A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A most anticipated book of 2022 at Vulture and Kirkus Reviews A leading historian tells the story of the United States’ most enduring political party and its long, imperfect, and newly invigorated quest for “moral capitalism,” from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden. The Democratic Party is the world’s oldest mass political organization. But what has the party stood for through the centuries, and how has it managed to succeed in elections and govern? In What It Took to Win , the eminent historian Michael Kazin tells the story of the party’s longtime commitment to promoting “moral capitalism,” a system that mixes entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers. Yet the party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or furthered the causes of slavery, segregation, and Native American removal. With its evolution toward a more inclusive, egalitarian vision, the party won durable victories for Americans of all backgrounds. But it has also struggled to hold together a majority coalition and advance a persuasive agenda. Kazin traces the party’s fortunes through vivid character sketches of its key thinkers and doers, from William Jennings Bryan to Eleanor Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Throughout, Kazin reveals the rich interplay of personality, belief, strategy, and policy that defines the life of the Democratic Party and outlines the core components of a political legacy that President Joe Biden and his co-partisans rely on today as they seek to revitalize the American political experiment.

In his bestseller The Tempting of America , Robert Bork portrayed himself as someone whose views are in the American mainstream, and has said that the failure of the Senate to approve him was an aberration. On the contrary, Matters of Principle shows that with the rejection of Bork, Americans emphatically reaffirmed one of the enduring virtues of our national character—a fervent belief in individual rights. In the end, Americans rejected the cramped vision of Robert Bork and the Right. Matters of Principle is a lively, provocative, and thoughtful first-hand account of this tumultuous battle for control of the Supreme Court, a battle that continues to make news but whose strategy was shaped largely behind closed doors. For Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it would prove to be a watershed moment. Biden wanted to be President and was in the middle of a campaign for the Democratic nomination when the process began. Robert Bork’s ambition was to serve on the Supreme Court. Both saw their dreams die amid constant pressures from political action groups, other senators, editorial boards, and the President. The goal for Biden was to make the American public interested in a battle over judicial philosophy without being perceived as a political opportunist. Bork’s aim was to become the standard-bearer of the Reagan Revolution, to project himself as a moderate, while his judicial decisions and his writings showed otherwise. The inner proceedings provide a fascinating look at the players in this event, from the editorial boards of The New York Times and The Washington Post to the Senate chambers of Biden, Thurmond, Kennedy, et al., to the White House, where President Reagan erred enormously, first by choosing Bork, then by adopting faulty strategy to help him, and finally by apparently abandoning Bork and leaving him without strong support. Perhaps most important, Matters of Principle is a story about the clash of judicial ideas and ideals. Mark Gitenstein traces the evolution of Bork’s legal philosophy from his days at Yale through his time in the Nixon Administration, finally offering a portrait of a man far from the mainstream of American beliefs.

“Brilliantly illustrates the immense and disarming power of changing course and driving not toward division, but toward civility and mutual respect.” -- Ms . magazine As a progressive commentator on Fox News and now CNN, Sally Kohn has made a career out of bridging intractable political differences. In this age of dangerous partisan resentment and rising bigotry, she decided to investigate hate itself--to better consider how we can stop it. With her trademark humor and humanity, Kohn introduces us to leading researchers and scientists who are exploring the evolutionary and cultural roots of hate. She travels to Rwanda, to the Middle East, and across the United States, talking with former terrorists and reformed white supremacists, and even sitting down with some of her own Twitter trolls. What she discovers is surprising: All of us harbor hate but the powerful acknowledgment that we are all in this together can lead us out of the wilderness. The opposite of hate is connection .

A landmark study in the history of working class labour organisations, WORLDS OF LABOUR is a sequel to the author's widely acclaimed LABOURING MEN. WORLDS OF LABOUR is a series of studies that considers the formation and evolution of working classes in the period between the late eighteenth century and the mid-twentieth, scrutinising their 'consciousness', ways of life and the movements they generated. The emphasis throughout the study is on the way labour organisations, policies and ideas were rooted in the everyday reality of working class life. In the process, leading Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm reveals the daily struggles of working class militants, many of whom are still unknown to the modern world. The result is a book that is expansive in scope, but fluent and clear in detail. It will serve as a valuable source of reference to those with an academic interest in the subject, and as an inspiration to those who simply wish to discover the development of working class movements.

Spanning nearly one hundred years of American political history, and abounding with outsize characters—from Lindbergh to Goldwater to Gingrich to Abramoff— White Protestant Nation offers a penetrating look at the origins, evolution, and triumph (at times) of modern conservatism. Lichtman is both a professor of political history at American University and a veteran journalist, and after ten years of prodigious research, he has produced what may be the definitive history of the modern conservative movement in America. He brings to life a gallery of dynamic right-wing personalities, from luminaries such as Strom Thurmond, Phyllis Schlafly, and Bill Kristol to indispensable inside operators like financiers Frank Gannett and J. Howard Pew. He explodes the conventional wisdom that modern conservative politics began with Goldwater and instead traces the roots of today's movement to the 1920s. And he lays bare the tactics that conservatives have used for generations to put their slant on policy and culture; to choke the growth of the liberal state; and to build the most powerful media, fundraising, and intellectual network in the history of representative government. White Protestant Nation is entertaining, provocative, enlightening, and essential reading for anyone who cares about modern American politics and its history.

Evolutionary Socialism was Bernstein's most significant work, and it set the stage for the Democratic Socialism of today. In Evolutionary Socialism, Bernstein was principally concerned with refuting Karl Marx's predictions about the imminent and inevitable demise of capitalism. Bernstein warned that a violent proletarian revolution, as in France in 1848, produced only reactionary successes, which undermined workers' interests. Therefore, he rejected revolution and instead insisted the best strategy to be patiently building up a durable social movement working for continuous nonviolent incremental change.

"The history of the Canadian Congress of Labour and the CIO in Canada traces the evolution of industrial unionism in Canada from the depression years of the 1930s to the 1950s. This is not simply a historical survey. Rather it is the dramatic story of the bitter, bloody, but successful struggle to create an industrial union movement in Canada and the equality fascinating story of the fierce but less successful battle to build a national union movement. It describes the Canadian Congress of Labour's attempts to establish itself as an autonomous labour organization independent of American control and details the efforts of the CIO and its Canadian affiliates to limit that autonomy. The author raises many significant questions concerning the presence of American unions in Canada and the crucial role played by the Communist party in the history of the Canadian labour movement. He rejects many of the standard interpretations of the history of the trade union movement and presents important new evidence to support his position. This study, based on archival sources that have never before been used - the files of the Canadian Congress of Labour and its affiliates - and supplemented by dozens of interviews, should stand as the definitive work on the growth of industrial and international unionism in Canada" - Publisher.