Dawning of the Counter-culture: The 1960s

A lively survey of the eccentric politics and culture of ...


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American History Titles

Browse our American History titles listed below.

Peanuts, Popcorn & American Presidents

by Ray Robinson

United States History, American History, U.S. History, Sports History, Sports

No politician who yearns for the White House would dare turn his back on the National Pastime. Ray Robinson surveys the presidential attitude toward baseball since the early twentieth century, separating the enthusiasts from the pretenders.

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Mr. Dooley Now and Forever

Thoughts on Life and Politics from the Famous Turn-of-the-20th-Century Chicago Saloonkeeper

by Finley Peter Dunne

United States History, Political Science, American History, U.S. History, U.S. Government

Mr. Dooley, a turn-of-the-20th-century Irish saloonkeeper from Chicago’s Archer Avenue (“Ar-rchey Road,” he called it) on the city’s southwest side, was the creation of Finley Peter Dunne, a Chicago newspaperman. Mr. Dooley analyzed world affairs for the equally fictitious Mr. Hennessey, and his opinions went out to the real press and the reading public. They are current—and funny. The problems confronting America a hundred years ago are among those that remain unsolved today.

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At Los Alamos

Learning to Love the Bomb

by Jeremy Bernstein

United States History, Military History, American History, U.S. History, U.S. Government

The atomic bomb was developed at government laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico, by a team of outstanding physicists under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Upon seeing the results of the first detonation of an atomic device, the test director Kenneth Bainbridge is said to have remarked to Oppenheimer, “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Yet the physicists could scarcely contain their fascination with what they had wrought, as Jeremy Bernstein finds in this report from ground zero.

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Hunting the Grizzly

by Theodore Roosevelt

American History, U.S. History, Sports History, Education

On his Dakota ranch, Theodore Roosevelt learned to ride Western style, rope, and hunt. Already at twenty-seven a serious historian and author, he began writing about the frontier life. His account of confrontations with grizzly bears shows us how unusual was this American president.

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Courting Racial Justice

Harry Truman Outflanks the Southern Barons of Capitol Hill

by Robert Shogan

United States History, Political Science, American History, U.S. History, U.S. Government

President Harry Truman skirted Congress and boldly used the Justice Department to support the rights of black Americans. How he did it, and his effort’s lasting consequences, are told in this sharply observed account.

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Henry Adams Grows Up

The Early Years of a Conspicuous American / Selections from The Education of Henry Adams

by Henry Adams

United States History, American History, U.S. History, U.S. Government, Biography

Henry Adams, whose distinguished family had a tradition of service to the nation, thought himself a comparative failure because his instincts ran toward literature and spiritual adventure. In his autobiographical Education he tried to make sense of his own path in a changing America.

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The March to the Sea

Sherman Drives Across Georgia to Savannah

by William T. Sherman

Military History, American History, U.S. History

The most controversial Civil War general was William T. Sherman, an indelible figure whose march through Georgia and the Carolinas typified his unrelenting style of warfare that showed the South no quarter. Sherman’s Memoirs may not be as direct as Grant’s, but they make no compromise. They are the work of an intelligent and literate man who brought to modern warfare a new sensibility that was later to become a subject of ongoing debate. Here is his account of the march from Atlanta to Savannah in November and December 1864, the prelude to Confederate surrender.

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The Siege of Blair Mountain

Class Warfare and High Treason in West Virginia's Coalfields

by Robert Shogan

United States History, Political Science, American History, U.S. History

The so-called Roaring Twenties were not only about loose morality and a devil-may-care display of opulence. In the byways of America, working men and women were seeking labor justice and struggling against the entrenched powers of capitalism. Nowhere was this struggle more poignant and important than in the coalfields of West Virginia. There in the 1920s the United Mine Workers confronted the coal operators who sought to bust their union. The ensuing conflict, violent and bloody, had much to say about the future of relations between working people and their bosses in America.  

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