American Century

Horace Busby was one of LBJ's most trusted advisors; their close working and personal relationship spanned twenty years. In The Thirty-First of March he offers an indelible portrait of a president and a presidency at a time of crisis.

In this survey of eighteenth and nineteenth century American drama, Tice L. Miller examines American plays written before a canon was established in American dramatic literature and provides analyses central to the culture that produced them. Entertaining the Nation evaluates plays in the early years of the republic, reveals shifts in taste from the classical to the contemporary in the 1840s and 1850s, and considers the increasing influence of realism at the end of the nineteenth century.

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Americans underwent a dramatic transformation in self-conception: having formerly lived as individuals or members of small communities, they now found themselves living in networks, which arose out of scientific and technological innovations.

In Frontline Bodies, Nicolas Martin-Breteau argues that sports are not—and have never been—purely about entertainment for Black Americans. Instead, beginning in the 1890s during Reconstruction, Black Americans proactively used athletics as a tactic to fight racial oppression. Martin-Breteau considers the work of Edwin B. Henderson, a prominent Black physical educator, civil rights activist, and historian of Black sports.

Ulysses S. Grant was an American army officer and political leader who acted as the United States' 18th president from 1869 to 1877. Grant was an achieved civil liberties executive at the time of his presidency, developing the Justice Department and teaming up with the Radical Republicans to secure African Americans at the time of Restoration. He led the Union Army to success in the American Civil War as Commanding General in the year 1865, and after that briefly functioned as Secretary of War.

On December 7, 1941—"a date which will live in infamy"—the Japanese navy launched an attack on the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and the US Army officially entered the Second World War. Three years later, on December 18, 1944, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Secretary of War to enforce a mass deportation of more than 100,000 Americans to what government officials themselves called "concentration camps." None of these citizens had been accused of a real crime.

Little Turtle’s War: The History and Legacy of the 18th Century Conflict Between the United States and Native Americans in the Northwest Territory examines the life of one of the most famous Native American leaders, the events that brought about the war, and the results.

The short war between a confederation of Native American tribes under Little Turtle’s leadership has been referred to by many names, including the Northwest Indian War, the Ohio War, and the Miami War, but it is probably best known as Little Turtle’s War. Before Little Turtle’s War, it was believed that the U.S. did not need a professional army, that ordinary citizens would take up arms in times of threat and serve in militias as they had done in the fight against the British.

The westward movement of Americans in the 19th century was one of the largest and most consequential migrations in history, and among the paths that blazed west, the California Trail was one of the most well-known. The trail was not a single road but a network of paths that began at several “jumping off” points.

Barbara Kreiger's intriguing narrative presents the account of Clorinda Minor, a charismatic American Christian woman whose belief in the second coming prompted her to leave a comfortable life in Philadelphia in 1851 and take up agriculture in Palestine.

A shocking glimpse into the crazy lives of drug-addicted prostitutes. You'll never look at heroin addicts the same way again. In this darkly funny coming-of-age novel based on true events, Oliver, a teenage hacker living in Germany, meets Donna online. She's an American girl living in New York. After chatting and talking on the phone for months, he finally decides to surprise her with a visit. But he soon finds out that things are not what they appeared to be and that this visit will change his life forever.

For centuries, most Native Americans lived in a state of limbo, neither citizen nor foreigner, at times, considered part of "domestic dependent nations," but never really having full rights. It was not until after their efforts in World War I that universal citizenship was given to Native Americans.

What was the bloodiest war in American history? Most people with at least a little knowledge of history would quickly say that it was the Civil War (1861-65), and they would certainly be correct overall. However, when historians go farther back in time and include colonial wars and look at casualties per capita, the correct answer would be the much-lesser known conflict known as "King Philip's War" (1675-76).

By the second half of the 19th century, still less than a century old, the United States had become a regional power. It had soundly defeated its southern neighbor, Mexico, and greatly enlarged itself in the process. America’s navy and merchant marines were becoming common sights on the high seas, and the country was at the beginning of the end of its drawn-out conquest of the Native Americans. However, it was a country divided deeply along political and economic lines, a tottering edifice many predicted would split apart.

The history of the United States is, to a large extent, a history of armed conflict. The nation was first forged in war, a tough fight for independence against one of the world’s largest empires, and that fight would resume less than a generation later with the War of 1812. Then, there were constant low-level conflicts with Native Americans as the nation expanded westwards, and occasionally the country engaged in full-scale war against the Sioux, Comanche, and Apache.

An intimate account of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of a Quaker pacifist couple living in Philadelphia. Spanning a half-century before, during, and after the war, this gripping narrative illuminates the Revolution’s darker side as patriots vilified, threatened, and in some cases killed pacifist Quakers as alleged enemies of the revolutionary cause. Amid chaos and danger, the Drinkers tried as best they could to keep their family and faith intact. A master storyteller takes his listeners on a moving journey they will never forget.

With Amazon's growing power in both bookselling and publishing, considering where and how we get our books is more important now than ever. The simple act of putting a book in a reader's hands—what booksellers call handselling—becomes a catalyst for an exploration of the moral, financial, and political pressures all indie bookstores face.

Reluctant Race Men traces a history of the disparate challenges Black American reformers lodged against race across the long nineteenth century. It factors their opposition into the nation's history of race and reconstructs a reform tradition largely ignored in accounts of Black activism. Black-controlled newspapers, societies, churches, and conventions provided the principal loci and resources for questioning race. In these contexts, people of African descent generated a lexicon for refuting race, debated its logic, and, ultimately, reinterpreted it.

Many of today's critical issues, including immigration, inflation, income disparity, civil discord, and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, all had their roots in earlier presidencies. Ronald Gruner's engaging and straightforward writing describes how presidencies over the last century have shaped today's America from the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act of 2020.

In Resist, Rita charts the last century of civil rights activism, from the early years of renowned activist Ella Baker and others she inspired, to the first glimpse of allyship in the Bates Seven and a renewed examination of the Black Panther Party, all the way to the current generation of young Black revolutionaries who walked American cities in the wake of the murders of countless Black people. Rita also draws on her own experiences as a Black immigrant living in America, offering a unique and insightful perspective on this ongoing struggle for justice.