Showing titles in History

This concise, accessible text provides students with a history of American constitutional development in the context of political, economic, and social change. Constitutional historian Michael Benedict stresses the role that the American people have played over time in defining the powers of government and the rights of individuals and minorities. He covers important trends and events in US constitutional history, encompassing key Supreme Court and lower-court cases.

More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just 14 words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, drawing on exclusive interviews and first-time access to Justice O’Connor’s archives—as seen on PBS’s American Experience...

A withering and witty examination of how the American legal system, burdened by complexity and untrammeled growth, fails Americans and threatens the rule of law itself, by the acclaimed author of A Generation of Sociopaths. Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do...

A concise, accessible, and engaging guide to the law of treason, written by the nation’s foremost expert on the subject The only crime defined in the United States Constitution, treason is routinely described by judges as more heinous than murder. Today the term is regularly thrown around by...

On May 3, 1946, in St. Martinsville, Louisiana, a 17-year-old Black boy was scheduled for execution by electric chair. Willie Francis had been charged with murder; his trial had been brief; his death sentence never in doubt. When the executioners flipped the switch, Willie screamed and writhed as electricity coursed through his body. But Willie Francis did not die. Having miraculously survived, Willie was informed that the state would attempt to execute him a second time within a week.

Both historically and in the present, the Supreme Court has largely been a failure In this devastating book, Erwin Chemerinsky—“one of the shining lights of legal academia” (The New York Times)—shows how, case by case, for over two centuries, the hallowed Court has been far more likely...

A documentary drawn from testimony at the Coast Guard’s official inquiry looks anew at one of the most storied, and mysterious, shipwrecks in American history. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the most famous shipwreck stories in Great Lakes history. It is also one of maritime lore’s great mysteries, the details of its disappearance as obscure now as on that fateful November day in 1975.

Constitutional originalism stakes law to history. The theory's core tenet—that the United States Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning—has us decide questions of modern constitutional law by consulting the distant constitutional past. Yet originalist engagement with history is often deeply problematic. In this comprehensive and novel critique of originalism, Jonathan Gienapp targets originalists' unspoken assumptions about the Constitution and its history.

The divorce proof which shocked Britain in the so-called "Swinging '60s" when the 11th Duke of Argyll divorced his second wife Margaret amidst enough dirty linen to give the "investigative journalists" of the time enough copy to last for decades. The Duchess was the Paris Hilton of her time but in a more judgmental age. She paid the price financially then socially when His Grace produced the infamous "headless man" Polaroids at the divorce proof, ensuring her eternal ridicule and sparking off a debate about the link between morality and national decline.

On November 23, 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor - some leads put Parkman at sea or in Manhattan - but a Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never even left the Medical School building. His shocking discovery engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials.

In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victim’s body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case.

Dirty Linen: How Women Sued The Reader's Digest and Changed History is the story of the landmark sexual discrimination lawsuit against the well-known magazine and publishing empire. The book is written by one of the eight women who stepped forward to challenge the assumptions that kept women out of higher positions despite being eminently qualified and legislation prohibiting discrimination.

当群体狂热与系统性迫害交织，最令人惊心的历史纪实不在于鬼神，而在于普通人如何以正义之名将邻居送上火刑架。在这场席卷中世纪欧洲的集体癔症中，毫无根据的猜疑被社会危机与畸形律法无限放大，最终演变成一场针...

تتبع السرد التاريخي المظلم لجنون الارتياب الجماعي الذي حوّل الشكوك اليومية إلى آلة إعدام لا ترحم في أوروبا. يضعك هذا العمل المفعم بالتوتر في قلب المحاكمات...

تعمق في قصة واقعية عن هستيريا جماعية مزقت مجتمعا صغيرا، حيث تحول الجيران إلى أعداء تحت وطأة الخوف والاتهامات المميتة. هذه السردية التاريخية المثيرة للقلق تأخذك...

当狂热的宗教信仰与隐秘的邻里宿怨相互碰撞，一场源于群体恐惧的猎巫行动，瞬间将平静的清教徒村庄拖入撕裂与背叛的深渊。曾经互助共存的普通人，在流言与权力逼迫下，轻易沦为指控至亲好友的伪证者。...

Ervaar hoe massahysterie en dodelijke paranoia een puriteinse gemeenschap verscheurden in deze historische true crime. Terwijl je luistert, word je meegezogen in het onheilspellende, zeventiende-eeuwse Nieuw-Engeland waar pure angst regeert. Het is een duister en meeslepend verhaal, perfect voor...

L'isteria collettiva e i processi storici per stregoneria hanno trasformato antiche superstizioni in veri massacri. Questo saggio dalle tinte oscure e riflessive ti guida tra i villaggi europei dell'epoca, dove il sospetto alimentava la ricerca del perfetto capro espiatorio. Un ascolto ideale...

Descubra como o pânico moral e a histeria coletiva transformaram vizinhos comuns em inquisidores implacáveis. Transforme seu deslocamento diário em uma jornada imersiva e inquietante pelas engrenagens da perseguição histórica. Entenda os rígidos mecanismos sociais que converteram...