Camp Meetings

The former dean of the Yale School of Management and undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 August meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard - breaking the link between gold and the dollar - transforming the entire global monetary system.

This book chronicles the fervent religious revival movement known as the Great Awakening as it swept across the American frontier between 1800 and 1879. It focuses particularly on the rise of frontier camp meetings and the vital role played by itinerant Methodist preachers, known as circuit riders. Drawing heavily on the experiences and writings of figures like Peter Cartwright, the book vividly portrays the raw, emotional, and often dramatic nature of these revivals, including mass conversions, intense preaching, and physical manifestations of religious fervor at gatherings like the famous...

In Animal Spirits, the distinguished historian Jackson Lears explores an alternative American cultural history by tracking the thinkers who championed the individual's spontaneous energies and the idea of a living universe against the strictures of conventional religion, business, and politics. From Puritan times to today, Lears traces ideas and fads such as hypnosis and faith healing from the pulpit and stock exchange to the streets and the betting table. We meet the great prophets of American vitality who spoke of the "god within-rendering us diseaseless incarnations of the great I Am."

An eyewitness to the Kentucky revival of the early 1800s describes how it started and how it progressed and what the people believed and the strange manifestations that were present in their services. It was the beginning of the Second Great Awakening. Preface to the Modern Edition The information in this book is very enlightening because history books tell us the Second Great Awakening started about 1820 with camp-meetings in the Northeast, but this book shows that great revival camp-meetings started in 1799 and went on continuously up to and including the period given for the Second Great...

When a young man left his years of naval service behind him he yearned for something different. A challenge, of course, but something where he could be at one with nature, find his own space in his own company but also enjoy the friendship of others when the opportunity arose. So began an epic trip by bicycle through some of the most stunning scenery the United States has to offer, crossing mountains and rivers in a quest to reach the one place of beauty he always wanted to return to. From Ohio to the Rocky Mountains, the road was often hard but never dull and the kindness of strangers was ...

For over four years, Jesse’s father’s addiction to alcohol and gambling deprives Jesse and his mom of basic necessities, overwhelming twelve-year-old Jesse Hall. He feels a need to help his family, but it causes him to neglect school so much that he is in danger of repeating the sixth grade. Jesse forges his mom’s name on his grade card and makes other bad choices. He thinks a lie will cover up his misdeed and is sure his sin is redeemable. Jesse blames all his problems on his father’s drinking and gambling and yearns for him to reform. Then, at the County Fair Jesse sees the worst ...