United Nations History

How did people in our country, North and South, East and West, come to share a remarkably durable and consistent common vision of what it meant to be an American in the first 50 years after the Revolution? How did the nation respond to the problem of slavery in a republic?

In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."

Everything you need to understand the content and vocabulary to successfully navigate the Advanced Placement United States History exam. The book and its audio narration explain every key concept, word for word, that the College Board publishes for the Advanced Placement United States History. Better yet, it is delivered by a professional actor in language that is relatable, understandable, and sometimes humorous. This is your best investment for a passing grade on your exam!

In the 1820s, few Americans could imagine a viable future for black children. Even abolitionists saw just two options for African American youth: permanent subjection or exile. Educated for Freedom tells the story of James McCune Smith and Henry Highland Garnet, two black children who came of age and into freedom as their country struggled to grow from a slave nation into a free country.

Most Americans know Andrew Jackson as a frontier rebel against political and diplomatic norms, a "populist" champion of ordinary people against the elitist legacy of the Founding Fathers. Many date the onset of American democracy to his 1829 inauguration. Despite his reverence for the "sovereign people", however, Jackson spent much of his career limiting that sovereignty, imposing new and often unpopular legal regimes over American lands and markets.

Known to generations of Americans for his stirring call to arms, “Give me liberty or give me death,” Patrick Henry is all but forgotten today as the first of the Founding Fathers to call for independence, the first to call for revolution, and the first to call for a bill of rights. If Washington was the “Sword of the Revolution” and Jefferson, “the Pen,” Patrick Henry more than earned his epithet as “the Trumpet” of the Revolution for rousing Americans to arms in the Revolutionary War.

In 1789, James Madison and James Monroe ran against each other for Congress-the only time that two future presidents have contested a congressional seat. But what was at stake, as author Chris DeRose reveals in Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election That Saved a Nation, was more than personal ambition. This was a race that determined the future of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the very definition of the United States of America.

As the 2012 presidential campaign begins: Profiles of 12 men who have run for the presidency and lost, but who, even in defeat, have had a greater impact on American history than many of those who have served as president - from Henry Clay to Stephen Douglas, William Jennings Bryan to Al Gore - Plus, mini-profiles on 22 "honorable mentions."

As the largest minority in the country, Latino Americans make up an integral part of American history and continue to make major social, cultural, and political contributions. Latino Americans, vividly and candidly tells how the story of Latino Americans is the story of the United States, revealing the personal struggles and successes of immigrants, poets, soldiers, and others who have made an impact on history.

One of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists, and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of 30 and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker.

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.

Civilization may face no greater enemy than Saddam Hussein, and yet, as Richard Butler makes clear in his gripping and terrifying The Greatest Threat, the major powers allowed Saddam to face them down.

The American Dream is one of the most familiar and resonant phrases in our national lexicon, so familiar that we seldom pause to ask its origin, its history, or what it actually means. In this fascinating short history, Jim Cullen explores the meaning of the American Dream, or rather the several American Dreams that have both reflected and shaped American identity from the Pilgrims to the present.

Is America ruled by the ‘shadowy government’ which famed journalist Ferdinand Lundberg described in 1934? Is the nation ruled by what President Carter called “an Oligarchy instead of a Democracy”?

America's Existential Crisis: Our Inherited Obligation to Native Nations is a historical journey and a road trip through "Indian country". The surprising stories of two ancestors of the author lead into the Plains Indian Wars, the 1830 Indian Removal Act, the Potawatomi Trail of Death, and the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee.

Most histories of the Cherokee nation focus on its encounters with Europeans, its conflicts with the U.S. government, and its expulsion from its lands during the Trail of Tears. This work, however, traces the origins of the Cherokee people to the third century B.C.E. and follows their migrations through the Americas to their homeland in the lower Appalachian Mountains.

Millions of American families have turned to The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass by William J. Bennett for moral guidance in troubled times. Our Sacred Honor offers inspiration and instruction as well -- this time of a particularly American sort.

Roy Bean was an American saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Texas, who called himself "The Only Law West of the Pecos". He and his three brothers set out from Kentucky in the mid 1840s, heading into the American frontier to find their fortunes. Their lifetimes of triumphs, tragedies, laurels, and scandals will play out on the battlefields of Mexico, in shady dealings in California city halls, inside eccentric saloon courtrooms of Texas, and along the blood-soaked Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico. They will kill men, and murder will likewise stalk them.

The Supplement to Volume VII expands the story of the Virginia Colony and discusses the important contributions of its founders, from the arrival of the British at Jamestown in 1607, through the economic expansion, and turbulence of the 18th century. Included are discussions of the investors and explorers who were members of the Virginia Company, such as John Smith, George Percy, and many others. The lives and teachings of Virginia's early religious leaders, and the movement from the government-backed Anglican religion to other Protestant faiths are also discussed.

Drawing on period letters and chronicles, and on the papers of the Virginia Company - which financed the settlement of Jamestown - David Price tells a tale of cowardice and courage, stupidity and brilliance, tragedy and costly triumph. He takes us into the day-to-day existence of the English men and women whose charge was to find gold and a route to the Orient, and who found, instead, hardship and wretched misery. Death, in fact, became the settlers' most faithful companion, and their infighting was ceaseless.