Early America

The powers-that-be in auto racing in the 1920s, namely the American Automobile Association's Contest Board, prohibited everyone who wasn't a White male from the sport. Dewey Gaston, a Black man who went by the name Rajo Jack, broke into the epicenter of racing in California, refusing to let the pervasive racism of his day stop him from competing against entire fields of White drivers. In The Brown Bullet, Bill Poehler uncovers the life of a long-forgotten trailblazer and the great lengths he took to even get on the track.

An Independent Empire shows how foreign policy and diplomacy constitute a truly national story, necessary for understanding the history of the United States. In this lively and well-written book, episodes in American history - such as the writing and ratification of the Constitution, Henry Clay's advocacy of an American System, Pinckney's Treaty with Spain, and the visionary but absurd Congress of Panama - are recast as elemental aspects of United States foreign and security policy.

The settlement of North America was the beginning of a new era in human history. The oppressive laws, habits, and customs of the Old World no longer held such power over those who had made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic. No reigning monarch or dictatorial power ever stepped onto the ground of North America. Yet, despite this, the men and women of the 13 colonies of North America were still not free until they threw off the shackles of England's government and asserted their own rights.

Readers who love Susan Wiggs and Susan Mallery will adore New York Times bestselling author Mary McNear newest novel. A young woman travels home to Butternut Lake, confronting her past and the tragedy she and her friends have silently carried with them for over a decade while also facing an...

The American Revolution conjures a series of iconographic images of defiant Patriots fighting against British Redcoats for freedom and democracy, while a unified citizenry rallies behind them and the American cause. But the lived experience of the Revolution was a more complex matter, filled with uncertainty, fear, and discord. In The American Revolution Reborn, editors Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman compile essays from a new generation of multidisciplinary scholars that render the American Revolution as a time of intense ambiguity and frightening contingency.

First published in 1903, this groundbreaking work is a cornerstone of African American literary history and a foundational text in the field of sociology. In these fourteen essays, W. E. B. Du Bois introduces and explores the concept of “double-consciousness”—a term he uses to describe the experience of living as an African American and having a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Though an examination of Black life in post-Civil War America, The Souls of Black Folk has had a lasting impact on civil rights and the discussion of race in the United States.

A gripping blend of psychological suspense and historical true crime, this riveting novel—inspired by a sensational real-life murder from the 1800s—by critically acclaimed author Emily Arsenault delivers a heart-stopping mystery linking two young mothers from different centuries. Frances...

The lives of four teenagers are capsized by a shocking school shooting and its aftermath in this powerful debut novel, a coming-of-age story with the haunting power of Station Eleven and the bittersweet poignancy of Everything I Never Told You. As members of the yearbook committee, Nick, Zola...

From the critically acclaimed author of The Widow's War comes a captivating work of literary historical fiction that explores the tenuous relationship between a brilliant and complex father and his devoted daughter—Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson Randolph. After the death of her beloved...

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democratic values of the Revolution.

In The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America, Richard R. Beeman offers an ambitious overview of political life in pre-Revolutionary America. Beeman uncovers an extraordinary diversity of political belief and practice. In so doing, he closes the gap between eighteenth-century political rhetoric and reality. Although the majority of people living in America before the Revolution would not have used the term "democracy," important changes were underway that made it increasingly difficult for political leaders to ignore "popular pressures".

In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called "the American Century." Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For "one brief, shining moment" in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon give way, however, to a new reality involving assassinations, the Vietnam War, Cold War crises, the civil rights movement, a new feminist movement, and various culture wars.

The Great Migration was the name coined for the mass movement of African-Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line in the years following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The enormous promise of emancipation proved to be illusory for the majority of Southern blacks, whether free or formerly enslaved, and as a result, hundreds of thousands made use of their fundamental freedom to leave. This resulted in a “push” away from the South, caused by ongoing discrimination, punishing Jim Crow laws, and increasing violence directed at blacks by whites.

In Marjorie Herrera Lewis’s debut historical novel the inspiring true story of high school teacher Tylene Wilson—a woman who surprises everyone as she breaks with tradition to become the first high school football coach in Texas—comes to life. ""A wonderfully touching and beautiful...

Four centuries ago, and 14 years before the Mayflower, a group of men - led by a one-armed ex-pirate, an epileptic aristocrat, a reprobate cleric, and a government spy - left London aboard a fleet of three ships to start a new life in America. They arrived in Virginia in the spring of 1607 and set about trying to create a settlement on a tiny island in the James River.

In Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic, historian Peter C. Mancall reveals how Europeans and Native Americans thought about a natural world undergoing rapid change in the century following the historic voyages of Christopher Columbus. Through innovative use of oral history and folklore maintained for centuries by Native Americans as well as original use of manuscript atlases, paintings that depict European representations of nature, and texts that circulated across the ocean, he reveals how the encounter between the old world and the new changed the fate of millions.

In Frontier Country, Patrick Spero addresses one of the most important and controversial subjects in American history: the frontier. Countering the modern conception of the American frontier as an area of expansion, Spero employs the eighteenth-century meaning of the term to show how colonists understood it as a vulnerable, militarized boundary. The Pennsylvania frontier, Spero argues, was constituted through conflicts not only between colonists and Native Americans but also among neighboring British colonies.

When Dr. David Hosack tilled the country's first botanical garden in the Manhattan soil more than 200 years ago, he didn't just dramatically alter the New York landscape; he left a monumental legacy of advocacy for public health and wide-ranging support for the sciences. In melodic prose, historian Victoria Johnson eloquently chronicles Hosack's tireless career to reveal the breadth of his impact. The result is a lush portrait of the man who gave voice to a new, deeply American understanding of the powers and perils of nature.

Join this great voyage through the history of the Panama Canal, which is, one hundred years after its completion, on the eve of a new chapter in its spectacular history. From the early explorers, many seeking a critical water connection between two of the world's great oceans to the determination of the best engineers of America, the BIG DIG finally opened for shipping - you can be on board! What stood in the way of making this canal a reality?

In John Adams vs Thomas Paine: Rival Plans for the Early Republic, historian Jett B. Conner makes the case that Thomas Paine was more than just a revolutionary figure who spurred Americans toward declaring independence. Common Sense made important contributions to American constitutional thought, too, particularly its call for more equal representation, popular sovereignty, a constitutional convention, and a federal system of governance with a strong central government.