United States History

In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.

This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Although the American government expressed sympathy towards the plight of the Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, historian Julien Zarifian explores how, from the 1960s, a set of geopolitical and institutional factors soon led the United States to adopt a policy of genocide nonrecognition which it would cling to for over fifty years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime.

Seattle, 2019. After a severe injury, ace mecha designer and pilot Reiko Morikawa is recruited to a secret organization plotting a revolt against the corrupt governor (and Nazi sympathizer) of the United States of Japan. When their plan to save the USJ from itself goes awry, the mission is only saved from failure because the governor is killed by an assassin known as Bloody Mary. But the assassin isn't satisfied with just the governor.

Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.

Among the autobiographies of great military figures, Ulysses S. Grant’s is certainly one of the finest, and it is arguably the most notable literary achievement of any American president: a lucid, compelling, and brutally honest chronicle of triumph and failure. From his frontier boyhood, to his heroics in battle, to the grinding poverty from which the Civil War ironically rescued him, these memoirs are a mesmerizing, deeply moving account of a brilliant man told with great courage.

Booker T. Washington fought his way out of slavery to become an educator, statesman, political shaper, and proponent of the "do-it-yourself" idea. In his autobiography, he describes his early life as a slave on a Virginia plantation, his steady rise during the Civil War, his struggle for education, his schooling at the Hampton Institute, and his years as founder and president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which was devoted to helping minorities learn useful, marketable skills.

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The stock market crash of 1929 didn’t cause the Great Depression by itself, but it is a powerful symbolic starting point to the greatest economic disaster of the 20th century. On that dark day in October 1929, fortunes were lost, and fear of financial insecurity rose throughout the United States and the world. In 1932, the low point of the Depression, as much as a third of Americans were out of work, and even more people were unemployed in other countries. The stock market reached its lowest point ever and wouldn’t rise to its pre-Depression levels for almost 20 years.

In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals.

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939), an educated and well-known Sioux, saw both sides of the great divide between Indians and whites, and he wrote 11 books attempting to reconcile the two cultures. This book is his illumination of Indian spiritual beliefs and practices. A convert to Christianity, Eastman never lost his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian's relation to his existence and to the natural world.

Written by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson addressed to King George III of England, the Declaration of Independence was a key document in shaping the course of American history and severing the colonies' ties to England. Young listeners will learn about the events that led to the writing and creation of the Declaration of Independence, the effect it had on the colonists' lives, and why it is one of America's most significant symbols of liberty.

Meet Harry S. Truman, Joe McCarthy, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Full coverage of everything, including President Clinton's impeachment trial.

From 1897 to 1898, over 100,000 men and women walked, rode, paddled, and sailed thousands of miles to the Klondike River area of the Canadian Yukon in search of gold. Out of those 100,000 people, only about a quarter ever made it to the goldfields, and those who did mostly went home empty-handed. But for a very lucky, hard-working, and fortunate few, the goldfields of the Yukon meant fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams.

“It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer.” So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools prepared by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC).

Early nineteenth-century America could just about be summed up by Henry David Thoreau's words when he said, "Eastward I go only by force, but westward I go free." It was an exuberant time for the diverse citizens of the United States, who included a range of folk, from mountain men and railroad builders to whalers and farmers, as they pushed forward into the open frontier. And all their hopes and fears are captured in Liberty for All?

Today, Germantown is a busy neighborhood in Philadelphia. On October 4, 1777, it was a small village on the outskirts of the colonial capital whose surrounding fields and streets witnessed one of the largest battles of the American Revolution. The bloody battle represented George Washington's attempt to recapture Philadelphia but has long been overshadowed by better-known events like Brandywine, Saratoga, and Valley Forge.

The War of 1812 and an American victory inspired Francis Scott Key to write his famous poem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," which later became the national anthem of the United States. The events surrounding the war and Key's poem helped establish the American flag as a symbol of patriotism and freedom. Listeners will be reminded of our nation's strength and perseverance through engaging historical content.

Although a British document, the Magna Carta was an influential and important written document that helped shape the foundation of America. Listeners will discover why this primary source is so important, the context behind the document, and how it inspired key U.S. documents like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Get ready to explore the forgotten stories of America’s past. Untold American History brings to life strange, exciting, and true tales that many people have never heard before. Imagine a flood of sticky molasses sweeping through the streets of Boston. It sounds like something out of a movie, but it actually happened in 1919. This is just one of the many surprising events you’ll learn about. You’ll also meet Norton, a man who called himself the “Emperor of the United States” and became a local legend.