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› Find signed collectible books: 'Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'America's God: From Jonathan Edwards To Abraham Lincoln'
Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new American ethos. In the 125 years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, theology played an extraordinarily important role in American public and private life. Its evolution had a profound impact on America's self-definition. The changes taking place in American theology during this period were marked by heightened spiritual inwardness, a new confidence in individual reason, and an attentiveness to the economic and market realities of Western life. Vividly set in the social and political events of the age, America's God is replete with the figures who made up the early American intellectual landscape, from theologians such as Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel W. Taylor, William Ellery Channing, and Charles Hodge and religiously inspired writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Stowe to dominant political leaders of the day like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The contributions of these thinkers combined with the religious revival of the 1740s, colonial warfare with France, the consuming struggle for independence, and the rise of evangelical Protestantism to form a common intellectual coinage based on a rising republicanism and commonsense principles. As this Christian republicanism affirmed itself, it imbued in dedicated Christians a conviction that the Bible supported their beliefs over those of all others. Tragically, this sense of religious purpose set the stage for the Civil War, as the conviction of Christians both North and South that God was on their side served to deepen a schism that would soon rend the young nation asunder. Mark Noll has given us the definitive history of Christian theology in America from the time of Jonathan Edwards to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. It is a story of a flexible and creative theological energy that over time forged a guiding national ideology the legacies of which remain with us to this day. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'THE AMERICAN DEMOCRAT'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin'
From the most respected chronicler of the early days of the Republicand winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizescomes a landmark work that rescues Benjamin Franklin from a mythology that has blinded generations of Americans to the man he really was and makes sense of aspects of his life and career that would have otherwise remained mysterious. In place of the genial polymath, self-improver, and quintessential American, Gordon S. Wood reveals a figure much more ambiguous and complexand much more interesting. Charting the passage of Franklins life and reputation from relative popular indifference (his death, while the occasion for mass mourning in France, was widely ignored in America) to posthumous glory, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin sheds invaluable light on the emergence of our countrys idea of itself.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin'
This classic is Franklin's last word on his greatest literary creation--his own invented persona, the original incarnation of the American success story. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America's First Military Victory'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89'
From the back: In 1765 John Dickinson of Philadelphia thought that American independence from Great Britain would bring a "multitude of Commonwealths, Crimes and Calamities. Centuries of Mutual Jealousies, Hatreds, Wars of Depression" 24 years later he saw the US adopt its present constitution which he had helped draft, Here are the events of that remarkable quarter-century which transformed 13 quarrelsome colonies into a nation. Edmund S. Morgan's account of the Revolutionary period shows how the challenge of British taxation started the Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom." by 0226537595 [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Constitution In Congress: Democrats And Whigs, 1829-1861'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Constitution In Congress: Descent Into The Maelstrom, 1829-1861'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period 1789-1801'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians, 1801-1829'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Coquette'
The Coquette tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut.
Written as a series of letters--between the heroine and her friends and lovers--it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and the Reverend Boyer, a bore who wants to marry her. When, in her mid-30s, Wharton finds herself suddenly abandoned when both men marry other women, she willfully enters into an adulterous relationship with Sanford and becomes pregnant. Alone and dejected, she dies in childbirth at a roadside inn. Eliza Wharton, whose real-life counterpart was distantly related to Hannah Foster's husband, was one of the first women in American fiction to emerge as a real person facing a dilemma in her life. In her Introduction, Davidson discusses the parallels between Elizabeth Whitman and the fictional Eliza Wharton. She shows the limitations placed on women in the 18th century and the attempts of one woman to rebel against those limitations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Democratization of American Christianity'
The Democratization of American Christianity [Paperback] by Nathan O. Hatch [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family'
The controversy over the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his African American slave Sally Hemings has raged for generations. Shannon Lanier, a 20-year-old descendant of Jefferson and Hemings, was inspired to delve deeper into the debate after attending the Monticello Association's yearly meeting in 1999. On the heels of the discovery through DNA evidence of a link between Jefferson and Hemings, excitement was running high at Jefferson's famous homestead. Lanier, who is black, encountered Jeffersons who embraced him, and those who wouldn't even shake his hand. He met Hemingses who looked as white as Jeffersons, Jeffersons who refused to acknowledge the scientific evidence, and Hemingses who were angry at having to prove their lineage. In this climate of stirred-up emotions and racial tensions, Lanier, along with photographer Jane Feldman, decided to write this book in hopes of unraveling some of the mystery, and giving members of one of America's largest, most well-known families a chance to speak. The result is a fascinating look at race relations, history--both oral and written, and family ties. The authors interview dozens of individuals who claim--or disclaim--shared ancestry. Many of those interviewed believe that, DNA testing or not, the connection between these families is a powerful symbol of America; to acknowledge the link would be a major step toward racial harmony. Eager, friendly, and astute, Lanier brings out the heartfelt thoughts and emotions of his extended family, while Feldman's photos capture the expressions of hope and joy on their faces. (Ages 11 and older) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Divided Heart: Essays on Protestantism and the Enlightenment in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, & America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Enlightenment in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Era of Good Feelings'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Forgotten Americans: Footnote Figures Who Changed American History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War'
Since its publication twenty-five years ago, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men has been recognized as a classic, an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. A key work in establishing political ideology as a major concern of modern American historians, it remains the only full-scale evaluation of the ideas of the early Republican party. Now with a new introduction, Eric Foner puts his argument into the context of contemporary scholarship, reassessing the concept of free labor in the light of the last twenty-five years of writing on such issues as work, gender, economic change, and political thought.
A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny.
In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks.
Demonstrating the profoundly successful fusion of value and interest within Republican ideology prior to the Civil War, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men remains a classic of modern American historical writing. Eloquent and influential, it shows how this ideology provided the moral consensus which allowed the North, for the first time in history, to mobilize an entire society in modern warfare. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898'
Like the city it celebrates, Gotham is massive and endlessly fascinating. This narrative of well over 1,000 pages, written after more than two decades of collaborative research by history professors Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, copiously chronicles New York City from the primeval days of the Lenape Indians to the era when, with Teddy Roosevelt as police commissioner, the great American city became regarded as "Capital of the World." The sheer bulk of the book may be off- putting, but the reader can use a typically New York approach: Those who don't settle in for the entire history can easily "commute" in and out to read individual chapters, which stand alone nicely and cover the major themes of particular eras very well.
While Gotham is fact-laden (with a critical apparatus that includes a bibliography and two indices--one for names, another for subjects), the prose admirably achieves both clarity and style. "What is our take, our angle, our schtick?" ask the authors, setting a distinctly New York tone in their introduction. No matter what it's called, their method of weaving together countless stories works wonderfully. The startlingly detailed research and lively writing bring innumerable characters (from Peter Minuit to Boss Tweed) to life, and even those who think they know the history of New York City will no doubt find surprises on nearly every page. Gotham is a rarity, reigning as both authoritative history and page-turning story. --Robert McNamara [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Experiment: George Washington and the American Republic'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In the Heart of the Sea'
The appeal of Dava Sobel's Longitude was, in part, that it illuminated a little-known piece of history through a series of captivating incidents and engaging personalities. Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea is certainly cast from the same mold, examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production--a vital source of oil--and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life aboard whalers. We are spared neither the nitty-gritty of open boats nor the sucking of human bones dry.
By sticking to the tried and tested Longitude formula, Philbrick has missed a slight trick or two. The epicenter of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, necessitating a huge journey around the southernmost tip of South America. We never learn why no one ever tried to create an alternative whaling capital somewhere nearer. Similarly, Philbrick tells us that the story of the Essex was well known to Americans for decades, but he never explores how such legends fade from our consciousness. Philbrick would no doubt reply that such questions were beyond his remit, and you can't exactly accuse him of skimping on his research. By any standard, 50 pages of footnotes impress, though he wears his learning lightly. He doesn't get bogged down in turgid detail, and his narrative rattles along at a nice pace. When the storyline is as good as this, you can't really ask for more. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Inhuman Bondage: The Rise And Fall of Slavery in the New World'
David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his prodigious research, his brilliant analytical skill, and his rich and powerful prose. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in what Stanley L. Engerman calls "a monumental and magisterial book, the essential work on New World slavery for several decades to come."
Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, which vividly highlights the international character of the Atlantic slave trade and the roles of the American judiciary, the presidency, the media, and of both black and white abolitionists. The heart of the book looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive internal, long-distance slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more. But though centered on the United States, the book offers a global perspective spanning four continents. It is the only study of American slavery that reaches back to ancient foundations (discussing the classical and biblical justifications for chattel bondage) and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism (as in the writings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, among many others). Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it illuminates the meaning of nineteenth-century slave conspiracies and revolts, with a detailed comparison with 3 major revolts in the British Caribbean. It connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics and stresses that slavery was integral to America's success as a nation--not a marginal enterprise.
A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kingdom of Matthias/a Story of Sex and Salvation in 19Th-Century America: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19Th-Centtury America'
In the autumn of 1834, New York City was awash with rumors of a strange religious cult operating nearby, centered around a mysterious, self-styled prophet named Matthias. It was said that Matthias the Prophet was stealing money from one of his followers; then came reports of lascivious sexual relations, based on odd teachings of matched spirits, apostolic priesthoods, and the inferiority of women. At its climax, the rumors transformed into legal charges, as the Prophet was arrested for the murder of a once highly-regarded Christian gentleman who had fallen under his sway. By the time the story played out, it became one of the nation's first penny-press sensations, casting a peculiar but revealing light on the sexual and spiritual tensions of the day.
In The Kingdom of Matthias, the distinguishd historians Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz brilliantly recapture this forgotten story, imbuing their richly researched account with the dramatic force of a novel. In this book, the strange tale of Matthias the Prophet provides a fascinating window into the turbulent movements of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening--movements which swept up great numbers of evangelical Americans and gave rise to new sects like the Mormons. Into this teeming environment walked a down-and-out carpenter named Robert Matthews, who announced himself as Matthias, prophet of the God of the Jews. His hypnotic spell drew in a cast of unforgettable characters--the meekly devout businessman Elijah Pierson, who once tried to raise his late wife from the dead; the young attractive Christian couple, Benjamin Folger and his wife Ann (who seduced the woman-hating Prophet); and the shrewd ex-slave Isabella Van Wagenen, regarded by some as "the most wicked of the wicked." None was more colorful than the Prophet himself, a bearded, thundering tyrant who gathered his followers into an absolutist household, using their money to buy an elaborate, eccentric wardrobe, and reordering their marital relations. By the time the tensions within the kingdom exploded into a clash with the law, Matthias had become a national scandal.
In the hands of Johnson and Wilentz, the strange tale of the Prophet and his kingdom comes vividly to life, recalling scenes from recent experiences at Jonestown and Waco. They also reveal much about a formative period in American history, showing the connections among rapid economic change, sex and race relations, politics, popular culture, and the rich varieties of American religious experience. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic'
It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations.
In A Leap in the Dark, John Ferling offers a magisterial new history that surges from the first rumblings of colonial protest to the volcanic election of 1800. Ferling's swift-moving narrative teems with fascinating details. We see Benjamin Franklin trying to decide if his loyalty was to Great Britain or to America, and we meet George Washington when he was a shrewd planter-businessman who discovered personal economic advantages to American independence. We encounter those who supported the war against Great Britain in 1776, but opposed independence because it was a "leap in the dark." Following the war, we hear talk in the North of secession from the United States. The author offers a gripping account of the most dramatic events of our history, showing just how closely fought were the struggle for independence, the adoption of the Constitution, and the later battle between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Yet, without slowing the flow of events, he has also produced a landmark study of leadership and ideas. Here is all the erratic brilliance of Hamilton and Jefferson battling to shape the new nation, and here too is the passion and political shrewdness of revolutionaries, such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, and their Loyalist counterparts, Joseph Galloway and Thomas Hutchinson. Here as well are activists who are not so well known today, men like Abraham Yates, who battled for democratic change, and Theodore Sedgwick, who fought to preserve the political and social system of the colonial past. Ferling shows that throughout this period the epic political battles often resembled today's politics and the politicians--the founders--played a political hardball attendant with enmities, selfish motivations, and bitterness. The political stakes, this book demonstrates, were extraordinary: first to secure independence, then to determine the meaning of the American Revolution.
John Ferling has shown himself to be an insightful historian of our Revolution, and an unusually skillful writer. A Leap in the Dark is his masterpiece, work that provokes, enlightens, and entertains in full measure. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Letters from an American Farmer'
Written by an emigrant French aristocrat turned farmer, the Letters from an American Farmer (1782) posed the famous question: "What, then, is the American, this new man?", as a new nation took shape before the eyes of the world. Addressing some of American literature's most pressing concerns and identity issues, these Letters celebrate personal determination, freedom from institutional oppression, and the largeness and fertility of the land. They also address darker and more symbolic elements, particularly slavery. This book is the only critical edition available of what is seen by many as the first-ever work of American literature. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life in Early Philadelphia: Documents from the Revolutionary and Early National Periods'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moby Dick'
Avec Moby Dick, Melville a donné naissance à un livre-culte et inscrit dans la mémoire des hommes un nouveau mythe : celui de la baleine blanche. Fort de son expérience de marin, qui a nourri ses romans précédents et lui a assuré le succès, l'écrivain américain, alors en pleine maturité, raconte la folle quête du capitaine Achab et sa dernière rencontre avec le grand cachalot. Véritable encyclopédie de la mer, nouvelle Bible aux accents prophétiques, parabole chargée de thèmes universels, Moby Dick n'en reste pas moins construit avec une savante maîtrise, maintenant un suspense lent, qui s'accélère peu à peu jusqu'à l'apocalypse finale. L'écriture de Melville, infiniment libre et audacieuse, tour à tour balancée, puis hachée au rythme des houles, des vents et des passions humaines, est d'une richesse exceptionnelle. Il faut remonter à Shakespeare pour trouver l'exemple d'une langue aussi inventive, d'une poésie aussi grandiose. --Scarbo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mutiny on the Globe: The Fatal Voyage of Samuel Comstock'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nation Takes Shape 1789-1837'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New Perspectives on the Early Republic: Essays from the Journal of the Early Republic, 1981-91'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes on the State of Virginia'
Available for the first time in Penguin Classics, Notes on the State of Virginia is at once a scientific discourse, an attempt to define America, and an examination of the idea of freedom. With the same genius and clear, flexible prose style that informs the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson chronicles Virginia's natural, social, and political history.
Frank Shuffleton includes in this edition with selections from relevant correspondence and discusses the work's origins, composition, and initial reception. He focuses particularly on Jefferson's response to contemporary scientific writings on "New World degeneracy"; his differing treatment of Blacks and Native Americans; and his influential (and problematic) role in creating a mythicized American self-image. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784-1898'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Natural History: The Lessons of Lewis and Clark'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pioneers'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Power of Sympathy and the Coquette'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Printers and Press Freedom: The Ideology of Early American Journalism'
In the United States, the press has sometimes been described as an unoffical fourth branch of government, a branch that serves as a check on the other three and provides the information necessary for a democracy to function. Freedom of the press--guaranteed but not defined by the First Amendment of the Constitution--can be fully understood only when examined in the context of the political and intellectual experiences of 18th-century America. Here, Jeffery A. Smith explores how Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, and their contemporaries came to see liberty of the press as a natural and vital part of a democratic republic. Drawing on sources ranging from political philosophers to court records and newspaper essayists, Printers and Press Freedom traces the development of a widespread conception of the press as necessarily exempt from all government restrictions, but still liable for the defamation of individuals. Smith carefully analyzes libertarian press theory and practice in the context of republican ideology and Enlightenment thought--paying particular attention to the cases of Benjamin Franklin and his relatives and associates in the printing business--and concludes that the generation that produced the First Amendment believed that government should not be trusted and that the press needed the broadest possible protection in order to serve as a check on the misuse of power. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party : Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War'
Most Americans remember the Whigs as morally uptight New Englanders who provided us with some of our more mediocre presidents. In his exhaustively researched book The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt partially rehabilitates the reputation of this once-thriving political party. Founded in 1833, following Andrew Jackson's decimation of the Second Bank of the United States, the Whigs were united in the belief that the federal government was obligated to sponsor the nation's internal development and to promote manufacturing and large-scale agricultural endeavors. In Holt's account, however, proponents of Whiggery were divided on numerous other issues.
The nature of these disagreements amongst party leaders (most notably Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and future presidents such as John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore) take up the majority of space in Holt's 1,200-page account. Instead of relating how general sentiment on major issues (such as territorial expansion and the Compromise of 1850) determined the Whigs' fate, Holt shows how local and statewide political caucuses, party "kingmakers," federal patronage, and special interests created competing factions within the party even before sectionalism fractured cooperation between Northern and Southern wings in 1854. Amidst the diffused levels of power that defined the Federalism of the post-Jacksonian era, Holt concludes that the more popular leaders (such as Taylor and Fillmore) tried to balance competition amongst party factions instead of imposing an ideological "hard line" on sectional issues, a move that alienated many of the party's key ideological supporters. Written in an engaging narrative style with a minimal engagement of abstract theory, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party meticulously reconstructs the byzantine world of 19th-century American politics. --John M. Anderson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Scandalmonger'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.s. Exploring Expedition'
The expeditions of Magellan, Columbus, and Lewis and Clark have been well documented and are instantly familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in world history. But the average person is likely unaware of the U.S. Exploring Expedition or its mercurial leader, Charles Wilkes. This despite the numerous accomplishments and lasting legacy of the massive four-year project that involved six ships and hundreds of men. The "Ex. Ex.," as it came to be known, is credited with the discovery of Antarctica, the first accurate charting of what is now Oregon and Washington, the retrieval of thousands of new species of life, and the foundation of the Smithsonian Institution. Yet when Wilkes returned, instead of being hailed as a great man of science or a national hero, he was shunned by the President, ignored by the press, and was the subject of so much ill will on the part of his men that he was ultimately put on trial for a variety of offenses. In the portrayal presented in Nathaniel Philbrick's Sea of Glory, Wilkes is a passionate man, brash and enthusiastic, driven by seemingly impossible goals, many of which he actually accomplished. But he's also a petty, mean-spirited loner, egotistical enough to unilaterally give himself a promotion in the middle of the expedition. Without Wilkes' singularity of purpose, it's hard to imagine the mission being as successful as it was, but it's also hard to conceive a personality more poorly suited to leadership than the near-universally-despised Wilkes. Philbrick also skillfully reveals the insecurity behind the tyranny in excerpts from letters to Wilkes' wife, Jane. The accounts of the expedition's adventures are at various times exhilarating and tragic as the crew scales the volcanoes of Hawaii, becomes involved in a bloody war with Fijian natives, and struggles merely to stay alive while at the same time not killing Wilkes. Philbrick's compelling narrative and meticulous research provide a vivid picture of the triumphs and hardships of the exploration age. --John Moe [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Washington Community, 1800-1828'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States'
An abridgement of the acclaimed White Over Black, which won both the National Book Award and a Bancroft Prize. This study attempts to answer a simple question: What were the attitudes of white men toward Negroes during the first two centuries of European and African settlement in what became the United States of America? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wieland'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wieland; Or the Transformation and Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist'
One of the earliest major American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism. Also included is Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, the unfinished sequel to Wieland, in which Brown considers power and manipulation while tracing Carwin's career as a disciple of the utopist Ludloe. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wieland; Or the Transformation and Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist'
One of the earliest major American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism. Also included is Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, the unfinished sequal to Wieland, in which Brown considers power and manipulation while tracing Carwin's career as a disciple of the utopist Ludloe. [via]
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