One of America's most esteemed political analyst offers his analysis of the global build-up to the Semptember 11th attacks, the long-term results of American military action. He suggest what can be done to promote peace and justice. View More...
The day after Thanksgiving, five months into the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur flew to American positions in the north and grandly announced an end-the-war-by-Christmas offensive, despite recent evidence of intervention by Mao's Chinese troops. Marching north in plunging temperatures, General Edward Almond's X Corps, which included a Marine division under the able leadership of General Oliver Smith, encountered little resistance. But thousands of Chinese, who had infiltrated across the frozen Yalu River, were lying in wait and would soon trap tens of thousands of US troops. Led by the ... View More...
The war that was fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was a major event in the history of both countries: it cost Mexico half of its national territory, opened western North America to U.S. expansion, and brought to the surface a host of tensions that led to devastating civil wars in both countries. Among generations of Latin Americans, it helped to cement the image of the United States as an arrogant, aggressive, and imperialist nation, poisoning relations between a young America and its southern neighbors.In contrast to many current books, which treat the war as a fu... View More...
A provocative new book that shows us why we must put American history firmly in a global context--from 1492 to today Americans like to tell their country's story as if the United States were naturally autonomous and self-sufficient, with characters, ideas, and situations unique to itself. Thomas Bender asks us to rethink this exceptionalism and to reconsider the conventional narrative. He proposes that America has grappled with circumstances, doctrines, new developments, and events that other nations, too, have faced, and that we can only benefit from recognizing this. Bender's exciting argume... View More...
I write of peoples and of a struggle. So begins A New World, an ambitious and extraordinary book that challenges conventional historical narrative by presenting episodes in North America's history through the eyes and voices of the Europeans who established the first colonial outposts here. Beginning with the swaggering John Smith at Jamestown and ending with the beleaguered Montcalm at Quebec, Arthur Quinn allows towering historical figures to emerge from an often beautiful, sometimes forbidding early American landscape and speak. An elderly William Bradford looks back with growing despair at... View More...
Tens of millions of Americans currently live in poverty, more and more of them in extreme poverty. But the words we use to describe them tend to obscure rather than illuminate the human lives and real-life stories behind the statistics. A "sympathetic social history that allows poor people, past and present, to tell their own remarkably similar stories" (Booklist), A People's History of Poverty in America movingly brings to life poor people's everyday battles for dignity and respect in the face of the judgment, control, and disdain that are all too often the price they must pay for charity and... View More...
Arizona's rugged Chiricahua Mountains have a special place in frontier history. They were the haven of many well-known personalities, from Cochise to Johnny Ringo, as well as the home of prospectors, cattlemen, and hardscrabble farmers eking out a tough living in an unforgiving landscape. In this delightful and well-researched book, Alden Hayes shares his love for the area, gained over fifty years. From his vantage point near the tiny twin communities of Portal and Paradise on the eastern slopes of the Chiricahuas, Hayes brings the famous and the not-so-famous together in a profile of this st... View More...
Born into a wealthy and prominent Cape Fear River plantation family, Howe became a militia officer, justice of the peace, and legislator. In 1775 he was appointed colonel of the Second North Carolina Regiment and became commanding general of the Southern Department and the highest ranking officer in the states south of Virginia. He also served as a division commander with General Washington's main army in the New York Highlands, commanded the crucial West Point post, and put down mutinies in the American army. Originally published in 1991. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Edi... View More...
The technological advances and globalization of the Information Age have changed our lives so greatly and so rapidly that we tend to assume that transformations of this magnitude are unique to our times. But the early twentieth century was also a time of technological revolution, when Americans of the Progressive Era watched as giant corporations used new inventions to produce ever more wealth, create millions of jobs, and offer people a stunning array of new consumer goods.Drawing on the rich scholarship of recent social history, Steven J. Diner focuses on how these changes affected Americans... View More...
Few events have had a more profound impact on the social and cultural upheavals of the Sixties than the psychedelic revolution spawned by the spread of LSD. This book for the first time tells the full and astounding story--part of it hidden till now in secret Government files--of the role the mind-altering drug played in our recent turbulent history and the continuing influence it has on our time. And what a story it is, beginning with LSD's discovery in 1943 as the most potent drug known to science until it spilled into public view some twenty years later to set the stage for one of the great... View More...
The Smithsonian National air and Space Museum curator, features over 200 illustrations - including new photos of the airplane's interiors, this book takes the reader on a memorable flight through history. 75,000 first print run. View More...
Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars havelabored to uncover the facts behind Chambers s shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948 that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage.In this highly original work, Susan Jacoby turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions. Unfettered by political ax-grinding, the author examines conflicting responses... View More...
"The work that brought down a presidency...perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history" (Time)--from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Final Days. The most devastating political detective story of the century: two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened. One of Time magazine's All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books, this is the book that changed America. Published just months before President Nixo... View More...
"Among the many rewards of America the Ingenious, Kevin Baker's survey of Yankee know-how, is stumbling on its buried nuggets. . . . Baker examines a wide range of the achievements that have made, and still make, America great again--and again." --The Wall Street Journal All made in America: The skyscraper and subway car. The telephone and telegraph. The safety elevator and safety pin. Plus the microprocessor, amusement park, MRI, supermarket, Pennsylvania rifle, and Tennessee Valley Authority. Not to mention the city of Chicago or jazz or that magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. What is it abo... View More...
Known for its interpretive voice, balanced analysis, and brief-yet-comprehensive narrative, America's History, Value Edition helps students to make sense of it all while modeling the kind of thinking and writing they need to be successful. The two-color Value Edition includes the full narrative, the popular nine-part organization, and select images and maps. This new Value Edition introduces a breakthrough in teaching and learning through the addition of LaunchPad, an intuitive e-book and course space with LearningCurve adaptive quizzing. LaunchPad also features all of the contents of the full... View More...
The story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt has provided inspiration for many throughout the history of the United States. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to Moses in his famous "I have been to the mountaintop" speech, delivered the day before his assassination. From the arrival of the first Pilgrims to Abraham Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, it has been a defining theme in American life. One part adventure story, one part literary detective story, and one part exploration of faith, Bruce Feiler's America's Prophet traces the influence of Moses throughout remarkably diverse aspects of Amer... View More...
From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease has both shaped, and been shaped by, the law. Arguing that throughout American history legal approaches to public health have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others, Witt shows us how history's answers to the major questions brought up by previous epidemics help shape our answers ... View More...
From the prizewinning author of the bestselling Founding Brothers and American Sphinx comes this masterly and highly ironic examination of the founding years of our country. View More...
From the prizewinning author of the bestselling Founding Brothers and American Sphinx comes this masterly and highly ironic examination of the founding years of our country. View More...
Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the megalomaniacal Jim Jones, these figures have routinely been dismissed as dangerous and hysterical outliers.After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history. As Morris demonstrates, these charismat... View More...
Fresh insights into the ongoing fascination with dinosaurs and their place in 19th century American nationalism In 1801, the first complete mastodon skeleton was excavated in the Hudson River Valley, marking the climax of a century-long debate in America and Europe over the identity of a mysterious creature known as the American Incognitum. Long before the dinosaurs were discovered and the notion of geological time acquired currency, many citizens of the new republic believed this mythical beast to be a ferocious carnivore, capable of crushing deer and elk in its monstrous grinders. During the... View More...
There is a common belief among college students that American politics and government are broken, or too complicated to understand, or completely illogical. With a student-friendly analytical framework and vivid, current examples, American Politics Today demystifies the political process and shows students how the system actually works effectively and powerfully." View More...
"Breathtaking. Rasmussen's] scholarly detective work reveals a fascinating narrative of slavery and resistance, but it also tells us something about history itself--about how fiction can become fact, and how 'history' is sometimes nothing more than erasure." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr."Deeply researched, vividly written, and highly original." --Eric FonerHistorian Daniel Rasmussen reveals the long-forgotten history of America's largest slave uprising, the New Orleans slave revolt of 1811. In an epic, illuminating narrative, Rasmussen offers new insight into American expansionism, the path to Civ... View More...