Great statesmen and gentlemen, men of honor and rank, seem to be phenomena of a bygone Aristocratic era. Aristocracies, which emphasize rank, and value difference, quality, beauty, rootedness, continuity, stand in direct contrast to democracies, which value equality, autonomy, novelty, standardization, quantity, utility and mobility. Is there any place for aristocratic values and virtues in the modern democratic social and political order? This volume consists of essays by political theori...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN LOOKS DOWN ON US in magisterial dominion from his throne in Washington's biggest monument—the American demigod. There is some justice in the symbol, because it was Lincoln who, with rivers of blood, destroyed the old Constitutional Union and founded the American nation that we know. As M.E. Bradford writes: "The truth about the life and death of Lincoln seems to matter very little when it is confronted by the myth." Even though, he adds, there is "God's plenty of evidence" ...

A "brilliant" look at America's sixteenth president by the New York Times–bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lincoln ( American Historical Review).First published in 1956 and revised and updated for the twenty-first century, Lincoln Reconsidered is a masterpiece of Civil War scholarship. In a dozen eloquent, witty, and incisive essays, the author of the definitive biography of Abraham Lincoln offers a fresh perspective ...

"A fine, invaluable book. . . . It is always instructive to study Lincoln, but now is a particularly good time to consider his devotion to words." —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book WorldFor Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America's 16th president through his use of language both as a ve...

This definitive analysis of the Lincoln-Douglas debates is "one of the most influential works of American history and political philosophy ever published ( National Review).In Crisis of the House Divided, noted conservative scholar and historian Harry V. Jaffa illuminates the political principles that guided Abraham Lincoln from his reentry into politics in 1854 through his Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas in 1858. Through...

Many writers have explored Lincoln's leadership; others have debated Lincoln's ambiguous religious identity. But in this classic work, Christian philosopher and statesman Elton Trueblood reveals how Lincoln's leadership skills flowed directly from his religious convictions—which explains how the president was able to combine what few leaders can hold together: moral resoluteness with a shrewd ability to compromise; confidence in his cause while refusing to succumb to the traps of self-righ...

Here is a concise scholarly yet accessible overview of the brilliant flawed and quarrelsome group of lawyers politicians merchants military men and clergy known as "the Founding Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic "philosopher-kings" as American or world history has ever seen. In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered R. B. Bernstein reveals Washington Franklin Jefferson Adams Hamilton and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings--people much ...

James McPherson has emerged as one of America's finest historians. Battle Cry of Freedom, his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times Book Review, called "history writing of the highest order." In that volume, McPherson gathered in the broad sweep of events, the political, social, and cultural forces at work during the Civil War era. Now, in Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

The First American. Frontiersman and backwoods attorney. Teller of bawdy tales and a spellbinding orator. A champion of liberty some called a would-be tyrant. Savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator. All these are Abraham Lincoln -- in his time America's most admired and reviled leader, and still our nation's most enigmatic and captivating hero.Timed to complement the new motion picture Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, Lincoln: A President for the Ages...

**An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize*Winner of the 2024 Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize**Finalist for the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize*"It is altogether fitting and proper that, with this meditation on democracy and its most subtle defender, Allen Guelzo again demonstrates that he is toda...

Most Americans hold basic misconceptions about the Confederacy, the Civil War, and the actions of subsequent neo-Confederates. For example, two thirds of Americans--including most history teachers--think the Confederate States seceded for "states' rights." This error persists because most have never read the key documents about the Confederacy.These documents have always been there. When South Carolina seceded, it published "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Just...

Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individ...