Alfred A. Knopf

1861; the Civil War awakening.

Goodheart (Washington College, Maryland) and some of his students found an attic full of family papers spanning 13 generations of the owners' family, and among those papers was a bundle of documents tied up with a ribbon and labeled "1861." Those documents inspired his curiosity regarding what ordinary citizens and national leaders were thinking and how they were reacting to the shattering events that were unfolding. This study brings those questions to the forefront and offers a close look at "...how some people clung to the past, while others sought the future; how a new generation of Americans arose to throw aside the cautious ways of its parents and embrace the revolutionary ideals of it grandparents." (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The rights of the people; how our search for safety invades our liberties.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Shipler made the decision to write about civil liberties on September 11, 2001, feeling immediately that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would fuel a liberty-repressing response. This book, the first of two he plans on the subject, reports on some egregious instances of civil rights violation. He focuses on the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." (The planned upcoming volume will focus on the First, Fifth, and Sixth amendments.) The cases Shipler describes are real. He's not a lawyer but has taken pains to understand and explain the legal context and the far-reaching implications of the violations. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)