United Nations History

The story of the American occult has remained largely untold. Now a leading writer on the subject of alternative spirituality brings it out of the shadows. Here is a rich, fascinating, and colorful history of a religious revolution and an epic of offbeat history.

A creature of myth and magic emerging from the mist-shrouded forests of the Northwest, Coyote appears as a creator, messenger, hero, trickster, fool, or shapeshifter. Always on the lookout for fun, mischief, or the opportunity to help humans, Coyote’s encounters with gods, demons and the supernatural bring to life the rich cultural traditions of the Northwest peoples.

A tribute to the courageous chiefs and warriors who fought to protect their people and preserve the Native way of life in the face of European expansion across North America, including: Sequoyah, a Cherokee who invented a system of writing for his people; Sitting Bull, the powerful warrior and spiritual leader of the Lakota Sioux who doggedly fought white incursions on Sioux land; Chief Joseph, who led the Nez Perce on a heroic and doomed flight to freedom; and more.

Roy Bean was an American saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Texas, who called himself "The Only Law West of the Pecos". He and his three brothers set out from Kentucky in the mid 1840s, heading into the American frontier to find their fortunes. Their lifetimes of triumphs, tragedies, laurels, and scandals will play out on the battlefields of Mexico, in shady dealings in California city halls, inside eccentric saloon courtrooms of Texas, and along the blood-soaked Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico. They will kill men, and murder will likewise stalk them.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply embedded in our national psyche and identity. The drama and tragedy of the war help explain why the Civil War remains a topic of interest. But the legacy of the war extends far beyond historical interest or scholarly attention.

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations has influenced economic thinkers for generations. Smith was a firm believer that the economic progress of any nation was tied to free trade and the division of labor.

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.

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.

In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade.

Historian Jay Sexton contends that our national narrative is not one of halting yet inevitable progress, but of repeated disruptions brought about by shifts in the international system. Sexton shows that the American Revolution was a consequence of the increasing integration of the British and American economies; that a necessary precondition for the Civil War was the absence, for the first time in decades, of foreign threats; and that we cannot understand the New Deal without examining the role of European immigrants and their offspring in transforming the Democratic Party.

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.

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.

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

No more difficult task can be found in the twenty-six volumes of The American Nation than to write a fresh and original account of the Revolution...

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.

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.

By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—had become a cultural punchline. But amidst the Yuppies' preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, something serious was happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later.

The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is technically 69 years old and counting, but it has its roots in over 2,000 years of history. Over time, it has become exceedingly difficult for even sophisticated political pundits and followers to keep track of it all. In 1947, the British delegated the issue of partitioning the British Mandate to the United Nations. The UN General Assembly eventually came up with what is now known as the UN Partition Plan of 1947.

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.