United States History Titles
Browse our United States History titles listed below.
An Outmoded Concept Is Sapping America's Strength
by John Prados
United States History, Political Science, Military History, American History, U.S. History, U.S. Government, EssaysThe distinguished historian John Prados calls for a total rethinking of our expansive concept of national security. If we fail to make hard decisions about existential threats, he concludes, we will find ourselves in a death spiral as a nation.
Selections from her Journal of Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 1838-1839
by Frances Anne Kemble
United States History, American History, U.S. HistoryMarried 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.
How a Couple of Bungling Sociopaths Became Bonnie and Clyde
by Steven Biel
United States History, American History, U.S. History, BiographyIn 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.
Walker Evans, Ellie Mae Burroughs, and the Great Depression
by Jerry L. Thompson
United States History, American History, U.S. History, EssaysWalker 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.
Jack Kerouac and the Making of the Beat Generation
by John Tytell
United States History, American History, U.S. History, BiographyJack 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.
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. GovernmentThe 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.
The Rise of Fundamentalism in American Culture
by George M. Marsden
United States History, U.S. History, Essays, ReligionFundamentalists, 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.
The American West as It Once Was
by Francis Parkman
United States History, American HistoryIn 1846, Francis Parkman traveled some seventeen hundred miles through the unspoiled West, meeting trappers, gamblers, woodsmen, soldiers, emigrant pioneers, and Indians, and hunting buffalo with a band of Oglala Sioux. His account remains one of the great books ever produced by an American.