Ron Kovic went to Vietnam dreaming of being an American hero. What he found there changed him profoundly, even before the severe battlefield injury that left him paralysed from the waist down. He returned to an America indifferent to the realities of war and the fate of those who fought for their country. From his wheelchair he became one of the most visible and outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War. Born on the Fourth of July is a journey of self-discovery, a reckoning with the horrors of an unjust war, a testament to courage and a call to protest. A modern classic of anti-war writing, it inspired an Oscar-winning film, sold over one million copies and remains as powerful and relevant today as when it was first published.

In The Sum of Our Dreams, Louis P. Masur offers a sweeping yet compact history of America from its beginnings to the current moment. For general readers seeking an accessible, single-volume account, one that challenges but does not overwhelm, and which distills and connects the major events and figures in the country's past in a single narrative, here is that book. Evoking Barack Obama's belief that America remains the "sum of its dreams," Masur locates the origin of those dreams-of freedom, equality, and opportunity-and traces their progress chronologically, illuminating the nation's struggle over time to articulate and fulfill their promise. Moving from the Colonial Era, to the Revolutionary Period, the Early Republic, and through the Civil War, Masur turns his attention to Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Age, World War One, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, Civil Rights, Vietnam, and Watergate, and then laying out clearly and concisely what underlies the divisiveness that has characterized American civic life over the last forty years-and now more than ever. Above all, however, Masur lets the story of American tell itself. Inspired by James Baldwin's observation that "American history is longer, larger, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it," he expands our notion of that history while identifying its individual threads. The Sum of Our Dreams will be the new go-to single volume for anyone wanting a foundational understanding of the nation's past, and its present.