As our country goes through trying times, the author put together the best of his op-ed columns, published in his local newspaper, The Tuscaloosa News, which deals with the issues facing our nation today. Clayton ranges all the way from the issues very close to home and family, such as what is being taught in our schools, colleges, and universities, to issues straddling the incredibly complex and often rancorous events in public life, from the presidency of the nation all the way down to local school boards. He not only identifies and analyzes issues we are all, more or less, familiar with, like Project 1619, critical race theory, the programs of diversity, equity, and inclusion in virtually all colleges and universities across the country, but the reader will also find suggestions and remedies for a world that has become almost dysfunctional or dystopic in today’s language.

These suggestions range all the way from establishing new programs of study that emphasize our traditional values, like liberty, equality, the right to vote, personal responsibility, and furthermore, call for a restoration of the home and religion to fashionably modern concerns with sexism, racism, and other expressions leaving young people at loose ends on who they are and what is it that made the nation so prosperous and generous until this day. As a historian, he does not ignore what went wrong over the years in the making of our people but deals with them honestly and explores many answers suggested by a close reading of both natural law and Christian Scripture.

“The Push Back” is available in paperback and kindle on Amazon

Excerpts from Reviews on Amazon

• This book is a hidden treasure. The author, Lawrence Clayton, made a compilation of his best writings in a newspaper column, in which he speaks openly about various problems in the USA. The best point here was, for me, that the author not only criticizes different situations, but he also analyzes and offers solutions or alternatives from his point of view. It seems a really nutritious contribution to me. I loved it!
• Thought-provoking books like ‘The Push Back’ are hard to find nowadays. Written by Lawrence Clayton, The Push Back is a unique and informative read that reveals everything wrong with the United States. Clayton covers a wide range of subjects, from those that are personal and family-focused, like education, to those that are complicated and frequently contentious in public.
• I loved that this incredible book offers us a great variety of viewpoint articles that the writer himself released, all of which focused on the present fascinating subjects and scenarios that impact the United States. Moreover, Clayton also shares exceptional suggestions to cope with the issues. I highly recommend this book to all!
• This is a very interesting book written by Lawrence Clayton. The articles and themes presented by the author are from everyday life, but at the same time controversial. Not all of us think the same, but books like “The Push Back” make us reflect on what kind of Nation we want to be, and where we want to go. I definitely recommend it.
• ‘The Push Back’ is a book that talks about American national history and people in general. The author emphasizes liberty, equality, and other fundamental principles. It’s a blend of natural law and Christian scriptures. The book is a highly engaging one and it is truly thought-provoking. The main theme Lawrence Clayton tried to portray throughout is ‘United we stand and divided we fall.’
• In this sense, I found this book extremely interesting, since it provides us with a wide collection of opinion articles that the author himself published in the local newspaper of his own city, all of them focusing on very current, very diverse and interesting topics and situations of all kinds that affect the United States to a lesser or greater extent. In all of them he makes a deep analysis and provides his own critique on the matter, but he does not limit himself to that alone, he confronts all of them and provides, thanks to his extensive background and experience, really interesting solutions that can be very valid to improve as a society.

Lawrence A. Clayton was born October 5, 1942, in Summit, New Jersey. He lived in Peru for seven years. He attended Duke University (B.A., 1964), and earned his M.A. (1969) and Ph.D. (1972) at Tulane University in Latin American History.  From 1964-1966 he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy on the USS Donner (LSD-20), cruising both in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean with the 6^th Fleet.

He was on the faculty of the University of Alabama from 1972-2013. He directed the Latin American Studies Program from 1980 to 1992. He was Chair of Department of History 2000-2007 and was Interim Chair, 2009-2010. His specialties focused on Latin American history and the history of the Christian church. He is now Professor Emeritus of History. He retired in 2013.

He held two Senior Fulbright Lecturing Awards, one in 1983 to Costa Rica and one in 1988 to Peru. In 1983 he served as President of the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies. In 1999 he held a year-long Pew Evangelical Scholars Fellowship.

Some of his publications include

• The De Soto Chronicles (Tuscaloosa, 1993). Prize winning.
• A History of Modern Latin America (3^rd. ed. published as A New History of Modern Latin America ,University of California Press, 2017).
• Peru and the United States: The Condor and the Eagle (Athens, Georgia, 1999).
• Cleared for Landing: On Living a Christian Life (2008).
• Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas (New York, 2011)
• Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography (New York, 2012).
• Work and Wealth in Scripture (Eugene, Oregon, 2015)
• The Andean Cross: A Novel (Los Angeles, Ca., 2019)
• My Christian Prism or at the Port Rail (Bloomington, In., 2019)
• Three of his books have been translated and published in Peru and Ecuador.

He is working on the script to a new movie on the Doolittle Raid of 1942; and on several book projects, including his Memoirs. The best of his OpEds published in The Tuscaloosa News and elsewhere was published in 2019, as was his first novel, The Andean Cross,

He and his wife Louise have two daughters and a son, Carlton, who is a pilot with Elite Air, Tampa. Oldest daughter Amy Alderman, M.D. (UAB) is a plastic surgeon in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Stephanie Clayton Richmond, next oldest, is Executive Vice President for Papa Murphy’s Pizza in Portland, Oregon. Both daughters have two children.

Clayton has participated since 2000 in a Christian jail ministry program at the Tuscaloosa County Jail on a weekly basis, and his wife Louise is a licensed and ordained minister who teaches a Monday evening course on Christianity and the Bible to female inmates. They attend Victorious Life Church, Fosters, Al. Clayton also writes a weekly column, The Port Rail for The Tuscaloosa News that appears on Sundays in the Op-ed section.

In November, 2015 he was inducted as a Knight Commander of the Imperial Order of Charles V, in the Alcazar Palace, Segovia, Spain. In 2018, he was inducted into the Royal Hispanic American Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters in Cadiz, Spain.