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Former U.S. ambassador to the USSR Jack F. Matlock demolishes central myths behind America's present foreign policy—including the idea that the U.S. destroyed Communism and ended the Cold War—and makes bold recommendations for the Obama administration.

This important work of revisionist history tells the story of the Bourgeois Frontier—the French merchants and families from Mid-America who shaped the course of western expansion.

In this bold new history, Bruce Cumings upends the dominant Atlanticist approach to American history and offers a Pacific perspective on America’s ascendency over the past 150 years.

This timely book argues for a new approach by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan based on a reexamination of the history of counterinsurgency warfare in U.S. history.

Published to considerable controversy in Germany, this astonishing book draws on new archival material to reveal the existence of a systematic U.S. policy during the Vietnam War to exterminate Vietnamese civilians whenever and wherever possible.

This book tells for the first time the tragic story of Thomas Jeremiah, a black man caught up in the turmoil of revolution in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1775.

In this provocative book, Michael Fellman argues that terrorism, in various forms, has been a constant and crucial driving force in America from the Civil War to today. 

In this comprehensive and thought-provoking book, educational theorist and bestselling author E. D. Hirsch, Jr. offers a masterful analysis of how American ideas about education have veered off course, what we must do to right them, and most importantly why.

With expert scholarship and a keen eye for detail, Bockstoce provides the first analysis of the historic competition among the Russians, British, and Americans for control of Alaska.

Stephen Cox tells the story of the American prison—its politics, its sex, its violence, its inability to control itself—and its idealization in American popular culture.

This beautiful volume explores American paintings of daily life between the colonial era and World War I, emphasizing the transformations in artists’ aspirations and viewers’ expectations through the works of leading artists ranging from John Singleton Copley to John Sloan.

This innovative microhistory gives voice to the people of two backcountry colonial towns in Southern New England and shows how, following the Revolution, these rural settlers pushed the urban elites to put a strongly democratic stamp on the new nation.

This innovative book examines the Portuguese-American Madeira wine trade from 1640 to 1815, demonstrating how the trade helped shape the Atlantic world and American society.

Integrating the history of science, environmental history, and science studies, Notes from the Ground examines the cultural conditions that brought agriculture and science together in early America.

How was Great Britain made? And what does it mean to be British? This brilliant and seminal book examines how a more cohesive British nation was invented after 1707 and how this new national identity was nurtured through war, religion, trade, and empire. This edition contains an extensive new preface by the author. Lavishly illustrated and powerful, Britons re...

This volume catalogues The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of nearly six hundred American portrait miniatures and their casework, ranging in date from the mid-18th to the 20th century and representing more than 155 artists.

Government contracting of foreign policy is a scandal—yet, argues Allison Stanger, we cannot turn back the clock a...

This volume represents the first of a four-volume series of the selected correspondence of the great American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass. The letters illuminate not only Douglass’s growth as an activist and writer, but the larger world of the times and the abolition movement as well.

This timely and original book examines the increasing influence of evangelical Christians in recent American politics and elections. The author explores contemporary strains of evangelical theology that have led some groups to embrace radical, progressive activism while others ally themselves with the religious right and the Republican Party.

This book traces the epic clash of values between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, America's most treasured landscapes. It spans the period from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to near the present, analyzing the management of fires, predators, elk, bear, and other natural phenomena in parks such as Yellowstone, Yos...

In this new assessment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech, Eric J. Sundquist explores the origins of the speech, its place in the long history of American debates about equality and race, and why it is now hailed as the most powerful American address of the twentieth century.

In this radically new account of America’s watershed victory in the U.S.-Mexican War, Brian DeLay uncovers the forgotten role of the Comanches and their native allies. For fifteen years, Indian raids devastated northern Mexico, precipitating key events and altering the history of the continent in enduring ways.

In this gripping book, a U.S. Army brigade commander offers an unprecedented on-the-ground account of the crucial first year of the war in Iraq. Colonel Peter Mansoor assesses the successes and failures of military operations against the insurgency and underscores the critical lessons to be learned from them.

The discovery of native peoples in the Atlantic world came as a shock to Columbus and other European explorers. This fascinating book uses the vivid eyewitness accounts of diaries and letters to uncover what these first encounters were like and why the initial sense of wonder gave way to vicious exploitation.

This deeply moving and original portrait of William Faulkner explores his three crucial relationships—with his black and white mothers, Caroline Barr and Maud Falkner, and with his wife, Estelle Oldham. These Southern women gave life to Faulkner’s imagination, profoundly shaping his emotional and psychological world.

This groundbreaking book is the first to trace the history of Huntington’s disease in America, from a despairing victim who committed suicide in 1806 to the genetic discoveries of our own times. Weaving together social, medical, and scientific insights, the book illuminates attitudes toward disease, heredity, eugenics, genetic testing, and more.

In this monumental history, the most respected western scholar of our time draws a nuanced and highly original portrait of the American West in the twentieth century.

Spanning the automobile’s entire history, this book is the first to relate consumer behavior to the wider environmental impact of cars—from raw materials and manufacturing to use and disposal. It shows that America’s disappointing response to automobile-related environmental issues stems from the interplay of politics, economics, and desire.

This portrait of Fred Astaire, widely acclaimed as America’s greatest male dancer, explores his life, his unforgettable movie performances with Ginger Rogers and other great dance partners, and how he came to represent the very essence of style, class, and charm.

This charming book recounts the remarkable journey of the bagel from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today. The story is one of surprising connections between an unassuming ring-shaped roll and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history.

In the mid-1700s, an outbreak of religious revivals shook American colonial society. This book provides a definitive history of these revivals, called the First Great Awakening, and shows how the evangelical movement’s radical notions of the spiritual equality of all people encouraged the democratic style that later came to characterize the American republic.

This compact synthesis of David J. Weber’s prize-winning history of colonial Spanish North America vividly tells the story of Spain’s 300-year tenure on the continent. From the first Spanish-Indian contact through Spain’s gradual retreat, Weber offers a balanced assessment of the impact of each civilization upon the other.

This magisterial book is the definitive history of the Spanish colonial period in North America. Authoritative and colorful, the book describes not only the Spaniards' impact on the lives, institutions, and environments of the native peoples, but also the effect of native North Americans on the societies and cultures of the Spanish settlers [from Florida to California].

This landmark book explores how Spain attempted to come to terms with the native peoples of the Americas in the late eighteenth century. Long after Spanish conquistadors had landed, Indians retained control of most of Spain’s American lands. Spaniards attempted a variety of solutions to their problems with “savages”—from gentle concessions to bloody wars.

This extraordinarily wide-ranging volume gathers together historian J. H. Elliott’s recent writings on politics, art, culture, and ideas in Europe and the colonial worlds from 1500 to 1800. Elliott’s many admirers will welcome this accessible collection of his influential and thought-provoking articles, lectures, and essays.

In this enthralling account of the entwined histories of Britain, Spain, and their empires in the Americas, distinguished historian J. H. Elliott offers us history on a grand scale. He interweaves the histories of the two great Atlantic civilizations, providing rich insights into both while revealing aspects of their dual history that influence the Americas to this day.

This book presents the most comprehensive portrait yet of Richard Hakluyt, a contemporary of Shakespeare and the indefatigable promoter of English colonies in the New World. Studded with nearly fifty illustrations, the book offers a fresh view of Hakluyt’s milieu, his place in the international debates of his time, and his role in establishing an English America.

This riveting biography of a Massachusetts slave boy who fought in the Revolutionary War illuminates race relations in the northern colonies, early battles of the revolution, and the experiences of black soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

This fascinating book reinterprets Benjamin Franklin’s social and political thought, examining for the first time his participation in eighteenth-century debates over the rise of the modern commercial republic. The author shows how Franklin offered practical and inventive proposals and urged Americans to improve themselves and their society through cooperation.

This book takes a fresh look at the acquisition of Spanish borderland territories from Florida toTexas. The author reassesses President James Madison’s diplomatic and expansionist policies as well as the roles played by a fascinating cast of local leaders, officials, and other small players in the boundary disputes.

This authoritative account of the secret Hell-Fire Clubs that scandalized eighteenth-century England reveals who joined them (wealthy industrialists, landed gentry, government elites, at least two royal figures), why the clubs became popular, and which of the many notorious legends about orgies, erotic libraries, and blasphemous rituals are true.

The first new assessment of King George III in many years, this biography harnesses rich unpublished sources in Britain, Germany, and the United States, as well as the king’s prolific correspondence, to reveal much about the monarch himself and how he influenced the conflict with the thirteen colonies and other critical events in modern world history.

This authoritative edition of the complete texts of the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Articles of Confederation is accompanied by essays in which leading scholars provide historical context and thematic background.

Jonathan Edwards, a towering figure in the history of American theology, was both a great American and a brilliant Christian. This definitive biography draws on newly available sources to reveal how the internationally famous preacher was shaped by cultural and religious battles of his time and how he struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular world emerging out of the Enlightenm...

This final volume in The Works of Jonathan Edwards publishes for the first time Edwards’ “Catalogue,” a notebook he kept of books of interest, especially titles he hoped to acquire, and entries from his “Account Book,” a ledger in which he noted books loaned to family, parishioners, and fellow clergy. These two records, along with several shorter documents pres...

This unusual volume presents the entire contents of Jonathan Edwards’s “Blank Bible,” a leather-bound manuscript containing an interleaved printed edition of the King James Bible in which the theologian penned more than five thousand notes and entries over three decades.

This volume concludes the series of private theological notebooks that Jonathan Edwards kept from his late teens to the end of his life. Covering the years from 1751 to 1758, it shows Edwards grappling with modern naturalism, critiquing “generous doctrines,” and attempting to bolster Reformed thought in the face of the Enlightenment.

The sermons and discourses in this volume chart the rise and decline of the Great Awakening in Jonathan Edwards’s parish in Northampton, Massachusetts, and beyond. A leading figure of the revival period, Edwards delivered potent and wide-ranging sermons during the years 1739–42. In this volume the transcript of the original manuscript of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is

The greatest statesman of his age, Ben Franklin was also a pioneering scientist, a bestselling author, the first American postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant. He was also a man of vast contradictions. This brilliant biography by one of our greatest historians offers a compact and provocative new portrait of America’s most extraordinary patriot.

 

This volume covers a difficult period of negotiations during which Franklin employs his unparalleled diplomatic skills to mollify both the British and the French, helping to bring about the cessation of hostilities between Britain and the United States that effectively ended the American Revolution.

During these crucial five months in 1782, Franklin mastered one of the greatest challenges of his diplomatic career: he established the framework for a peace agreement with Great Britain. This volume, one of the most significant of the entire series, illuminates Franklin’s strengths as an enormously subtle negotiator and diplomat.

Translated into a dozen languages, printed in hundreds of editions, and read by millions of people, Franklin’s autobiography has had an influence perhaps unequaled by any other book by an American writer. Written ostensibly as a letter to his son William, the autobiography offers Franklin’s reflections on philosophy and religion, politics, war, education, material success, and the stat...

This engaging book reveals Benjamin Franklin’s human side—his tastes and habits, his enthusiasms, and his devotion to democracy and the people of the United States. Historian Edmund S. Morgan draws on Franklin’s vast archives to offer insights into the most unusual founding father, a gregarious man with boundless curiosity and a vision of what America could be. 

 ...

This book uncovers the stories of hundreds of English pilgrims who came to the New World in the 1630s but decided not to stay. Why did they come, and what prompted their return? The extensive original research for the book provides illuminating information on the colonial experiment in the New World as well as the religious and political tumults in the Old.

One of the master stylists of American literature, Gore Vidal now provides us with his uniquely irreverent take on America’s founding fathers. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation and considers the impact of their ideas and personalities on an America that he views with both pride and concern.

This book focuses on two centuries of early American maritime history, years when the Atlantic Ocean beckoned as the great frontier. Drawing on the records of seamen who sailed from Salem, Massachusetts, in the colonial and early national period, the book details the personal and social lives of several thousand seafaring men and their families.

This engaging book offers a rollicking account of the life of American adventurer John Ledyard as well as important insights into early modern empire in the Revolutionary era. Whether living with the Iroquois, sailing with Captain Cook, conferring with Thomas Jefferson, or trekking through Siberia, Ledyard was both a product of empire and an agent in its growth.

This highly entertaining biography draws a full portrait of one of the most colorful figures in English political history, John Wilkes. Remembered as the father of the British free press, a champion of liberty, and a hero to American colonists, Wilkes enjoyed a rancorous political career (involving duels, imprisonments, and a famous massacre) as well as a notorious private life.

This introduction to the diplomacy of the American Revolution presents a fresh, realistic, and balanced portrait of revolutionary diplomats and diplomacy.

Distinguished scholars and journalists reconsider the life and legacy of William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), one of the most radical abolitionists in the United States. They discuss Garrison’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader and the clarity and flaws in his moral vision, presenting a new evaluation of this controversial man.

This sweeping history of Reconstruction offers a new, national perspective on America’s post-Civil War era. Organized around the experiences of real individuals—a plantation mistress, a prominent industrialist, a Native American warrior, a Northern suffragist,  a black cowboy, and others—the book brings to life the process that brought forth a modern America.

This magisterial biography paints a rich portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat whose voyage to America resulted in one of the most vital texts in the history of democratic thought. Hugh Brogan brings Tocqueville to life and elucidates his thinking on the nature of democracy.

This book draws on newly opened archives to recount the full story of the life and achievements of reformer Thomas L. Kane—abolitionist, women’s rights advocate, Civil War general, and, though not a Mormon himself, indefatigable defender of the religious rights of Mormons.

This groundbreaking book tells the “upstairs-downstairs” story of plantation life in coastal Georgia from 1805 to 1869. Addressing not only the history of plantation owner Charles Colcock Jones and his family, historian Erskine Clarke also explores the experiences of the family slaves, offering deep insight into the nature of oppression and how African-American slaves struggled against...

Begun in 1837, Thoreau’s Journal spans twenty-five years and functions as a record of his interior life and a key to his other writings. This beautifully produced gift edition of the Journal, carefully selected and annotated by Jeffrey S. Cramer, provides a fully rounded portrait of Thoreau. The volume will make a welcome addition to any book lover’s libr...

This handsome, affordable paperback edition of Walden is the most authoritative version of Thoreau’s masterpiece to date.  Cramer’s newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreau’s draft manuscripts, his own markings on page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. An elegantly produced paperbac...

The ultimate gift edition of Walden, this volume is the most authoritative and richly annotated version of Thoreau’s American classic ever published. New readers as well as those well familiar with the text will find themselves immersed in Thoreau’s unique and fascinating world, guided by notes that illuminate the bibliographical, historical, and geographical contexts of his lif...

The incomparable Civil War diarist Mary Chestnut was a witness to the life and death of the Confederacy. With intelligence and passion she described the turbulent events of politics and war, as well as the complex society around her. Through the superb skills of an eminent historian, the Chestnut journals now appear in their first full and reliable edition. C. Vann Woodward has restored Mary Chest...

In the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire emerged as America’s most popular musical act. This engaging book tells the Hutchinsons’ story and documents their contributions to abolition and temperance, to the transformation of American culture, and to the history of the American protest song.

The Civil War has traditionally been portrayed as the first modern war. In this engrossing revisionist account, however, Paddy Griffith argues that, despite the use of new weapons and of trench warfare techniques, the Civil War was in reality the last Napoleonic-style war. Rich in description and analysis, his book will be of interest both to military historians and to Civil War buffs.

This book demolishes myths about America’s westward expansion and uncovers a shocking historical pattern of governmental deception and malfeasance in treaties signed—and just as often breached—with Native Americans. The book explores how millions of square miles of Native lands and resources were fraudulently acquired, who participated, why, and the...

This groundbreaking book uncovers the lost story of the Comanche Indians and the vast and powerful empire they built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The volume challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new perspective on the history of the colonization of North America.

This exciting book tells the story of America’s golden period of fossil discovery, the years from 1750 to 1890. Replete with high adventure, ruthless competing bone hunters, and previously unimagined scientific discoveries, the book sets the story of paleontology in the context of American history and the opening of the West.

This is a concise and freshly updated edition of Hine and Faragher’s acclaimed The American West: A New Interpretive History. The authors provide a grand survey of our colorful frontier history, from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans to the beginning of the twenty-first century.

 

A historian and a photographer join efforts to create this lyrical portrait of Roma, Texas, a small town on the Rio Grande. The book explores Roma’s colorful history—from the arrival of Spanish settlers in the eighteenth century to today—and shows how the story of this borderlands town is not just local—it illuminates the larger story of America itself.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. and Mexican elites sought to transform the U.S.-Mexico borderlands into a crossroads of economic development.  This book explores how efforts to tame this fugitive landscape ran aground, telling a forgotten story of unfulfilled dreams with lessons for contemporary border relations.

This is the story of a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision in 1941 that changed the field of Indian law. Threatened by railroad claims to their lands, Arizona’s Hualapai people engaged in a legal battle, emerged victorious, and along the way introduced revolutionary new ways of thinking about all native peoples, their property, and their past.

This grand survey of the history of the American West presents a panoramic view of events and characters from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans through the 1990s. Illustrated with more than 150 contemporary drawings, posters, and photographs, the book presents in fascinating detail the frontier’s diverse peoples and cultures, landscapes, environmental history, literat...

This classic book offers a lively and penetrating analysis of what the overland journey was really like for midwestern farm families in the mid-1800s. Through the subtle use of contemporary diaries, memoirs, and even folk songs, John Mack Faragher dispels the common stereotypes of male and female roles and reveals the dynamic of pioneer family relationships. This edition includes a new preface in ...

The fascinating story of the birth and development of a rural American community, from its origins at the turn of the nineteenth century to the years that followed the Civil War. Drawing on newspapers, account books, and reminiscences, the author of the prize-winning Women and Men on the Overland Trail vividly portrays the lives of the prairie's inhabitants—Indians, pioneers, farming men and...

In this compelling history of the California Franciscan missions and their impact on the Indians they sought to convert, James A. Sandos offers a balanced assessment of the missions’ tensions, conflicts, accomplishments, and limitations, focusing primarily on the religious conflicts between the two groups.

This authoritative, comprehensive, and lavishly illustrated single-volume encyclopedia is a rich source of information about the many American West’s real and imaginary, old and new, stretching from coast to coast and throughout the country’s history and culture. It discusses discoverers and mountain men, Native American tribes, politicians from Benjamin Franklin to Ronald Reagan, majo...

The gunfight at the OK Corral is legendary—but what happened once the shooting ended? This book tells the nearly unknown story of the prosecution of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holiday following the gunfight and shows how a talented defense attorney saved them from the gallows.

This engaging book is the first to trace the fascinating histories of the remarkable men—and one woman—who were members of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In later years, some of these individuals became public officials, others continued to be adventurers, and two were even murder suspects: this book tells their stories in colorful detail.

This landmark book, the concluding volume in a magisterial series, presents the story of America’s interwoven history and geography from 1915 to 2000. Discussing such developments as the automotive, neotechnic, and communications revolutions, the world wars, urban migration, and regionalism, D.W. Meinig offers unprecedented insights into the reshaping of the United States.

This entirely fresh interpretation of American history by a renowned historical geographer is the first in a projected three-volume series. Meinig here focuses on colonial America, examining how an immense diversity of ethnic and religious groups—Europeans, Africans, American Indians—ultimately created a set of distinct regional societies. Richly illustrated with more than forty specia...

In this new volume, the second in an acclaimed series, D. W. Meinig again provides a fresh interpretation of the American past, bringing a unique geographical perspective to the tumultuous years between 1800 and 1867, when the nation experienced a dramatic expansion in territory, population, economy, and political tension that culminated in the Civil War. As in his first masterful volume, Atlan...

In this third volume of his acclaimed series, D. W. Meinig offers a riveting account of the expanding country’s development from mid-nineteenth century to the onset of World War I. Beginning with the struggle over where to build the Pacific railway, the book details the settlement of the American West, the nation’s increasing consolidation, and America’s imperialist efforts in th...

This fascinating account tells what the Sioux were like when they first came to their reservation and how their reaction to the new system eventually led to the last confrontation between the Army and the Sioux at the armed clash at Wounded Knee Creek. A classic work, it is now available with a new preface by the author that discusses his current thoughts about a tragic episode in American history...

Moving from the Boston Tea Party to the present, this provocative book explores the ways non-Indian Americans have acted out their fantasies about Indians in order to experience national, modern, and personal identities. In this complicated tug-of-war between imaginings and actions, Indian people have been embraced and rejected, frequently humiliated and occasionally empowered. The historical anxi...

This stunning exposé of Soviet espionage in the U.S. during the 1930s and 40s is based on extensive KGB archives never revealed before. With new information on Alger Hiss, Robert Oppenheimer, the Rosenbergs, and many others, the book for the first time documents the secret world of Stalin’s spies and the Americans who worked with them.

This book offers a vivid account of Wilson’s stormy tenure as president of Princeton University, where acrimony and failure followed initial successes and foreshadowed his terms as U.S. President. Focusing for the first time on this period of Wilson’s life, the book provides insights into his difficult personality, motivations, and ruthless political tactics.

Using newly declassified documents from Soviet archives, this provocative book shows how the development of the atomic bomb and the ensuing atomic espionage propelled the U.S. and the Soviet Union into the Cold War.

In this book Joshua Hawley examines Theodore Roosevelt’s political thought and reassesses the impact of his intellectual legacy. The author contends that Roosevelt, more than any other figure, is responsible for the progressive movement, and that he permanently altered the shape of American politics as well as expectations for government, social progress, and t...

This volume publishes for the first time the report of President Clinton’s Commission on Race Initiative, an important but neglected document that assesses racial progress since the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s and offers an array of recommendations to improve race relations in the diverse America of the 21st century.

A diplomat, an adviser to presidents, and a prolific scholar, George Kennan was, above all, a man of integrity. In this account of Kennan’s work and thought, acclaimed historian John Lukacs explores his subject’s contributions to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, his “Containment” article, his role as realist critic during the Cold War, and more.

What began as the obscure local case of two Italian immigrant anarchists accused of robbery and murder soon flared into an unprecedented cause célèbre. This book is the first to reveal the full international scope of the Sacco-Vanzetti affair, tracing its enduring implications for America at home and abroad.

What really happened at the Battle of Midway, one of the greatest naval victories of the Second World War? This wrenching book, told by a survivor of the battle, provides the first accurate account and explanation of the devastating losses to America’s torpedo squadrons: only 7 of 51 planes returned, only 29 of 127 crewmen survived, and not a single torpedo hit its target.

In this memoir of life aboard aircraft carriers during World War Two, Alvin Kernan combines vivid recollections of his experience as a young enlisted sailor with a rich historical account of the Pacific war. Kernan served in many battles and was aboard the Hornet when it was sunk by torpedoes in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

In the midst of the most heated crises of the Second World War, Roosevelt and Stalin secretly exchanged three hundred letters. This book publishes the entire collection of their messages for the first time in any language. With a lively introduction and full annotations, the book illuminates how a unique relationship developed between two of the world’s most powerful men.

This is a masterpiece of historical writing, a book that compels its readers to reflect anew on the shaping forces of history. Beginning with the siege of Berlin, 1945 provides rich insight into the conflicts, motives, and counter-motives that marked the end of WWII and that established the lasting patterns of deceit, uncertainty, and distrust that defined the Cold War.

This breakthrough book provides a provocative reassessment of Stalin’s leadership during the most important years of his career. Geoffrey Roberts challenges standard perceptions of Stalin and shows that he was both a ruthless dictator and a remarkable politician who sought to avoid the Cold War and establish a long-term detente with the capitalist world.

The escape of ultra-orthodox Jewish leader Rebbe Schneersohn from Hitler’s Warsaw in 1939 has always been a subject of speculation. This book uncovers the true story of the rescue and the heroic role of the part-Jewish German soldier who led the operation. A harrowing story about identity and moral responsibility, it is also a riveting narrative of an extraordinary rescue mission.

As intriguing as any rapid-paced spy novel, this book breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko’s defection to the United States in 1963. Was Nosenko a bona fide defector with first-hand knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald, or was he a master of deceit, still loyal to the KGB? The CIA officer who handled the case at last uncovers the truth.

 

At odds with fellow neoconservatives in his opposition to the war against Iraq, Francis Fukuyama here explains why the Bush administration failed in its stewardship of American foreign policy. Fukuyama traces the neoconservative legacy in America, maintains the validity of its principles, and proposes realistic new directions for American foreign policy.

Is today's American "empire" like the British Empire of yore? What can be learned from comparing the two? In this groundbreaking book, Bernard Porter reveals the uncanny similarities between the imperial histories of Britain and the United States but contends that America's new "super-imperialism" in the post-2001 era is quite a different thing.

In this penetrating look at what has become of American democracy in the twentieth century, one of our most respected historians offers a major statement on the nature of our political system. John Lukacs focuses a critical eye on the underpinnings of our society and on the dramatic changes brought about by increasingly influential special groups.

 

 

As close friend and advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, Colonel Edward M. House played a critical role in U. S. foreign relations during the nation’s ascent to world power. This compelling biography recounts House’s fascinating career and rediscovers his important contributions to diplomacy, despite the bitter quarrel that ended his friendship with Wilson.

In this masterful volume, eminent historian Jay Winter focuses on twentieth-century “minor utopias” whose stories have been overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Focusing on six moments when utopian ideas and projects flourished in Europe, the author fills an important gap in the history of social thought and action.

This masterful volume on remembrance and war in the twentieth century traces the origins of the current fascination with memory back to the Great War. Historian Jay Winter discusses how images, languages, and practices that developed in the wake of WWI shaped the way later conflicts and victims are remembered both publicly and privately.

This extraordinary account of the development of aviation takes us from Charles Lindbergh’s dramatic New York-Paris flight to the horrifying bombing campaigns of World War II. Robert Wohl recaptures in words and illustrations an era when a wide-ranging cast of characters—among them millionaire Howard Hughes, Italian dictator Mussolini, and architect Le Corbusier—fell under aviati...

America emerged from the Reagan years transformed—socially, politically, technologically, economically. In this book John Ehrman tracks the extraordinary changes of the 1980s in the context of Ronald Reagan’s policies and convictions, providing a balanced portrait of a president and of the watershed decade over which he presided.

This lively account of American conservatism covers the entire span of U.S. history and introduces major conservative thinkers from Alexander Hamilton and Daniel Webster to William F. Buckley, Jr. and Irving Kristol. Readers from every political viewpoint will appreciate this balanced and insightful assessment of America’s conservative tradition.

In this major re-conceptualization of U. S. foreign policy, Walter Hixson explores the entire sweep of American history from colonial days to the War on Terror. He discovers a remarkably continuous mythical national identity that regularly propels us into war in response to external threats, even when other options are available.

This provocative book draws on the thinking of three great political philosophers to diagnose the malady of today’s liberal democracies: soft despotism. A condition that occurs as paternalistic state power expands, soft despotism may be nonviolent, but it seriously undermines the spirit of self-government, says historian Paul Rahe.

The idea that the United States is destined to spread its unique gifts of democracy and capitalism to other countries is dangerous for Americans and for the rest of the world, warns an eminent British commentator in this provocative book.

In this absorbing book, George McKenna ranges across the entire panorama of United States history to track the development of American patriotism. Shaped by the Puritan belief in a providential “errand,” America’s unique patriotism has influenced the nation in both positive and negative ways, sometimes uniting and sometimes dividing her people.

In today’s world of conflict and threatened nuclear violence, few books, if any, could be more important than this one. Middle East expert Trita Parsi untangles the complex and often duplicitous relations among Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present and spells out how American policies can avert catastrophe and lead the region toward peace...

This fast-paced account of the history of the FBI presents the first balanced and complete portrait of the powerful and oft-criticized institution. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones offers a new take on the origins and mission of the bureau, the significance of J. Edgar Hoover’s term as director, the bureau’s pre-emptive anti-terrorist capabilities before and after 9...

This book is a detailed legal and historical examination of presidential power. The authors look at the theory of the unitary executive as practiced in every administration from Washington to Bush. Discovering consistent patterns in presidential practices, the book has important implications for today’s debates over the extent of executive power.

In this sweeping survey, John Kane examines the tensions between American virtue and power and how the moral dilemma they pose has influenced foreign policy decisions from the earliest days of the republic to the present.

This provocative book presents a theory of the First Amendment’s development during the twentieth century into an instrument for social progress and defends a cultural role for the courts.

The South’s transition from Democratic stronghold to Republican base has frequently been viewed as a recent occurrence. But as Joseph Lowndes argues in this book, this rightward shift was not necessarily a natural response by alienated whites, but rather the result of the long-term development of an alliance between Southern segregationists and Northern conserv...

This wide-ranging volume gathers fourteen essays on American political parties, politicians, elections, and policymaking by a foremost political scientist. David Mayhew looks at policymaking from the Civil War to 9/11 and offers new insights into why public policy emerges as it does and what determines its shape.

This new edition of Michael H. Hunt's classic reinterpretation of American diplomatic history includes a preface that reflects on the personal experience and intellectual agenda behind the writing of the book, surveys the broad impact of the book's argument, and addresses the challenges to the thesis since the book's original publication. In the wake of 9/11 this int...

Despite America’s commitment to civil rights from the earliest days of nationhood, examples of injustices against minorities stain many pages of U.S. history. The battle for racial, ethnic, and gender fairness remains unfinished. This comprehensive book traces the history of legal efforts to achieve civil rights for all Americans, beginning with the years leadi...

In this landmark book, Nobel laureate Thomas C. Schelling considers the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used as bargaining power.  This edition contains a new foreword by the author where he considers the book’s relevance over forty years after its first publication.  Included as an afterword is the text of Profess...

This engaging book seeks to revive an understanding of honorable ambition.  Drawing from classical accounts of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, the author presents a compelling picture of greatness. Modern thinkers who disdain ambition are mistaken, the author contends, and he offers an appreciation of what makes leaders great.

This is a comprehensive account of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, told for the first time by an Iraqi insider. Ali Allawi, former Iraqi Minister of Defense and Finance, writes from the perspective of both principal and observer, shedding new light on the story behind the invasion, the shambolic aftermath and attempts at stabilization, and why events have failed to unfold as planned.

The South’s transition from Democratic stronghold to Republican base has frequently been viewed as a recent occurrence. But as Joseph Lowndes argues in this book, this rightward shift was not necessarily a natural response by alienated whites, but rather the result of the long-term development of an alliance between Southern segregationists and Northern conserv...

A central story of contemporary southern politics is the shift toward Republican majorities, yet strands of continuity affect the practice of campaign politics in important ways, argues James Glaser in this book. He offers eyewitness accounts of recent congressional elections, highlighting the color, drama, and psychology of the campaigns.

Recent alarming changes in the nature of American democracy threaten such democratic values as respect for pluralism, the separation of powers, and the rights of opposition parties, warns Alan Wolfe. In this brilliant, non-partisan analysis he identifies the political conditions that endanger the quality of our democracy and calls for Americans to overcome their indifference.

Can the Constitution change with the times without forsaking the framers’ original intent? In this thoughtful book, Constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt enters the debate over judicial activism and explains in plain language how the Constitution can be a constant and an organic document. He shines a whole new light on today’s most controversial federal cases.

 

This lively historical examination of American federalism concludes that the founding fathers could never agree on the proper balance of federal vs. state power. The constitutional law of federalism is therefore not rooted in the Constitution or any “original” understanding of it, but in the personal values and assumptions of its interpreters, Edward Purc...

One of our most respected political scientists offers a thought-provoking exploration of political equality and its relation to democracy. Robert A. Dahl considers the history of political equality and looks to its future. Is it possible to close the huge gap between the ideal of equality and its actual achievement? How? Will there be greater inequality in the U.S.?

In this accessible and authoritative book, an eminent political theorist provides a primer on democracy that clarifies what it is, why it is valuable, how it works, and what challenges it confronts in the future. 

In this provocative book, one of our most eminent political scientists questions the extent to which the American Constitution furthers democratic goals. Robert Dahl reveals the Constitution’s potentially antidemocratic elements and explains why they are there, compares the American constitutional system to other democratic systems, and explores how we might alter our political system to ach...

In this classic book, one of the world's most distinguished political scientists discusses the problems, strengths, and weaknesses of democracy as a method of decision making for modern governments. Robert A. Dahl examines the principles on which the authority of democratic government rests, the question of who "the people" should be in the concept of "rule by the people," and the kinds of democra...

In this now-classic work, one of the most celebrated political scientists of the twentieth century offers a powerful interpretation of the location of political power in American urban communities. For this new edition, Robert A. Dahl has written a new Preface in which he reflects on Who Governs? more than four decades after its publication. And in a new Foreword, Douglas W. Rae offe...

Amidst all the emotional uproar about democracy and the widespread talk of revolution comes this clear call to reason—a mind-stretching book that equips the young and the old suddenly to see an ageless problem of society in a new and exciting way. Everything Dahl says can be applied in a fascinating way to the governing of any human enterprise involving more than one person—whether it ...

Is there any real justification for choosing American presidents by means of the electoral college? George Edwards demonstrates that there is no real justification for the electoral college, a complex and harmful antiquated mechanism that distorts political campaigns and can elect a candidate who has not received the most votes. 

In this important book, a leading constitutional theorist offers a compelling defense of American constitutional practice. Lawrence G. Sager views judges as active partners in the enterprise of securing political justice and describes the process of constitutional adjudication as a promising and distinctly democratic addition to that enterprise.

This book explores the origins of health insurance in the U.S. and revises our understanding of the Progressives’ failure to establish universal coverage during the first half of the twentieth century. Murray's careful economic analyses have interesting implications for current health insurance policy debates.

A leading scholar of constitutional law delivers an incisive and brilliant new account of the Bill of Rights and explodes conventional wisdom about our most basic charter of liberty. Akhil Reed Amar not only illuminates the text, structure, and history of the 1789 Bill but also argues that its present character owes more to antislavery activists of the Reconstruction era than to the Founding Fathe...

In this fascinating history of the origins of the Bill of Rights, Pulitzer prize-winning historian Leonard W. Levy offers a panoramic view of the liberties secured by the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Levy illuminates the behind-the-scenes maneuverings, public rhetoric, and political motivations of James Madison and others who overcame fierce opposition to ensure the ratification of th...

Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars have labored to uncover the facts behind Chambers’s shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948—that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage.

In this highly original work, Susan Jacoby turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions. Unfettered by political ax-grinding, the author examines conflicting responses, from scholars and the media on both the left and the right, and the ways in which they have changed from 1948 to our present post–Cold War era. With a brisk, engaging style, Jacoby positions the case in the politics of the post–World War II era and then explores the ways in which generations of liberals and conservatives have put Chambers and Hiss to their own ideological uses. An iconic event of the McCarthy era, the case of Alger Hiss fascinates political intellectuals not only because of its historical significance but because of its timeless relevance to equally fierce debates today about the difficult balance between national security and respect for civil liberties.

Susan Jacoby is an independent scholar and best-selling author. The most recent of her seven previous books is The Age of American Unreason. She lives in New York City.

This revealing biography of Gypsy Rose Lee—an American icon who brought striptease from the margins of American life to Broadway, Hollywood, and Main Street—uncovers the long-obscured facts of her life and sets her accomplishments in the context of mid-20th-century American culture.

This book recounts the colorful history of America’s love-hate relationship with Wall Street. Steve Fraser frames his fascinating analysis around the roles of four iconic Wall Street types—the aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero, and the immoralist—all recurring figures who yield surprising insights about how the nation has wrestled, and still ...

One of the master stylists of American literature, Gore Vidal now provides us with his uniquely irreverent take on America’s founding fathers. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation and considers the impact of their ideas and personalities on an America that he views with both pride and concern.

A lively and entertaining history of the hamburger and why it is no mere sandwich in America, but an icon. Josh Ozersky uncovers an array of facts and stories about the hamburger’s evolution and chronicles how the burger has reflected—and even shaped—American business and culture.

In this lively exploration of Gone with the Wind, Molly Haskell traces the complexities of both the book and movie, and shows why Rhett and Scarlett’s saga is still riveting, more than seventy years after Margaret Mitchell created it.

An engaging history of the one-room school and how successive generations of Americans have remembered—and just as often misremembered—this iconic institution.

With more than 600 photographs of Shaker objects great and small, this gorgeous catalogue documents the unparalleled Andrews collection and for the first time tells the story of how it came to be.

A bold and original examination of the international Jewish trade in ostrich feathers, which flourished on three continents from the 1880s until the great "feather bust" of the First World War.

This book shows how interrelated movements—social and scientific—combined to transform the study of the child in the early twentieth century. Drawing on nationwide archives and interviews with child study pioneers, the book recounts the role of social reformers, philanthropists, and progressive scientists who established an entirely new field of study.

The Abu Ghraib scandal. Skyrocketing prison populations. Controversial taser incidents. America’s attitudes toward criminals and punishment have drastically changed, says the author of this alarming book, and she explores the cultural roots, significance, and far-reaching implications of the new focus on retribution.

This unusual history examines how practices and attitudes toward cleanliness and dirt evolved in America from the arrival of the first Europeans to the mid-1800s. Personal care of the body is not simply a private matter, the book shows, but an expression of cultural ideals and fundamental social values.

Long before 9/11, visions of the destruction of New York City were a part of America’s collective imagination. This book investigates images of the city’s end in literature and art to understand why the destruction genre has been popular for two centuries and what it tells us about Americans, New Yorkers, and the city itself.

Hotel is a spellbinding history of the hotel in America—a saga in which politicians and prostitutes, tourists and confidence men, celebrities and salesmen all have a role. The book explores the modern hotel as a distinctly American invention, the development of its architecture, and its influence on society from colonial days to the civil rights movement...

A witty and incisive analysis of America’s enduring fascination with the British monarchy and what it reveals about the Founding Fathers, the American presidency, today’s obsession with celebrity, and more.

The true story of a resilient circle of shrimp boat captains who faced and withstood the wreckage of Katrina but now find their courage tested by a greater threat: the disappearance of their livelihood and their centuries-old bayou culture.

Hitler’s rising influence sent a flood of musical talent abroad, and many, including Klemperer, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, wound up in the Los Angeles area. This book tells the stories of the immigrant musicians who profoundly influenced the film industry, the music institutions of LA, and the next generation of American musical leaders.

The prodigiously gifted Isaac Rosenfeld, Saul Bellow’s closest friend and most brilliant rival, died abruptly at 38, leaving his early promise unfulfilled. This book is the first to explore the genius of this unjustly forgotten writer, his place in Jewish letters, and the cost of choosing a writer’s life.

In the early 1990s, Classics professor Mary Lefkowitz discovered that one of her faculty colleagues at Wellesley College was teaching his students that Greek culture had been stolen from Africa and that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. This book tells the disturbing story of what happened when she spoke out.

A lively and entertaining history of the hamburger and why it is no mere sandwich in America, but an icon. Josh Ozersky uncovers an array of facts and stories about the hamburger’s evolution and chronicles how the burger has reflected—and even shaped—American business and culture.

This book recounts the colorful history of America’s love-hate relationship with Wall Street. Steve Fraser frames his fascinating analysis around the roles of four iconic Wall Street types—the aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero, and the immoralist—all recurring figures who yield surprising insights about how the nation has wrestled, and still ...

This elegantly written appreciation of the Empire State Building opens up its richness and importance as a beloved American icon. Mark Kingwell tells the story of the skyscraper’s conception and construction, then offers new perspectives on its history, its representations in pictures, literature, and film, and its meaning in the American imagination.

This lively and lavishly illustrated book tells the extraordinary history of the bicycle, an invention that precipitated nothing short of a social revolution. Recounting a story replete with disputed patents, brilliant inventions, and missed opportunities, David Herlihy shows us why the bicycle captured the public’s imagination and the myriad ways it has reshaped our world.

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Tracing the Hudson River through four centuries, this entertaining book recounts the stories of intrepid explorers, inspired artists and writers, dedicated entrepreneurs and industrialists, and pioneering ecologists—those who have both shaped and been shaped by the river. Tom Lewis illuminates the unique role of this grand river in American history and imagination.

Mary C. Beaudry mines archaeological findings from the middle ages through the industrial revolution to discover what needles, thimbles, bobbins, and other artifacts of sewing and needlework reveal about the cultures in which they were used. She shows that these items, though small, have much to tell us about the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class.

This book is the first to explore the history of a powerful category of illicit sex in America's past: liaisons between Southern white women and black men. Martha Hodes tells a series of stories about such liaisons in the years before the Civil War, explores the complex ways in which white Southerners tolerated them in the slave South, and shows how and why these responses changed with emancipatio...

In this important new work, the author of The Bonds of Womanhood offers a new interpretation of American feminism during the early decades of this century—a time traditionally viewed as one in which women won the right to vote and then lost interest in feminist issues. Nancy F. Cott argues instead that this was a time of crisis and transition from the nineteenth-century "woman movement" to t...

This twentieth anniversary edition of Nancy F. Cott’s acclaimed study includes a new preface in which Cott assesses her own and other historian’s development of the concept of domesticity from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Alfred Kazin, the son of barely literate Jewish immigrants, rose from near poverty to become a dominant figure in literary criticism and one of America’s last great men of letters. This book provides the first complete portrait of Kazin, his troubled personal life, his relationships with such figures as Lionel Trilling and Hannah Arendt, and his prodigious cont...

This book chronicles the remarkable stage career of Joseph Jefferson, the nineteenth-century actor most famous for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle. Through the lens of Jefferson’s experience, the book presents a lively history of American theater from the pre-Civil War era to the dawn of motion pictures.

The creator of uniquely American forms of fiction—the Western, the sea tale, the Revolutionary War romance—James Fenimore Cooper profoundly influenced literary and intellectual history. The first biographer to draw upon complete family archives, Wayne Franklin argues that Cooper was a representative figure of the early American republic.

This groundbreaking book views the rise of celebrity culture in nineteenth-century America through the eyes of Walt Whitman. Part biography, part cultural history, the book examines Whitman’s attitudes toward fame and publicity, discusses the celebrity of notable contemporaries, and proposes a new way of thinking about a seminal American poet and a major national icon.

Distinguished scholar Martha Banta investigates the peculiarly American quest for an indigenous and all-encompassing aesthetic. She focuses on the nineteenth-century, when artists, architects, writers, politicians, and other Americans sought One True Theory in order to uncover the theoretical principles underlying "the idea of creation."

Tennessee Williams’s Notebooks, here published for the first time, provide a dazzling and uninhibited look into the interior life and creative process of one of America’s great literary geniuses. Encompassing his life from undergraduate days to his death in 1981, the notebooks reveal Williams’s private thoughts, personal encounters, and growth as a writer.

This insightful book offers an original view of the complex relations between home and school in the working class immigrant Italian community of New Haven, from 1870 to 1940. Through the lenses of history, sociology, and education, the book provides an account of one generation’s suspicions toward public education and another’s need to assimilate.

Although Americans like to believe that they live in a classless society, Stanley Aronowitz demonstrates that class remains a potent force. Defining class as the power of social groups to make a difference, he explains that social groups such as labor movements, environmental activists, and feminists become classes when they make demands that change the course of history.

This book traces the history of the Bible from the eleventh century, when it was available only to the clerical elite, to our own time, when it is a source of guidance and inspiration to people in all walks of life. Endlessly retailored to meet changing needs, the Bible—now in countless versions and translations—has become more influential as it has become m...

In this powerful sequel to Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, Edward Kaplan tells the story of Heschel’s life and work in America, after his escape from Nazism. A tireless challenger to spiritual and religious complacency, Heschel not only influenced Jewish debate but also wider religious and cultural debates in the postwar decades.

This groundbreaking book tells the story of Joseph Hurley, the American priest who became a Vatican diplomat, a witness to Pope Pius XII’s behind-the-scenes debates on Nazism and the Holocaust, and a participant in secret dealings between the U.S. and the Vatican from the 1930s through the early years of the Cold War.

This book tells the rich history of New York City’s magnificent Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first synagogue in America founded by East European Jews. Built in 1887 in response to an enormous wave of immigrants, the synagogue has served as a place of worship as well as a singularly important center in the development of American Judaism.

This pathbreaking book tells the story of American metaphysical religion more fully than it has ever been told before, along the way revising the entire panorama of American religious history. Catherine L. Albanese argues that metaphysical religion has been more influential than previously recognized and that it offers key insights into mainstream American religion.

This book is the first to explore the profound impact of the Bible on African American culture and history, from the colonial era to the present. Connecting hip-hop, soul, sermons, and a wide range of other arts to the Bible, Allen Callahan shows how certain biblical themes have helped African Americans deal with extraordinary injustice and find a collective identity.

 

This classic work, winner of the 1973 National Book Award in Philosophy and Religion and Christian Century’s choice as the Religious Book of the Decade (1979), is now issued with a new chapter by noted religious historian David Hall, who carries the story of American religious history forward to the present day.

This book is the most comprehensive survey of early American Christian theology ever written, and a major contribution to American intellectual history. It encompasses scores of American theological traditions, schools of thought, and thinkers active from 1636 to 1865 and considers the social and institutional settings for religious thought during this period.

In this groundbreaking and timely history, an eminent historian of religion chronicles America’s struggle to fulfill the promise of religious toleration enshrined in our Constitution. William Hutchison shows that as Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and adherents of other world religions have come forward to challenge the Protestant mainstream, Americans have expanded their understanding of what it ...

In a masterful evocation of Italian Harlem and the men and women who lived there, Robert Orsi examines how the annual festa of the Madonna of 115th Street both influenced and reflected the lives of the celebrants. His prize-winning book offers a new perspective on lived religion, the place of religion in the everyday lives of men, women, and children, the experiences of immigration and community f...

In 1958, an estranged Episcopalian priest forged an ancient gospel that told of Jesus and his apostles using magic and homosexual rites. Until now, the forgery has fooled many of the best Biblical scholars. Peter Jeffery unravels the mystery of the “Secret Gospel,” proves that the document is a hoax, and reveals the motives behind the forgery.

 

 

This magisterial work chronicles the 350-year history of the Jewish religion in America. Tracing American Judaism from its origins in the colonial era through the present day, Jonathan Sarna explores how Judaism adapted in this new context, how American culture affected Jewish religion and culture, and how American Jews shaped their own communities and faith in the new world.

Published on the 350th anniversary of the first Jews to arrive in America, this comprehensive history of the Jews of Boston is now available in a revised and updated paperback edition. The stunning work combines illuminating essays by distinguished Jewish historians with 110 rare photographs to trace the community from its tentative beginnings in colonial Boston through its emergence in the twenti...

In this book, Lee Shai Weissbach offers the first comprehensive portrait of small-town Jewish life in America. Exploring the history of communities of 100 to 1000 Jews, the book focuses on the years from the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Weissbach examines the dynamics of 490 communities across the United States and reveals that smaller Jewish centers were not simply miniature versions o...

This insightful new conceptualization of American political history demonstrates that—despite the clear separation of church and state—religion lies at the heart of American politics. From the Puritan founding to the present day, the American story is a moral epic, James Morone says, and while moral fervor has inspired the dream of social justice it has also ignited our fiercest social...

This lively history of the rise of Methodism charts the development of the movement from its unpromising origins in England in the 1730s to its major international importance by the 1880s. The book explores Methodism’s phenomenal growth in the British Isles, America, and around the globe, and the complex reasons for its wide-ranging appeal.

In this book Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American republic, arguing that during this period American Christianity was democratized and common people became powerful actors on the religious scene. Examining five distinct traditions or mass movements that emerged early in the nineteenth century—the Christian movement, Metho...

In this groundbreaking book, Matthew Klingle explores the environmental history of Seattle and shows how the city’s attempts to reshape nature have often ended in both ecological disaster and economic inequality. Advocating what he describes as “an ethic of place,” Klingle proposes bold new ways of thinking about environmental and urban policy.

This intriguing book explores eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Philadelphia through the findings of recent archaeological excavations, sharing the excitement of reconstructing long-forgotten lives—craftspeople, shopkeepers, ministers, free Blacks, Native Americans, and other ordinary men and women.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, burgeoning American cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia seemed increasingly chaotic. Noise, odors, and a feverish level of activity on the streets threatened to overwhelm the senses. Growing populations placed new demands on every aspect of the urban landscape—streets, parks, schools, asylums, cemeteries, m...

In this fascinating examination of the early days of American suburbia, an eminent historian identifies the pivotal role of restrictive covenants. Imposing a range of restrictions from the trifling (acceptable exterior paint colors) to the intrusive (excluding racial and religious groups from ownership), covenants reveal much about Americans’ hopes and fears.  

 

This groundbreaking book is the first to tell the story of the struggle to end slave trading between states in antebellum America. If the federal government had the authority to regulate interstate commerce, why wasn’t that power invoked to terminate slave trafficking? The author offers insights into Congress, the courts, abolitionists, and the issues that led to secession and the Civil War....

This pathbreaking  volume explores  the intertwining histories of abolitionism and feminism from 1770-1870. By comparing and integrating the histories of these movements in England, Europe, and the United States, the authors offer a new perspective on the search for social justice in that fateful century.

This book is the first to chronicle the lives of African American women in the urban north during the early years of the republic. A Fragile Freedom investigates how African American women in Philadelphia journeyed from enslavement to the precarious status of “free persons” in the decades leading up to the Civil War and examines comparable developm...

This multi-disciplinary volume offers a unique portrait of Jamaican culture from the beginning of British rule in 1655 to the aftermath of emancipation in the 1840s. It offers new perspectives on art, music, and performance in Afro-Jamaican society and on the Jewish diaspora in the Caribbean.

This wide-ranging book is the first to survey the practice of arming slaves as soldiers throughout history. The book encompasses classical Greece, early Islamic cultures of the Near East, West, and East Africa, the British and French Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America, and shows why entrusting slaves with weapons, though surprising, often made sense.

Drawing on an enormous amount of recent research, the contributors to this volume explore fundamental questions about the history of the transatlantic trade in slaves. Their groundbreaking findings fill in previous gaps, particularly concerning slave trade activity in Central and South America, and suggest new perspectives on the largest coerced migration in history....

This absorbing book is the first ever to focus on the traffic in Indian slaves in the American South, a practice that for decades linked southern lives and created a whirlwind of violence and profit-making. Alan Gallay documents in vivid detail how the trade operated, the processes by which Europeans and Native Americans became participants, and the profound consequences for the South and its peop...

This wide-ranging book presents the first comprehensive account of the slave trade within the nations and colonial systems of the Americas—Brazil, the West Indies, and the Southern states of the United States after the closing of the Atlantic slave trade.

Seven years after his escape from slavery in 1838, the young Frederick Douglass published this celebrated account of his life in bondage and his triumph over oppression. His story—revealing the terrors of his enslavement, the brutality of his owners and overseers, and his harrowing escape to the North—has become a classic of American autobiography. This authoritative edition includes a...

Misunderstood and underappreciated in life, Thomas Eakins is now acclaimed as America’s foremost portrait painter. This revealing biography is the first to recount the full drama of the artist’s public and private life, drawing on a treasure trove of recently discovered Eakins family correspondence and papers to tell the compelling story.  

Thomas Eakins' extraordinary rowing pictures—some of the most celebrated and recognized images in the history of American art—appear together for the first time in this beautiful book. Fascinating information about the sport of rowing and its heroes, about Eakins' development as an artist, and about nineteenth-century social, cultural, and artistic concerns accompanies the twenty-four ...

In this fresh interpretation of the artist, Amy Werbel sets Eakins in the context of Philadelphia’s medical and artistic communities in the nineteenth century, and considers his provocative behavior in the light of other well-publicized scandals of his era. This illuminating perspective provides a rich, alternative account of Eakins and casts entirely new light on his renowned paintings.

A close look at early 20th-century New York City through the paintings, drawings, and prints of John Sloan, whose dark palette and gritty urban scenes inspired the epithet “Ashcan School.”

A major new study of the life and career of Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas––the “father of Black American art”––and his significant role in the evolution of American modernism.

An unparalleled and definitive survey of American photography from its beginnings through the nation’s coming of age and the rise of popular photography in the 1880s.

This charming book examines a previously undocumented photograph album comprising 41 cyanotypes of his native Ipswich that Dow produced in 1899.

In this groundbreaking book, Matthew Klingle explores the environmental history of Seattle and shows how the city’s attempts to reshape nature have often ended in both ecological disaster and economic inequality. Advocating what he describes as “an ethic of place,” Klingle proposes bold new ways of thinking about environmental and urban policy.

This book offers an intimate portrait of the ways allergic disease has shaped American culture, landscape, and life. Through the life stories of people, plants, and insects, Mitman reveals how our changing environment—physical, biological, social, and economic—has helped to create America’s allergic landscape and why solutions to combat hay fever and asthma have failed.

In this detailed reconstruction of colonial farming in Concord, Massachusetts, Brian Donahue challenges the notion that early farmers degraded their land. In fact, Donahue shows, Concord farmers skillfully adapted the ancient traditions of English mixed husbandry to New England’s soils and climate to achieve a sustainable, ecologically sound system.

This engaging book examines the shared history of people and bears. Hopscotching through history, literature, and science, Bernd Brunner presents a delightfully illustrated compendium of information about different cultures’ attitudes toward bears, the central place of bears in our myths and dreams, how our images of bears do and do not mesh with reality, and m...

Since the beginnings of European settlement, Americans have transformed the myth of the wolf from an expression of the untamed frontier to an embodiment of the great wilderness. In this provocative history of wolves in America—and of the humans who have hated and loved them—Jon Coleman investigates the sometimes violent and always controversial relationship between the ...