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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alistair Cooke's America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All the President's Men'
In the most devastating political detective story of the century, two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened.
Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing with headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward kept the tale of conspiracy and the trail of dirty tricks coming -- delivering the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon's scandalous downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post and toppled the President. This is the book that changed America. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'All the President's Men'
The 25th-anniversary edition of Bernstein and Woodward's classic of investigative journalism.
In what must be the most devastating political detective story of the century, two young "Washington Post" reporters whose brilliant investigative journalism smashed the Watergate scandal wide open tell the whole behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened.
The story begins with a burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972. Bob Woodward, who was then working on the "Washington Post's" District of Columbia staff, was called into the office on a Saturday morning to cover the story. Carl Bernstein, a Virginia political reporter on the "Post," was also assigned. The two men soon learned that this was not a simple burglary.
Following lead after lead, Woodward and Bernstein picked up a trail of money, secrecy and high-level pressure that led to the Oval Office and implicated the men closest to Richard Nixon and then the President himself. Over the months, Woodward met secretly with Deep Throat, now perhaps America's most famous still-anonymous source.
Here is the amazing story. From the first suspicions through the tortuous days of reporting and finally getting people to talk, the journalists were able to put the pieces of the puzzle together and produce the stories that won the "Post" a Pulitzer Prize. "All the President's Men" is the inside story of how Bernstein and Woodward broke the story that brought about the President's downfall. This is the reporting that changed the American presidency. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson'
Well timed to coincide with Ken Burns's documentary (on which the author served as a consultant), this new biography doesn't aim to displace the many massive tomes about America's third president that already weigh down bookshelves. Instead, as suggested by the subtitle--"The Character of Thomas Jefferson"--Ellis searches for the "living, breathing person" underneath the icon and tries to elucidate his actual beliefs. Jefferson's most ardent admirers may find this perspective too critical, but Ellis's portrait of a complex, sometimes devious man who both sought and abhorred power has the ring of truth. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'
First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West'
First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West'
First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
Edited, with an Introduction, by Thomas Bender [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
Tocqueville's monumental book is as relevant today as when it was first published in the mid-nineteenth century, and it remains the most comprehensive, penetrating, and astute picture of American life, politics, and morals ever written -- whether by an American or, as in this case, a foreign visitor. This special edition contains the entire two volumes of Democracy in America, based on the second revised and corrected text of the 1961 French edition, meticulously edited by the distinguished Tocqueville scholar J.P. Mayer. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
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 succeede 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 [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America'
Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don't Know Much About History'
Finally, someone who tells history like it was, without the old textbook gloss that's put so many students into premature naptime and misinformed the few who stayed awake. Davis corrects the myths and misconceptions from Columbus up through the Clinton administration, and shows that truth is more entertaining than propaganda. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned'
Finally, someone who tells history like it was, without the old textbook gloss that's put so many students into premature naptime and misinformed the few who stayed awake. Davis corrects the myths and misconceptions from Columbus up through the Clinton administration, and shows that truth is more entertaining than propaganda. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First Salute'
This is a narrative history of the tumultuous years of the American War of Independence, using the salute of the St Eustatius as the starting point in an examination of the rivalries that determined Europe's crucial role in the American struggle. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Greatest Generation'
Tom Brokaw was born in 1940, but it wasn't until he was a famous newscaster that he began to contemplate what his parents' generation--those born between 1910 and the mid-1920s--had accomplished. Narrating his own book, he discusses the sacrifices those men and women made: the bodily harm they suffered in war, the diligence with which they built families and businesses, the courage they displayed in rehabilitating their war wounds, the integrity and values that infused their lives. "They never whined or whimpered," Brokaw notes. The stories these men and women tell Brokaw are consistently startling--triumphant, tragic, courageous, sad, miraculous. Although Brokaw never gets maudlin or sappy, most people will find it impossible to listen to this audiobook with dry eyes. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) --Lou Schuler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'His Excellency: George Washington'
As commander of the Continental army, George Washington united the American colonies, defeated the British army, and became the world's most famous man. But how much do we really know about the first president of the United States? Today, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph J. Ellis says in this crackling biography, Americans see their first president on dollar bills, quarters, and Mount Rushmore, but only as "an icon--distant, cold, intimidating." In truth, Washington was a deeply emotional man, but one who prized and practiced self-control (an attribute reinforced during his years on the battlefield).
Washington first gained recognition as a 21-year-old emissary for the governor of Virginia, braving savage conditions to confront encroaching French forces. As the de facto leader of the American Revolution, he not only won the country's independence, but helped shape its political personality and "topple the monarchical and aristocratic dynasties of the Old World." When the Congress unanimously elected him president, Washington accepted reluctantly, driven by his belief that the union's very viability depended on a powerful central government. In fact, keeping the country together in the face of regional allegiances and the rise of political parties may be his greatest presidential achievement.
Based on Washington's personal letters and papers, His Excellency is smart and accessible (not to mention relatively brief, in comparison to other encyclopedic presidential tomes)--Ellis's short, succinct sentences speak volumes, allowing readers to glimpse the man behind the myth. --Andy Boynton
Amazon.com Exclusive Content
Curious about George?
Amazon.com reveals a few facts about the legendary first president of the United States
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| Washington bust by Jean Antoine Houdon. Courtesy of the Mt. Vernon Ladies' Assoc. |
1. The famous tale about Washington chopping down the cherry tree ("Father, I cannot tell a lie") is a complete fabrication.
2. George Washington never threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River--in fact, to do so from the shore of his Mount Vernon home would have been physically impossible.
3. George Washington did not wear wooden teeth. His poorly-fitting false teeth were in fact made of cow's teeth, human teeth, and elephant ivory set in a lead base.
4. Early in his life, Washington was himself a slave owner. His opinions changed after he commanded a multi-racial army in the Revolutionary War. He eventually came to recognize slavery as "a massive American anomaly."
5. In 1759, having resigned as Virginia's military commander to become a planter, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis. Washingtons marriage to the colony's wealthiest widow dramatically changed his life, catapulting him into Virginia aristocracy.
6. Scholars have discredited suggestions that Washington's marriage to Martha lacked passion, as well as the provocative implications of the well worn phrase "George Washington slept here."
7. Washington held his first public office when he was 17 years old, as surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia.
8. At age 20, despite no prior military experience, Washington was appointed an adjutant in the Virginia militia, in which he oversaw several militia companies, and was assigned the rank of major.
9. As a Virginia aristocrat, Washington ordered all his coats, shirts, pants, and shoes from London. However, most likely due to the misleading instructions he gave his tailor, the suits almost never fit. Perhaps this is why he appears in an old military uniform in his 1772 portrait.
10. In 1751, during a trip to Barbados with his half-brother Lawrence, Washington was stricken with smallpox and permanently scarred. Fortunately, this early exposure made him immune to the disease that would wipe out colonial troops during the Revolutionary War.
Timeline
Important Dates in George Washington's Life
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| Engraving of Mount Vernon, 1804. Courtesy of the Mt. Vernon Ladies' Assoc. |
1732: George Washington is born at his father's estate in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
1743: Georges father, Augustine Washington, dies.
1752: At age 20, despite the fact that he has never served in the military, Washington is appointed adjutant in the Virginia militia, with the rank of major.
1753: As an emissary to Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie, he travels to the Ohio River valley to confront French forces--the first of a series of encounters that would lead to the French and Indian War.
1755: Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of Virginia's militia.
1759: He marries wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis.
1774: Washington is elected to the First Continental Congress.
1775: He is unanimously elected by the Continental Congress as its army's commander-in-chief. Start of the American Revolution.
1776: On Christmas day, Washington leads his army across the Delaware River, and launches a successful attack against Hessian troops in Trenton, New Jersey.
1781: With the French, he defeats British troops in Yorktown, Virginia, precipitating the end of the war.
1783: The Revolutionary War officially ends.
1788: The Constitution is ratified.
1789: Washington is elected president.
1797: He fulfills his last term as president.
1799: Washington dies on December 14, sparking a period of national mourning.
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![[???]: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Tanks and Fighting Vehicles: A Technical Directory of Major Combat Vehicles from World War I to the Prese [???]: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Tanks and Fighting Vehicles: A Technical Directory of Major Combat Vehicles from World War I to the Prese](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0861010035.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Illustrated Souls Of Black Folk'
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line . . . - W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903. This prophetic statement made by W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago is from The Souls of Black Folk. One hundred years later, Souls remains the most important treatment of African-American life and culture published in the Twentieth century. Richly illustrated, this special edition of Du Bois's seminal work includes historical woodcuts and engravings, photos, and documents. Most of the photos, engravings, and documents are from the 19th and early 20th century and depict American slavery and its legacy, African-American life, and the prominent figures and events associated with the book's content. Assembled by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., this illustrated edition of The Souls of Black Folk also offers extensive annotations, commentary, and related materials from government, the media, advertising, and popular culture. Documents include: the Act Establishing the Freedman's Bureau; Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Speech; W. E. B. Du Bois's essay The Talented Tenth; Ida B. Wells-Barnett's The Lynch Law in Georgia; W. E. B. Du Bois's report The Negro in the Black Belt; Alexander Crummell's sermon Common Sense and Schooling; W. E. B. Du Bois's story The Black Man Brings His Gifts; Thomas W. Higginson's Negro Spirituals, and more. Annotated, Illustrated, Documentary Editions are a new series of books created by Eugene Provenzo and Paradigm Publishers, offering classic works in Literature, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities with extensive commentary, illustrations, and related documentary sources. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Isaac's Storm'
Galveston, Texas, 8 September 1900. It's another fine day in the Gulf according to Isaac Cline, chief observer of the new US Weather Bureau, but one day later, 6-10,000 people were dead, wiped out by the biggest storm the coast of America had ever witnessed. Isaac Cline was confident of his ability to predict the weather: he had new technology at his disposal, 'perfect science', and, like America itself, he was sure that he was in control of his world, that the new century would be the American century, that the future was man's to command. And the coastal city of Galveston was a prosperous, enthusiastic place - a jewel of progress and contentment, a model for the new century. The storm blew up in Cuba. It was, in modern jargon, an X-storm - an extreme hurricane - and it did not circle around the Gulf of Mexicao as storms routinely did. On 8 September 1900 it ploughed straight into Galveston. It was the meteorological equivalent of the Big One. It was to be the worst natural disaster ever to befall America to this day: between six and ten thousand people died, including Isaac Cline's wife and unborn child. With them died Cline's and America's hubris: the storm had simply blown them away. Told with a novelist's skill this is the true story of an awful and terrible natural catastrophe. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Isaac's Storm: The Drowning of Galveston, 8 September 1900'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Johnny Tremain'
This story of a tragically injured young silversmith who ends up hip-deep in the American Revolution is inspiring, exciting, and sad. Winner of the prestigious Newbery Award in 1944, Esther Forbes's story has lasted these 50-plus years by including adventure, loss, courage, and history in a wonderfully written, very dramatic package. It's probably not great for little guys but mature 11-year-olds or older will find it a great adventure. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lincoln'
Destined to become a classic in American history and biography, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality. This fully rounded biography of America's sixteenth President is the product of Donald's half-century of study of Lincoln and his times. In preparing it, Donald has drawn more extensively than any previous writer on Lincoln's personal papers and those of his contemporaries, and he has taken full advantage of the voluminous newly discovered records of Lincoln's legal practice. He presents his findings with the same literary skill and psychological understanding exhibited in his previous biographies, which have received two Pulitzer Prizes. Donald brilliantly traces Lincoln's rise from humble origins in Kentucky to prominent positions in legal and political circles in Illinois, and then to the pinnacle of the presidency. He shows how, in all these roles, Lincoln repeatedly demonstrated his enormous capacity for growth, which enabled one of the least experienced and most poorly prepared men ever elected to high office to become a giant in the annals of American politics. Much more than a political biography, Donald's Lincoln reveals the development of the future President's character and shows how his private life helped to shape his public career. Donald's biography is written from Lincoln's point of view. Donald seats us behind the President's desk, where we read the papers and reports he received and wrote, meet the politicians and generals and ordinary citizens who visited his office, and observe him evaluating the evidence before him and making the decisions that shaped modern America. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Communtiy, and War'
Nathaniel Philbrick became an internationally renowned author with his National Book Award? winning In the Heart of the Sea , hailed as ?spellbinding? by Time magazine. In Mayflower , Philbrick casts his spell once again, giving us a fresh and extraordinarily vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower ?s arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip?s War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a fifty-five-year epic, at once tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative of the Life & Times of Frederick Douglass'
This Eloquent and dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave was first published in 1845, when its author was twenty eight years old & had just achieved his freedom. Although it was not uncommon during the era of American slavery for articulate Blacks who escaped to have their experiences published, Narraive Of The Life & Times Of Frederick Douglass is unique among these slave narratives because of Douglass's eloquent power of expression. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'
Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895) was born into slavery by a slave mother and an unknown father. At the age of 8, he started to educate himself with the help of his master's wife. In 1838, he fled Baltimore for the North. There he soon became a noted author and speaker on slavery.
Douglass wrote three autobiographies, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845), "My Bondage and My Freedom" (1855) and "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" (1881). Quiet Vision publishes all three plus the "Selected Works of Frederick Douglass", a collection of short works and speeches.
A man ahead of his time, in the 1840's he had to be dragged from the railroad cars reserved for whites. He also protested the dual standard of certain churches in having separate worship. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'
Born into a family of slaves, Frederick Douglass educated himself through sheer determination. His unconquered will to triumph over his circumstances makes his one of Americas best and most unlikely success stories. Douglass own account of his journey from slave to one of Americas great statesmen, writers, and orators is as fascinating as it is inspiring.
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and readers notes to help the modern reader contend with Douglass nineteenth-century style and vocabulary. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave'
Written more than a century ago by Frederick Douglass, a former slave who went on to become a famous orator, U.S. minister, and a leader of his people, this masterpiece is one of the most eloquent indictments of slavery ever recorded. Douglass [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl'
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume.
Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, And Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan'
New York Burning is a well-told tale of a once-notorious episode that took place in Manhattan in 1741. Though, as Jill Lepore writes, New York's "slave past has long been buried," for most of the 18th century one in five inhabitants of Manhattan were enslaved, making it second only to Charleston, South Carolina, "in a wretched calculus of urban unfreedom." Over the course of a few weeks in 1741, ten fires burned across Manhattan, sparking hysteria and numerous conspiracy rumors. Initially, rival politicians blamed each other for the blazes, but they soon found a common enemy. Based solely on the testimony of one white woman, some 200 slaves were accused of conspiring to burn down the city, murder the resident whites, and take over the local government. Under duress, 80 slaves confessed to the crimes and were forced to implicate others. When the trial was over, 13 black men were burned at the stake, 17 more were hanged (along with four whites accused of working with them), and 70 others were shipped off to the Caribbean where slavery conditions were even worse.
By necessity, Jill Lepore bases much of her research on a journal written in 1744 by New York Supreme Court Justice Daniel Horsmanden, which she describes as "one of the most startling and vexing documents in early American history" and "a diary, a mystery, a history, and maybe one of English literature's first detective stories." Adding cultural and political context to the available evidence, Lepore questions whether there was a conspiracy at all, or if it was blind fear run amok that led to the guilty verdicts for so many slaves. As she points out, fear of slave revolt was a real and consistent theme throughout the early days of the colonies. Crisply written and meticulously researched (the book includes several detailed appendices), New York Burning is a gripping narrative of events that led to what one colonist referred to as the "bonfires of the Negroes." --Shawn Carkonen [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nothing Like It in the World'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869'
Abraham Lincoln, who had worked as a riverboat pilot before turning to politics, knew a thing or two about the problems of transporting goods and people from place to place. He was also convinced that the United States would flourish only if its far-flung regions were linked, replacing sectional loyalties with an overarching sense of national destiny.
Building a transcontinental railroad, writes the prolific historian Stephen Ambrose, was second only to the abolition of slavery on Lincoln's presidential agenda. Through an ambitious program of land grants and low-interest government loans, he encouraged entrepreneurs such as California's "Big Four"--Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford--to take on the task of stringing steel rails from ocean to ocean. The real work of doing so, of course, was on the shoulders of immigrant men and women, mostly Chinese and Irish. These often-overlooked actors and what a contemporary called their "dreadful vitality" figure prominently in Ambrose's narrative, alongside the great financiers and surveyors who populate the standard textbooks.
In the end, Ambrose writes, Lincoln's dream transformed the nation, marking "the first great triumph over time and space" and inaugurating what has come to be known as the American Century. David Haward Bain's Empire Express, which covers the same ground, is more substantial, but Ambrose provides an eminently readable study of a complex episode in American history. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Politically Incorrect Guide To American History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Radicalism of the American Revolution'
In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian depicts much more than a break with England. He gives readers a revolution that transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt'
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
This is Morris's highly acclaimed account of Theodore Roosevelt's life, encompassing the years from Roosevelt's birth to his service in the White House.
He was one of our most vibrant presidents; his image still haunts our past and our present. This fascinating and comprehensive biography of the extraordinary naturalist, adventurer, soldier, and politician, tells the improbable, but very real, story of a man determined to get what he wanted, an American who helped define our century and our very character. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America'
When Mother Nature rages, the physical results are never subtle. Because we cannot contain the weather, we can only react by tabulating the damage in dollar amounts, estimating the number of people left homeless, and laying the plans for rebuilding. But as John M. Barry expertly details in Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, some calamities transform much more than the landscape.
While tracing the history of the nation's most destructive natural disaster, Barry explains how ineptitude and greed helped cause the flood, and how the policies created to deal with the disaster changed the culture of the Mississippi Delta. Existing racial rifts expanded, helping to launch Herbert Hoover into the White House and shifting the political alliances of many blacks in the process. An absorbing account of a little-known, yet monumental event in American history, Rising Tide reveals how human behavior proved more destructive than the swollen river itself. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Secession to Fort Henry'
History [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Souls of Black Folk'
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Theodore Rex'
In this lively biography, Edmund Morris returns to the gifted, energetic, and thoroughly controversial man whom the novelist Henry James called "King Theodore." In his two terms as president of the United States, Roosevelt forged an American empire, and he behaved as if it was his destiny. In this sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Morris charts Roosevelt's accomplishments: the acquisition of the Panama Canal and the Philippines, the creation of national parks and monuments, and more. "Collaring Capital and Labor in either hand," Morris writes, Roosevelt made few friends, but he usually got what he wanted--and earned an enduring place in history.
Morris combines a fine command of the era's big issues with an appreciation for the daily minutiae involved in governing a nation. Less controversially inventive, but no less readable, than the Ronald Reagan biography Dutch, Theodore Rex gives readers new reason both to admire and fault an American phenomenon. --Gregory McNamee [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Truman'
This warm biography of Harry Truman is both an historical evaluation of his presidency and a paean to the man's rock-solid American values. Truman was a compromise candidate for vice president, almost an accidental president after Roosevelt's death 12 weeks into his second term. Truman's stunning come-from-behind victory in the 1948 election showed how his personal qualities of integrity and straightforwardness were appreciated by ordinary Americans, perhaps, as McCullough notes, because he was one himself. His presidency was dominated by enormously controversial issues: he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, established anti-Communism as the bedrock of American foreign policy, and sent U.S. troops into the Korean War. In this winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, McCullough argues that history has validated most of Truman's war-time and Cold War decisions. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America'
Nominated for the National Book Award, this book is set in colonial Massachusetts where, in 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wounded Knee'
First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'
Volume 2 of the classic commentary on the influence of democracy on the intellect, feelings, and actions of Americans. With an introduction by Phillips Bradley.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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