Forging A More Perfect Union

Cities today are the weakest link of both democracy and modern affluence. Their explosive sprawl wastes land that promotes both urban social crises and environmental decay through mass auto movement on outrageously costly freeways--contradicting the inherent role of cities to minimize even the need to travel. The immense sprawl unnecessarily assures human isolation (with the consequent dependence upon television), undermines sustainable ecology, and abandons huge areas of the old inner city. Consequently cities are waste-generating environments that arbitrarily promote production and consumption for purposeless and endless economic growth that can never satisfy human "needs". As basic organizers of life in society, cities can become inspired environments of human development. But they must be built compactly to preserve large, accessible open spaces for recreation, parks, and natural areas. Then they can underwrite an unprecedented human efficiency comparable to productive efficiency. To build such cities, a major shift is required to control their structure and eliminate urban development as merely a promotional waste by real estate speculation. Urban development authorities are required to build cities through principles of land conservation, urban spaciousness, minimal need for transportation, human efficiency, and highly congenial human spaces.

"It is spectacular to watch his poems upend everything. In this book, the paint squeezes its artist from the tube. The facts are not to be believed, but you will ardently believe that they are facts."--Darcie Dennigan, author of 'Corinna A-maying the Apocalypse' This loosely federated republic of curses, verses, and fractured mythic narratives holds a single truth to be self-evident: our genius for disorder is our truest gift. TJ Beitelman teaches writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.

Inspired by true events, A More Perfect Union is an epic story of love and courage, desperation and determination, and three people whose lives are inescapably entwined… Henry O’Toole sails to America in 1848 to escape the famine in Ireland, only to face anti-immigrant prejudice. Determined never to starve again, he changes his surname to Taylor and heads south to Virginia, seeking work as a traveling blacksmith on the prosperous plantations. Torn from her home and sold to Jubilee Plantation, Sarah must navigate its intricate hierarchy. And now an enigmatic blacksmith is promising her not just the world but also her freedom. How could she say no? Enslaved at Jubilee Plantation, Maple is desperate to return to her husband and daughter. With Sarah’s arrival, she sees her chance to be reunited at last with her family—but at what cost?

In a future where asteroids are being actively mined and comets are being intentionally crashed into the Venusian atmosphere to cool the planet down for eventual colonization, a violent civil war breaks out in America over repeal of the Second Amendment. On one side is a fanatical religious right, on the other a spineless liberal administration. Caught inbetween are space-travelers returning home from a stint on Mars. Among them is one Butch Hogan, a spacejockey in the employ of Transcomet Industries. Butch works atop the highest of all steels, orbiting electromagnetic mass drivers crucial to the asteroid trade. Upon landing, he must choose up sides in the ever-widening war.

America is at a pivotal crossroads. The soul of our nation is at stake and in peril. A new public narrative is needed to unite Americans around common values and to counter the increasing discord and acrimony in our politics and culture. The process of healing and creating a more perfect union in our nation must start now. The moral vision of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Beloved Community, which animated and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, provides a hopeful way forward. In A More Perfect Union, Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, reimagines a contemporary version of the Beloved Community that will inspire and unite Americans across generations, geographic and class divides, racial and gender differences, faith traditions, and ideological leanings. In the Beloved Community, neither privilege nor punishment is tied to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or economic status, and everyone is able to realize their full potential and thrive. Building the Beloved Community requires living out a series of commitments, such as true equality, radical welcome, transformational interdependence, E Pluribus Unum ("out of many, one"), environmental stewardship, nonviolence, and economic equity. By building the Beloved Community we unify the country around a shared moral vision that transcends ideology and partisanship, tapping into our most sacred civic and religious values, enabling our nation to live up to its best ideals and realize a more perfect union.

In a brilliantly conceived and elegantly written book, Rogan Kersh investigates the idea of national union in the United States. For much of the period between the colonial era and the late nineteenth century, he shows, "union" was the principal rhetorical means by which Americans expressed shared ideals and a common identity without invoking strong nationalism or centralized governance. Through his exploration of how Americans once succeeded in uniting a diverse and fragmented citizenry, Kersh revives a long-forgotten source of U.S. national identity. Why and how did Americans perceive themselves as one people from the early history of the republic? How did African Americans and others at the margins of U.S. civic culture apply this concept of union? Why did the term disappear from vernacular after the 1880s? In his search for answers, Kersh employs a wide range of methods, including political-theory analysis of writings by James Madison, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln and empirical analysis drawing on his own extensive database of American newspapers. The author's findings are persuasive—and often surprising. One intriguing development, for instance, was a strong resurgence of union feelings among Southerners—including prominent former secessionists—after the Civil War. With its fascinating and novel approach, Dreams of a More Perfect Union offers valuable insights about American political history, especially the rise of nationalism and federalism. Equally important, the author's close retracing of the religious, institutional, and other themes coloring the development of unionist thought unveils new knowledge about the origination and transmittal of ideas in a polity.

Timely, multidisciplinary analysis of Obama’s presidential campaign, its context, and its impact.