Militant Christians

What fundamentalists believe, and why they are a force in ...


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U.S. History Titles

Browse our U.S. History titles listed below.

Women in Slavery

Selections from her Journal of Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 1838-1839

by Frances Anne Kemble

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

Married to a wealthy American slaveholder, Fanny Kemble recorded her experience on her husband’s estates from the perspective of an “insider” as well as an “outsider.” Her ability to translate life so vividly onto the page provided readers with a sense of being eyewitness to events.

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Bonnie Parker Writes a Poem

How a Couple of Bungling Sociopaths Became Bonnie and Clyde

by Steven Biel

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

In their time, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker attracted much less attention than star criminals like John Dillinger. Steven Biel plots the strange path by which this pair of ne’er-do-wells became the stuff of myth and legend.

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The Story of a Photograph

Walker Evans, Ellie Mae Burroughs, and the Great Depression

by Jerry L. Thompson

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

Walker Evans’s iconic photograph of Ellie Mae Burroughs of Hale County, Alabama, made while he was working with James Agee, has become a memorable symbol of the Great Depression. How it came to be, and what consequences it provoked, make for a fascinating tale.

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In Search of the Next Kick

Jack Kerouac and the Making of the Beat Generation

by John Tytell

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

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in 1957 burst onto a fifties America supposedly safe and stuffy, and announced the coming of the “beat” generation. This new and wildly disorganized view of life seemed to extol amorality and self-gratification. Here is an insightful mini-biography of the beats’ icon.

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Vigilante Wars

Gang Democracy and the Collapse of Government in San Francisco's Gold Rush Years

by Cecelia Holland

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

The 1849 Gold Rush in California brought to a boiling point the new state’s unruly politics and produced mob rule in the muddy streets of San Francisco. Cecelia Holland’s compelling account of these events reveals a disturbing underside of democratic government in a nation headed for civil war.

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Militant Christians

The Rise of Fundamentalism in American Culture

by George M. Marsden

United States History, U.S. History, Essays, Religion

Fundamentalists, uneasy with modernity and with the American social and moral landscape, prefer the Bible’s teachings—in their faith, in their personal lives, and in the larger life of the nation.  Here’s why. 


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Oppenheimer's Lives

Reflections on the Father of the Atomic Bomb

by Jeremy Bernstein

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

Jeremy Bernstein remembers the “father” of the atomic bomb—a man unsure of his identity and scarred by the famous government hearing that took away his security clearance.

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Family Intervention, Ku Klux Klan Style

The Hooded Remedy for Social Misbehavior

by Thomas R. Pegram

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

In the social unease that followed World War I, some groups sought to preserve white Protestant morality in the face of new challenges to the old order. A reborn Ku Klux Klan focused not on racial matters but on social behavior, with a peculiar, not-so-subtle intervention in family affairs. 

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