From financial crises, to pandemic price-spikes, to recurring cycles of inflation, everyone agrees: the economy has seen better days.

But as soon as pundits and politicians start discussing economics, things get murky. Most books ask more questions than they answer.

Most books...but not this one.

Judy Shelton--Senior Fellow at Independent Institute, former Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, and critically acclaimed monetary economist--has written a book with answers.

And not a moment too soon.

With clarity and moral courage, Shelton charts the course to a brighter future. She's one of the few economists bold enough to challenge the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve, emphasizing how today's policies enrich elites at the expense of--you guessed it--poor and middle-class Americans. This, Shelton insists, must end. And it can end--easily.

But Shelton doesn't stop there. Her vision is for not only America but also for people around the world. Global, economic upliftment, she insists, need not come at the expense of domestic prosperity. We can have both--but not without a sound and stable U.S. currency.

And history is very clear on this point. When the U.S. dollar is backed by gold, America prospers, and so does the rest of the world. In this book, Shelton casts a powerful vision that is as revolutionary as it is time-tested...a vision that shows how the future American dollar can perform as good as gold...

...or even better.

But this is no curmudgeonly demand to return to the gold standard of yore. Neither is it a demand to return to the Bretton Woods era. Instead, Shelton offers something new: an explanation of how we can use gold for a new international monetary order. Step by step, she lays out how gold can provide a universal measure of value across borders, create new financial opportunities, and dramatically increase prosperity around the world.

If you care about the poor, rich, and everyone in between, you have to read this book ... and discover:

- how price stability functions as the foundation for productive economic growth;

- how political freedom and economic freedom are fundamentally linked ... and how one cannot exist without the other;

- how to reconcile the stability of America's domestic currency in a global context;

- the proper role of government in the economy;

- and much, much more ...

Writing with a sober but hopeful voice, Shelton is no ordinary economist. With grace, intellectual rigor, and unmatched passion, this book is a must-read for anyone invested in the future of the American--and global--economy. You'll walk away with more answers than questions--a rare experience for anyone who reads about monetary policy.

In Hot Talk, Cold Science, Fred Singer looks at the issue of climate change the way a physicist should. He asks probing questions and offers reasoned possibilities. He notes the obvious weaknesses that others too often ignore.... Fortunately, some like Dr. Singer still prefer the joys and value of scientific inquiry.
--Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor Emeritus of Meteorology, M.I.T.

The revised and expanded third edition of Hot Talk, Cold Science forms the capstone of the distinguished astrophysicist Dr. S. Fred Singer's lucid, yet hard scientific look at climate change. And the book is no less explosive than its predecessors--and certainly never more timely.

Singer explores the inaccuracies in historical climate data and the failures of climate models, as well as the impact of solar variability, clouds, ocean currents, and sea levels on global climate--plus factors that could mitigate any human impact on world climate.

Singer's masterful analysis decisively shows that the pessimistic, and often alarming, global-warming scenarios depicted in the media have no scientific basis. In fact, he finds that many aspects of increased levels of CO2, as well as any modest warming, such as a longer growing seasons for food and a reduced need to use fossil fuels for heating, would have a highly positive impact on the human race.

As alarmists clamor to impose draconian government restrictions on entire populations in order to combat climate change, this book reveals some other startling, stubborn contradictory facts, including:

• CO2 has not caused temperatures or sea levels to rise beyond historical rates.
• Severe storms have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1970--neither have heat waves nor droughts.
• Global climate change is not harming coral reefs.
• Any increases in CO2 concentrations across huge time spans haven't preceded rising global temperatures, they've followed them by about 600 to 800 years--just the opposite of alarmist claims.
• Carbon taxes and other solutions to the global warming crisis would have severe consequences for economically disadvantaged groups and nations.
• Alarmist climate scientists have hidden their raw temperature data and deleted emails--then undermined the peer-review system to squelch debate.

In sum, despite all the hot talk--and outright duplicity--there is no climate crisis resulting from human activities and no such threat on the horizon.

With the assistance of renowned climate scientists David R. Legates and Anthony R. Lupo, Singer's Hot Talk, Cold Science is an essential, clear-headed book of scope and substance that no one who claims to value science, the environment, and human well-being can afford to ignore.

This is a powerful exploration of the debilitating impact that politically-correct multiculturalism has had upon higher education and academic freedom in the United States. In the name of diversity, many leading academic and cultural institutions are working to silence dissent and stifle intellectual life. This book exposes the real impact of multiculturalism on the institution most closely identified with the politically correct decline of higher education--Stanford University. Authored by two Stanford graduates, this book is a compelling insider's tour of a world of speech codes, dumbed-down admissions standards and curricula, campus witch hunts, and anti-Western zealotry that masquerades as legitimate scholarly inquiry. Sacks and Thiel use numerous primary sources--the Stanford Daily, class readings, official university publications--to reveal a pattern of politicized classes, housing, budget priorities, and more. They trace the connections between such disparate trends as political correctness, the gender wars, Generation X nihilism, and culture wars, showing how these have played a role in shaping multiculturalism at institutions like Stanford. The authors convincingly show that multiculturalism is not about learning more; it is actually about learning less. They end their comprehensive study by detailing the changes necessary to reverse the tragic disintegration of American universities and restore true academic excellence.

This book is not mere history; it is an exposé. You won't know which is more shocking: the lengths to which FDR and New Dealers like Senators (and future Supreme Court justices) Hugo Black and Sherman Minton went to suppress freedom of speech, privacy, and civil rights; or the degree to which these efforts have been concealed by pro-FDR and New Deal propagandists.
--Randy E. Barnett, Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Spying on citizens. Censoring critics. Imprisoning minorities. These are the acts of communist dictators, not American presidents....

Or are they?

The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, leadership as a wartime president, cozy fireside chats, and groundbreaking support of the forgotten man, FDR, we have been told, is worthy of the same praise as men like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln....

But is that true? Does the father of today's welfare state really deserve such generous approbation? Or is there a dark side to this golden legacy?

The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance unveils a much different portrait than the standard orthodoxy found in today's historical studies.

Deploying an abundance of primary source evidence and well-reasoned arguments, historian and distinguished professor emeritus David T. Beito masterfully presents a complete account of the real Franklin D. Roosevelt: a man who abused power, violated human rights, targeted dissidents, and let his crude racism imprison American citizens merely for being of Japanese descent.

Read it, and discover how FDR:

• shamelessly censored critics of his administration, barred them from the public square, destroyed their careers, and even bankrupted them when possible;
• locked up Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps built on American soil;
• sowed the seeds of today's out-of-control surveillance state;
• and much, much more...

Here is an all too rare portrait of a man who changed the course of American history ... not for the better.

Read it, and you'll never view the fireside president the same again.

In this long-awaited updated edition of Race & Liberty in America: The Essential Reader, editor Jonathan Bean draws on timeless and urgent insights from America's most principled anti-racist standard-bearers--and they could not be more relevant for our troubled and polarized time.

In 2009, when Race & Liberty in America: The Essential Reader was originally published, there was a spirit of optimism surrounding race relations. Fifteen years later, a far different spirit prevails: one fraught with tensions, many regrettably familiar and some new.

Which raises the question: What happened? And more importantly: How can we set things right?

With new contributions from Thomas Sowell, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wilfred Reilly, Kenny Xu, David Bernstein, and Ilya Somin--as well as a plethora of primary source evidence from recent landmark US Supreme Court decisions--Bean champions the values of colorblindness, freedom, and equal constitutional protection for all individuals--regardless of race.

It's a message that couldn't be more timely.

This first collection of writings on race and immigration to document the role of the classical liberal tradition--a tradition rooted in natural law principles of individual rights and liberty--reveals:

• Why classical liberals have espoused unalien­able Rights derived from God, individual freedom from government control, the Con­stitution as a guarantor of freedom, color-blind law, and capitalism;
• How classical liberals led the fights against slavery and racism against seemingly insurmountable odds and long before such positions became popular;
• What classical liberals' defense of a natural right to migration implies for today's immigration controversies;
• How capitalism undermines racism by penalizing those who act on their taste for discrimination;
• Why America's obtuse preoccupation with left-versus-right politics overshadows solutions to racial division;
• How we can improve race relations in the United States today;
• And much, much more...

From the Declaration of Independence, the antislavery movement, post-Civil War reconstruction, the Progressive Era, the Great Depression and World War II, the civil rights era, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, all the way up to the present day--each chapter in this new and improved updated edition illuminates how specific time periods in American history grappled with the demands of equality.

Citing such influential Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Louis Marshall, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Zora Neale Hurston, plus those missing from other books and heretofore lost to history, Bean shows how classical liberal thought on race relations has helped shape both law and public opinion ... and how it will need to do so again, if America as we know it is to prosper and thrive.

If you're ready to trade the tired and failed left-versus-right politics for timeless principles that actually work and uplift societies, read Race & Liberty in America.

A copy of the top-secret memo below recently came into our hands, and we thought we should bring it to your attention!

Dear National Security Elite:

In an ideal world, the public would simply accept whatever their leaders--you, in other words--told them. They would comply with restrictions and mandates, not as a matter of mere obedience, but as a matter of unquestionable patriotic duty.

But we don't live in an ideal world.

And with the fate of the world, especially the world's wars, in the hands of our enlightened, benevolent, and eminentlyresponsible national security elite--in your hands, in other words--we can't afford to risk opening the conversation to an informed public.

And we certainly can't risk asking for anything so antiquated as consent, either.

Not when the stakes are this high.

You simply must learn:

• How to control the narrative--every narrative--in your favor;
• How to completely capture the media and effectively quash dissent;
• How destroying liberty creates more liberty in the long (long) run;
• Why top-down economic planning, here and abroad, is your best friend;
• How to flout international, and of course domestic, law and get away with it;
• And much, much more...

The danger with any book like this is, obviously, that it may fall into the wrong hands. If any member of the general public should happen upon these pages, the consequences would be fatal.

After all, people may realize that the national security elite--you, in other words--are not, in fact, all-powerful harbingers of peace...

They may realize that you are, literally, a force for good... armed and relentlessly attempting to bend the planet to your noble will.

And that realization would be nothing short of disastrous.

Don't let this book fall into the wrong hands!

Merciless in their penetrating analysis, Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail Hall have written the satirical portrait of America's contemporary military-industrial complex. Drawing inspiration from the 1936 classic How to Run a War, by Bruce W. Knight, this book is a must-read for anyone who would know the truth about America's endless wars and the people who run them....

The truth might just set us free.

It will certainly make you laugh.

Then--really angry.

This book could not be timelier. Benjamin Ginsberg uses his deep knowledge of Jewish history to show that Jews, long identified with leftwing causes, in many ways, are not natural allies of the left. A culture of separateness and high achievement make the Jews vulnerable to political pathologies from wherever they come--and two of the most destructive, anti-Zionism and wokeism, come from the left. With the help of fascinating detail, this book shows that Jews need neither right nor left but a society based on the universal values they brought into the world many centuries ago.
--David Satter, author of Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union

The New American Anti-Semitism: The Left, the Right, and the Jews is a clarion call--not only to Jews, but to all Americans. As a nation, we must wake up and face the rising anti-Semitic threat and act accordingly.

But that threat is not coming from its usual source. The most virulent form of anti-Semitism today, Ginsberg warns, is the result of toxic identity politics and anti-Israeli sentiment coming from today's political Left.

Perhaps the most persecuted people in all of history, Jews have stood tall in the face of unprecedented persecution in all places, at all times. Their culture's rigorous emphasis on education and achievement catapults them, Ginsberg argues, to the upper echelons of the societies in which they live. But their success too often breeds resentment and jealousy, leading to an ugly anti-Semitism that has led, historically, to unspeakable violence.

In this urgent new work, Dr. Benjamin Ginsberg--political scientist, professor, and bestselling author--exposes the ugly face of this new, progressive anti-Semitism (which is also thriving in Europe). To combat it, he urges American Jews to form new political alliances, particularly with evangelical Christians.

The stakes of not doing so, says Ginsberg, are horrifically high--not only for the survival of the Jewish people, but for America's survival. After all, the Jews have contributed immeasurably to America's scientific, cultural, and economic achievements. Jews have been good for America; and America has been good to the Jews. But what once was so can change ... and Jews can never afford to forget their history.

Read this book and learn:

• Why the Jews have always persisted in the face of persecution;
• Why the new face of Jewish persecution has found a home on university campuses, Left-leaning media outlets, and other unlikely places;
• The high and horrible costs of anti-Semitism;
• The profound benefits of philo-Semitism;
• The details of the new alliances that must be made to ensure the continuing success of American Jews--and America itself;
• And much, much more...

In this must-read tour de force, Ginsberg enlightens readers by tracing the history of the Jewish people--starting from the children of Abraham and ending with Jews today--and urging all Jews and all Americans to learn the lessons of that history. Now.

A fascinating story of the important yet virtually unknown episode in the history of money, this history chronicles the British manufacturers' challenge to the Crown's monopoly on coinage. In the 1780s, when the Industrial Revolution was gathering momentum, the Royal Mint failed to produce enough small-denomination coinage for factory owners to pay their workers. As the currency shortage threatened to derail industrial progress, manufacturers began to mint custom-made coins, called tradesman's tokens, which served as the nation's most popular currency for wages and retail sales until 1821, when the Crown outlawed all moneys except its own. This book not only examines the crucial role of private coinage in fueling Great Britain's Industrial Revolution, but also sheds light on contemporary private-sector alternatives to government-issued money, such as digital monies, cash cards, electronic funds transfer, and--outside of the United States--spontaneous dollarization.

Based on newly-discovered, secret documents from German archives, diaries and newspapers of the time, Gun Control in the Third Reich presents the definitive, yet hidden history of how the Nazi regime made use of gun control to disarm and repress its enemies and consolidate power. The countless books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust fail even to mention the laws restricting firearms ownership, which rendered political opponents and Jews defenseless. A skeptic could surmise that a better-armed populace might have made no difference, but the National Socialist regime certainly did not think so--it ruthlessly suppressed firearm ownership by disfavored groups.

Gun Control in the Third Reich spans the two decades from the birth of the Weimar Republic in 1918 through Kristallnacht in 1938. The book then presents a panorama of pertinent events during World War II regarding the effects of the disarming policies. And even though in the occupied countries the Nazis decreed the death penalty for possession of a firearm, there developed instances of heroic armed resistance by Jews, particularly the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

In the groundbreaking book Priceless, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman reveals how patients, healthcare providers, employers, and employees are all trapped in a dysfunctional, bureaucratic, healthcare system fraught with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. Unless changed, these incentives will only worsen the problems in the coming months and years. He demonstrates how market forces have been driven out from the American healthcare system, making it nearly impossible to solve problems as effectively or efficiently as in virtually every other type of consumer marketplace. Goodman cuts through the politics to think outside the box and propose dozens of bold and crucial innovations that, if adopted, would enable caregivers, entrepreneurs, and patients to use their knowledge and creativity to create access to low-cost, high-quality healthcare.

Everyone knows American universities are more expensive and less impressive than ever. But no one has come up with a plan to fix them.

No one...

Until now.

Let Colleges Fail: The Promise of Creative Destruction in Higher Education is the hard-hitting instruction manual America needs in order to save its institutions of higher learning.

The solutions proposed herein are unorthodox. They're stern. They're tough.

To some, they might even sound utterly shocking.

But they're bound to work.

Richard Vedder, Senior Fellow at Independent Institute and Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University, asks the forbidden question:

Why do we subsidize universities through taxpayer-provided grants and private donor gifts when the institutions are so obviously failing America's youth?

How can we justify this special status, while businesses offering far more useful goods and services are punished by confiscatory taxes--for simply turning a well-deserved profit?

The history behind these questions is long, winding, and complicated.

But the solutions to our current crisis are not.

In fact, they're as time-tested as the study of economics itself.

Vedder reminds Americans of the concept of creative destruction (famously introduced by economist Joseph Schumpeter)--the idea that, because markets threaten to reallocate resources from unproductive to productive uses by creatively destroying failing businesses, markets actually help failing businesses adapt to the market's ever-changing needs and realities.

It's sink or swim.

And in the face of necessity, most businesses--or at least, those worth their salt--learn, however painfully, to swim.

And if universities want to survive, says Vedder, they must learn to swim, too.

But because we have cushioned them from the demands, necessities, and realities of public life, American colleges are weak, woke, and unforgivably obtuse. Their eye-stretching price tag just adds insult to injury.

Read this book and discover:

• what universities can--indeed, must--learn from the profit-making private sector;
• why big government needs to get out of the student loan business yesterday ... and what will happen if it refuses to do so;
• why accreditation, though infrequently questioned or critiqued, might actually be unnecessary ... or even bad;
• how privatizing state universities could actually open newer and more affordable finance options;
• what a healthy voucher/scholarship arrangement could look like;
• and much, much more ...

Daring in its analysis, practical in its problem-solving, and thoroughly readable in its prose, Let Colleges Fail is indispensable reading for those who want America's colleges to thrive once again.

Unlike what usually passes for economics in many classrooms, government, the media and elsewhere, Choice is an engaging and intriguing book that provides something quite unique: a genuine treatise on economics that both instructs and entertains both economists and general readers. Drawing on the seminal volume by the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, and comparing classical and neoclassical approaches, Choice is a creative, comprehensive, and unusually lucid book on economic science and market processes. The book illuminates free economies as underpinning civilization, the folly of government central planning, the primacy of entrepreneurship and innovation, the nature of money and banking, the causes of the business cycle, the failures of government intervention, and more.

As a result, Choice teaches economic principles and exposes economic fallacies, and any reader will learn both the important truths about economics and the

In this long-awaited updated edition of his groundbreaking work Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman (father of Health Savings Accounts) analyzes America's ongoing healthcare fiasco--including, for this edition, the failed promises of Obamacare.

Goodman then provides what many critics of our healthcare system neglect: solutions.

And not a moment too soon. Americans are entangled in a system with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. It's not just patients that need liberation from this labyrinth of confusion--it's doctors, businessmen, and institutions as well.

Read this new work and discover:

• why no one sees a real price for anything: no patient, no doctor, no employer, no employee;
• how Obamacare's perverse incentives cause insurance companies to seek to attract the healthy and avoid the sick;
• why having a preexisting condition is actually WORSE under Obamacare than it was before--despite rosy political promises to the contrary;
• why emergency-room traffic and long waits for care have actually increased under Obamacare;
• how Medicaid expansion spends new money insuring healthy, single adults, while doing nothing for the developmentally disabled who languish on waiting lists and children who aren't getting the pediatric care they need;
• how the market for medical care COULD be as efficient and consumer-friendly as the market for cell phone repair... and what it would take to make that happen;
• how to create centers of medical excellence, which compete to meet the needs of the chronically ill;
• and much, much more...

Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and decidedly humane in its concern for the health of all Americans, John Goodman has written the healthcare book to read to understand today's healthcare crisis. His proposed solutions are bold, crucial, and most importantly, caring. Healthcare is complex. But this book isn't. It's clear, it's satisfying, and it's refreshingly human.

If you read even one book about healthcare policy in America, this is the one to read.

Anyone concerned with social justice will find this book makes him question his assumptions, rethink his premises, and think!
--Andrew P. Morriss, professor, Bush School of Government and Public Service, School of Law, Texas A&M University

What is social justice?

In these pages, twenty-one accomplished academics seek to do justice to social justice. Inequality exists and it obviously causes rifts in societies. But it's not obvious how the government should address those rifts, or if it should address them at all. Have we forgotten the perhaps more efficient power of personal choice--and the corollary obligation: to serve our neighbors--to make our society more humane?

Beginning with the first political philosophers in ancient Athens, and continuing right through Marx into our post-modern era, men have wrestled with the question of justice; and the answers have been as earnest as they have been varied.

Today, our expert class also claim to have answers--updated answers, more equitable answers, more technological answers ... in short, answers that are simply better suited to our times.

But are those answers in any way correct? Do they work? Are they--just?

In these elegant, nuanced essays, the authors use the wisdom of ancient and modern philosophers to shed light on these important questions--and the answers are revealing.

Armed with ample evidence from real-world experiences, lessons from history, the wisdom of the classics, modern philosophers, and even the teachings of the world religions, the contributors of Is Social Justice Just? Illuminate the central role of the individual in achieving justice in all its aspects.

Read Is Social Justice Just? And discover:

• how to do social justice wrong with the poison of resentment, envy, and ignorance;
• how to do social justice right with the insights of philosophers and theologians;
• how to respect people's rights and liberties without sacrificing true equality;
• and how to reform flawed public policies that just make everything worse.

In a world of partisanship, hysteria, maliciousness, and good intentions attached to hellish outcomes, this landmark book enters the public discourse at a critical time.

With a foreword by Jordan B. Peterson, a preface by Nicholas Rescher, and a collection of essays by some of the best and brightest scholars of our time, Is Social Justice Just? is a timely and urgent work.

Read it, and you will begin to think about social justice, and justice, in some surprising new ways.

Evaluating presidents on the merits of whether their policies promoted peace, prosperity, and liberty, this ranking system takes a distinctly new approach. Historians and scholars have long tended to give higher rankings to presidents who served during wartime, were well spoken, or exceeded in expanding the power of the executive office. However, this new examination cuts through these longstanding biases and political rhetoric to offer a new nonpartisan system of ranking that is based purely on how well each president's policies adhered with the founders' original intention of limiting federal power in all its aspects. As a result, the book provides an alternative history of the United States as seen through the founders' likely vision of subsequent presidential actions. These presidential rankings will surprise most and enlighten even acknowledged experts on the presidency.

James Tooley has taken his argument about the transformative power of low-cost private education to a new and revelatory level in Really Good Schools. This is a bold and inspiring manifesto for a global revolution in education.

--Niall C. Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Almost overnight a virus has brought into question America's nearly 200-year-old government-run K-12 school-system--and prompted an urgent search for alternatives. But where should we turn to find them?

Enter James Tooley's Really Good Schools.

A distinguished scholar of education and the world's foremost expert on private, low-cost innovative education, Tooley takes readers to some of the world's most impoverished communities located in some of the world's most dangerous places--including such war-torn countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Sudan.

And there, in places where education experts fear to tread, Tooley finds thriving private schools that government, multinational NGOs, and even international charity officials deny exist.

Why?

Because the very existence of low-cost, high-quality private schools shatters the prevailing myth in the U.S., U.K., and western Europe that, absent government, affordable, high-quality schools for the poor could not exist.

But they do. And they are ubiquitous and in high demand. Founded by unheralded, local educational entrepreneurs, these schools are proving that self-organized education is not just possible but flourishing--often enrolling far more students than free government schools do at prices within reach of even the most impoverished families.

In the course of his analysis Tooley asks the key questions:

■ What proportion of poor children is served?

■ How good are the private schools?

■ What are the business models for these schools?

■ And can they be replicated and improved?

The evidence is in. In poor urban and rural areas around the world, children in low-cost private schools outperform those in government schools. And the schools do so for a fraction of the per-pupil cost.

Thanks to the pandemic, parents in America and Europe are discovering that the education of their children is indeed possible--and likely far better--without government meddling with rigid seat-time mandates, outdated school calendars, absurd age-driven grade levels, and worse testing regimes. And having experienced the first fruits of educational freedom, parents will be increasingly open to the possibilities of ever greater educational entrepreneurship and innovation.

Thankfully, they have Really Good Schools to show the way.

Unique and well-researched, this study concentrates on the right to keep and bear arms and analyzes the incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment. Examining the history of the recognition of the right of freedmen to keep and bear arms in the period between 1866 and 1876, this comprehensive volume analyzes the extent to which American political society was willing to secure the same civil rights to all without regard to race or previous condition of slavery.

In this eye-opening book, Professor James Bennett guides readers through centuries of one of the most underrated yet widely used aspects of American life--roads.

Relying on history and economic data--and with a humorous and oftentimes sharp tongue--Bennett explains how important America's highways and byways have been to everything from policymaking to everyday life.

Crafting America's roads took persuasion, planning--and more taxes than any politician could have dreamed of. And far too often their realization, thanks, in Bennett's view, to flawed interpretations of the power of eminent domain, required destruction, sometimes on a massive scale, of long-established neighborhoods and important cityscapes.

Likewise, the upkeep of America's highways has been the center of many a policy battle, waged by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Yes, we all want roads in good working condition--but just how and who will pay for them remain contentious questions.

Bennett argues persuasively that the road forward just might be a second, but more serious, sustained look at, and local experimentation with, private roads and toll roads.Agree or disagree with him, Bennett has written a significant contribution to America's ongoing debate about how her citizens should traverse, from sea to shining sea, its fruited plain.

This is an authoritative study of the second amendment, using history and current-day analysis. It is one of the only scholarly works on the subject, but has proven widely accessible. Halbrook traces the origins of the Second Amendment back to ancient Greece and Rome, and then through the freemen movement in 18th-century England and France. He demonstrates that the framers of the Constitution were conscious of such history when they drafted the Second Amendment, and that the Second Amendment was clearly intended to allow possession of firearms not just for defense of personal life and property but also to prevent government infringement of human liberties. His meticulous, thorough scholarship demonstrates that the right to bear arms is as fundamental a right under the Constitution as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Presidents who claimed to limit government often actually did the opposite. History often looks unfavorably on presidents who may have actually contributed smart and important policies. Were Harding and Coolidge really as ineffective as their reputations maintain? Did Hoover not do enough to end the Depression? Was Reagan a true champion of small-government conservatism? We all know that the American president is one of the most powerful people in the world. But to understand the presidency today we often have to learn from the past. Author Ivan Eland offers a new perspective in Eleven Presidents on the evolution of the executive office by exploring the policies of eleven key presidents who held office over the last one hundred years: Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. The book combines an exploration of how political currents shape historical legacies with an in-depth analysis of presidents' actual policies. An important, revealing book about the presidency, legacy, and the formation of history, Eleven Presidents is essential reading for understanding the American presidency.