Kauffman's perspective on progress in America-from the point of view of those who lost-revives forgotten figures and reinvigorates dormant causes as he examines the characters and arguments from six critical battles that forever altered the American landscape: the debates over child labor, school consolidation, women's suffrage, the back-to-the-land movement, good roads and the Interstate Highway System, and a standing army. The integration of these subjects and the presentation of the anti-Progress case as a coherent political tendency encompassing several issues and many years is unprecedented. With wit, passion, and an arsenal of long-neglected sources, Kauffman measures the cost of progress in 20th-Century America and exposes the elaborate plans behind seemingly inevitable reforms. Kauffman brings to life such people and places as Ida Tarbell, the muckraker who thought that suffrage would ruin women; Onward, Indiana, the town that took up arms to defend its high school from death by consolidation; and the motley band of agrarian poets and ghetto dwellers who tried to stop the bulldozers that paved over America. He maintains that these forlorn causes-usually regarded as quaint, archaic, and hopeless-rested, in large part, upon quintessential American ideals: limited government, human-scale community, and family autonomy. The victory of progress has uprooted our citizens, swollen the central state at the expense of liberty, and sucked much of the life from what was once a nation of small communities.

The America First Committee, founded in September 1940 to keep the United States out of what became the Second World War, was the largest antiwar organization in American history. Its 800,000 members spanned the political spectrum from conservative Republican to Socialist; its spokesmen were prairie populists, Eastern patricians, and, most controversially, the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Written in 1942, but unpublished until now, this study of the America First Committee by its chief researcher and Senate lobbyist, Ruth Sarles, sheds new light on this frequently misunderstood and misrepresented group. An introduction by Bill Kauffman assesses the place of Ruth Sarles and America First in American history.

Ruth Sarles was at the center of the storm. An Ohio-born peace activist with the pacifist National Council for Prevention of War, Sarles knew all of the principals and had a ringside seat for the great debates that pitted isolationists against interventionists. In 1942 she wrote a firsthand history of the America First Committee. But a war was on, and dissent was scarce: her manuscript remained unpublished--until now. Ruth Sarles tells of America First's unlikely birth at the Yale Law School, its extraordinary growth as Middle Americans rallied to the antiwar banner, and the fierce controversies in which it became enmeshed. In this edition, Kauffman uncovers some fascinating sidelights to the era, including a pro-Lindbergh editorial by a student journalist named Kurt Vonnegut.

Bill Kauffman, a self-proclaimed "placeist" who believes that things urban are homogenizing our national scene, returned to his roots after a bumpy ride on the D.C. fast track. Rarely has he ventured forth since. Here he illuminates the place he loves, traveling from Batavia's scenic vistas to the very seams of its grimy semi-industrial pockets, from its architecturally insignificant new mall to the pastoral grounds of its internationally known School for the Blind. Not one to shy from controversy, Kauffman also investigates his town's efforts to devastate its landmarks through urban renewal, the passions simmering inside its clogged political machinery, and the sagging fortunes of its baseball heroes, the legendary Muckdogs.

Bill Kauffman has adapted Harold Frederic's novella (originally serialized in "Scribner's Magazine") into a screenplay for Ronald F. Maxwell's Civil War era movie which is also to be released in the spring of 2013.

"The Copperhead" is a dramatically intense story set in New York State in 1862 and 1863 and it's about the price of dissent, the cost of dissent. "Copperhead" was the extremely derisive term used to insult those Northerners who were opposed to the war. It was a big movement in the North. They wanted to end the war, and this book (and related film) explores the anti-war movement in the North through the conflict of one family in one town. It's a work of fiction, but it is based on real events. "The Copperhead" explores ground that has not been explored at all in screenplay or cinema--these people were politically opposed to war--which ties the book and movie to our current situation.

Bill Kauffman is the author of nine books, among them "Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette" and "Ain't My America." He was born in Batavia, New York, and currently resides in Elba, New York, with his wife and daughter.

Harold Frederic is the author of "The Damnation of Theron Ware" as well as "Gloria Mundi." Jonathan Yardley called "Damnation" "a minor classic of realism."

Ronald F. Maxwell is an independent film director and writer. He is most famous for writing and directing the American Civil War epics "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals."