A historian and author of the popular daily newsletter Letters from an American explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy--and how we can turn back.

Based on a firm foundation of historical scholarship, America's top historians replace myths with research and reality, debunking narratives that portray the New Deal and Great Society as failures, immigrants as hostile invaders and feminists as anti-family warriors, among other partisan lies.

America's leading authority on the War of 1812 dispels the many misconceptions that distort our view of America's second war with Great Britain. Embracing military, naval, political, economic, and diplomatic analysis, Hickey looks carefully at how the war was fought between 1812 and 1815, and how it was remembered thereafter. He peels away fantasies and embellishments to explore why certain myths gained currency, and how they contributed to the way...

"Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended...