Resultados Editorial "Charles River Editors" en Política y gobierno

John Adams has become one of the more popular presidents in history relatively recently, but it was not always so. For most of his life he was seen as a bit of an outsider, different from his fellow first presidents in his temperament, birth, life, and politics. Adams and his son were the only presidents out of the first seven who were born north of the Mason Dixon line, and he was not an easy man to understand or work with.

The most famous debates in American history were held over 150 years ago, and today they are remembered and celebrated mostly because they included future president Abraham Lincoln, one of the nation’s most revered men. But in the fall of 1858, Lincoln was just a one-term congressman who had to all but beg his US Senate opponent to debate him. That’s because his opponent, incumbent US senator Stephen Douglas, was one of the most famous national politicians of the era.

Describing Hillary Clinton as just a first lady belittles all of her accomplishments. Today she is the most powerful woman in the world and one of the most recognizable. History for Kids: An Illustrated Biography of Hillary Clinton for Children looks at the life and career of one of America’s most influential first ladies, but it also humanizes the woman who has overcome personal and political hurdles along the way.

Today, as one of the biggest cities in the country, Chicago means a lot of different things to different people, but the Windy City, as culturally rich as it is, has long been known for controversial political corruption and its gangster past. While those kinds of crimes are less prominent today, one recent documentary Chiraq provided a new chilling, sobering, and wildly unfortunate sobriquet for the city. For far too many of the city’s youth, the places they call home are just a few steps removed from an actual war zone.

World War I, also known in its time as the “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars”, was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite.

In today’s modern world every political regime, even the most authoritarian or repressive, describes itself as democracy or a Democratic People’s Republic. It is also generally accepted that democracy, as a political ideology, began in Greece, specifically in Athens, in the 7th century BCE and reached its zenith in the 5th century under the leadership of Pericles. The Greeks and Romans would not have recognized, or accepted, any of today’s modern versions of democracy as being truly “democratic”.

Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793) gave the French Revolution a voice. One of the most memorable and notorious revolutionaries, Marat became one of the Revolution's best-known figures through his speeches, writings, and scathing attacks on everyone he perceived as, "[E]nemies of the revolution". No revolutionary was more passionate, determined, and willing to die for the cause.

When he died in 1904, most Americans who knew his people's story considered Chief Joseph a military genius and an "Indian Napoleon". This assessment of the Native American leader was based on a 1,500-mile odyssey during which he and his people left their reservation in the hopes of escaping to Canada, where the Nez Percé intended to join Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa Sioux band. The real Chief Joseph was a gifted speaker and more diplomat than war leader.

From their very beginnings, England and Scotland fought each other. Emerging as unified nations from the early medieval period, their shared border and related aristocracy created endless causes of conflict. Every century from the 11th to the 16th was colored by such violence, and there were periods when not a decade went by without some act of violence marring the peace. Out of all of this, the most bitterly remembered conflict is Edward I's invasion during the late 13th century.

Dred Scott was an unlikely candidate to become the impetus and rallying cry of a brand-new political party in the mid-19th century. He was sold to US Army doctor John Emerson in St. Louis, Missouri. Emerson's commission brought him to the Wisconsin Territory in 1836, which was free territory where slavery was illegal. By 1840, Dred Scott had married another slave of Emerson's, and the couple had a child. Desperate to shake off the yoke of slavery, Scott sued for his freedom in Missouri, arguing that once he had entered free territory he could no longer be a slave.

No single figure in 20th-century American history inspires such opposing opinions as J. Edgar Hoover, the iconic first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In his time he was arguably the most powerful nonelected figure in the US government. Serving under eight presidents (and outliving two of them), he remains the longest-serving head of a major government office. To many Americans in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, J. Edgar Hoover was a real American hero.

Nero ranks among the very worst of the caesars. He is a figure so hated that in many ancient Christian traditions, he is literally - without hyperbole - considered the Antichrist. He was the man who famously "fiddled while Rome burned" and his economic policies, according to many historians, virtually bankrupted Rome. Nero was an inveterate lecher, a murderous tyrant who showed little compunction in murdering his mother, and he liked to use Christian martyrs as sources of illumination by burning them alive at night.

As the oldest political party in the United States, the Democratic Party has been one of the nation’s major political parties for over 150 years, and diverse men and ideas have fallen under its tent since the 19th century. Today the Democrats are generally viewed as proponents of a strong, centralized federal government, and yet the forerunner of the modern party was none other than Thomas Jefferson, the man most associated with states’ rights and limited government.

The Babylonians were one of the earliest of history's great ancient civilizations, and the most famous Babylonian of them all was Hammurabi, who came to the throne as the first king of the Babylonian empire around the beginning of the 18th century BC. Hammurabi had a long and fruitful reign that saw him consolidate most of Mesopotamia under his control, but he's best known today for Hammurabi's Code, one of the earliest known code of laws in human history. Inscribed on stone tablets, Hammurabi's Code was found over 3,500 years later, in the early 20th century.

From the beginning, Americans debated how their national government should govern, balancing powers between the federal government and the states. Nobody spent more time in the thick of these debates than Thomas Jefferson, one of the most famous and revered Americans. Jefferson was instrumental in all of the aforementioned debates, authoring the Declaration of Independence, and overseeing the expansion of the United States during his presidency.

Until the implementation of new legislation on March 26, 2015, men were given preference to women in the British royal line. This system of male primogeniture meant that women seldom inherited the throne, and even when they did, they were often dominated by male councilors. Those women who married British kings gained the title of queen, but they were queen consorts, holding the title with no power. This makes Elizabeth II one of a select few queens regnant - queens ruling in their own right.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is one of the most famous Americans in history and one of the country's most revered presidents. Schoolchildren can recite the life story of Lincoln, the "Westerner" who educated himself and became a self-made man, rising from lawyer to leader of the new Republican Party before becoming the 16th President of the United States.

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) holds a unique place in American history, as the man best remembered for being the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. While other famous Confederates like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are still celebrated across the reunited country, Davis continues to be the object of scorn, derided over his attempt to flee after the Civil War and criticized as ineffective by historians. Among the Confederates still lauded among some Southerners, Davis is well down the list.

One of the most unique and effective generals of the Civil War also happens to be one of the most overlooked. While there is a never ending stream of acclaim going to generals like Grant, Lee, and Sherman, General George H. Thomas has managed to fly under the radar, despite having an unusual background as a Southerner fighting for the Union and scoring almost inconceivable successes at Missionary Ridge, Franklin, and Nashville.

Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm II, who occupied the throne of the German Empire for more than 30 years from June 1888 to November 1918, remains as much an enigma in death as he was in life. Over 70 years after his death in 1941, the mention of his name still sparks unsettled debates among historians. Was he the duty-bound, hands-on leader and passionate pro-British reformer who ruled in challenging times, seemingly mild in comparison to Hitler?