America First History

September 11, 2001, did not represent the first aerial assault against the American mainland. The first came on July 17,1996, with the downing of TWA Flight 800. This book looks in detail at what people saw and heard on this fateful night. First Strike explains how a determined corps of ordinary citizens worked to reveal the compromise and corruption that tainted the federal investigation.

A tribute to the courageous chiefs and warriors who fought to protect their people and preserve the Native way of life in the face of European expansion across North America, including: Sequoyah, a Cherokee who invented a system of writing for his people; Sitting Bull, the powerful warrior and spiritual leader of the Lakota Sioux who doggedly fought white incursions on Sioux land; Chief Joseph, who led the Nez Perce on a heroic and doomed flight to freedom; and more.

On September 3, 1901, a Protestant missionary named Ellen Stone set out on horseback across the mountainous hinterlands of Balkan Macedonia and was ambushed by a band of armed revolutionaries. In The Miss Stone Affair, Teresa Carpenter re-creates an event that captured the attention of the world and posed a dilemma for incoming president Theodore Roosevelt. Should he send in the Navy or not? And, if so, send it where? Drawing upon a wealth of contemporary correspondence and documents, Carpenter constructs a narrative that is suspenseful, harrowing, and at times even comical. It is a story for our time.

With an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the United States Marine Corps - the last all-white branch of the U.S. military - was forced to begin recruiting and enlisting African Americans. The first black recruits received basic training at the segregated Camp Montford Point, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina.

The year: 1638. The setting: Providence, near Plymouth Colony. A young Nipmuc tribesman returning home from trading beaver pelts is fatally stabbed in a robbery in the woods near Plymouth Colony by a vicious white runaway indentured servant. The tribesman, fighting for his life, is able with his final breaths to reveal the details of the attack to Providence’s governor, Roger Williams. A frantic manhunt by the fledgling government ensues to capture the killer and his gang, now the most hunted men in the New World.

At the same time as the women's rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman. Yet, while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but forgotten Sarah Polk. Now, Amy Greenberg brings her story into vivid focus in this riveting biography and reveals Sarah Polk's complicated but essential part in American feminism.

In Vitagraph, Andrew A. Erish provides a comprehensive examination and reassessment of the company most responsible for defining and popularizing the American movie. This history challenges long-accepted Hollywood mythology that simply isn't true: that Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these companies, along with MGM and Warner Bros., developed motion pictures into a multimillion-dollar business.

At the end of World War I, Canada was poised on the brink of social revolution. At least that is what many Canadians, inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, hoped - and others dreaded. Seeing Reds tells the story of this turbulent period in Canadian history during the winter of 1918-19, when a fearful government led by Prime Minister Robert Borden tried to suppress radical political activity by branding legitimate labour leaders as "Bolsheviks" and "Reds".

From Darkness to Dynasty tells the unlikely history of the New England Patriots as it has never been told before. From their humble beginnings as a team bought with rainy-day money by a man who had no idea what he was doing, to the fateful season that saw them win their first Super Bowl, Jerry Thornton shares the wild, humiliating, unbelievable, and wonderful stories that comprised the first 40 years of what would ultimately become the most dominant franchise in NFL history.

When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs - including an expert on germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster - devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons, to bring down vital targets such as ships, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan. New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them.

In November 2018, the greatest number of women in American history entered Congress. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and "the Squad" to "the Badasses" with national security backgrounds, from the first two Native Americans in Congress to the first two Muslim women, all were swept into office on a wave of grassroots support, diverse in background, age, professional experience, and ideology. In The Firsts, New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer follows these women's first year in the 116th Congress.

In this impressive, well-researched biography, Phelps separates historical fact from long-standing myth to reveal the life of Nathan Hale, a young man who deserves to be remembered as an original American patriot. Using Hale's own journals and letters as well as testimonies from his friends and contemporaries, Phelps depicts the Revolution as it was seen from the ground.

How does the First Amendment really work? Is it a principle or a value? What is hate speech and should it always be banned? Are we free to declare our religious beliefs in the public square? What role, if any, should companies like Facebook play in policing the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and opinions? With clarity and power, Stanley Fish explores these complex questions in The First.

In Voyage of Mercy, Stephen Puleo tells the incredible story of the famine, the Jamestown voyage, and the commitment of thousands of ordinary Americans to offer relief to Ireland, a groundswell that provided the collaborative blueprint for future relief efforts, and established the United States as the leader in international aid. The USS Jamestown’s heroic voyage showed how the ramifications of a single decision can be measured not in days, but in decades.

In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure - the remarkable Major Taylor, the Black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era.

Yellowstone remains a national icon, one of the few entities capable of bridging ideological divides in the United States. Yet the park's history is also filled with episodes of conflict and exclusion, setting precedents for Native American land dispossession, land rights disputes, and prolonged tensions between commercialism and environmental conservation. Yellowstone's legacies are both celebratory and problematic. A Place Called Yellowstone tells the comprehensive story of Yellowstone National Park as the story of the nation itself.

When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army had no specialized division of mountain soldiers. But in the winter of 1939-40, after a tiny band of Finnish mountain troops brought the invading Soviet army to its knees, an amateur skier named Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole convinced the United States Army to let him recruit an extraordinary assortment of European expatriates, wealthy ski bums, mountaineers, and thrill-seekers and form them into a unique band of Alpine soldiers.

In 1938, a young German rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun had dreams of building a rocket that could fly him to the moon. In Ray, North Dakota, a young farm girl named Mary Sherman was attending high school. In an age when girls rarely dreamed of a career in science, Mary wanted to be a chemist. A decade later, the dreams of these two disparate individuals would coalesce in ways neither could have imagined.

In 1872 Congress established Yellowstone National Park, and its vast wonders mesmerized early sightseers, including school superintendent William Wallace Wylie. From 1896 to 1905 his Wylie Camping Company fed, sheltered, and guided thousands of Victorian vacationers through relaxed week-long tours. Wylie promised travelers comfort and delicious meals. His clients enjoyed heated sleeping tents, informative outings, and fresh-air bonfires.

At the dawn of America's love affair with the automobile, cars and trucks leaving the nation's largest city were unceremoniously dumped out of the western end of the Holland Tunnel onto local roads wending their way through the New Jersey Meadowlands. Jersey City mayor Frank Hague, dictator of the Hudson County political machine and a national political player, was a prime mover behind the building of the country's first "superhighway", designed to connect the hub of New York City to the USA.