NCW Libraries

Donald Trump promised to "Drain the Swamp," by which he originally meant lobbyists. When he got in, he found an entirely different Swamp-a Deep State that had grown, layer upon layer, within the government. But he wasn't the first to encounter entrenched Swamp opposition. Abraham Lincoln had to battle the "Slave Power Conspiracy"; Grover Cleveland was the most successful of three presidents to fight the spoils Swamp. Theodore Roosevelt found a new...

How the antitax fringe went mainstream--and now threatens America's future! The postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards--and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity. Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a "second American Revolution," setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has...

"Since 2016, many commentators have expressed shock at the so-called rise of the far right in America at the expense of "responsible" and "respectable" conservatism. But is the far right an aberration in conservative politics? As David Austin Walsh shows, the mainstream conservative movement and the far right have been intertwined for nearly a century, and both were born out of a "right-wing popular front" linking racists, anti-Semites, and fascists...

CAL THOMAS IS AMERICA'S "WATCHMAN" IN THE NIGHT In A WATCHMAN IN THE NIGHT, Cal Thomas-one of the most popular syndicated columnists in the country-takes the reader on a "road trip" through over fifty years of journalism and American life, serving as a "watchman" on culture and politics and seeking to conform it to a standard that never changes. A watchman "keeps guard over a building at night, to protect it from fire, vandals, or thieves." Thomas...

"This book began as a political history of the 60s and 70s, with a particular focus on why Americans have let our nation decline in almost every measurable way since then, and sometimes even cheered on those who engineered that decline. I wanted to tell it the way I saw it growing up, watching many of my working-class Irish relatives forsake the Democrats, a party they saw as forsaking them. But my family's story, and that of the Democratic Party,...

"A cutting-edge look into a pivotal moment in U.S. history: McCarthy's infamous 'witch hunt' for communists during the 1950's Red Scare ... Told through a unique and inviting screenplay-format, brought to life with dozens of illustrations by Tim Foley, and comprised almost entirely of quotes derived from primary sources, Witch Hunt recounts the political craze that gripped America during the Red Scare when McCarthyism forced people to go to extraordinary...

From the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News and the New York Times best-selling author of Ship of Fools, a collection of nostalgic writings that underscore America's long slide from innocence to orthodoxy.

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow reserved for those who are white and of the "right" ancestry? Gary Gerstle traces the forces of civic and racial nationalism, arguing that both profoundly shaped our society. After Theodore Roosevelt...

A new account of America's most controversial diplomat that moves beyond praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America's current imperial stance In his fascinating new book, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America-its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home-we have to understand Henry Kissinger. Examining Kissinger's own writings, as well as a wealth...