goes in search of the “real” James Brown. McBride’s travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown’s never-before-revealed history, illuminating not only our understanding of the immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated Godfather of Soul, but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown’s enduring legacy. Praise for Kill ’Em and Leave “A tour de force of cultural reportage.”—The Seattle Times “Thoughtful and probing.”—The New York Times Book Review “Masterly . . . powerful.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “McBride provides something lacking in most of the books about James Brown: an intimate feeling for the musician, a veracious if inchoate sense of what it was like to be touched by him. . . . It may be as close [to ‘the real James Brown’] as we’ll ever get.”—David Hajdu, The Nation “A feat of intrepid journalistic fortitude.”—USA Today “[McBride is] the biographer of James Brown we’ve all been waiting for. . . . McBride’s true subject is race and poverty in a country that doesn’t want to hear about it, unless compelled by a voice that demands to be heard.”—Boris Kachka, New York “Illuminating . . . engaging.”—The Washington Post “A gorgeously written piece of reportage that gives us glimpses of Brown’s genius and contradictions.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

The Saga of the American Soul

The Saga of the American Soul
Author: Richard E. Wentz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 1980
Genre: History
ISBN:

A reflective study of some of the basic images that have been important to the American experience, i.e. Promised Land, Paradise, Covenant, errand, new humanity, and wonder-working Providence. Drawing on the work of Bellah, Mead, and Marty, this book will be of use in courses on American religion.

Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South

Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South
Author: Ken Fones-Wolf
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2015-03-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0252097009

In 1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) undertook Operation Dixie, an initiative to recruit industrial workers in the American South. Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf plumb rarely used archival sources and rich oral histories to explore the CIO's fraught encounter with the evangelical Protestantism and religious culture of southern whites. The authors' nuanced look at working class religion reveals how laborers across the surprisingly wide evangelical spectrum interpreted their lives through their faith. Factors like conscience, community need, and lived experience led individual preachers to become union activists and mill villagers to defy the foreman and minister alike to listen to organizers. As the authors show, however, all sides enlisted belief in the battle. In the end, the inability of northern organizers to overcome the suspicion with which many evangelicals viewed modernity played a key role in Operation Dixie's failure, with repercussions for labor and liberalism that are still being felt today. Identifying the role of the sacred in the struggle for southern economic justice, and placing class as a central aspect in southern religion, Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South provides new understandings of how whites in the region wrestled with the options available to them during a crucial period of change and possibility.

Soul of a People

Soul of a People
Author: David A. Taylor
Publisher: Wiley
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2009-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781684425204

Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, the book reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, Nebraskan meatpackers, and blind musicians. Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage involved: shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.

California Soul

California Soul
Author: Keith Corbin
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593243838

JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • A sharply crafted and unflinchingly honest memoir about gangs, drugs, cooking, and living life on the line—both on the streets and in the kitchen—from one of the most exciting stars in the food world today “Beautiful. Moving. Inspiring. Get it.”—Chris Storer, Emmy Award–winning creator of The Bear A SALON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Chef Keith Corbin has been cooking his entire life. Born on the home turf of the notorious Grape Street Crips in 1980s Watts, Los Angeles, he got his start cooking crack at age thirteen, becoming so skilled that he was flown across the country to cook for drug operations in other cities. After his criminal enterprises caught up with him, though, Corbin spent years in California’s most notorious maximum security prisons—witnessing the resourcefulness of other inmates who made kimchi out of leftover vegetables and tamales from ground-up Fritos. He developed his own culinary palate and ingenuity, creating “spreads” out of the unbearable commissary ingredients and experimenting during his shifts in the prison kitchen. After his release, Corbin got a job managing the kitchen at LocoL, an ambitious fast food restaurant spearheaded by celebrity chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, designed to bring inexpensive, quality food and good jobs into underserved neighborhoods. But when Corbin was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, he struggled to live up to or accept the simplified “gangbanger redemption” portrayal of him in the media. As he battles private demons while achieving public success, Corbin traces the origins of his vision for “California soul food” and takes readers inside the worlds of gang hierarchy, drug dealing, prison politics, gentrification, and culinary achievement to tell the story of how he became head chef of Alta Adams, one of America’s best restaurants.

Soul City

Soul City
Author: Thomas Healy
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250811260

"A history of Floyd McKissick's 1969 plan to build a Black city in North Carolina, examining the story of the idealists who settled there, the obstacles that derailed the project, and what Soul City's saga says about Black opportunity, capitalism, and power then and now"--

The Theft of America’s Soul

The Theft of America’s Soul
Author: Phil Robertson
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1400210054

It's time to take back what the devil has stolen and bring God back into our culture. Phil Robertson, patriarch of A&E's Duck Dynasty and one of the most recognized voices of conservative Christianity in America, believes that little by little, generation by generation, America has allowed the lines of morality, decency, and virtue to be erased. Our values have disappeared as we began to believe lies that have only sown discord and division. But, most importantly, Phil also believes that things can change. Written with captivating storytelling and unflinching honesty, The Theft of America's Soul shows us how to make America a God-honoring nation once more by dropping the ten central lies that rule our day and replacing them with timeless, biblical truths, including: God's people represent his voice in the world True unity comes from a God-centered culture God's standard for all time is the standard of virtue The Theft of America's Soul is a prophetic wake-up call for anyone who wants to see our nation thrive, challenging us to exchange lies for truths that will bring peace of mind, harmony, and prosperity back to our country--an invitation to experience the life-giving, peace-filling, wholly-transforming love of God. Praise for The Theft of America's Soul: "The moral clarity in this book is so powerful and so refreshing I wish I could give it to everyone I know. Incidentally, the only way something could be this full of truth and wisdom is if its author is a prophet. That he is. Hear him." --Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer "In The Theft of America's Soul, the Duck Commander has set his sights on something higher, taking aim at the ten lies that have led our culture astray and put our faith, our families, and our freedom at risk. I am grateful for the direct, nonpolitically correct way my friend Phil Robertson lays out the truth. My prayer is that this book finds its way into the hands and hearts of many Americans." --Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council and president of Council for National Policy

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul
Author: John M. Barry
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-12-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143122886

A revelatory look at the separation of church and state in America—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Influenza For four hundred years, Americans have fought over the proper relationships between church and state and between a free individual and the state. This is the story of the first battle in that war of ideas, a battle that led to the writing of the First Amendment and that continues to define the issue of the separation of church and state today. It began with religious persecution and ended in revolution, and along the way it defined the nature of America and of individual liberty. Acclaimed historian John M. Barry explores the development of these fundamental ideas through the story of Roger Williams, who was the first to link religious freedom to individual liberty, and who created in America the first government and society on earth informed by those beliefs. This book is essential to understanding the continuing debate over the role of religion and political power in modern life.

Pike's Peak: a Family Saga

Pike's Peak: a Family Saga
Author: Frank Waters
Publisher: Swallow Press
Total Pages: 780
Release: 1971
Genre: Colorado
ISBN:

During the fabulous reign of Colorado Silver, innumerable prospectors passed by Pike's Peak on their way to the silver strikes at Leadville, Aspen, and the boom camps in the Saguache, Sangre de Cristo, and San Juan mountain. Then, in 1890, a carpenter named Winfield Scott Stratton discovered gold along Cripple Creek. By 1900, this six square mile area on the south slope of Pike's Peak supported 475 mines and led the world in gold production. Against this backdrop of frenzied mining and gold fever, Pike's Peak tells the story of Joseph Rogier, a man who seeks and finds his fortune in Colorado, and then loses everything in pursuit of something more important. Arriving in Colorado Springs in the 1870s, Rogier becomes a successful contractor and builder and helps to raise a little mountain town into the Saratoga of the west. He rears a large family and scoffs at the "alfalfa miners" chasing silver strikes everywhere. But with the discovery of gold at nearby Cripple Creek, Rogier is shaken and methodically squanders his prosperous business and all his property attempting to reach the "great gold heart" of Pike's Peak. Waters' is a psychologically modern novel whose universal theme is expressed on the grand scale of the opening of a territory. It is both a marvelously colorful and detailed account of the days when Colorado boomed and Denver became a big town, and an allegory of one man's furious pursuit of the truth within himself.