American Story

Co-founder of The Carlyle Group and patriotic philanthropist David M. Rubenstein takes readers on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story through revealing conversations with our greatest historians. In these lively dialogues, the biggest names in American history explore the subjects they’ve come to so intimately know and understand. — David McCullough on John Adams — Jon Meacham on Thomas Jefferson — Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton — Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin — Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln — A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh — Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King — Robert Caro on Lyndon B. Johnson — Bob Woodward on Richard Nixon —And many others, including a special conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts Through his popular program The David Rubenstein Show, David Rubenstein has established himself as one of our most thoughtful interviewers. Now, in The American Story, David captures the brilliance of our most esteemed historians, as well as the souls of their subjects. The book features introductions by Rubenstein as well a foreword by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead our national library. Richly illustrated with archival images from the Library of Congress, the book is destined to become a classic for serious readers of American history. Through these captivating exchanges, these bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors offer fresh insight on pivotal moments from the Founding Era to the late 20th century.

“These are remarkable and poignant stories that need to be told.” —Ken Burns More than six million people watch Bob Dotson’s Emmy award-winning segment, American Story, on NBC’s Today Show. For the last four decades, Dotson has traveled the country searching out inspiring individuals who quietly perform everyday miracles. In the process, he has become the treasured cartographer of America’s heart and soul. Today’s news is overwhelmingly grim; it’s also told by journalists who travel in herds as they trail politicians and camp out at big stories. In American Story, Dotson shines a light on America’s neglected corners, introducing readers to the ordinary Americans who have learned to fix what really matters.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "If you loved the movie, you will love the real story in the book." -- Fox & Friends On the 50th anniversary of the creation of the "Topgun" Navy Fighter School, its founder shares the remarkable inside story of how he and eight other risk-takers revolutionized the art of aerial combat. When American fighter jets were being downed at an unprecedented rate during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy turned to a young lieutenant commander, Dan Pedersen, to figure out a way to reverse their dark fortune. On a shoestring budget and with little support, Pedersen picked eight of the finest pilots to help train a new generation to bend jets like the F-4 Phantom to their will and learn how to dogfight all over again. What resulted was nothing short of a revolution -- one that took young American pilots from the crucible of combat training in the California desert to the blistering skies of Vietnam, in the process raising America's Navy combat kill ratio from two enemy planes downed for every American plane lost to more than 22 to 1. Topgun emerged not only as an icon of America's military dominance immortalized by Hollywood but as a vital institution that would shape the nation's military strategy for generations to come. Pedersen takes readers on a colorful and thrilling ride -- from Miramar to Area 51 to the decks of aircraft carriers in war and peace-through a historic moment in air warfare. He helped establish a legacy that was built by him and his "Original Eight" -- the best of the best -- and carried on for six decades by some of America's greatest leaders. Topgun is a heartfelt and personal testimony to patriotism, sacrifice, and American innovation and daring.

Every family has a story of how they arrived in America, whether it was a few months, years, decades, or centuries ago. Journeys: An American Story celebrates the vastness and variety of immigration tales in America, featuring seventy-two essays about the different ways we got here. This is a collection of family lore, some that has been passed down through generations, and some that is being created right now. Journeys captures the quintessential idea of the American dream. The individuals in this book are only a part of the brilliant mosaic of people who came to this country and made it what it is today. Read about the governor’s grandfathers who dug ditches and cleaned sewers, laying the groundwork for a budding nation; how a future cabinet secretary crossed the ocean at age eleven on a cargo ship; about a young boy who fled violence in Budapest to become one of the most celebrated American football players; the girl who escaped persecution to become the first Vietnamese American woman ever elected to the US congress; or the limo driver whose family took a seventy-year detour before finally arriving at their original destination, along with many other fascinating tales of extraordinary and everyday Americans. In association with the New-York Historical Society, Andrew Tisch and Mary Skafidas have reached out to a variety of notable figures to contribute an enlightening and unique account of their family’s immigration story. All profits will be donated to the New-York Historical Society and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation. Featuring Essays by: Alan Alda Arlene Alda Tony Bennett Cory Booker Michael Bloomberg Barbara Boxer Elaine Chao Andrew Cuomo Ray Halbritter Jon Huntsman Wes Moore Stephanie Murphy Deborah Norville Dr. Mehmet Oz Nancy Pelosi Gina Raimondo Tim Scott Jane Swift Marlo Thomas And many more!

A Charlotte Mason Inspired Journey Through American History! America’s Story 3 concludes the exciting journey through American History as students review America’s rich history, experience the excitement of discovery and invention as well as the hardships of the Great Depression, and examine the challenges our nation still faces. In America’s Story 3, your student will: Discover the impact one president had on the New York City Police DepartmentObserve the first flightRide along with the development of the Model TExperience the wonder and the tragedy of the TitanicExplore America during & after the World WarsLearn the hardships Americans faced during the Great DepressionFeel the excitement of new discoveries and technological advancementand so much more! Exciting, interactive stories O’Dell’s lively storytelling style ensures history comes alive in an exciting way! Through engaging narrative, O’Dell interacts with students and draws them in to imagine the adventures, hardships, failures, and triumphs of the incredible characters who shaped American history from the early 1900s to Modern Times. America’s Story 3 Student Features: Full-color student textbook featuring engaging narrative and beautiful historic illustrations, photographs, maps, and cultural connections.

Over the past few decades, the complicated divides of geography, class, religion, and race created deep fractures in the United States, each side fighting to advance its own mythology and political interests. We lack a central story, a common ground we can celebrate and enrich with deeper meaning. Unable to agree on first principles, we cannot agree on what it means to be American. As we dismantle or disregard symbols and themes that previously united us, can we replace them with stories and rites that unite our tribes and maintain meaning in our American identity? Against this backdrop, Our American Story features leading thinkers from across the political spectrum—Jim Banks, Pulitzer Prize–winner David W. Blight, Spencer P. Boyer, Eleanor Clift, John C. Danforth, Cody Delistraty, Richard A. Epstein, Nikolas Gvosdev, Cherie Harder, Jason Kuznicki, Gerard N. Magliocca, Markos Moulitsas, Ilya Somin, Cass R. Sunstein, Alan Taylor, James V. Wertsch, Gordon S. Wood, and Ali Wyne. Each draws on expertise within their respective fields of history, law, politics, and public policy to contribute a unique perspective about the American story. This collection explores whether a unifying story can be achieved and, if so, what that story could be. Purchase the audio edition.

Stories reflect culture, and American stories reflect American culture is Livia Polanyi's provocative thesis in Telling the American Story. Combining linguistic and cultural analyses, Polanyi provides thoughtful insights into many features of conversational stories that have either been put aside or omitted from formal analysis within cognitive science. She also brings to life stories as cultural artifacts in which every evaluation, presupposition, point, perspective, and interpretation is a reflection of popular culture.Examining the structure of autobiographical stories, Polanyi pays close attention to the storyteller's own evaluation of the events he or she is narrating -- why it is being told, and what the audience is to learn by it. This leads to an extended discussion of the ways in which narrative structure is embedded in conversation. Polanyi shows how in negotiating a story and negotiating the point of a story, false starts and repairs can be used to further the narrative.Polanyi then analyzes several personal American stories such as "Fainting on the Subway" and "Eating on the New York Thruway" -- for the propositions they express about American culture and draws these propositions together in a broad compendium, or grammar, of cultural assumptions. These chapters in particular provide perhaps the earliest and best efforts at making explicit the commonsense knowledge that underlies discourse and every other human activity.The book concludes with the creation of "The American story," a text made up of sentences each of which can be seen as a compressed form of a myriad of "real" stories told in American conversation. Livia Polanyi is with Bolt, Beranek and Newman. A Bradford Book.