One Nation Under George

How Motown changed the landscape of American popular culture

This book is a satirical novel describing the presidency of 2004-2008. It explores the "evolution of democracy", and how that evolution affects not only America, but the entire world.

Is America a Christian nation? This question has loomed large in American culture since the Puritans arrived on American shores in the early seventeenth century. More recently, the Christian America thesis has been advocated by many evangelical leaders across the denominational spectrum. This book contributes to the conversation by critiquing, from an evangelical perspective, the idea that America is a Christian nation as articulated by specific writers over the past three decades. Wilsey asserts that the United States was not conceived as a Christian nation, but as a nation with religious liberty. Herein lies the genius of the Founders and the uniqueness of America.

One Nation Under God follows the spiritual direction of our country from the time the Puritans landed in the new world up to today. Our loss of faith in God and how that loss has impacted our society is profiled. It includes quotes from some of the people that had the most influence on the growth of our once great nation and some of the people and events that have caused our nation to decline economically, socially, and morally. One Nation Under God includes many landmark court cases that have affected our way of life in the way the American people can worship the Lord in public and in private. One Nation Under God is a map of our rise to greatness and our decline to the potential oblivion of this once "light on the hill" for all the world to follow. It also is a guide on how to reclaim our greatness by turning back to God for His forgiveness and guidance. The farther away we move from God the worse our society becomes. One Nation Under God sets out to prove to the country---possibly the world---that we are a Christian nation.

Based on the most extensive survey ever conducted on religion in America, One Nation Under God delivers surprising revelations about the religious beliefs, practices, and affiliations of Americans. "These statistical findings provide rich material for interpretation of the uniquely American religious experience."--Publishers Weekly.

One Nation Under Gold examines the countervailing forces that have long since divided America—whether gold should be a repository of hope, or a damaging delusion that has long since derailed the rational investor. Worshipped by Tea Party politicians but loathed by sane economists, gold has historically influenced American monetary policy and has exerted an often outsized influence on the national psyche for centuries. Now, acclaimed business writer James Ledbetter explores the tumultuous history and larger-than-life personalities—from George Washington to Richard Nixon—behind America’s volatile relationship to this hallowed metal and investigates what this enduring obsession reveals about the American identity. Exhaustively researched and expertly woven, One Nation Under Gold begins with the nation’s founding in the 1770s, when the new republic erupted with bitter debates over the implementation of paper currency in lieu of metal coins. Concerned that the colonies’ thirteen separate currencies would only lead to confusion and chaos, some Founding Fathers believed that a national currency would not only unify the fledgling nation but provide a perfect solution for a country that was believed to be lacking in natural silver and gold resources. Animating the "Wild West" economy of the nineteenth century with searing insights, Ledbetter brings to vivid life the actions of Whig president Andrew Jackson, one of gold’s most passionate advocates, whose vehement protest against a standardized national currency would precipitate the nation’s first feverish gold rush. Even after the establishment of a national paper currency, the virulent political divisions continued, reaching unprecedented heights at the Democratic National Convention in 1896, when presidential aspirant William Jennings Bryan delivered the legendary "Cross of Gold" speech that electrified an entire convention floor, stoking the fears of his agrarian supporters. While Bryan never amassed a wide-enough constituency to propel his cause into the White House, America’s stubborn attachment to gold persisted, wreaking so much havoc that FDR, in order to help rescue the moribund Depression economy, ordered a ban on private ownership of gold in 1933. In fact, so entrenched was the belief that gold should uphold the almighty dollar, it was not until 1973 that Richard Nixon ordered that the dollar be delinked from any relation to gold—completely overhauling international economic policy and cementing the dollar’s global significance. More intriguing is the fact that America’s exuberant fascination with gold has continued long after Nixon’s historic decree, as in the profusion of late-night television ads that appeal to goldbug speculators that proliferate even into the present. One Nation Under Gold reveals as much about American economic history as it does about the sectional divisions that continue to cleave our nation, ultimately becoming a unique history about economic irrationality and its influence on the American psyche.

What limits, if any, should be placed on a government's efforts to spy on its own citizens in the interests of national security? By reframing the relationship between privacy and security One Nation Under Surveillance offers a framework to defend freedom without sacrificing liberty.

George Washington was an affluent slave owner who believed that republicanism and social hierarchy were vital to the young country’s survival. And yet, he remains largely free of the “elitist” label affixed to his contemporaries, as Washington evolved in public memory during the nineteenth century into a man of the common people, the father of democracy. This memory, we learn in The Property of the Nation, was a deliberately constructed image, shaped and reshaped over time, generally in service of one cause or another. Matthew R. Costello traces this process through the story of Washington’s tomb, whose history and popularity reflect the building of a memory of America’s first president—of, by, and for the American people. Washington’s resting place at his beloved Mount Vernon estate was at times as contested as his iconic image; and in Costello’s telling, the many attempts to move the first president’s bodily remains offer greater insight to the issue of memory and hero worship in early America. While describing the efforts of politicians, business owners, artists, and storytellers to define, influence, and profit from the memory of Washington at Mount Vernon, this book’s main focus is the memory-making process that took place among American citizens. As public access to the tomb increased over time, more and more ordinary Americans were drawn to Mount Vernon, and their participation in this nationalistic ritual helped further democratize Washington in the popular imagination. Shifting our attention from official days of commemoration and publicly orchestrated events to spontaneous visits by citizens, Costello’s book clearly demonstrates in compelling detail how the memory of George Washington slowly but surely became The Property of the Nation.