History : Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)

This is history from the inside out. What did Americans say about the great events in their own lifetimes? This book is a grassroots look at the country, as real people tell the story of America in their own voices. Quotations from more than 350 individuals are taken from speeches, interviews, editorials, letters, jokes, songs, and eyewitness accounts represent American thought from the ground up. This compendium includes the words of everyone from politicians and generals, to Native Americans, ethnic minorities, women, labor representatives, and slaves. The book is divided into 18 traditional historical periods from the pre-Columbus explorers to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.||We hear the voices of Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy and FDR, but also of Joe McCarthy, Huey Long, and Susan B. Anthony. We hear American law in action through watersheds like Brown v. the Board of Education, the Scopes case, the prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Salem witch trials. Then there are the grace notes, the forgotten but significant stories—a black woman beaten and humiliated for encouraging others to vote; the G.I. who overthrew a German bunker at Normandy; the last letter of a Union soldier soon to die in battle. Their words are woven into American history, remembered and illuminated in this kaleidoscopic collection. more...

Price: $139.00

America's Home Front Heroes: An Oral History of World War II brings together in one rich resource the voices of those whom history often leaves out—the ordinary men, women, and children caught up in an extraordinary time.||America's Home Front Heroes is divided into four sections: A Time for Heightened Passion, A Time for Caution and Prejudice, A Time for Flag Waving, and A Time for War Plant Women. The 34 brief oral histories within these sections capture the full diversity of the United States during the war, with contributions coming from men, women, and children of all backgrounds, including Japanese Americans, conscientious objectors, African Americans, housewives, and journalists. A treasure trove for researchers and World War II enthusiasts, this remarkable volume offers members of “the greatest generation” an opportunity to relive their defining era. For those with no direct experience of the period, it’s a chance to learn firsthand what it was like living in the United States at a pivotal moment in history.|| more...

Price: $70.00

A comprehensive work about the first families' children, this is the only book available that treats these privileged few at any depth. The reading is enjoyable, answering questions such as, What happened to...? and, Did this president have any children? The book also is informative, glimpsing the lives of a few who have been shoved into the limelight at a certain period and for generations to come. Historically, the work functions sometimes as a period piece, sometimes as a human interest piece, but it always serves to help bring to life our first families. Included (where possible and/or appropriate) are the vital statistics of birth, marriage, education, development, profession, and death. The book is a good read, but it also serves an historical function.||Aside from the fact that the book is informative, reading about the lives of the children of America's chief executives is like peering into a moment of the American equivalent of royalty. Observing the exciting, painful, humdrum, and heartfelt experiences of both the children and the families may also serve to increase the reader's understanding of the real lives of these emulated families; that they too lead lives that are similar to every person's, except that they are in the historical spotlight. After all, leaders such as Lincoln and Kennedy were forced to continue governing the affairs of state as their sons died. more...

Price: $188.00

For anyone who has looked at a map of the United States and wondered how Texas and Oklahoma got their Panhandles, or flown over the American heartland and marveled at the vast grid spreading out in all directions below, American Boundaries will yield a welcome treasure trove of insight. The first book to chart the country’s growth using the boundary as a political and cultural focus, Bill Hubbard’s masterly narrative begins by explaining how the original thirteen colonies organized their borders and decided that unsettled lands should be held in trust for the common benefit of the people. Hubbard goes on to show—with the help of photographs, diagrams, and hundreds of maps—how the notion evolved that unsettled land should be divided into rectangles and sold to individual farmers, and how this rectangular survey spread outward from its origins in Ohio, with surveyors drawing straight lines across the face of the continent. Mapping how each state came to have its current shape, and how the nation itself formed within its present borders, American Boundaries will provide historians, geographers, and general readers alike with the fascinating story behind those fifty distinctive jigsaw-puzzle pieces that together form the United States. more...

Price: $55.00

The rich history of the Native American brims with agriculture, hunting, crafts, music, culinary arts, storytelling, religious culture, battle prowess, medicine, and mythology. It is also a history marked by bloodshed and battle, conquest, violence, religious conflict, disease, and starvation. American Indian Chronology guides the reader through the most significant events in Native North American history, from prehistory to the present. From early Spanish and Portuguese exploration to the surrender of Geronimo, from the decline of the fur trade to the Wounded Knee massacre, from smallpox epidemics and broken treaties to the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, from Tecumseh's rebellion to the Native American Church, from the first journey across the Bering land bridge to the occupation of Alcatraz Island, the Chronology presents a fascinating look into the sweeping changes of history, wars and conflicts, government policies, social progress, and cultural changes affecting peoples on all sides in the New World.||American Indian Chronology guides the reader through the most significant events in Native North American history, from prehistory to the present. Entries are organized by dates and subdivided into over 35 categories, including: agriculture and farming; death and burial; exploration; legislation; arts, crafts, and musi; treaties; wars and conflicts; legends and storytelling; education; and civil rights and protests||This concise format makes a clear and accessible student research tool, supplemented with primary source sidebars, useful illustrations, a glossary, bibliography—including print and electronic sources—and index. With updates through 2005, this chronology is the most current in its field, bringing the modern struggles of American Indians into the 21st century. more...

Price: $63.00