America First History

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.

From George Washington's reluctant oath-taking through George W. Bush's leadership challenges after September 11, 2001, we view ambitious and fallible men through the new lens of the 21st century. Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? And what do we know now that we could not have known at the time?

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.

It began as President Ulysses S. Grant's bid for international glory after the Civil War - America's first attempt to reach the North Pole. It ended with Captain Charles Hall's death under suspicious circumstances, dissension among sailors, scientists, and explorers, and the ship's evacuation and eventual sinking. Then came a brutal struggle for survival by 33 men, women, and children stranded on the polar ice.

Dale Maharidge’s father, like many World War II veterans, never talked about “the good war”. There was just one clue to his dad’s experience as a US Marine - a portrait with a close friend that hung permanently in their home. In The Dead Drink First, Dale, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, recounts his 18-year quest to find and repatriate the missing remains of his dad’s buddy, Herman Walter Mulligan, 73 years after he was killed in action.

Schultz weaves together the key events in Sacajawea’s story, from her traumatic childhood and adolescence, being captured and taken away from her home by a raiding party of Minnetaree to her unhappy marriage to the interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau, through to her life assisting in Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Pacific Northwest.

Canada is not one nation, but three: English Canada, Quebec, and First Nations. Yet as a country Canada is very successful, in part because it maintains national diversity through bilingualism, multiculturalism, and federalism. Alongside this contemporary openness Canada also has its own history to contend with; with a legacy of broken treaties and residential schools for its Indigenous peoples, making reconciliation between Canada and First Nations an ongoing journey, not a destination.

The chilling tome that launched an entire genre of books about the often gruesome but always tragic ways people have died in our national parks, this updated edition of the classic includes calamities in Yellowstone from the past sixteen years, including the infamous grizzly bear attacks in the summer of 2011 as well as a fatal hot springs accident in 2000. In these accounts, written with sensitivity as cautionary tales about what to do and what not to do in one of our wildest national parks, Whittlesey recounts deaths ranging from tragedy to folly.

Two centuries ago, without congressional or public debate, a president who is thought of today as peaceable, Thomas Jefferson, launched America's first war on foreign soil, a war against terror. The enemy was Muslim; the war was waged unconventionally, with commandos, native troops, and encrypted intelligence, and launched from foreign bases.

J. M. Adovasio has spent the last thirty years at the center of one of our most fiery scientific debates: Who were the first humans in the Americas, and how and when did they get there? At its heart, The First Americans is the story of the revolution in thinking that Adovasio and his fellow archaeologists have brought about, and the firestorm it has ignited.

In America's First Dynasty, Richard Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still-greatest dynasty, the Adamses, the only family in our history to play a leading role in American affairs for nearly two centuries.John Adams was only the first of the Adamses to occupy the highest office in the land; his son, John Quincy Adams, ascended to the presidency as an equal champion of liberty.

You may have learned about Cesar Chavez’s leadership in organizing the well-known Delano Grape Strike and Boycott of the 1960s. But did you know it began as a strike led by Larry Itliong? He was a Filipino labor organizer who had also been working with grape pickers in California at the time.

Dig in on the deadly struggle for a Boston hilltop, Breed’s Hill, known as Bunker Hill. For the British Army, it was the deadliest battle of the American Revolutionary War. This battle, more than any other event, created the moment Massachusetts and the other colonies realized the American Revolution had begun. Meet a young Boston bookseller who believed he could bomb the mighty British army out of Boston. He became Washington’s Yankee, standing with him from Boston to victory at Yorktown.

The astonishing untold history of America's first Black millionaires - former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring '20s - self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.

In A Canadian Shame, Darren Grimes has collected and presented overwhelming evidence which shows beyond doubt that a monster bent on the complete destruction of the Indigenous peoples of Canada (First Nations, Inuit, Metis, and all the other Aboriginal inhabitants of the land) has been devouring not only men and women, but also children of those cultures, that this monster has been doing so for hundreds of years, that this destruction has been deliberate and systematic rather than accidental or unintended.

For a while, it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. But then the bubble burst. The financial sector was paralyzed and the economy contracted. State and federal governments struggled to pay their domestic and foreign creditors. Washington was incapable of decisive action. The country seethed with political and social unrest. In America's First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts describes how the United States dealt with the economic and political crisis that followed the Panic of 1837.

Television host, razor sharp political pundit, and #1 bestselling author Bill O’Reilly focuses in on where we all stand in the Age of Obama in Pinheads and Patriots. In this brave, hard-hitting, provocative volume, the author of Culture Warrior and A Bold, Fresh Piece of Humanity guides...

Hillary Rodham Clinton's inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America's 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future. In the aftermath of her 2008 presidential run, she expected to return to representing New York in the United States Senate. To her surprise, her former rival for the Democratic Party nomination, newly elected President Barack Obama, asked her to serve in his administration as Secretary of State. This memoir is the story of the four extraordinary and historic years that followed.

Isaac's Storm meets The Age of Wonder in Lee Sandlin's Storm Kings, a riveting tale of the weather's most vicious monster - the super cell tornado - that recreates the origins of meteorology, and the quirky, pioneering, weather-obsessed scientists who helped change America.

The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America's first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people, launched yellow-ribbon campaigns, made celebrities of the hostage's families, and crippled the reelection campaign of President Jimmy Carter.