A Renegade History of the United States

An all-new, stunning, and controversial story of the United States: It was not "good" citizens who established American liberty, declares Thaddeus Russell, but "immoral" and "degraded" people on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles legitimized the taboo and made America the land of the free. In vivid portraits of renegades and their "respectable" adversaries, Russell shows that the nation's history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires. The more these accidental revolutionaries - drunkards, prostitutes, gangsters, unassimilated immigrants, "bad" blacks - persevered, the more American society changed for the better. This is not the history taught in textbooks or classrooms - this renegade book will upend everything you believe about the American past.