United Nations 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.

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.

Roberts presents a colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women's public roles and private responsibilities.

This work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women's independence, resourcefulness, and vision.

In Radical Reparations, this conversation shifter, social justice pioneer, change agent, and inventor of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which redefined the global conversation on racism and social justice, offers a unifying and unconventional framework for achieving holistic and comprehensive healing of African American communities.

In this lively and compelling biography, Harlow Giles Unger reveals the dominant political figure of a generation. A fierce fighter in four critical Revolutionary War battles and a courageous survivor of Valley Forge and a near-fatal wound at the Battle of Trenton, James Monroe (1751 - 1831) went on to become America's first full-time politician, dedicating his life to securing America's national and international durability.

"I am in Birmingham because injustice is here," declared Martin Luther King, Jr. He had come to that city of racist terror convinced that massive protest could topple Jim Crow. But the insurgency faltered. To revive it, King made a sacrificial act on Good Friday, April 12, 1963: he was arrested. Alone in his cell, reading a newspaper, he found a statement from eight "moderate" clergymen who branded the protests extremist and "untimely." King drafted a furious rebuttal that emerged as the "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

Civilization may face no greater enemy than Saddam Hussein, and yet, as Richard Butler makes clear in his gripping and terrifying The Greatest Threat, the major powers allowed Saddam to face them down.

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.

At a time when surveys reveal that Americans know less and less about our past, Tony Williams provides entertaining and informative descriptions of 50 of the most important and dramatic events from the colonial and Revolutionary period - some known and some forgotten - from the Mayflower Compact to the Annapolis Convention.

A legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, Ralph Bunche was one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. The first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard and a celebrated diplomat at the United Nations, he was once so famous he handed out the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Yet today Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten. In The Absolutely Indispensable Man, Kal Raustiala restores Bunche to his rightful place in history.

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.

Deep in the heart of Northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of the vast 17.5 million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School. Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child. Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a narrative of triumph and hardship, a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities that confront Native Americans living on reservations.

Shawnee chief Tecumseh was a man destined for greatness - the son of a prominent war leader, he was supposedly born under a lucky shooting star. Charismatic, intelligent, handsome, he was both a fierce warrior and a savvy politician. In the first biography of Tecumseh in more than 20 years, Peter Cozzens thoroughly revises our understanding of this great leader and his movement, arguing that his overlooked younger brother Tenskwatwa, the 'Shawnee Prophet', was a crucial partner in Tecumseh's success.

Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation's founding. The acclaimed political historian Sean Wilentz shares the dismay but sees the Constitution and slavery differently. Although the proslavery side won important concessions, he asserts, antislavery impulses also influenced the framers' work. Far from covering up a crime against humanity, the Constitution restricted slavery's legitimacy under the new national government.

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.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic, their significance in American history undeniable. Together, these two Lakota chiefs, one a fabled warrior and the other a revered holy man, crushed George Armstrong Custer’s vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Yet their legendary victory at the Little Big Horn has overshadowed the rest of their rich and complex lives. Now, based on years of research and drawing on a wealth of previously ignored primary sources, award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle, thrillingly told, of these extraordinary Indigenous leaders.

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.

This book covers a period of a little more than three-quarters of a century. It begins with the first attempt at English colonization in America, in 1576, and ends with the year 1652, when the supremacy of Parliament was recognized throughout the English colonies. The most interesting period in the history of any country is the formative period; and through the mass of recently published original material on America the opportunity to tell its story well has been of late years greatly increased. In the preparation of this work I have endeavored to consult the original sources.

This is volume 3 of 27 in The American Nation: A History, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University. This volume begins with the detailed narrative of the founding and development of the communities now included within the United States of America, and the story necessarily goes back to the discovery of the American islands and continents. Professor Bourne in his earlier chapters summarizes and restates, with many original conclusions, the controverted points with regard to the discovery of America.