Published

If Americans know anything about the deportation of native people in the 1830s, it is usually the story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, often recounted in maudlin prose in a narrative that is heartbreaking but ultimately of little broader import. The poetic phrase “Trail of Tears” is so familiar that many people conflate Cherokee forced emigration with deportation more generally, even though Cherokees represented a fraction—about 15,000—of the 80,000 thousand children, women, and men who were shipped west by the Federal government.

In May of 1830, Congress authorized the expulsion of indigenous peoples in the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Over the next decade, Native Americans saw their homelands and possessions stolen through fraud, intimidation, and murder. Thousands lost their lives. In this powerful, gripping book, award-winning historian Claudio Saunt upends the common view that “Indian Removal” was an inevitable chapter in U.S. expansion across the continent.

Instead, Saunt argues that it was a contested political act—resisted by both indigenous peoples and U.S. citizens – that passed by a razor-thin margin in Congress. In telling the full story of this systematic, state-sponsored theft, he reveals how expulsion became national policy, abetted by Southern power brokers and slave owners and financed by northern Wall Street bankers. Moving beyond the Trail of Tears, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Country is a fast-paced, yet deeply researched, account of unbridled greed, government indifference, and administrative incompetence. The consequences of this vast transfer of land and wealth still resonate today.

Jammed with sage advice, genuine encouragement, and surprising examples of how to write and how not to write, this book gives beginning writers and confident students alike an easy-to-follow roadmap for improving one of the most important skills for success.

En route to Sin Boldly!-induced, A+ paper bliss, readers encounter such topics as: Choosing a Topic and Telling Your Story (“K.I.S.S.-Keep It Simple, Stupid”), Literary Games (featuring “Francobabble for Freshman”), Choosing a Voice (“Dissing the Prof”), Grammatical Horrors (“A does not equal they”), and Common Mistakes (“Hopefully and Other Controversies”).

Cheeky, original, and decidedly practical… perfect for anyone who wants to hone their communication skills—college-bound or in the working world. Fully revised and updated with new examples, quizzes, and tips, Sin Boldly! is not only a comprehensive guide, but also a fantastic, fun read for anyone who wants to write clearly and effectively.

In the years leading up to World War II, people purchased and read a stunning number of newspapers. And while elite journalists often overlooked the influence of America’s most popular newspapers, the newspapers that people actually read (as opposed to the ones that they said that they read) would shape the political and foreign policy debate in America in surprising ways. Most of the top-selling newspapers in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s were anti-Democratic, anti-New Deal, and anti-liberal. All of them were vehemently isolationist on foreign policy.

In The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler, historian Kathryn Olmsted explores the story of the American media moguls—and their British counterparts—who used their newspaper empires to champion the isolationist cause in the years leading up to the Second World War, and makes a case for its significance in the history of the Right.

The papers that were controlled by William Randolph Hearst, Robert McCormick, Joe Patterson, and Cissy Patterson in the US, and by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook in the UK, had a vast following. In the US, the Hearst/McCormick/Patterson papers reached more than seven million readers a day—far outpassing the numbers that Fox News boasts of today. The conservative stance that they promoted would shape the political and foreign policy debates of the time, constraining the ability of western democracies to respond to the rise of fascism.

Echoes of the anti-intellectualism championed by McCormick and the other media barons of the time can be found today. And to understand the rise of the conservative right of the 21st century we need to appreciate how the press barons of the US and the UK worked together to undermine the response to Hitler in the 1930s.