An award-winning scholar's sweeping history of American secularism, from Jefferson to Trump"An essential book for understanding today's culture wars. Sehat's clear-eyed and elegant narrative will change how you think about our supposedly secular age."—Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillIn This Earthly Frame, David Sehat narrates the making of American secularism through its most prominent proponents and most significant detractors. He shows how its foun...

In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents...

In The Jefferson Rule, historian David Sehat describes how everyone from liberals to conservatives, secessionists to unionists have sought out the Founding Fathers to defend their policies.Beginning with the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the future of the nation, and continuing throughout our history—the Civil War, the World Wars, the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and Obama and the Tea Party—many politicos have asked, “What...

In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents...

An award-winning scholar’s sweeping history of American secularism, from Jefferson to TrumpIn This Earthly Frame, David Sehat describes the making of American secularism through its most prominent proponents and most significant detractors. He shows how its foundations were laid in the US Constitution and how it fully emerged only in the twentieth century. Religious and nonreligious Jews, liberal Protestants, apocalyptic sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses,...

Beginning with the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the future of the nation and continuing through the Civil War, the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and Obama and the Tea Party, many pols have asked, "What would the Founders do?" instead of "What is the common good today?" Recently, both the Right and the Left have used the Founders to sort through such issues as voting rights, campaign finance, free speech, gun control, taxes, and war and peace. They have use...

Winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in NonfictionAnti-Intellectualism in American Life is a book which throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society."As Mr. Hofstadter unfolds the fascinating story, it is no crude battle of eggheads and fatheads. It is a rich, c...

The bestselling author of Liberal Fascism dismantles the progressive myths that are passed-off as wisdom in our schools, media and politics.According to Jonah Goldberg, if the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, the greatest trick liberals ever pulled was convincing themselves that they’re not ideological.Today, “objective” journalists, academics and “moderate” politicians peddle some of the most radical a...

An authoritative history of the vital role of secularist thinkers and activists in the United States, from a writer of "fierce intelligence and nimble, unfettered imagination" ( The New York Times)At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock o...

Late in life William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is "boring" said the founding father of the American right. "Devoting your life to it" as conservatives do "is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." With this unlikely conversation began Robin's decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism and what's truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them what excites them? Tracing conservatism back to its roots ...

Originally published anonymously, The Federalist Papers first appeared in 1787 as a series of letters to New York newspapers exhorting voters to ratify the proposed Constitution of the United States. Still hotly debated and open to often controversial interpretations, the arguments first presented here by three of America's greatest patriots and political theorists were created during a critical moment in our nation's history, providing readers with a running ideological commentar...

Could the 2024 election have been the last free election held in a unified America? • "A dire warning of the right’s drift towards authoritarianism.” —Financial TimesPublished in the run-up to Donald Trump’s victory, Rebellion sounded a chilling and clear-eyed warning about the threats posed to American democracy by the increasingly radicalized Republican Party. With the Trump administration in place, and attempting a systematic dismantling of the...