Nancy Isenberg

This definitive biography of the revolutionary era villain overturns every myth and image we have of him. The narrative of America's founding is filled with godlike geniuses—Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson—versus the villainous Aaron Burr. Generations have been told Burr was a betrayer—of Hamilton, of his country, of those who had nobler ideas. All untrue. He did not turn on Hamilton; rather, the politically aggressive Hamilton was preoccupied with Burr and subverted Burr's career at every turn for more than a decade through outright lies and slanderous letters. In Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg portrays the founders as they all really were and proves that Burr was no less a patriot and no less a principled thinker than those who debased him. He was an inspired politician who promoted decency at a moment when factionalism and ugly party politics were coalescing. He was a genuine hero of the Revolution, as much an Enlightenment figure as Jefferson, and a feminist generations ahead of his time. A brilliant orator and lawyer, he was New York's attorney general, a senator, and vice president. Denounced as a man of extreme tastes, he in fact pursued a moderate course, and his political assassination was accomplished by rivals who feared his power and who promoted the notion of his sexual perversions. Fallen Founder is an antidote to the worshipful biographies far too prevalent in the histories of the revolutionary era. Burr's story returns us to reality: to the cunning politicians our nation's founders really were and to a world of political maneuvering, cutthroat politicking, and media slander that is stunningly modern. ==== Villain of the Revolution or victim of history? Generations have been told that Aaron Burr was a betrayer of Alexander Hamilton, of his country, of those who had nobler ideas. But in this painstakingly researched, eye-opening biography, Nancy Isenberg resurrects the Burr that time forgot: a loyal patriot, brilliant lawyer, and progressive Enlightenment intellectual who had the tremendous misfortune to make powerful enemies whose efforts ultimately dammed his legacy. Exposing the gritty reality of 18th-century America and its haunting resemblance to our own time, Fallen Founder offers a fresh, provocative, and often surprising view of Burr and his fascinating era. - Back cover

"Rural spaces," writes Elizabeth Catte, author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, "are often thought of as places absent of things, from people of color to modern amenities to radical politics. The truth, as usual, is more complicated." With activists, historians, and political scientists as guides, Left Elsewhere explores the radical politics of rural America--its past, its priorities, and its moral commitments--that mainstream progressives overlook. This volume shows how these communities are fighting, and winning, some of the left's biggest battles. From novel health care initiatives in the face of the opioid crisis to living wages for teachers, these struggles do not fall neatly into the "puny language," as Rev. William Barber says, of Democrat or Republican. Instead they help us rethink the rural-urban opposition at the heart of U.S. politics. The future of the left, this collection argues, could be found elsewhere.--Publisher's website

Poor or marginal whites occupy an uncharted space in recent identity studies, particularly because they do not easily fit the model of whiteness-as-power proposed by many multiculturalist or minority discourses. Associated in mainstream culture with "trashy" kitsch or dangerous pathologies rather than with the material realities of economic life, poor whites are treated as degraded caricatures rather than as real people living in conditions of poverty and disempowerment. White Trash situates the study of poor whites within the context of several academic disciplines, public-policy analysis, and popular or mass-media representations. Arguing that white racism is directed not only against people of color but also against certain groups of whites, the contributors to this volume explore the ways in which race and class in America are often talked about and represented in hidden, coded, or half-realized ways. In so doing, they demonstrate why the term white trash itself embodies yet another way in which some whites generate a debased "other" through pejorative naming practices.

"John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (and it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results, and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. John and John Quincy Adams, the second and sixth presidents, father and son, were brilliant, accomplished men who were disparaged throughout their careers. But this book does considerably more than encompass two essential political lives: it takes the temperature of American democracy from its heated origins through multiple storm events, providing major lessons about the excesses of campaign rhetoric that apply all too obviously to our century. It is a fact that the United States, as originally constituted, was not (nor was even meant to be) a democracy. How we got from there to today's unchallengeable notion of democracy as something real and inviolable is best explained by looking at what the Adamses had to say about the dangers of political deception. By the time John Adams succeeded George Washington as president, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat. Though they spent many years apart--and as their careers spanned Europe, Washington, D.C., and their family home south of Boston--they maintained a close bond through extensive correspondence in which they debated history, political philosophy, and partisan maneuvering. The problem of democracy is an urgent problem. The father-and-son presidents grasped the perilous psychology of politics and forecast what future generations would have to contend with: citizens wanting heroes to worship, and covetous elites more than willing to mislead. Rejection at the polls, which each suffered after one term, does not prove that the presidents Adams had erroneous ideas. Intellectually, they were what we today call independents, reluctant to commit blindly to an organized political party. No other historian has attempted to dissect their intertwined lives as Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein do in these pages, and there is no better time than the present to learn from the American nation's most insightful malcontents."--Dust jacket.