History Nation State

From the author of the acclaimed The Brother Gardeners, a fascinating look at the founding fathers from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen, and farmers. For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. These stories reveal a guiding but previously overlooked ideology of the American Revolution.

At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look.

How the demise of the Habsburg Empire, postwar sovereignty, and new diplomatic frontiers shaped the nature of citizenship, identity, and belonging across Europe.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not trying to start a movement. She was simply tired of the social injustice. Yet her simple act of courage started a chain of events that forever shaped the landscape of American race relations. Now, decades after her quiet defiance inspired the modern civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks' own words tell of her courageous life, her passion for freedom and equality, and her strong faith.

In American Gospel (literally meaning the "good news about America"), New York Times best-selling author Jon Meacham sets the record straight on the history of religion in American public life. As Meacham shows, faith, meaning a belief in a higher power, and the sense that we are God's chosen, has always been at the heart of our national experience, from Jamestown to the Constitutional Convention to the Civil Rights Movement to September 11th.

That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time hardly needs a statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence. Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields. Meantime there, is a rapid increase of published sources and of serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused. On the one side, there is a necessity for an intelligent summarizing of the present knowledge of American history by trained specialists; on the other hand, there is a need for a complete work.

In this highly original approach to the history of the US, James Moore focuses on the extraordinary role that prayer has played in every area of American life, from the time of the first settlers to the present day and beyond.

From the Editor’s Introduction to Volume Fifteen: Hardly any year in American history so distinctly marks the transition from one era to another as 1829. The character of Andrew Jackson is so distinct and so aggressive that few writers upon the period can resist the temptation to group the events of his administration around his personality. This temptation Professor MacDonald has resisted. His conception of the period is that it witnessed the fruition of national policies, nearly all of which would have come up and would have divided the nation had there been no Andrew Jackson.

Few periods of American history have been more written upon than the decade preceding the Revolution. Nevertheless, there is still room for a brief volume on the subject; all the world knows that the Revolution really began almost fifteen years before its beginning, because of the efforts of the British government to give greater unity and stiffness to its colonial system, both as to government and as to trade with other nations; but the real motives underlying the uneasiness of the colonies still need enlightenment.

Except perhaps the struggle between patriots and tories at the outbreak of the Revolution, no controversy in the history of the United States has aroused such passion and led to such momentous results as that between the advocates and the opponents of slavery … The book has the double purpose of describing the conditions of slavery and the state of mind of those interested in it or against it, and at the same time recording the events which mark the anti-slavery agitation.

Although the separate history of the commonwealths is, for the most part, merged into that of the nation, the national history grows steadily more complex … The special function of this volume in the American Nation series is to describe the foundations of the present American party system and its application to the extremely difficult problems of that time …

That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time hardly needs statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence. Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields. Meantime there, is a rapid increase of published sources and of serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused.

To the period between 1689 and 1740 has been applied the term “The Forgotten Half-Century.” Most of the writers on colonial history in detail give special attention to the seventeenth century, the period of upbuilding; and general historians like Bancroft and Hildreth sweep rather lightly over the epoch between the English Revolution and the forerunners of the American Revolution.

Volume 7 of 27 in The American Nation: A History published by Harper Brothers (1904-1918). Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University.

Having the first volume of this series discussed the events, the national developments, and the institutions which preceded the colonization of America, the next step is to describe the land and the people of America as they were found by the Europeans. This volume, therefore, is intended once and for all to set forth the physical conditions of colonization; for within twenty-five years after the discovery, the Spaniards began to penetrate into the interior of North America and encounter the obstacles of rivers and mountains and the sterner opposition of native tribes.

Reader's Choice Award Winner. Throughout China's rapidly growing cities, a new wave of unregistered house churches is growing. They are developing rich theological perspectives that are both uniquely Chinese and rooted in the historical doctrines of the faith. To understand how they have endured despite government pressure and cultural marginalization, we must understand both their history and their theology. In this volume, key writings from the house church have been compiled, translated, and made accessible to English speakers.

Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two revolutions - and two nations. Jefferson first met Lafayette in 1781, when the young French-born general was dispatched to Virginia to assist Jefferson, then the state’s governor, in fighting off the British. The charismatic Lafayette, hungry for glory, could not have seemed more different from Jefferson, the reserved statesman.

Volume 12 of 27 in The American Nation: A History published by Harper Brothers (1904-1918). Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University

In this dramatic and fully accessible account of these titans of the early republic and their fiercely held ideas, James F. Simon brings to life the early history of the nation and sheds new light on the highly charged battle to balance the powers of the federal government and the rights of the states. A fascinating look at two of the nation's greatest statesmen and shrewdest politicians, What Kind of Nation presents a cogent, unbiased assessment of their lasting impact on American government.

In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."