America's Founders placed great confidence in schools, which they believed would teach young people to understand our political system and to engage in reasoned political debate as adults. Yet today, when virtually all Americans graduate from high school, we remain stunningly ignorant of history and government.In The Cradle of Citizenship, James Traub chronicles his year of observing public schools across the country, talking to teachers, scholars, and curriculum designers...

A devastating critique of our failure to prepare students for citizenship—and a roadmap to a better way.America’s Founders placed great confidence in schools, which they believed would teach young people to understand our political system and to engage in reasoned political debate as adults. Yet today, when virtually all Americans graduate from high school, we remain stunningly ignorant of history and government. In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Prog...

As Times Square turns 100, New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub tells the story of how this mercurial district became one of the most famous and exciting places in the world. The Devil’s Playground is classic and colorful American history, from the first years of the twentieth century through the Runyonesque heyday of nightclubs and theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, to the district’s decline in the 1960s and its glittering corporate revival in the...

A sweeping history of liberalism, from its earliest origins to its imperiled present and uncertain futureDonald Trump is the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt. He has company: the leaders of Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others, are also avowed illiberals. What happened? Why did liberalism lose the support it once enjoyed? In What Was Liberalism?, James Traub returns to the origins of liberalism, in the afterm...

A moral examination of one of the first Jewish senators, confidante to Jefferson Davis, and champion of the cause of slaveryJudah P. Benjamin (1811–1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult ...

Americans have been trying to shape democracy around the world for more than a century. It is the American mission, our distinctive form of evangelism. But when President Bush declared, in his second inaugural address, that "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands," he elevated this cause—the "Freedom Agenda," as he called it—to the central theme of American foreign policy. Yet the war in Iraq has proven the folly of seeking to impo...

"If you want to understand [the UN] . . . [this book] is one of the finest guides around." — The New York Times Book ReviewWith a New Afterword by the AuthorA man who had won the Nobel Peace Prize, who was widely counted one of the greatest UN Secretary Generals, was nearly hounded from office by scandal. Indeed, both Kofi Annan and the institution he incarnates were so deeply shaken after the Bush Administration w...

**A penetrating, lyrical biography of John Quincy Adams, the president and politician whose experiences spanned—and shaped—the most critical period in our nation's history."A splendid new biography .... Reliably thorough, blissfully bereft of jargon, and nicely paced."―New York Times Book Review**Few figures in American history have held as many roles in public life as John Quincy Adams. The son of John Adams, he was a brilliant ambassador and secretary of state, a...

A celebrated historian recounts Hubert Humphrey’s role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century AmericaHubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, his suppor...

A sweeping history of liberalism, from its earliest origins to its imperiled present and uncertain futureDonald Trump is the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt. He has company: the leaders of Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others, are also avowed illiberals. What happened? Why did liberalism lose the support it once enjoyed? In What Was Liberalism?, James Traub returns to the origins of liberalism, in the afterm...

The extraordinary life of James Monroe: soldier, senator, diplomat, and the last Founding Father to hold the presidency, a man who helped transform thirteen colonies into a vibrant and mighty republic.“A first-rate account of a remarkable life.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of AmericaMonroe lived a life defined by revolutions. From the battlefields of the War for Independence, to his ambassadorship in Par...

A new biography of the 8th president of the United States, the first chief executive not born a British citizen and the first to use the party system to chart his way from tavern-keeper's son to the pinnacle of power. Martin Van Buren was one of the most remarkable politicians not only of his time but in American presidential history. The principal architect of the party system and one of the founders of the Democratic Party, he came to dominate New York-then the most infl...