Land Of Hope

For too long we’ve lacked a compact, inexpensive, authoritative, and compulsively readable book that offers American readers a clear, informative, and inspiring narrative account of their country. Such a fresh retelling of the American story is especially needed today, to shape and deepen young Americans’ sense of the land they inhabit, help them to understand its roots and share in its memories, all the while equipping them for the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship in American society The existing texts simply fail to tell that story with energy and conviction. Too often they reflect a fragmented outlook that fails to convey to American readers the grand trajectory of their own history. This state of affairs cannot continue for long without producing serious consequences. A great nation needs and deserves a great and coherent narrative, as an expression of its own self-understanding and its aspirations; and it needs to be able to convey that narrative to its young effectively. Of course, it goes without saying that such a narrative cannot be a fairy tale of the past. It will not be convincing if it is not truthful. But as Land of Hope brilliantly shows, there is no contradiction between a truthful account of the American past and an inspiring one. Readers of Land of Hope will find both in its pages.

Grossman’s rich, detailed analysis of black migration to Chicago during World War I and its aftermath brilliantly captures the cultural meaning of the movement.

A world where the Indian Mutiny takes place in a very different England . . . Where magic is a weapon controlled by the oppressors . . . Where the only hope for the future is the Holy Grail. It is 1852. The Indian empire of Rajthana has ruled Europe for more than a hundred years. With their vast armies, steam-and-sorcery technology and mastery of the mysterious power of sattva, the Rajthanans appear invincible. But a bloody rebellion has broken out in a remote corner of the empire, in a poor and backward region known as England. At first Jack Casey, retired soldier, wants nothing to do with the uprising, but then he learns his daughter, Elizabeth, is due to be hanged for helping the rebels. The Rajthanans will spare her, but only if Jack hunts down and captures his best friend and former army comrade, who is now a rebel leader. Jack is torn between saving his daughter and protecting his friend. And he struggles just to stay alive as the rebellion pushes England into all-out war.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Barack Obama’s lucid vision of America’s place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared understandings as Americans, based on his years in the Senate “In our lowdown, dispiriting era, Obama’s talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope.”—Michael Kazin, The Washington Post In July 2004, four years before his presidency, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Obama called “the audacity of hope.” The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. At the heart of this book is Barack Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy—where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, Obama says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes—“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

From the prolific author of The Moon Within comes the heart-wrenchingly beautiful story in verse of a young Latinx girl who learns to hold on to hope and love even in the darkest of places: a family detention center for migrants and refugees. Nine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled to Los Angeles to seek refuge from cartel wars in Mexico. The Aztecs came from a place called Aztlan, what is now the Southwest US, called the land of the cranes. They left Aztlan to establish their great city in the center of the universe-Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. It was prophesized that their people would one day return to live among the cranes in their promised land. Papi tells Betita that they are cranes that have come home.Then one day, Betita's beloved father is arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Mexico. Betita and her pregnant mother are left behind on their own, but soon they too are detained and must learn to survive in a family detention camp outside of Los Angeles. Even in cruel and inhumane conditions, Betita finds heart in her own poetry and in the community she and her mother find in the camp. The voices of her fellow asylum seekers fly above the hatred keeping them caged, but each day threatens to tear them down lower than they ever thought they could be. Will Betita and her family ever be whole again?

In a way that only the medium of comics can, The Book of Hope slows the reader down to the rhythms of the life of a retired couple living in a rural countryside. Behind the static, routine moments of everyday life something bigger takes shape. Encroaching

Following a nuclear holocaust, Nathan Taylor and his family face grim choices in order to stay alive. Fleeing deadly radiation, plague and desperate men, Nathan, an army officer, leads his wife and their two teenage sons away from chaos and madness toward his ancestral home in Kentucky. Horrors lie in their path. From the prison struggling to maintain control of its inmates, to the desperadoes who enslave anyone who comes their way, even survival may cost Nathan his humanity...or that of his sons, Joshua and David. Nathan struggles to keep his family intact, but it requires making brutal choices. He wants to protect his sons, but knows they now must be deadly and cold at times. Nathan's home has been spared from the worst of the destruction, but a larger conflict over scarce resources erupts. For the survivors to have any chance they will have to fight and the desperate journey has transformed young Joshua and David into men called upon to lead and sacrifice. Torn between harsh realities, and wanting to hold onto fleeting childhoods, they are often conflicted and angry about the roles thrust upon them. Much will depend on how Nathan and his sons respond to a madman and his military regime seeking to conquer the fledgling community they are helping to build. GLIMMER OF HOPE is an epic tale of one family's endurance and triumph after tomorrow's apocalypse.

Follow three women from three eras in the Pacific Northwest as they discover a place where miracles really happen—based on true stories. 1901: Plagued by loneliness on the Big Muddy Ranch, a sheepherder’s wife awaits the outcome of her husband’s trial for murder. He is sentenced to life in prison—and she to life without him. But a startling event could redeem their pasts and transform their future. 1984: Against a backdrop of attempted murder, federal indictments, and the first case of bio-terrorism in the U.S., one woman seeks to rescue her granddaughter from within the elaborate compound of a cult that has claimed the land. 1997: On the much-reviled, abandoned cult site, one woman’s skepticism turns to hope when she finds that what was meant to destroy can be used to rebuild—and in the process realizes a long-held dream. For three women seekers united across time, a remote and rugged stretch of land in the Pacific Northwest proves to be a place where miracles really happen—and the gifts of faith, hope, and charity are as tangible as rocks, rivers, and earth.

In the chaos of World War II, having lost everything, Polish teenagers Helena and Luzyna Grabowski are shipped to a refugee camp in Persia. When they hear that orphans are being selected for relocation to New Zealand, Helena is filled with hope - until she learns only her younger sister has a place. On the morning she is to be transported, Luzyna fails to join the chosen group, and Helena goes in her stead. But the horrors of war, and her guilt at abandoning her sister, follow her on the journey across the sea and blind her to the devotion of James, a charming, heroic young Allied pilot. If Helena can let go and dare to hope again, she may finally step out of the long shadow of her past to find a future made whole.

This volume presents the history of North America from the landing of Columbus in 1492 to the late 20th century. It tells the story of the French, the Spanish, Dutch, Russian, and English settlements, and of the native peoples and cultures with which they interacted and came in conflict. It continues the story of the European settlement, focusing on the United States as the representative of Anglo-American culture and Mexico as the representative of Latin American culture. Though Lands of Hope and Promise tells the secular history found in standard textbooks, it includes the contributions of the Catholic Church, Catholic communities, and individual Catholics - along with Catholic ideas - to the rich and tempestuous of American story. And it tells this history as a story, with all the color and drama that belongs to it. End of chapter reviews and other material highlight dates and events, characters in history, and definitions of key terms.Grade range: high school