What Makes America Great?

About the Book

Unlike dry history books, What Makes America Great? is written in a breezy, personal style. It makes history come alive with humanizing stories about the men and women who made America great.

·Chapter 1 provides objective proof of America's greatness, using a lot of statistics.

·Chapters 2 and 3 cover the early history of America and explain why we revolted.

·Chapter 4 explains our victory over England in the American Revolution, a tremendous upset. Few Americans know how the colonists achieved this astounding feat.

·Some modern "debunkers" like to say that our founding fathers acted out of selfishness rather than principle. Chapter 5 shows the idealism of our founders and details the sacrifices made by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

·Our founding fathers were faced with the exciting but daunting task of creating an entirely new kind of country. Well-educated men, they based the United States on principles developed by the world's greatest philosophers. Chapter 6 starts with Moses and goes through Locke and Voltaire. Each philosopher's ideas are related to American ideals.

·The Declaration and the Constitution are the two greatest publications mankind has ever known. But they weren't created out of thin air. Chapter 7 discusses the precedents our forefathers studied before drafting these two great documents.

·In Chapter 8, each American war is discussed in the light of whether it was just or unjust.

·Chapter 9 covers the role of immigrants in shaping America. It shows the challenges, obstacles and contribution of each immigrant group.

·No country is perfect, not even America. Chapter 10 discusses the five areas in which America has done wrong: Indians, slaves, women, prejudice, and education.

·Chapter 11 is a glimpse into the future of America.

About the Author

Like many first-generation Americans, Lon Cantor has a special love and appreciation of his country. Both of his parents fled from Russia to escape anti-Semitism. During the Korean War, he served as an electronic technician aboard the U.S.S. Worcester, a light cruiser.

After earning a B.S. in Public Relations at Columbia University, he worked his way up to executive positions in the Electronics Industry. He served as Director of Marketing Communications for RCA, then General Electric and finally Level One, now a part of Intel.

Lon is the author of three other books, plus several hundred magazine articles. He served as a speechwriter for Milt Shapp during his campaign for Governor of Pennsylvania. For the past 35 years, he has been an avid amateur historian.

A voracious reader, Lon especially enjoys history and science. He is a competitive tennis player and has won gold medals as a ballroom dancer.