Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Lucky Lab, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
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WTP Unit 5
Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment
Author: Anthony Lewis
Basic Books, 2010
240 Pages
Synopsis: In Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Lucky Lab, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
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WTP Unit 1
Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers
Author: Carl Rishard
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009
224 Pages
Synopsis: This lively and engaging book is the only popular work to explore the profound impact of Ancient Greece and Rome on the Founding Fathers. The classical education they imbibed as young students inspired them to undertake the American Revolution and influenced their approach to a host of constitutional and practical issues crucial to the shaping of the new American republic.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Lucky Lab, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
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WTP Unit 3
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
Author: Elaine Weiss
Viking, 2018
416 Pages
Synopsis: Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, along with appearances by Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Woman’s Hour is an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Lucky Lab, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
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WTP Unit 2
Fault Lines in the Constitution
Author: Cynthia & Sanford Levinson
Peachtree Publishers, 2017
192 Pages
Synopsis: Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution. Husband-and-wife team Cynthia and Sanford Levinson take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced—then they offer possible solutions. Think Electoral College, gerrymandering, even the Senate. Many of us take these features in our system for granted. But they came about through haggling in an overheated room in 1787, and we’re still experiencing the ramifications.
Supplemental Reading:
Drake Law Review Article – “How the United States Constitution Contributes to the Democratic Deficit in America,” Sanford Levinson, 2007.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Lucky Lab, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
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WTP Unit 4
On Tyranny (+ a Film TBA)
Author: Timothy Snyder
Tim Duggan Books, 2017
128 Pages
Synopsis: The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Lucky Lab, 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
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WTP Unit 6
The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
Author: Jon Meacham
Random House, 2018
416 Pages
Synopsis: While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail.