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books tagged “US History” (us history)
books tagged “US History”
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The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White Houseby Bob Woodward, Julie RubensteinISBN 0671666843 (0-671-66684-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House'Book summary:Working behind the scenes for the eighteen months following Bill Clinton's election, conducting hundreds of interviews with administration insiders and other key officials, and gaining access to confidential internal memos, diaries, and meeting notes, Bob Woodward has discovered how the Clinton White House really works. Clinton's pledge for a new economic deal was the cornerstone of his 1992 campaign, and fulfilling it has been his central ambition and enterprise as president. By focusing on Clinton's efforts to pass a comprehensive economic recovery plan, Woodward takes us not only to the highest level meetings, the hard-fought debates, and the most difficult decisions but also to the very hear of this presidency -- and of this man. With its day-by-day, often minute-by-minute account, it is one of the most intimate portraits of a sitting president ever published. President Clinton is shown as he debates, scolds, pleads, celebrates, and rages in anger and frustration. What emerges also is a group portrait of Clinton's innermost circle of advisers in action -- including his wife, Hillary; Vice President Al Gore; Treasure Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and the economic team; George Stephanopoulos and David Gergen and the White House staff; James Carville, Paul Begala, and the other outside political strategists; Congressional leaders; and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Using his proven research method -- returning time and again to key sources and relying on the paper trail of internal documentation -- Woodward has assembled an extensive archive of the early Clinton presidency. This microscopic examination of the Clintons and this administration, working under pressure on the nation's most important task, reveals the deep and still unsettled conflicts among President Clinton's advisers and within himself. The questions about the federal deficit, health care, welfare reform, taxes, jobs, government spending, interest rates, the roles and responsibilities of the [via]
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Alexander Hamilton, Americanby Richard BrookhiserISBN 0684863316 (0-684-86331-6)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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America Is Born: A History for Peterby Gerald JohnsonISBN 0688210171 (0-688-21017-1)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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America's First Dynastyby Richard BrookhiserISBN 0684868644 (0-684-86864-4)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'America's First Dynasty'Book summary:In the spirit of his earlier books, Alexander Hamilton: American and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Richard Brookhiser produces an elegant, concise volume drawing on previous scholarship but offering a fresh perspective on four prickly generations of Adamses. Until David McCullough's John Adams became a surprise bestseller, the United States' second president and his descendants seldom had good press. Acknowledging John's essential role in the American Revolution and his son John Quincy's principled fight against slavery, contemporaries and historians nonetheless judged both men poor presidents, characterized by haughty pride and stiff-necked dislike of compromise. Charles Francis Adams, John Quincy's son, lost an almost certain chance to run for president as a Republican in 1872 by disdainfully announcing "that he would reject any nomination that had to be negotiated for;" the most famous book by Charles's son, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), implicitly blames Henry's failure to achieve the prominence of his forefathers on the loss of meaning and coherence in the modern, fragmented world. Tracing the lives and careers of these four men, Brookhiser strikes a balance between their struggles with a daunting heritage and battles with the often unappreciative outer world, identifying "the constant companion of the Adamses" as "the idea of greatness. Am I as great as my ancestors? As great as my contemporaries? Why doesn't the world recognize my greatness?" This proves a sensible organizing principle for his graceful reappraisal of a well-known but not often well-understood family. --Wendy Smith [via]
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Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolutionby Benson BobrickISBN 0684810603 (0-684-81060-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution'Book summary:George Washington at Valley Forge, Benedict Arnold's treason at West Point, Corwallis's defeat at Yorktown--these are the characters and events most Americans remember from their high-school history lessons about the Revolutionary War. Yet the war itself is so removed from us in time, its villains and heroes so remote, that it fails to grasp the place in popular imagination occupied by the Civil War, the two World Wars, or even Vietnam. Benson Bobrick's fresh account of the Revolutionary War, Angel in the Whirlwind, might just change all that. The secret to Bobrick's success lies in his entertaining, lively prose, and--more importantly--in his choice of focus: this account of the American Revolution weaves the fortunes of two of its more fascinating participants, George Washington and Benedict Arnold, into its larger story. Washington's fascination is rooted in his military genius and talent for leadership, Arnold's in his flawed character. At once a fearless soldier and a greedy opportunist, Arnold's perfidy makes an interesting counterpoint to Washington's heroism.
Bobrick does a fine job of covering the ins and outs of this extraordinary war, giving readers enough background to understand the complexities of the issues that led to the Declaration of Independence by taking them through the war years leading to Washington's inauguration. Better yet, he creates a sense of the times in which these stirring events occurred, limning the details of the common people's lives and attitudes to add a sense of immediacy. Angel in the Whirlwind is popular history at its best; George Washington would be proud. [via]
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Bad Landby Jonathan RabanISBN 0679759069 (0-679-75906-9)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bad Land'Book summary:A New York Times Editors' Choice for Book of the Year
Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award
Winner of the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award
"No one has evoked with greater power the marriage of land and sky that gives this country both its beauty and its terror. "
--Washington Post Book World
In 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the Great American Desert. But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily by railroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone bold or foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelessly inventive brochures, countless homesteaders--many of them immigrants--went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country that was the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their story come miraculously alive.
In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories. Startlingly observed, beautifully written, this book is a contemporary classic of the American West.
"Exceptional. . . . A beautifully told historical meditation. "
--Time
"Championship prose. . . . In fifty years don't be surprised if Bad Land is a landmark."
--Los Angeles Times [via]More editions of Bad Land:
Bad Land : An American Romanceby Jonathan RabanISBN 0679442545 (0-679-44254-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of Americaby J. Anthony LukasISBN 0684846179 (0-684-84617-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America'Book summary:In June 1997, just months before publication of his latest book, Big Trouble, Pulitzer-winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas killed himself. He was 64 and, according to many accounts, had finally surrendered to a lifelong despair over what he saw as his inability to meet his own exceedingly high literary standards.
Yet in reading Big Trouble, a gripping account of murder and politics in turn-of-the-century Idaho, one can't help but think that Lukas was far too hard on himself. His last work is a well-told tale of the struggle between labor and capitalists in the West at a time when entire state legislatures were effectively owned by corporate interests and America teetered on the brink of open class warfare.
The story begins with the 1905 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, an ex- governor of Idaho. His murder was rumored to be the work of vengeful labor bosses, and Pinkerton detective James McParland tracked Wobbly organizer Big Bill Haywood all the way to Colorado to bring him back to stand trial, where he and two other men were defended by a team of lawyers that included Clarence Darrow.
During the writing of Common Ground, his account of Boston's painful process of school desegregation in the 1970s, Lukas became intrigued by what he called race's "twin issue": class. "The more I delved into Boston's crisis," he writes in the foreword to Big Trouble, "the more I found the conundrums of race and class inextricably intertwined." Class simply wasn't as overt an issue as race in contemporary society. What Lukas needed was a time and place where class and class struggle were open and visible. He found it in Idaho in 1905, a time of change and uncertainty, when any notion of a large American middle class was still a distant dream. In order to make this era comprehensible to modern readers, Lukas has gone great lengths in Big Trouble to re-create the entire social, political, and economic context of the murder trial. Here are the histories not simply of mining, railroads, and unions, but of detectives, "modern" journalism, baseball, land speculation, and frontier-town boosterism. In its capacity to translate historical facts into an engrossing, insightful read, Big Trouble stands as a final testament to Lukas's well-deserved reputation as a top reporter of America's growing pains. [via]
More editions of Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America:
- Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America: ISBN 0684808587 (0-684-80858-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America: ISBN 0684846179 (0-684-84617-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America: ISBN 0684808587 (0-684-80858-7)
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Brave Companionsby David Willis McCulloughISBN 0671792768 (0-671-79276-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brave Companions'Book summary:The bestselling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition.
Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war"; Frederic Remington; the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard; Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Beryl Markham; Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia; and David Plowden, a present-day photographer of vanishing America.
Different as they are from each other, McCullough's subjects have in common a rare vitality and sense of purpose. These are brave companions: to each other, to David McCullough, and to the reader, for with rare storytelling ability McCullough brings us into the times they knew and their very uncommon lives. [via]
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Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolutionby Diane McWhorterISBN 0684807475 (0-684-80747-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution'Book summary:The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, but a contemporary African American saying predicted that freedom would come only after another hundred years of struggle. That prediction was about right: the civil rights struggle erupted in the middle of the 20th century, with its violent epicenter in the industrial city of Birmingham, Alabama. There freedom riders and voter-rights activists faced down Klansmen and Nazis, who had put aside their own differences to cast a pall of terror--and the smoke of a well-orchestrated campaign of church bombings--over the South.
Diane McWhorter, a journalist and native Alabamian, offers a comprehensive, literate record of the struggle that covers more than half a century and that involves hundreds of major actors. Her work is solidly researched and highly readable, and it offers much new information. Among the many newsworthy aspects of the book are McWhorter's discussions of internal power struggles within the civil rights movement, the uneasy role of Birmingham's small Jewish population, and the collusion of local government--especially swaggering Police Commissioner Bull Connor. The author also addresses the segregationist and white-supremacist movements and recounts the tortuous quest to bring the church bombers to justice, which was finally accomplished in 2000. Carry Me Home is a worthy and highly recommended companion to Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters and Andrew Young's An Easy Burden. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945by Stephen E. AmbroseISBN 0684848015 (0-684-84801-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945'Book summary:This sequel to D-DAY opens at 00:01 hours, June 7, 1944 on the Normandy Beaches and ends at 02:45 hours, May 7, 1945. In between comes the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy, the breakout of Saint-Lo, the Falaise gap, Patton tearing through France, the liberation of Paris, the attempt to leap the Rhine in operation Market-Garden, the near-miraculous German recovery, the battles around Metz and in the Huertgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, the capture of the bridge at Remagen and, finally, the overunning of Germany. From the enlisted men and junior officers, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from those on both sides of the war. The experience of these citizen soldiers reveals the ordinary sufferings and hardships of war. They overcame their fear and inexperience, the mistakes of their high command and their enemy to win the war. [via]
More editions of Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945:
- Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945: ISBN 0684815257 (0-684-81525-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945: ISBN 0684848015 (0-684-84801-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945: ISBN 0684815257 (0-684-81525-7)
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A Clearing in the Distance: Frederich Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Centuryby Witold RybczynskiISBN 0684865750 (0-684-86575-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Clearing in the Distance: Frederich Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century'Book summary:Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best remembered today as a landscape designer, well known for his plans for New York's Central Park and Prospect Park, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the campus of Stanford University, among other noteworthy sites.
But, writes urban studies professor and accomplished author Witold Rybczynski, Olmsted was an American original, a 19th-century success story who packed many careers and wide learning and travel into a long life. He spent time in China and Europe, managed a California gold mine, edited The Nation, commanded a medical unit in the Civil War, and crisscrossed the United States many times over, writing long reports and articles all the while. (One series of reports urged, for instance, that the then-remote Yosemite region of California be made a national park.) Olmsted, Rybczynski suggests, changed the face of America: he had a vision of the American landscape as a reflection of the national character, with its broad vistas and open skies, and he was concerned to make America's urban spaces livable, bringing "trees and greenery into the congested grid of streets." At Olmsted's urging, many American and Canadian cities adopted his system of parks, broad avenues, and greenways, which encouraged the appreciation and preservation of nature; his influence is felt today in the so-called urban ecology movement, and in dozens of public spaces across the continent.
Rybczynski's fine and illuminating biography of Olmsted shows him to have been a man of many parts, an important historical figure whose legacy remains strong nearly a century after his death. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Centuryby Witold RybczynskiISBN 0684824639 (0-684-82463-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century'Book summary:Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best remembered today as a landscape designer, well known for his plans for New York's Central Park and Prospect Park, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the campus of Stanford University, among other noteworthy sites.
But, writes urban studies professor and accomplished author Witold Rybczynski, Olmsted was an American original, a 19th-century success story who packed many careers and wide learning and travel into a long life. He spent time in China and Europe, managed a California gold mine, edited The Nation, commanded a medical unit in the Civil War, and crisscrossed the United States many times over, writing long reports and articles all the while. (One series of reports urged, for instance, that the then-remote Yosemite region of California be made a national park.) Olmsted, Rybczynski suggests, changed the face of America: he had a vision of the American landscape as a reflection of the national character, with its broad vistas and open skies, and he was concerned to make America's urban spaces livable, bringing "trees and greenery into the congested grid of streets." At Olmsted's urging, many American and Canadian cities adopted his system of parks, broad avenues, and greenways, which encouraged the appreciation and preservation of nature; his influence is felt today in the so-called urban ecology movement, and in dozens of public spaces across the continent.
Rybczynski's fine and illuminating biography of Olmsted shows him to have been a man of many parts, an important historical figure whose legacy remains strong nearly a century after his death. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Cold Mountainby Charles FrazierISBN 0679309454 (0-679-30945-4)
Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cold Mountain'Book summary:The hero of Charles Frazier's beautifully written and deeply-imagined first novel is Inman, a disillusioned Confederate soldier who has failed to die as expected after being seriously wounded in battle during the last days of the Civil War. Rather than waiting to be redeployed to the front, the soul-sick Inman deserts, and embarks on a dangerous and lonely odyssey through the devastated South, heading home to North Carolina, and seeking only to be reunited with his beloved, Ada, who has herself been struggling to maintain the family farm she inherited. Cold Mountain is an unforgettable addition to the literature of one of the most important and transformational periods in American history. [via]
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Coming Furyby Bruce CattonISBN 0671543083 (0-671-54308-3)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Coming Fury'Book summary:Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award! A thrilling, page-turning piece of writing that describes the forces conspiring to tear apart the United States--with the disintegrating political processes and rising tempers finally erupting at Bull Run. "...a major work by a major writer, a superb re-creation of the twelve crucial months that opened the Civil War."--The New York Times.[via]More editions of Coming Fury:
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Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil Warby Tony HorwitzISBN 067975833X (0-679-75833-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War'Book summary:Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz returned from years of traipsing through war zones as a foreign correspondent only to find that his childhood obsession with the Civil War had caught up with him. Near his house in Virginia, he happened to encounter people who reenact the Civil War--men who dress up in period costumes and live as Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks. Intrigued, he wound up having some odd adventures with the "hardcores," the fellows who try to immerse themselves in the war, hoping to get what they lovingly term a "period rush." Horwitz spent two years reporting on why Americans are still so obsessed with the war, and the ways in which it resonates today. In the course of his work, he made a sobering side trip to cover a murder that was provoked by the display of the Confederate flag, and he spoke to a number of people seeking to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. Horwitz has a flair for odd details that spark insights, and Confederates in the Attic is a thoughtful and entertaining book that does much to explain America's continuing obsession with the Civil War. [via]
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D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War IIby Stephen E. AmbroseISBN 068480137X (0-684-80137-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'Book summary:Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, Stephen E. Ambrose's D-Day: June 6, 1944 relies on over 1,400 interviews with veterans, as well as prodigious research in military archives on both sides of the Atlantic. He provides a comprehensive history of the invasion which also eloquently testifies as to how common soldiers performed extraordinary feats. A major theme of the book, upon which Ambrose would later expand in Citizen Soldiers, is how the soldiers from the democratic Allied nations rose to the occasion and outperformed German troops thought to be invincible. The many small stories that Ambrose collected from paratroopers, sailors, infantrymen, and civilians make the excitement, confusion, and sheer terror of D-day come alive on the page. --Robert McNamara [via]
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Democracy in Americaby Daniel J. Boorstin, Phillips Bradley, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Alexis De TocquevilleISBN 0679728252 (0-679-72825-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'Book summary:Democracy in America is the classic analysis of America's unique political character, quoted heavily by politicians and perennially popping up on history professors' reading lists. The book's enduring appeal lies in the eloquent, prophetic voice of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French aristocrat who visited the United States in 1831. A thoughtful young man in a still-young country, he succeeded in penning this penetrating study of America's people, culture, history, geography, politics, legal system, and economy. Tocqueville asserts, "I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress."
In addition to a brilliant, perceptive outline of "the philosophical method of the Americans," Volume II of Democracy in America includes the oddly modern-sounding "Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity," the surprising and provocative "How Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes," and the more archaic "The Study of Greek and Latin is Peculiarly Useful in Democratic Communities." This edition--which many consider the best--contains the Henry Reeve text, revised by Francis Bowen, and further edited with introduction, editorial notes, and bibliographies by Phillips Bradley. [via]
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The Devil in the Shape of a Womanby Carol F. KarlsenISBN 0679721843 (0-679-72184-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Devil in the Shape of a Woman'Book summary:Confessing to "Familiarity with the Devils." Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens, was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. In 1662, Ann Cole was "taken with very strange Fits," and fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events in Salem took place. The witch-hunting hysteria that seized New England in the late seventeenth century still haunts us today. Why were these and other women likely witches? Why were certain people vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? In this fascinating work, Professor Carol Karlsen of the University of Michigan draws a compelling, richly detailed portrait of the women who were persecuted as witches. And in what Kirkus Reviews calls "an enlightening contribution to U.S. historical studies." The Devil in the Shape of a Woman gives us an unforgettable look at a society in transition, where fears and witch hunts were manifestations of much deeper sexual, religious, and economic tensions. [via]
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Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859by Allan NevinsISBN 0684104156 (0-684-10415-6)
Hardcover, Macmillan Pub Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859'Book summary:For Americans who believed in the promise of the founders of our nation, these were tragic years. The Atlantic cable was laid in 1858 and the Pony Express linked the West Coast with the East, but the Union was threatened as never before. On March 6, 1857 the Supreme Court decided on the Dred Scott case that Congress lacked the power to exclude slavery from the territories. What was more, Justice Taney ruled that within the meaning of the constitution, a Negro was not a "citizen" who had a right to sue in a Federal court by reason of his citizenship. In this very year the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas was framed by the pro-slavery faction. Although the Constitution was voted down by the people of the territory, President Buchanan swore that Kansas would be admitted to the Union under its provisions. Buchanan failed to get his way. Over this issue, Stephen A. Douglas, stung to fury by what he conceived to be deceit, broke with the administration. In his courageous battle against Buchanan, Douglas smashed the unity of the Democratic party and went on to debate with Lincoln in 1858. Though Douglas defeated Lincoln in the race for the Senate in that year, the real victor, as all the world knows, was the lawyer from Springfield who, as Allan Nevins says, accepted no truth at second hand. 472 pages with illustrations. [via]
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Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861by Allan NevinsISBN 0684104164 (0-684-10416-4)
Hardcover, Gale Group
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Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odysseyby Robert Knox Sneden, Nelson D. Lankford, Charles F. BryanISBN 0684863669 (0-684-86366-9)
Softcover, Free Pr
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Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United Statesby Alan Brinkley, Vincent Virga, Library of CongressISBN 0679443304 (0-679-44330-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States'Book summary:The Library of Congress is the largest library on earth, with more than 111 million items. Eyes of the Nation's nearly 400 lavishly illustrated pages take the reader into the vaults of the library to see such priceless relics as Thomas Jefferson's draft for the Declaration of Independence, James Madison's handwritten "Notes on Debates on the Bill of Rights," and Abraham Lincoln's manuscript of the Emancipation Proclamation. And not only the obvious artifacts of American history are featured. Also included are maps so old that cartographers drew sea serpents cavorting in the ocean waves, a galley of Leaves of Grass with Walt Whitman's handwritten corrections, and a poster advertising the Grateful Dead at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom.
Besides the abundant and well-captioned illustrations, each chapter is introduced by an essay by historian Alan Brinkley, a professor at Columbia and winner of the National Book Award. Brinkley's text could stand alone as a solid, balanced overview of American history. It also adds essential structure and context to the book's parade of images. Eyes of the Nation is a rare combination of ravishing visuals with substantive, carefully conceived text and structure. For anyone interested in the vast American experience, it's nearly impossible to open its pages without being drawn in. [via]
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Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of America in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happenby David ColbertISBN 067976724X (0-679-76724-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of America in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen'Book summary:David Colbert has brought together a rich assembly of voices, offering first-hand accounts of American history spanning almost exactly 500 years, from Christopher Columbus' first encounter with Taino tribesmen in 1492 to the final public display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt at the Washington Mall. At that same mall, in 1963, James Reston and Malcolm X came away with two radically different views of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. For Reston, "Dr. King touched all the themes of the day, only better than anybody else," while Malcolm referred to the entire March on Washington as "another form of the weakening, lulling, and deluding effects of so-called 'integration.'" Within these pages, you will read H.L. Mencken on the Scopes trial, Hunter S. Thompson at Super Bowl VIII, Black Elk's perspective of the Massacre of Wounded Knee, and journal entries from a member of the Donner Party, among many other stories. They are by turns heartbreaking, chilling, mirthful, and exhilarating--and all will remind you that the story of the United States is born in the stories of all its people, famous and "ordinary" alike. [via]
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The Fiftiesby David HalberstamISBN 0679415599 (0-679-41559-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fifties'Book summary:"In retrospect," writes David Halberstam, "the pace of the fifties seemed slower, almost languid. Social ferment, however, was beginning just beneath this placid surface." He shows how the United States began to emerge from the long shadow of FDR's 12-year presidency, with the military-industrial complex and the Beat movement simultaneously growing strong. Television brought not only situation comedies but controversial congressional hearings into millions of living rooms. While Alfred Kinsey was studying people's sex lives, Gregory Pincus and other researchers began work on a pill that would forever alter the course of American reproductive practices. Halberstam takes on these social upheavals and more, charting a course that is as easy to navigate as it is wide-ranging. [via]
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Final Daysby Bob Woodward, Carl BernsteinISBN 0671222988 (0-671-22298-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Final Days'Book summary:The Final Days is the classic, behind-the-scenes account of Richard Nixon's dramatic last months as president. Moment by moment, Bernstein and Woodward portray the taut, post-Watergate White House as Nixon, his family, his staff, and many members of Congress strained desperately to prevent his inevitable resignation. This brilliant book reveals the ordeal of Nixon's fall from office -- one of the gravest crises in presidential history. [via]
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The Final Daysby Carl Bernstein, Bob WoodwardISBN 0671894404 (0-671-89440-4)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Final Days'Book summary:The Final Days is the classic, behind-the-scenes account of Richard Nixon's dramatic last months as president. Moment by moment, Bernstein and Woodward portray the taut, post-Watergate White House as Nixon, his family, his staff, and many members of Congress strained desperately to prevent his inevitable resignation. This brilliant book reveals the ordeal of Nixon's fall from office -- one of the gravest crises in presidential history. [via]
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Fire in the Lake : The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnamby Frances FitzGeraldISBN 0679723943 (0-679-72394-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fire in the Lake : The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam'Book summary:This is the prize winning work of the tragic collision between two cultures - the Vietnamese and the American. [via]
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Five Points : The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slumby Tyler G. AnbinderISBN 0684859955 (0-684-85995-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Five Points : The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum'Book summary:Though long ago bulldozed away and remade, the rough-and-tumble lower Manhattan district called Five Points was once considered to be so representative of New York that foreign journalists traveled there to gather horrifying stories for their readers. Wrote a Swedish reporter, "lower than to the Five Points it is not possible for human nature to sink."
In his wide-ranging reconstruction of Five Points's few square blocks, historian Tyler Anbinder shows that that journalist was not far off the mark. "Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of its residents lived in windowless, teeming apartments that were unfit for habitation," he writes. Alcoholism, violence, and prostitution were commonplace. Poverty was epidemic, and living conditions were so intolerable that the reforming sociologist Jacob Riis used the area as a case study for the wretched excesses of urban life. A corrupt city government kept the police at bay, making the neighborhood safe for a succession of crime lords but woefully dangerous for residents--most of whom, in time, would be newcomers from Ireland, Italy, Russia, and other faraway lands, as well as African Americans newly arrived from the South. "Locked into the lowest-paying occupations," as Anbinder writes, they labored, saved, and eventually moved on, making room for the next wave of immigrants.
Five Points is gone, though a few of its streets remain, marking the edge of Chinatown. Anbinder's careful study brings it back to life. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Societyby Mary Beth NortonISBN 0679749772 (0-679-74977-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Founding Mothers and Fathers : Gendered Power and the Forming of American Societyby Mary B. NortonISBN 0679429654 (0-679-42965-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Founding Mothers and Fathers : Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society'Book summary:Founding Mothers & Fathers is a scholarly study of the responsibilities and rewards New World colonists assigned to adults solely on the basis of gender. Historian Mary Beth Norton asserts that a changing world-view caused the limited power wielded by a handful of early colonial women to trickle away by the time the American Constitution was framed. Since nearly every moment of daily life was subject to intense scrutiny by the entire community, the court records and other public documents Norton diligently combed to make her case are anything but dull, and the offenses and punishments meted out speak loudly to the issues of gendered power.
Crystallizing the inflexibility of gender roles in the American colonies is the tale of a servant known as Thomasine or Thomas Hall, alternately. Raised for two decades as a girl, Hall later switched several times between the clothes and roles of a man and those of a woman. Although outraged townswomen repeatedly assured colonial authorities that Hall was physically male, his feminine mannerisms and skill with a needle and thread so unnerved one regional commander that he demanded Hall "be putt in weomans apparell." Other stories include that of the ne'er-do-well Pinion family, who brawled through two generations of theft, adultery, and domestic squabbles in New England, and a man and woman brought up before a Virginia tribunal accused of "a great bussleling and juggling of the bed" judged unseemly in an unmarried couple. Founding Mothers & Fathers offers a full-bellied, incisive view of a developing social hierarchy and the slim margin of power that women held and lost within it. --Francesca Coltrera [via]
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Gilded City: Scandal and Sensation in Turn of the Century New Yorkby M. H. DunlopISBN 0688171443 (0-688-17144-3)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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The Grapes of Wrathby John Steinbeck, Brad LeithauserISBN 0679420401 (0-679-42040-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Grapes of Wrath'Book summary:When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.
The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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Hard Timesby Studs TerkelISBN 067150438X (0-671-50438-X)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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The Haymarket Tragedyby Paul AvrichISBN 0691006008 (0-691-00600-8)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Financeby Ron ChernowISBN 0671734008 (0-671-73400-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolutionby Bernard BailynISBN 0674443020 (0-674-44302-0)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution'Book summary:The leaders of the American Revolution, writes the distinguished historian Bernard Bailyn, were radicals. But their concern was not to correct inequalities of class or income, not to remake the social order, but to "purify a corrupt constitution and fight off the apparent growth of prerogative power." They wished, in other words, to mend a broken system and improve upon it. In doing so they drew on many traditions of political and social thought, ranging from English conservative philosophers to exponents of the continental Enlightenment, from backward-looking interpretations of ancient Roman civilization to forward-looking views of a new American people. Bailyn carefully examines these sources of sometimes conflicting ideas and considers how the framers of the Constitution resolved them in their inventive doctrine of federalism. [via]
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girlby Harriet A. Jacobs, Jean Fagan Yellin, John S. Jacobs, Lydia Maria Francis ChildISBN 0674002784 (0-674-00278-4)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herselfby John Jacobs, Jean Fagan Yellin, John S. JacobsISBN 0674002717 (0-674-00271-7)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself'Book summary:THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.
This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative now completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John Jacobs's short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother's perspective to Harriet Jacobs's own autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents additional historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Importantly, it presents the people, places, and events Harriet Jacobs wrote about from the different perspective of a male narrator. Once more, Jean Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication. She has also brought her Introduction up to date.
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself: Written by Herselfby L.Maria Child, Harriet A. Jacobs, Jean Fagan Yellin, Lydia Maria Francis ChildISBN 0674447468 (0-674-44746-8)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Israel On The Appomattox: A Southern Experiment In Black Freedom From The 1790s Through The Civil Warby Melvin Patrick ElyISBN 0679768726 (0-679-76872-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Israel On The Appomattox: A Southern Experiment In Black Freedom From The 1790s Through The Civil War'Book summary:WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEA New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' ChoiceThomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong. Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife. Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South. [via]
More editions of Israel On The Appomattox: A Southern Experiment In Black Freedom From The 1790s Through The Civil War:
- Israel on the Appomattox : A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War: ISBN 0679447385 (0-679-44738-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group - Israel On The Appomattox: A Southern Experiment In Black Freedom From The 1790s Through The Civil War: ISBN 0679768726 (0-679-76872-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- Israel on the Appomattox : A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War: ISBN 0679447385 (0-679-44738-5)
Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Cultureby William LeachISBN 0679754113 (0-679-75411-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Last Days of Innocence: America at War 1917-1918by Meirion Harries, Susie HarriesISBN 0679743766 (0-679-74376-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last Days of Innocence: America at War 1917-1918'Book summary:In The Last Days of Innocence Meirion and Susie Harries describe World War I as the portal through which the United States stepped into the 20th century. As a relatively naive and still young nation, the United States entered the European war to defend ideals of democracy and self-determination. It emerged from the conflict not as a clear victor but as a nation transformed: militarized, nationalistic, rife with a hatred of "foreigners," and saddled by class and racial divisions. The Harries illustrate how mobilization for "total war" altered America, placing great emphasis on the growth of the federal government's role in American society and the often maligned sacrifices made by Americans. Five million men were conscripted and $33 billion dollars spent for a war that did little to promote American ideals or interests. The authors examined archival material from American, British, and French sources, and this lends complexity and originality to their work. The Last Days of Innocence is a challenging, at times controversial, revisionist account of America's involvement in the Great War and its lasting effects on American government and society. [via]
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Lies Across America : What Our Historic Sites Get Wrongby James W. LoewenISBN 0684870673 (0-684-87067-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lies Across America : What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong'Book summary:Little seems to delight historian James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, more than picking apart the cherished myths of American history. Few Americans study history after high school--instead, Loewen writes, they turn to novels and Oliver Stone movies to learn about the past. And they turn to the landscape, to roadside historical markers, guidebooks, museums, and tours of battlefields, childhood homes, and massacre sites. If you were to trust those sources, Loewen suggests, you would learn, erroneously, that the first airplane flight took place not at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but at Pittsburg, Texas. "It must be true--an impressive-looking Texas state historical marker says so!" Loewen chortles.
In these entertaining pages, Loewen takes a region-by-region tour of the United States, pointing out historical oddments as he travels. For example, a massacre of white pioneers by Indians commemorated in Almo, Idaho, never took place, Loewen continues; neither did many other such events. Indeed, he insists, "throughout the entire West between 1842 and 1859, of more than 400,000 pioneers crossing the plains, fewer than 400, or less than .1 percent, were killed by American Indians." And if you were to visit Helen Keller's Georgia birthplace, over which a Confederate flag flies, you would get the impression that Keller had been an unreconstructed daughter of the Old South, whereas she was in fact an early supporter of the NAACP. And so on.
After finishing Loewen's alternately angry and bemused exposé, readers will likely never trust a roadside historical marker or tour guide again--which may prompt them to turn to history books to check things out for themselves. As well they should. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Life on the Mississippiby Mark Twain, Jonathan Raban, Library of America StaffISBN 067972527X (0-679-72527-X)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life on the Mississippi'Book summary:Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twains most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twains life before he began to write.
Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatest in English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his time but also Americas most profound chronicler of the human comedy.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]-
Lincolnby Gore VidalISBN 0679600485 (0-679-60048-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lincoln'Book summary:Lincoln is a masterwork of historical fiction, in which Gore Vidal combines a comprehensive knowledge of Civil War America with 20th-century literary technique, probing the minds and motives of the men surrounding Abraham Lincoln, including personal secretary John Hay and scheming cabinet members William Seward and Salmon P. Chase, as well as his wife, Mary Todd. It is a book monumental in scope that never loses sight of the intimate and personal in its depiction of the power struggles that accompanied Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union at all costs--efforts in which the eradication of slavery was far from the president's main objective. As usual, there's plenty of room for Vidal's wickedly humorous deflation of American icons, including a comic interlude in a Washington bordello in which Lincoln's former law partner informs Hay that Lincoln had contracted syphilis as a young man and had, just before marrying Mary Todd, suffered what can only be described as a nervous breakdown. (Protestors should note that Vidal is only passing along what that former partner had written in his own biography of Lincoln.) Don't be intimidated by the size of Lincoln; if you like historical fiction, you should read this book at the first opportunity. --Ron Hogan [via]
Lost Prophet : The Life and Times of Bayard Rustinby John D'EmilioISBN 0684827808 (0-684-82780-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Low Life : Lures and Snares of Old New Yorkby Luc SanteISBN 0679738762 (0-679-73876-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Low Life : Lures and Snares of Old New York'Book summary:There are very few classics in the field of pop culture--the academic stuff tends to be too dry and the fun stuff is too quickly dated. This book by Luc Sante is the exception--in fluid prose liberally sprinkled with astute metaphors, Sante tells the story of New York's Lower East Side, circa 1840-1920. The personal histories of criminals, prostitutes, losers, and swindlers bring to life the social and statistical history that the author has meticulously researched. Not limiting himself to the usual sources, Sante finds his history in old copies of Police Gazette as well as actual police, fire, and social service records. Above all, what really makes this book work is the writing, which brings to life a culture of the streets that continues to form a silent influence on our contemporary popular culture. [via]
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The Making of the President, 1968by Theodore Harold WhiteISBN 0689102933 (0-689-10293-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Merchandise &
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Mellon: An American Lifeby David CannadineISBN 0679450327 (0-679-45032-7)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West: The Climactic Battle of World War IIby Stephen E. AmbroseISBN 0671884034 (0-671-88403-4)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Mornings on Horsebackby David G. McCulloughISBN 0671447548 (0-671-44754-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mornings on Horseback'Book summary:FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JOHN ADAMS
Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it is the story of a remarkable little boy -- seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma -- and his struggle to manhood.
His father -- the first Theodore Roosevelt, "Greatheart," -- is a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. His mother -- Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt -- is a Southerner and celebrated beauty.
Mornings on Horseback spans seventeen years -- from 1869 when little "Teedie" is ten, to 1886 when he returns from the West a "real life cowboy" to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit.
This is a tale about family love and family loyalty...about courtship, childbirth and death, fathers and sons...about gutter politics and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884...about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and "blessed" mornings on horseback at Oyster Bay or beneath the limitless skies of the Badlands. [via]
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The New Americans : Colonial Times: 1620-1689by Betsy Maestro, Giulio MaestroISBN 0688134483 (0-688-13448-3)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63by Taylor BranchISBN 0671687425 (0-671-68742-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63'Book summary:An award-winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., a history of the civil rights movement, and a portrait of an era, Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters begins slowly but soon catches the listener in a tumult of unforgettable events. Branch's thorough research has been synthesized into an impressive account of the violence, courage, and confusion at the beginning of the civil rights movement, building to a powerful conclusion with a blow-by-blow retelling of the events in Birmingham, Alabama. Ably narrated by Joe Morton and C.C.H. Pounder, the audio abridgment is occasionally choppy, but well-done considering the print edition runs about 900 pages. The broad cast of characters includes Baptist preachers and student movement leaders as well as President John F. Kennedy and his cabinet. If you are daunted by the sheer mass of the print edition of Parting the Waters, this abridged production is for you. However don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting more and digging into the print version after all or perhaps the audio version of Pillar of Fire, Taylor's second book in his projected three-part series. (Running time: 6 Hours; 4 cassettes) [via]
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Patriotsby A.J. LangguthISBN 0671675621 (0-671-67562-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Patriots : The Men Who Started the American Revolutionby A. J. LangguthISBN 0671523759 (0-671-52375-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Patriots : The Men Who Started the American Revolution'Book summary:With meticulous research and page-turning suspense, Patriots brings to life the American Revolution -- the battles, the treacheries, and the dynamic personalities of the men who forged our freedom. George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry -- these heroes were men of intellect, passion, and ambition. From the secret meetings of the Sons of Liberty to the final victory at Yorktown and the new Congress, Patriots vividly re-creates one of history's great eras. [via]
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Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65by Taylor BranchISBN 0684848090 (0-684-84809-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65'Book summary:In "Pillar of Fire", the second volume of his America in the King Years trilogy, Taylor Branch portrays the civil rights era at its zenith. The first volume, "Parting the Waters", won the Pulitzer Prize for History. It is a monumental chronicle of a movement that stirred from Southern black churches to challenge the national conscience during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. In this masterly continuation of the narrative, Branch recounts the climactic struggles as they commanded the national and international stage.
"Pillar of Fire" covers the far-flung upheavals of the years 1963 to 1965-- Dallas, St. Augustine, Mississippi Freedom Summer, LBJ's Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Vietnam, Selma. And it provides a frank, revealing portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.-- haunted by blackmail, factionalism, and hatred while he tried to hold the nonviolent movement together as a dramatic force in history. Allies, rivals, and opponents addressed racial issues that went deeper than fair treatment at bus stops or lunch counters. Participants on all sides stretched themselves and their country to the breaking point over the meaning of simple words: dignity, equal votes, equal souls.
Branch's gallery of historic characters also includes:
Malcolm X, who challenged King's vision of nonviolent integration and lived under threat of death from the Nation of Islam.
Lyndon Johnson, who believed racial conflict was destroying his political base in the South and threatening his dream to end poverty.
J. Edgar Hoover, under whose direction the FBI, with Attorney General Robert Kennedy's approval, spied on King with wiretaps and bugs, and yet solved the most heinous racial crimes of the era.
Diane Nash, the passionate leader behind sit-ins and Freedom Rides, whose determination shaped the Selma voting rights movement.
Abraham Heschel, the Hasidic theologian who bonded with King in devotion to the Hebrew prophets.
Robert Moses, the Mississippi SNCC leader who finally came undone over the human suffering caused by his Freedom Summer.
Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who commanded a powerful voice for the unlettered.
"Pillar of Fire" takes readers inside the dramas that shook every American institution, from the local pulpit to the Presidency. We disappear with courageous young people into Mississippi's feudal Parchman Penitentiary. We absorb the shock of a single Presidential election in 1964 that revolutionized the structure of partisan politics. We follow Northern rabbis summoned by King, and Mary Peabody, mother of the governor of Massachusetts, into the segregated jails of St. Augustine, Florida. We witness the Shakespearean conflicts between Lyndon Johnson and King and Hoover and Robert Kennedy.
Branch brings to bear fifteen years of research-- archival investigation; nearly two thousand interviews: new primary sources, from FBI wiretaps to White House telephone recordings-- in a seminal work of history. "Pillar of Fire" captures the intensity of the legendary King years, when the movement broke down walls between races, regions, sexes, and religions, and between America and the larger world. Its struggle to rescue and redeem, its victories and defeats, its failings and sacrifices gave rise to opposing tides that still dominate the national debate about justice and democratic government. The story of this movement is an incandescent chapter in America's distinctive quest for freedom. [via]
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Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontierby Joanna L. StrattonISBN 0671447483 (0-671-44748-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier'Book summary:From a rediscovered collection of priceless autobiographical accounts written by hundreds of pioneer women, Joanna Stratton has made a remarkable and widely celebrated book. Never before has there been such a detailed record of women's courage, such a living portrait of the women who civilized the American frontier. Here are their stories: wilderness mothers, schoolmarms, Indian squaws, immigrants, homesteaders, and circuit riders. Their personal recollections of prairie fires, locust plagues, cowboy shootouts, Indian raids, and blizzards on the plains vividly reveal the drama, danger and excitement of the pioneer experience.
These were women of relentless determination, whose tenacity helped them to conquer loneliness and privation. Their work was the work of survival, it demanded as much from them as from their men -- and at last that partnership has been recognized. "These voices are haunting" (New York Times Book Review), and they reveal the special heroism and industriousness of pioneer women as never before. [via]
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President Kennedy: Profile of Powerby Richard ReevesISBN 0671892894 (0-671-89289-4)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'President Kennedy: Profile of Power'Book summary:President Kennedy is the compelling, dramatic history of JFK's thousand days in office. It illuminates the presidential center of power by providing an indepth look at the day-by-day decisions and dilemmas of the thirty-fifth president as he faced everything from the threat of nuclear war abroad to racial unrest at home. [via]
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Revolutionary War on Wednesdayby Mary Osborne, Sal MurdoccaISBN 0679890688 (0-679-89068-8)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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Shadowby Bob WoodwardISBN 0684852632 (0-684-85263-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shadow'Book summary:There are two ways to look at this bestseller by Watergate scoopmeister Woodward. First, it's an original take on Clinton's sex scandal, framing it as the latest consequence of Nixon's assault on the U.S. political system. Woodward sketches each president's tussles with scandal managing after Watergate permanently turned up the press heat on the White House. Ford lies about a meeting concerning a potential deal to pardon Nixon, but remains convinced he did nothing wrong. Carter's pious advocacy of truth telling backfires when he's confronted with conundrums involving his pal Bert Lance, the fallout from CIA-provided hookers, and cash for King Hussein. Reagan's men try to make him understand the lies and shocking wrongness of the Iran-Contra debacle, but he simply, stubbornly doesn't get it. And by the time prosecutors interview Reagan in 1992, he's so ill he can't remember his own oldest friends and advisers.
All provocative stuff, some of it new. But most readers will flip to the book's second half, a fly-on-the-wall account of the backroom mud-wrestling in both the Clinton and Starr camps in the Monicagate morass. It's a trove of racy facts (mostly from anonymous sources). We read that Clinton called Nixon a "war criminal," yet tried to minimize Watergate in his Nixon eulogy, that he disgusted Ford and Jack Nicklaus by cheating while golfing with them, and that he kept falsely assuring aides, "I'm retired! [as an adulterer]." We hear Hillary's alleged words of agony and see the pain on Bill's face after Chelsea reads The Starr Report on the Internet. Starr comes off like RoboCop without the human side. Woodward calls him "pathetic and unwise" in rejecting his staff's urgent demand not to send the lurid details of presidential sex to Congress. "I love the narrative!" Starr weirdly exulted, according to Woodward's new Deep Throat (or Throats). Since Monica was interrogated at Starr's mother-in-law's apartment, which he called "Grandma's place," ethics expert Sam Dash suggested they call it "Operation Red Riding Hood." What sharp teeth everyone in this book has!
To tell the truth, Woodward doesn't really knit together 25 years' worth of scandals into a single strong narrative. But the Clinton part is the closest thing yet to what we all crave: a tale of Monicagate with some of the flavor of a John Grisham thriller. --Tim Appelo [via]
Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrimsby Clyde Robert BullaISBN 0690766424 (0-690-76642-4)
Hardcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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A Struggle for Power: The American Revolutionby Theodore DraperISBN 0679776427 (0-679-77642-7)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution'Book summary:rom one of the great political journalists of our time comes a boldly argued reinterpretation of the central event in our collective past--a book that portrays the American Revolution not as a clash of ideologies but as a Machiavellian struggle for power. [via]
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Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Rightby Lisa McGirrISBN 0691096112 (0-691-09611-2)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right'Book summary:In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers's accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman James B. Utt that "barefooted Africans" were training in Georgia to help the United Nations take over the country. Yet, in Utt's home district of Orange County, thousands of middle-class suburbanites proceeded to organize a powerful conservative movement that would land Ronald Reagan in the White House and redefine the spectrum of acceptable politics into the next century.
Suburban Warriors introduces us to these people: women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses; members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education; pro-life Democrats gradually drawn into conservative circles; and new arrivals finding work in defense companies and a sense of community in Orange County's mushrooming evangelical churches. We learn what motivated them and how they interpreted their political activity. Lisa McGirr shows that their movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures. She describes how these suburban pioneers created new political and social philosophies anchored in a fusion of Christian fundamentalism, xenophobic nationalism, and western libertarianism.
While introducing these rank-and-file activists, McGirr chronicles Orange County's rise from "nut country" to political vanguard. Through this history, she traces the evolution of the New Right from a virulent anticommunist, anti-establishment fringe to a broad national movement nourished by evangelical Protestantism. Her original contribution to the social history of politics broadens--and often upsets--our understanding of the deep and tenacious roots of popular conservatism in America.
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Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religionby Edward J. LarsonISBN 0674854292 (0-674-85429-2)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion'Book summary:If you haven't seen the film version of Inherit the Wind, you might have read it in high school. And even people who have never heard of either the movie or the play probably know something about the events that inspired them: The 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," during which Darwin's theory of evolution was essentially put on trial before the nation. Inherit the Wind paints a romantic picture of John Scopes as a principled biology teacher driven to present scientific theory to his students, even in the teeth of a Tennessee state law prohibiting the teaching of anything other than creationism. The truth, it turns out, was something quite different. In his fascinating history of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, Edward J. Larson makes it abundantly clear that Truth and the Purity of Science had very little to do with the Scopes case. Tennessee had passed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union responded by advertising statewide for a high-school teacher willing to defy the law. Communities all across Tennessee saw an opportunity to put themselves on the map by hosting such a controversial trial, but it was the town of Dayton that came up with a sacrificial victim: John Scopes, a man who knew little about evolution and wasn't even the class's regular teacher. Chosen by the city fathers, Scopes obligingly broke the law and was carted off to jail to await trial.
What happened next was a bizarre mix of theatrics and law, enacted by William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Though Darrow lost the trial, he made his point--and his career--by calling Bryan, a noted Bible expert, as a witness for the defense. Summer for the Gods is a remarkable retelling of the trial and the events leading up to it, proof positive that truth is stranger than science. [via]
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Theodore Rooseveltby Kathleen DaltonISBN 0679767339 (0-679-76733-9)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Lifeby Kathleen DaltonISBN 067944663X (0-679-44663-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.by Ron ChernowISBN 0679757031 (0-679-75703-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'Book summary:The patrician accent of George Plimpton (author of Truman Capote and The X Factor), with its edge of aristocracy and money, is perfectly suited for telling the rags-to-riches story of America's most famous businessman and philanthropist. Indeed, Plimpton seems to positively relish the superlatives that describe the life of John D. Rockefeller, who was far and away one of the most calculating, secretive, competitive, merciless, and talented figures ever to dominate the free market. Showing, early on, his keen attachment to hard work and keeping accounts, Rockefeller started out as an accountant in Cleveland. From there he went into the produce business, and then on to oil. By the time he was 31, he was the most powerful oil refinery owner in the world. His strategies for suppressing competition and controlling all aspects of the oil business while still paying attention to the smallest details make for dramatic listening in this well-documented and accessible narrative. Plimpton recounts how Rockefeller was the ultimate clutch player, calm in the face of adversity, a manager who was constantly searching for talented people and another way to grow Standard Oil into a megalithic modern corporation. Ultimately his rapacious business practices would make him head of the most powerful monopoly in America and the richest man in the world. Plimpton's engrossing reading of Titan brings out the human side of Rockefeller, a man of contradictions who was greedy yet giving, a capitalist villain and a do-gooder. A teetotalling Baptist, he began giving to charity when he was earning just a few dollars a week. As his wealth grew, so too his financial gifts. In the end, Rockefeller's philanthropic acts rivaled the precedents he set as a businessman. The oil baron died just short of his last goal--to reach the age of 100--but the indelible imprint he made on America's financial landscape will live on into the 21st century. (Running time: six hours, four cassettes) --A.E.D. [via]
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True Stories About Abraham Lincolnby Ruth Belov Gross, Jill KastnerISBN 0688087981 (0-688-08798-1)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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Up from Slavery: An Autobiographyby Booker T. WashingtonISBN 0679640142 (0-679-64014-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up from Slavery: An Autobiography'Book summary:Nineteenth-century African American businessman, activist, and educator Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery is one of the greatest American autobiographies ever written. Its mantras of black economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of black leaders, including Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. In rags-to-riches fashion, Washington recounts his ascendance from early life as a mulatto slave in Virginia to a 34-year term as president of the influential, agriculturally based Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From that position, Washington reigned as the most important leader of his people, with slogans like "cast down your buckets," which emphasized vocational merit rather than the academic and political excellence championed by his contemporary rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Though many considered him too accommodating to segregationists, Washington, as he said in his historic "Atlanta Compromise" speech of 1895, believed that "political agitation alone would not save [the Negro]," and that "property, industry, skill, intelligence, and character" would prove necessary to black Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive today in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of black American society. [via]
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Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society From Conquest and Colonization Through Reconstructionby David Brundage, Bruce Levine, Stephen Brier, Edward CountrymanISBN 0679726993 (0-679-72699-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society From Conquest and Colonization Through Reconstruction'Book summary:At last, an American history about working Americans: what they thought, what they did, what happened to them. Volume One takes us from conquest and colonization through industrial expansion, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Great Uprising of 1877 [via]
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Will You Sign Here, John Hancockby Jean Fritz, Trina Schart HymanISBN 069811440X (0-698-11440-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture and Society : From the Gilded Age to the Presentby American Social History Project StaffISBN 0679730222 (0-679-73022-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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