United States History

This story is told in the words of a tragic figure in American history - a hook-nosed, hollow-cheeked old Sauk warrior who lived under four flags while the Mississippi Valley was being wrested from his people. The author is Black Hawk himself - once pursued by an army whose members included Captain Abraham Lincoln and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Perhaps no Indian ever saw so much of American expansion or fought harder to prevent that expansion from driving his people to exile and death.

Like any tapestry, the threads of history cross over and under each other in different points of view and places in time. Award-winning author Deborah K. Frontiera mixes natural science and geology into history where those aspects intersect with the lives of people or are the reason Michigan's Upper Peninsula developed the way it did.

Indigenomics in action—moving beyond Indian Act economics towards Indigenous economic sovereignty. In this groundbreaking new work, Carol Anne Hilton, author of the bestselling Indigenomics, explores the phenomenon of growing Indigenous economic power and sovereignty, achieved despite monumental historic injustices. The Indigenous economy in Canada is on track to exceed $100 billion. Yet full Indigenous participation at the economic table is still fundamentally lacking, due in large part to the inherently colonial and racist policies of the Indian Act.

In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals.

The setting for this haunting and encyclopedically researched work of history is colonial Massachusetts, where English Puritans first endeavored to "civilize" a "savage" native populace. There, in February 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

This prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

World War II was the most destructive war in history. Millions upon millions of people died, including innocent civilians. Both sides—the Allies and Axis Powers—pursued secret plans, tactics, and weapons to destroy each other resulting in horrors on a scale never before seen. Secrets of World War II reveals little-known stories of the people, weapons, and battles that have affected the maps on our walls and the allegiances in our hearts.

Like many historical events, the American Revolution is sometimes overlooked, ignored, or minimized by historians due to being shrouded in romantic myth and stubborn stereotypes. Here historian Phillip Thomas Tucker provides an in-depth look at the events of the Battle of Trenton, weeding out fiction and legend and presenting new insights and analysis.

In this “monumental and impressive” biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president’s aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides “the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date” (Robert Mann).

Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was a fact universally acknowledged that any man in want of a great fortune ought to find himself a Caribbean heiress. Their assets, the product of the exploitation of enslaved African men, women, and children, enabled them to marry into the top tiers of the aristocracy and influence society and politics. They fell in love (not always with their husbands), eloped, divorced, squandered fortunes, commissioned art, threw parties, went mad and (in once case) faked a daughter's death.

Travel to the United States. Find out the facts about this country in North America.

Born in an era of rising violence, Black Elk killed his first man at Little Big Horn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior, and instead chose the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that haunted and inspired him.

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.

In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years' War - long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution - takes on a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain's empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution. Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountry involving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville, Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to world conflagration.

Conducted under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, intended to stem the flow of firearms to Mexico, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gun walking” sting operations, including Operations Wide Receiver and Operation Fast & Furious. The government allowed licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers so that they could continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels.

From the author of The Last Testament comes the true love of Bonnie Prince Charlie, her adventures in America, and her lasting legacy. In the popular genre trail-blazed by Antonia Fraser and Phillippa Gregory, The Pretender's Lady, Alan Gold's meticulously researched novel, accurately opens history's pages on a peerless woman who helped change the course of history and whose legend lives on in Scotland today - Flora MacDonald.

Over the years, thousands of tales both true and fantastic have been told about the dastardly thievery of pirates. Their rum-drunk exploits and high-seas violence never fail to delight. Now in a brand new series collection, The Best Pirate Stories Ever Told includes many of the very best pirate yarns ever created on history’s most debaucherous scalawags. Anyone who loves a good story full of excitement, adventure, thrills, and laughs will find this collection irresistible.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

Many Americans reference the Bill of Rights, a document that represents many of the freedoms that define the United States. Who doesn’t know about the First Amendment’s freedom of religion or Second Amendment’s right to bear arms? In this succinct volume, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams offer a wealth of knowledge about the Bill of Rights that goes beyond a basic understanding.The Bill of Rights Primer is an authoritative guide to all American freedoms. Uncluttered and well-organized, this audiobook is perfect for those who want to study up on the Bill of Rights without needing a law degree to do so.

The U.S. Navy traces its roots back to the American Revolutionary War. Then, its small fleet was outnumbered. Today, it is the largest navy in the world. Learn about the roles of sailors and their training, as well as the different types of ships, aircraft, equipment, and weapons the U.S. Navy uses to complete missions around the world.