Historian Edward J. Larson recovers a crucially important -- yet almost always overlooked -- chapter of George Washington's life, revealing how Washington saved the United States by coming out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and serve as our first president. After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, Washington shocked the world: he retired. In December 1783, the most powerful man in the country stepped...

Senator Cruz argues that the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote. Case studies illustrate his point that one vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith. "In One vote away, you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote. One vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith....

Discusses the ideas at the core of the Declaration of Independence that form the ideals found in the Preamble to the Constitution.

""The Rights of Man." What does that mean? In 1789 that question rippled all around the world. Do all men have rights--not just nobles and kings? What then of enslaved people, women, the original inhabitants of the Americas? In the new United States a bill of rights was passed, while in France the nation tumbled toward revolution. In the Caribbean preachers brought word of equality, while in the South Pacific sailors mutinied. New knowledge was exploding,...

In modern America, talk radio host Levin argues, the civil society is being steadily devoured by a ubiquitous federal government. But as the government grows into an increasingly authoritarian and centralized federal Leviathan, many parents continue to tolerate, if not enthusiastically champion, grievous public policies that threaten their children and successive generations with a grim future at the hands of a brazenly expanding and imploding entitlement...

• Highly readable, insightful revelation of what the Founding Fathers intended when they drafted the Constitution • First published in 1936 The 55 men who traveled to Philadelphia on horse and by stagecoach in the spring of 1787 as delegates to a Convention on the Articles of Confederation had been warned by the states that sent them to do nothing more than make a few changes in the flimsy articles. But when they went back to their homes, after...

Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post—Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed...

The primary purpose of the United States Constitution is to limit Congress. There is no separation of church and state. The Second Amendment allows citizens to threaten the government. These are just a few of the myths about our constitution peddled by the Far Right-a toxic coalition of Fox News talking heads, radio hosts, angry "patriot" groups, and power-hungry Tea Party politicians. Well-funded, loud, and unscrupulous, they are trying to do to...