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The Small and the Mighty
Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement
1 of 1 copy available
From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.
In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.
You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 24, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593541685
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593541685
- File size: 1188 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 1, 2024
A survey of footnote-level historical figures who exemplify McMahon's declaration, "the best Americans are not always famous." "America's Government Teacher," as McMahon brands herself, turns out to be a reliable guide into lesser-known corners of history as well. Her initial specimen is Gouverneur Morris, a friend of Alexander Hamilton and signer of the Declaration of Independence who is unjustly forgotten in our day, McMahon holds. Morris, after all, wrote the preamble to the Constitution ("We the people..."). Many more of McMahon's subjects were never known to history in the first place: the enslaved Clara Brown, for instance, who moved westward to frontier Colorado and built a tidy fortune that, alas, did not outlive her. McMahon calls on the clothier Levi Strauss, who added rivets to jeans and then "marketed the heck out of them" as "the only kind made by white labor" (though enslaved people grew the cotton and indigo). The mid-19th-century president James Buchanan openly lived with a man who "helped found a city you may have heard of because of the Civil Rights movement: Selma, Alabama." Katherine Lee Bates, author of "America the Beautiful," also had a same-sex partner; as a couple, they "were obviously in love and 'together' together." McMahon tips her hat to Daniel Inouye, the Hawaiian senator who, in the era of Japanese American imprisonment during World War II, distinguished himself as a battlefield hero. The author is generally nonsectarian, though she gets in a subtle dig or two at Trump, denounces the "moral panic" that is the enemy of progress, and defends critical race theory. Her carefully researched book is just plain fun to read, especially at moments such as her takedown of those who hold that the Civil War was about states' rights: "Calmly look them in the eye, and ask, politely and inquisitively, what exactly the states wanted the 'right' to do?" An accessible, cheerful, and affectionate portrait of Americans who, though little known, made a difference.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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