American History Nonfiction

James Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party in 1773, two other large shipments of tea from the East India Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North America. The survival of these shipments shaped the politics of the years ahead and hint at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics. Tea protests were widespread in 1774, but, Fichter argues, so were tea advertisements and tea sales. Such protests were noisy and sometimes misleading performances, not clear signs that tea consumption was unpopular.

At the start of 1932, the nation's worst economic crisis has left one-in-four workers without a job, countless families facing eviction, banks shutting down as desperate depositors withdraw their savings, and growing social and political unrest. Amid this turmoil, a political decision looms that will determine the course of the nation. It's a choice between two men with very different visions of America: Incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover and New York's Democratic Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Americans are more familiar with his signature than with the man himself. In this spirited account of John Hancock's life, Brooke Barbier depicts a patriot of fascinating contradictions—a child of enormous privilege who would nevertheless become a voice of the common folk; a pillar of society uncomfortable with radicalism who yet was crucial to independence. Orphaned young, Hancock was raised by his merchant uncle, whose business and vast wealth he inherited—including household slaves, whom Hancock later freed. By his early thirties, he was one of New England's most prominent politicians.

There is much fiction surrounding the creation of Thanksgiving in America. Denise Kiernan debunks myths, provides facts, and explains how and why Thanksgiving evolved in the United States the way it did—and what gratitude means to society.

In Lincoln and California Brian McGinty explains the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln's lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln's close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union.

One of the worst acts of racial violence in American history took place in 1921, when a White mob numbering in the thousands decimated the thriving Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Burning recreates Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explores the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its Black residents and Tulsa's White population, narrates events leading up to and including Greenwood's devastation, and documents the subsequent silence that surrounded this tragedy.

1776. The early days of the Revolutionary War. It supposedly began with Thomas Hickey, a private in the Continental Army, and New York governor William Tryon. In an astonishing power grab, they plotted to kill Hickey's boss: a man by the name of George Washington. In the end, Hickey was caught, brought to trial, and found guilty. It would seem he became the first person in the new nation to be executed for treason.

Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award-winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot", an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War. In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of 13 days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne.

Theodore Roosevelt largely is known today by stereotypes and his many accomplishments—but the full and fascinating essence of the man is fading. In this book, TR charges back! Historian Rick Marschall has collected almost five hundred quotations, descriptions, impressions, and memories of the "Most Interesting American" derived from vintage newspapers, magazines, scrapbooks, diaries, letters, and so much more. In chapters devoted to his personality as a family man, a conservationist, an intellectual, patriot, activist, and as an American TR comes alive as never before seen.

This revelatory and gripping nonfiction middle grade book explores a deeply troubling chapter in American history that is still playing out today: the strange case of Prince Edward County, Virginia, the only place in the United States to ever formally deny its citizens a public education, and the students who pushed back.

On August 18, 1920, American women finally won the right to vote. Ratification of the 19th Amendment was the culmination of an almost 80-year fight in which some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marched, protested, and sometimes broke the law in to achieve this huge leap toward equal rights. In this expansive yet personal volume, author Winifred Conkling covers not only the suffragists' achievements and politics but also the private journeys that fueled their passion and led them to become women's champions.

Racism and profit were driving forces in the growth of slavery. The transatlantic trade of enslaved people saw millions of kidnapped Africans sent around the world, many of them to the Americas. Even after the importation of enslaved people was banned in 1808, slavery did not end in the US. Listen to this book to learn about the Middle Passage, the triangular trade, and the people who continued fighting for change after the importation of enslaved people was banned.

On April 15th, 1783, the Articles of Peace between the United States and Great Britain went into effect proclaiming that "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the United States . . . to be free Sovereign and independent States." That recognition represented a monumental achievement for the new American nation. It also, as Samuel Flagg Bemis shows us, marked the end of a world war.

Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on commander in chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less-developed South.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories. This collection of those stories - from nations and cultures across two continents, what the Aztecs called the Sea-Ringed World, from the edge of Argentina all the way up to Alaska - is a treasure.

Quince mil años antes de que los Europeos pisarán las Américas, la gente ya se había propagado de punta a punta y de costa a costa. Como todos los humanos, estos Nativos Americanos buscaban comprender su lugar en el universo, la naturaleza de su relación con lo divino, y el origen del mundo en el que habían emergido sus antepasados.Las respuestas se encuentran en sus historias sagradas.

If you've learned about the history of Chinese people in America, it was probably about their work on the railroads in the 1800s. But more likely, you may not have learned about it at all. This may make it feel like Chinese immigration is a newer part of this country, but some scholars believe the first immigrant arrived from China 499 CE—one thousand years before Columbus did!

Never Forget Our People Were Always Free illuminates for each of us how the path to healing America’s broken heart starts with each of us having the courage to heal our own.

American and British appeasement of Nazism during the early years of the Third Reich went far beyond territorial concessions. In Prologue to Annihilation: Ordinary American and British Jews Challenge the Third Reich, Stephen H. Norwood examines the numerous ways that the two nations' official position of tacit acceptance of Jewish persecution enabled the policies that ultimately led to the Final Solution and how Nazi annihilationist intentions were clearly discernible even during the earliest years of Hitler's rule.

After the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Americans became the subject of racism and discrimination within the United States. Many were rounded up and put in concentration camps. But even while this was happening, there were many Japanese American soldiers who fought to ensure that all Americans were safe during the biggest conflict in world history. Facing the Mountain is the story of three Japanese American soldiers: Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team to fight for their country in World War II.