Pulitzer Prize — History

Edda L. Fields-Black · 2025 · 849 pp

COMBEE is based upon original research and offers the first full account of Tubman's Civil War service and the Combahee River Raid. In the process, it also offers the story of enslaved families living in bondage and fighting for their freedom, and does so using their own distinct and individual voices.

Kathleen DuVal · 2025 · 753 pp

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history” (The New York Review of Books), from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE, THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE, AND THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed. A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory. In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future. “An essential American history”—The Wall Street Journal

Jacqueline Jones · 2024 · 501 pp

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY A “sensitive, immersive, and exhaustive” portrait of Black workers and white hypocrisy in nineteenth-century Boston, from “a gifted practitioner of labor history and urban history” (Tiya Miles, National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried) Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, however, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

Jefferson Cowie · 2023

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY - An "important, deeply affecting--and regrettably relevant" (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans' freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom--their freedom to dominate others. In Freedom's Dominion, prizewinning historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace. In a land shaped by settler colonialism and chattel slavery, freedom became a weapon. With freedom as their cry, white Americans seized Native lands, championed secession, overthrew Reconstruction, questioned the New Deal, and fought against the civil rights movement. Through a riveting account of two centuries of local clashes between white people and federal authorities, Freedom's Dominion offers a radically new history of federal power, democracy, and American freedom. This history summons us today to embrace a vigorous model of American citizenship, backed by a federal government that is not afraid to fight the many incarnations of the freedom to dominate.

Nicole Eustace · 2022 · 468 pp

WINNER • 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY Finalist • National Book Award for Nonfiction Best Books of the Year • TIME, Smithsonian, Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews The Pulitzer Prize-winning history that transforms a single event in 1722 into an unparalleled portrait of early America. In the winter of 1722, on the eve of a major conference between the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois) and Anglo-American colonists, a pair of colonial fur traders brutally assaulted a Seneca hunter near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today, the crime ignited a contest between Native American forms of justice—rooted in community, forgiveness, and reparations—and the colonial ideology of harsh reprisal that called for the accused killers to be executed if found guilty. In Covered with Night, historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the attack and its aftermath, introducing a group of unforgettable individuals—from the slain man’s resilient widow to an Indigenous diplomat known as “Captain Civility” to the scheming governor of Pennsylvania—as she narrates a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations. Taking its title from a Haudenosaunee metaphor for mourning, Covered with Night ultimately urges us to consider Indigenous approaches to grief and condolence, rupture and repair, as we seek new avenues of justice in our own era.

Ada Ferrer, Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad · 2022

An original and compelling history, spanning five centuries, of the island that became an obsession for many presidents and policy makers, transforming how we think about the U.S. in Latin America, and Cuba in American society.

Marcia Chatelain · 2021

WINNER • 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY Winner • 2022 James Beard Foundation Book Award [Writing] The “stunning” (David W. Blight) untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America. Just as The Color of Law provided a vital understanding of redlining and racial segregation, Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise investigates the complex interrelationship between black communities and America’s largest, most popular fast food chain. Taking us from the first McDonald’s drive-in in San Bernardino to the franchise on Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014, Chatelain shows how fast food is a source of both power—economic and political—and despair for African Americans. As she contends, fast food is, more than ever before, a key battlefield in the fight for racial justice.

W. Caleb McDaniel · 2020 · 365 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History The unforgettable saga of one enslaved woman's fight for justice--and reparations Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: in 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500. The decision stuck on appeal. More important than the amount, though the largest ever awarded by an American court in restitution for slavery, was the fact that any money was awarded at all. By the time the case was decided, Ward had become a wealthy businessman and a pioneer of convict leasing in the South. Wood's son later became a prominent Chicago lawyer, and she went on to live until 1912. McDaniel's book is an epic tale of a black woman who survived slavery twice and who achieved more than merely a moral victory over one of her oppressors. Above all, Sweet Taste of Liberty is a portrait of an extraordinary individual as well as a searing reminder of the lessons of her story, which establish beyond question the connections between slavery and the prison system that rose in its place.

David W. Blight · 2019 · 912 pp

**Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History** *Winner of the Bancroft, Parkman, Los Angeles Times (biography), Lincoln, Plutarch, and Christopher Awards* Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Time “Extraordinary…a great American biography” (The New Yorker) of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass spoke widely, using his own story to condemn slavery. By the Civil War, Douglass had become the most famed and widely travelled orator in the nation. In his unique and eloquent voice, written and spoken, Douglass was a fierce critic of the United States as well as a radical patriot. After the war he sometimes argued politically with younger African Americans, but he never forsook either the Republican party or the cause of black civil and political rights. In this “cinematic and deeply engaging” (The New York Times Book Review) biography, David Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historian have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers. “Absorbing and even moving…a brilliant book that speaks to our own time as well as Douglass’s” (The Wall Street Journal), Blight’s biography tells the fascinating story of Douglass’s two marriages and his complex extended family. “David Blight has written the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass…a powerful portrait of one of the most important American voices of the nineteenth century” (The Boston Globe).

Jack E. Davis · 2018 · 475 pp

Winner • Pulitzer Prize for History Winner • Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction Finalist • National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and gCaptain Booklist Editors’ Choice (History) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review). Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).

Heather Ann Thompson · 2017 · 754 pp

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive history of the infamous 1971 Attica Prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victim's decades-long quest for justice. • Thompson served as the Historical Consultant on the Academy Award-nominated documentary feature ATTICA “Gripping ... deals with racial conflict, mass incarceration, police brutality and dissembling politicians ... Makes us understand why this one group of prisoners [rebelled], and how many others shared the cost.” —The New York Times On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed. On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men—hostages as well as prisoners—and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the ensuing hours, weeks, and months, troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. And, ultimately, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against the officials involved in the retaking and its aftermath and neglecting to provide support to the survivors and the families of the men who had been killed. Drawing from more than a decade of extensive research, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. Blood in the Water is the searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century. (With black-and-white photos throughout)

T.J. Stiles · 2016 · 642 pp

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History From the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person—capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. During Custer’s lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation’s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer’s tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.

Elizabeth A. Fenn · 2015 · 178 pp

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Alan Taylor · 2014 · 622 pp

Drawn from new sources, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian presents a gripping narrative that recreates the events that inspired hundreds of slaves to pressure British admirals into becoming liberators by using their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war.

Fredrik Logevall · 2013 · 866 pp

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE ONE OF THE MOST ACCLAIMED WORKS OF HISTORY IN RECENT YEARS Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians • Winner of the American Library in Paris Book Award • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • Finalist for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • The Globe and Mail Written with the style of a great novelist and the intrigue of a Cold War thriller, Embers of War is a landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam. Tapping newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations, Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina—and shows how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history. An epic story of wasted opportunities and deadly miscalculations, Embers of War delves deep into the historical record to provide hard answers to the unanswered questions surrounding the demise of one Western power in Vietnam and the arrival of another. Eye-opening and compulsively readable, Embers of War is a gripping, heralded work that illuminates the hidden history of the French and American experiences in Vietnam. Praise for Embers of War “A balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war.”—Pulitzer Prize citation “This extraordinary work of modern history combines powerful narrative thrust, deep scholarly authority, and quiet interpretive confidence.”—Francis Parkman Prize citation “A monumental history . . . a widely researched and eloquently written account of how the U.S. came to be involved in Vietnam . . . certainly the most comprehensive review of this period to date.”—The Wall Street Journal “Superb . . . a product of formidable international research.”—The Washington Post

Manning Marable · 2012 · 641 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History and a New York Times bestseller, the definitive biography of Malcolm X Hailed as "a masterpiece" (San Francisco Chronicle), Manning Marable's acclaimed biography of Malcolm X finally does justice to one of the most influential and controversial figures of twentieth-century American history. Filled with startling new information and shocking revelations, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism as followers of Marcus Garvey through his own work with the Nation of Islam and rise in the world of black nationalism, and culminates in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X is a stunning achievement, the definitive work on one of our greatest advocates for social change.

Eric Foner · 2011 · 465 pp

From a master historian comes the story of Lincoln's--and the nation's--transformation through the crucible of slavery and emancipation.

Liaquat Ahamed · 2010 · 584 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic history of the lead-up to the Great Depression as seen through the careers of the West’s principal bankers . . . Spellbinding, insightful and, perhaps most important, timely.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred) “There is terrific prescience to be found in [Lords of Finance’s] portrait of times past . . . [A] writer of great verve and erudition, [Ahamed] easily connects the dots between the economic crises that rocked the world during the years his book covers and the fiscal emergencies that beset us today." —The New York Times It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As we continue to grapple with economic turmoil, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

Annette Gordon-Reed · 2009 · 799 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the National Book Award New York Times Bestseller #1 on Esquire's List of the 50 Best Biographies of All Time "[A] commanding and important book." —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker This epic work—named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, Time, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a notable book by the New York Times—tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826.

Daniel Walker Howe · 2008

Weaving together political and military events with social, economic, cultural and religious history, Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, when the United States expanded to the Pacific.

Gene Roberts, Hank Klibanoff · 2007 · 546 pp

An unprecedented examination of how news stories, editorials and photographs in the American press—and the journalists responsible for them—profoundly changed the nation’s thinking about civil rights in the South during the 1950s and ‘60s. Roberts and Klibanoff draw on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen—black and white—revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings that compelled its citizens to act. Meticulously researched and vividly rendered, The Race Beat is an extraordinary account of one of the most calamitous periods in our nation’s history, as told by those who covered it.

David M. Oshinsky · 2006 · 369 pp

All who lived in the early 1950s remember the fear of polio and the elation felt when a successful vaccine was found. Now David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond.Here is a remarkable portrait of America in the early 1950s, using the widespread panic over polio to shed light on our national obsessions and fears. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. Indeed, the competition was marked by a deep-seated ill will among the researchers that remained with them until their deaths. The author also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a family. As backdrop to this feverish research, Oshinsky offers an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil O'Connor. The National Foundation revolutionized fundraising and the perception of disease in America, using "poster children" and the famous March of Dimes to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast army of contributors (instead of a few well-heeled benefactors), creating the largest research and rehabilitation network in the history of medicine. The polio experience also revolutionized the way in which the government licensed and tested new drugs before allowing them on the market, and the way in which the legal system dealt with manufacturers' liability for unsafe products. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Oshinsky reveals that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. But in baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over daily life.Both a gripping scientific suspense story and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.

David Hackett Fischer · 2005 · 577 pp

Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington--and many other Americans--refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor'easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison at Trenton, killing or capturing nearly a thousand men. A second battle of Trenton followed within days. The Americans held off a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis's best troops, then were almost trapped by the British force. Under cover of night, Washington's men stole behind the enemy and struck them again, defeating a brigade at Princeton. The British were badly shaken. In twelve weeks of winter fighting, their army suffered severe damage, their hold on New Jersey was broken, and their strategy was ruined. Fischer's richly textured narrative reveals the crucial role of contingency in these events. We see how the campaign unfolded in a sequence of difficult choices by many actors, from generals to civilians, on both sides. While British and German forces remained rigid and hierarchical, Americans evolved an open and flexible system that was fundamental to their success. The startling success of Washington and his compatriots not only saved the faltering American Revolution, but helped to give it new meaning.

Steven Hahn · 2004 · 256 pp

The masterful and poignant story of three African-American families who journeyed west after emancipation, by an award-winning scholar and descendant of the migrants Following the lead of her own ancestors, Kendra Field’s epic family history chronicles the westward migration of freedom’s first generation in the fifty years after emancipation. Drawing on decades of archival research and family lore within and beyond the United States, Field traces their journey out of the South to Indian Territory, where they participated in the development of black and black Indian towns and settlements. When statehood, oil speculation, and Jim Crow segregation imperiled their lives and livelihoods, these formerly enslaved men and women again chose emigration. Some migrants launched a powerful back-to-Africa movement, while others moved on to Canada and Mexico. Their lives and choices deepen and widen the roots of the Great Migration. Interweaving black, white, and Indian histories, Field’s beautifully wrought narrative explores how ideas about race and color powerfully shaped the pursuit of freedom.

Rick Atkinson · 2003 · 707 pp

The first volume in a three volume work about the liberation of Europe opens in North Africa in 1942 and charts America's rise to world-power status by its involvement in a war on two fronts.

Louis Menand · 2002 · 569 pp

In an absorbing narrative about personalities and social history, Menand discusses the Metaphysical Club, an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce. 21 photos.

Joseph J. Ellis · 2001 · 306 pp

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A landmark work of history explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals—Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison—confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation. “A splendid book—humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit.” —The New York Times Book Review The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790. During the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers—re-examined here as Founding Brothers—combined the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the content of the Constitution to create the practical workings of our government. Through an analysis of six fascinating episodes—Hamilton and Burr’s deadly duel, Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, Adams’ administration and political partnership with his wife, the debate about where to place the capital, Franklin’s attempt to force Congress to confront the issue of slavery and Madison’s attempts to block him, and Jefferson and Adams’ famous correspondence—Founding Brothers brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history.

David M. Kennedy · 2000 · 3045 pp

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This book tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, illuminates a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed.

Mike Wallace, Edwin G. Burrows · 1999 · 1412 pp

To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe. In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city. The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.

Edward J. Larson · 1998 · 356 pp

The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes Trial and the battle over evolution and creation in America's schools In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes, represented by Clarence Darrow and the ACLU, in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day-in cities and states throughout the country. Edward Larson's classic Summer for the Gods -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History -- is the single most authoritative account of this pivotal event. An afterword assesses the state of the battle between creationism and evolution, and points the way to how it might potentially be resolved.

Jack N. Rakove · 1997 · 465 pp

From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.

Alan Taylor · 1996 · 512 pp

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Doris Kearns Goodwin · 1995 · 768 pp

Examines the distinct leadership roles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years and discusses the dynamics of their marriage.

Gordon S. Wood · 1993 · 472 pp

"Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor - Mac to her friends and colleagues - was a biologist who had wanted nothing more out of life than to study the spawning habits of salmon. But that was before she met Brymn, the first member of the Dhryn race ever to set foot on Earth. And it was before Base was attacked, and Mac's friend and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani was kidnapped by the mysterious race known as the Ro." "From that moment on everything changed for Mac, for Emily, for Brymn, for the human race, and for all the many member races of the Interspecies Union." "Now, with the alien Dhryn following an instinct-driven migratory path through the inhabited spaceways - bringing about the annihilation of sentient races who have the misfortune to lie along the star trail they are following - time is running out not only for the human race but for all life forms." "And only Mac and her disparate band of researchers - drawn from many of the races that are members of the Interspecies Union - stand any chance of solving the deadly puzzle of the Dhryn and the equally enigmatic Ro."--BOOK JACKET.

Mark E. Neely · 1992 · 278 pp

Reassesses Lincoln's civil liberties record and examines his responses to particular wartime problems

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich · 1991 · 459 pp

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, "A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" (The New York Times Book Review). Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich gives us an intimate and densely imagined portrait, not only of the industrious and reticent Martha Ballard but of her society. At once lively and impeccably scholarly, A Midwife's Tale is a triumph of history on a human scale.

Stanley Karnow · 1990 · 544 pp

In a swiftly paced, brilliantly vivid narrative, Karnow focuses on the relationship that has existed between the two nations since the United States acquired the country from Spain in 1898, examing how we have sought to remake the Philippines 'in our image, ' an experiment marked from the outset by blundering, ignorance, and mutual misunderstanding.

James M. McPherson · 1989 · 946 pp

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.

Taylor Branch · 1989

Chronicles the civil rights struggle from the twilight of the Eisenhower years through the assassination of President Kennedy.

Robert V. Bruce · 1988 · 492 pp

Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in History “For readers born since the 1930’s, who have grown up assuming the United States leads the world in science, The Launching of Modern American Science 1846-1876 will come as something of a shock. It shows that little over a century ago the American scientific community was small, mediocre and unpromising... Mr. Bruce has performed an invaluable service in retrieving from numerous archives the letters and diaries of mid-19th-century American scientists, in which both the well-known ones and the obscure describe their assimilation of the scientific ethos — their discovery of the fascination of lab work, their contempt for charlatanism, their dreams for the future of American science... he has done extensive archival research as well as detailed analyses of scientists and technologists listed in the Dictionary of American Biography... he has provided a wealth of information on the people and institutions of mid-19th-century American science.” — The New York Times “[A] superb study of the dawn of science and technology in the United States... [Bruce’s] premier focus in this and earlier books is mid- to late- 19th-century America, and one feels in the presence of a master who creates a reality of time and place that is breathtaking... Bruce meticulously documents the text with names, numbers, dates and places, with vignettes and personality sketches, noting that it was the American style of science to develop technique, to observe, describe and catalogue, rather than theorize... A scholarly gem.” — Kirkus “If I had to recommend only one book on the critical period of development of nineteenth-century science in America, it would be this one. Bruce’s book, a social history of science and the scientific community, is about launching the American ship of science on its course to professionalization, modernity, and international competitiveness. His goal is to tell how American scientists and engineers established new national patterns and organizations in science and technology, still prevalent today... For a most critical period in the history of science in America, Bruce has produced a thorough and well written historical demography of scientists, their institutions (societies, journals, jobs, colleges, schools, laboratories, museums, lectures, agencies, expeditions, surveys), and public relations.” — Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences “Drawing upon an enormous number of primary sources and scores of secondary works, Bruce has produced a truly important book. His incisive analyses, his exemplary style of writing, and his graceful touches of humor make it a fascinating one... [a] splendid book [which] fills a gap in our knowledge of the history of science in the United States and deserves the attention of everyone who desires to know when and how modern science fledged in America.” — Science “[A] book not just to be looked through, but looked at... Bruce displays a remarkable grasp of its sources — primary and secondary, in manuscript and print, statistical studies of his own and others — and it will be the well-informed historian indeed who fails to make discoveries here... Bruce writes a proprietary prose that... is both eloquent and playful. A magisterial study of the development of science under the peculiar constraints of democratic culture, The Launching belongs with the half dozen or so classics that have appeared since the history of American science came out of drydock four decades ago.” — Isis “[A]n exceptionally fine and eminently readable piece of historical scholarship... The book is a major contribution the scientific community in nineteenth-century America.” — Bulletin of the History of Medicine “This will be the definitive account for a long time indeed.” — American Scientist “[I]t is difficult to say too much good about The Launching of Modern American Science, which [is] a major interpretation of the period... a book so altogether excellent... [it] gives a view of that period that is both convincing and illuminating. As a very welcome extra, it is so well written that it is a joy to read.” — History of Education Quarterly “[A]n ample, thoughtful, scholarly, and well-written survey.” — The New England Quarterly “[A] rich and well-documented account. This is a readable book that should find a broad audience.” — The British Journal for the History of Science

Bernard Bailyn · 1987 · 724 pp

Analyzes the movement of English emigrants to North America between 1773 and 1776.

Walter A. McDougall · 1986 · 588 pp

The book chronicles the politics of the Space Race, comparing the different approaches of the US and the USSR. ...the Heavens and the Earth was a finalist for the 1985 American Book Award and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for History. The work highlights the role of Soviet space achievements in spurring the US into mounting its own space efforts to prove the superiority of the American political and economic system, while at the same time adopting the technocratic methods of the Soviet Union in order to do so. McDougall defines technocracy as the state funding and managing technological change for its own purposes. He finds that President Eisenhower took a skeptical point of view on the idea of adopting technocracy in the United States, as he opposed committing the nation to a lunar landing and stated that the progress of state managed technology had contributed to a dangerous military industrial complex in his farewell address. Yet Eisenhower fought against the tide, because by the time he left office the federal research and development budget had increased by 131 percent over the last five years. Gradually the idea of state managed technological progress went from being considered a violation of local freedoms to an accepted part of the federal government’s responsibility. McDougall makes clear that he did not view this in positive terms, as this perceived responsibility trampled the traditional American value of limited government. [[Wikipedia]][1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...The_Heavens_and_the_Earth:_A_Political_History_of_the_Space_Age "Wikipedia"

Thomas K. McCraw · 1985 · 426 pp

Four barons of regulation, the complex relationship between business and government, are profiled with insight toward their individual influence on their agencies. Analyzing these men as "independent social force[s]" questions the validity of personal regulatory failure versus institutional regulatory failure, and why regulation is still an active part of government today.

Rhys L. Isaac · 1983 · 492 pp

In this Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Rhys Isaac describes and analyzes the dramatic confrontations — primarily religious and political — that transformed Virginia in the second half of the eighteenth century. Making use of the observational techniques of the cultural anthropologist, Isaac vividly recreates and painstakingly dissects a society in the turmoil of profound inner change.

C. Vann Woodward · 1982

An authorized account of the Civil War, drawn from the diaries of a Southern aristocrat, records the disintegration and final destruction of the Confederacy.

Lawrence A. Cremin · 1981 · 607 pp

Defining education broadly to include the role of such institutions as the family and mass media, this is a history of American culture from 1783 to 1876. Preceded by American Education, the American Experience: 1607-1783 (1970).

Leon F. Litwack · 1980 · 673 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award Based on hitherto unexamined sources: interviews with ex-slaves, diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this "rich and admirably written book" (Eugene Genovese, The New York Times Book Review) aims to show how, during the Civil War and after Emancipation, blacks and whites interacted in ways that dramatized not only their mutual dependency, but the ambiguities and tensions that had always been latent in "the peculiar institution." Contents 1. "The Faithful Slave" 2. Black Liberators 3. Kingdom Comin' 4. Slaves No More 5. How Free is Free? 6. The Feel of Freedom: Moving About 7. Back to Work: The Old Compulsions 8. Back to Work: The New Dependency 9. The Gospel and the Primer 10. Becoming a People

Don E. Fehrenbacher · 1979 · 340 pp

This is an abridgement of the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Dred Scott Case, making Fehrenbacher's monumental work available to a wider audience. Although it condenses the original by half, all the chapters and major themes of the larger work have been retained, providing a masterful review of the issues before America on the eve of the Civil War.

Alfred D. Chandler · 1978 · 625 pp

The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution.

David M. Potter · 1977 · 667 pp

David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the definitive history of antebellum America. Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern succession. Now available in a new edition, The Impending Crisis remains one of the most celebrated works of American historical writing.

Paul Horgan · 1976 · 558 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History (1976). The extraordinary biography of a pioneer hero of the frontier Southwest from the author of Great River. Originally published in 1975, this Pulitzer Prize for History–winning biography chronicles the life of Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (1814–1888), New Mexico's first resident bishop and the most influential, reform-minded Catholic official in the region during the late 1800s. Lamy's accomplishments, including the endowing of hospitals, orphanages, and English-language schools and colleges, formed the foundation of modern-day Santa Fe and often brought him into conflict with corrupt local priests. His life story, also the subject of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, describes a pivotal period in the American Southwest, as Spanish and Mexican rule gave way to much greater influence from the United States and Europe. Historian and consummate stylist Paul Horgan has given us a chronicle filled with hardy, often extraordinary adventure, and sustained by Lamy's magnificent strength of character. " Lamy of Santa Fe stands as a beacon in American biography." —James M. Day, author of Paul Horgan " Lamy of Santa Fe is a classic work. Not only is the research exemplary but so is the narrative artistry, the work of history as art." —Robert Gish, author of Nueva Granada: Paul Horgan and the Modern Southwest "Historians, and general readers as well, seeking vivid portrayal of the Southwest's political, social and cultural traditions will find [this book] rewarding . . . the historical and literary heritage of Americans in general will be the richer for Mr. Horgan's painstaking effort." — Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Dumas Malone · 1975

Daniel J. Boorstin · 1974 · 738 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A study of the last 100 years of American history.

Michael Kammen · 1973 · 418 pp

In this major interpretive work Mr. Kammen argues that most attempt to understand America’s history and culture have minimized its complexity, and he demonstrates that, from our beginnings, what has given our culture its distinctive texture, pattern, and thrust is the dynamic interaction of the imported and the indigenous. He shows now, during the years of colonization, especially in the century from 1660 to 1760, many ideas and institutions were transferred virtually unchanged from Britain, while, simultaneously, others were being transformed in the New World environment. As he unravels the tangled origins of our “bittersweet” culture, Mr. Kammen makes us see that unresolved contradictions in the American experience have functioned as the prime characteristic of our national style. Puritanical and hedonistic, idealistic and materialistic, peace-loving and war-mongering, isolationist and interventionist, consensus-minded and conflict-prone—these opposing strands go back to the roots of our history. He pursues them down through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—from the traumas of colonization and settlement through the tensions of the American Revolution—making clear both the relevance of this early experience to ninetieth and twentieth-century realities and the way in which America’ dualisms have endured and accumulated to produced such dilemmas as today’s poverty amidst abundance and legitimized lawlessness. Far from being a study in social pathology, People of Paradox is a depiction of a complex society and am explanations of its development—a bold interpretation that gives an entirely new perceptive to the American ethos.

Carl N. Degler · 1972 · 330 pp

Until this groundbreaking work, scholars were puzzled by the differing courses of slavery and race relations in the United States and Brazil. Brazil had never developed a system of rigid segregation, such as appeared in the United States, and Blacks in Brazil were able to gain economically and retain far more of their African culture. Rejecting the theory of Giberto Freyre and Frank Tannenbaum ; that Brazilian slavery was more humane ; the author points to a combination of demographic, economic and cultural factors as the real reason for the differences.

James MacGregor Burns · 1971 · 757 pp

The “engrossing” Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning history of FDR’s final years (Barbara Tuchman). The second entry in James Macgregor Burns’s definitive two-volume biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins with the president’s precedent-breaking third term election in 1940, just as Americans were beginning to face the likelihood of war. Here, Burns examines Roosevelt’s skillful wartime leadership as well as his vision for post-war peace. Hailed by William Shirer as “the definitive book on Roosevelt in the war years,” and by bestselling author Barbara Tuchman as “engrossing, informative, endlessly readable,” The Soldier of Freedom is a moving profile of a leader gifted with rare political talent in an era of extraordinary challenges, sacrifices, heroism, and hardship.

Dean Acheson · 1970 · 854 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize With deft portraits of many world figures, Dean Acheson analyzes the processes of policy making, the necessity for decision, and the role of power and initiative in matters of state. Acheson (1893–1971) was not only present at the creation of the postwar world, he was one of its chief architects. He joined the Department of State in 1941 as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and, with brief intermissions, was continuously involved until 1953, when he left office as Secretary of State at the end of the Truman years. Throughout that time Acheson's was one of the most influential minds and strongest wills at work. It was a period that included World War II, the reconstruction of Europe, the Korean War, the development of nuclear power, the formation of the United Nations and NATO. It involved him at close quarters with a cast that starred Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle, Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Attlee, Eden Bevin, Schuman, Dulles, de Gasperi, Adenauer, Yoshida, Vishinsky, and Molotov.

Leonard W. Levy · 1969 · 588 pp

Origins probes the intentions of the framers of the Fifth Amendment.

Bernard Bailyn · 1968 · 335 pp

This book has developed from a study that was first undertaken a number of years ago, when Howard Mumford Jones, then editor-in-chief of the John Harvard Library, invited me to prepare a collection of pamphlets of the American Revolution for publication in that series. The full bibliography of pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American struggle published in the colonies through the year 1776 contains not a dozen or so items but over four hundred. In the end I concluded that no fewer than seventy-two of them ought to be re-published. But sheer numbers were not the most important measure of the magnitude of the project. The pamphlets include all sorts of writings -- treatises on political theory, essays on history, political arguments, sermons, correspondence, poems -- and they display all sorts of literary devices. But for all their variety they have in common one distinctive characteristic: they are, to an unusual degree, explanatory. They reveal not merely positions taken but the reasons why positions were taken; they review motive and understanding: the assumptions, beliefs, and ideas -- the articulated worldview -- that lay behind the manifest events of the time. As a result I found myself, as I read through these many documents, studying not simply a particular medium of publication but, through these documents, nothing less than the ideological origins of the American Revolution. - Foreword.

William H. Goetzmann · 1967 · 708 pp

Perry Miller · 1966 · 338 pp

Contains books 1-2, and part of book 3, of a work intended to be complete in 9 books. The parts after book 3, chapter 1, were never completed.

Irwin Unger · 1965 · 478 pp

The Greenback Era is not a financial history; rather, it is an attempt to locate the source of political power in the crucial Reconstruction years through a socio-economic study of American financial conflict during the years 1865 to 1879. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Sumner Chilton Powell · 1964 · 254 pp

Pulitzer Prize Winner: "A meticulous and remarkably detailed account of the early government and social organization of the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts." — Time In addition to drawing on local records from Sudbury, Massachusetts, the author of this classic work, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, traced the town's early families back to England to create an outstanding portrait of a colonial settlement in the seventeenth century. He looks at the various individuals who formed this new society; how institutions and government took shape; what changed—or didn't—in the movement from the Old World to the New; and how those from different local cultures adjusted, adapted, competed, and cooperated to plant the seeds of what would become, in the century to follow, a commonwealth of the United States of America. "An important and interesting book . . . to the student of institutions, even to the sociologist, as well as to the historian." — The New England Quarterly

Constance McLaughlin Green · 1963 · 500 pp

The Description for this book, Washington. Vol 1: Village and Capital, 1800-1878, will be forthcoming.

Lawrence H. Gipson · 1962

Herbert Feis · 1961 · 367 pp

Konferencerne mellem de allierede under 2. Verdenskrig. Beskrivelse af Potsdamkonferencen 17. juli-2. august 1945, hvor der blev forhandlet om fredsordningen i Europa efter 2. Verdenskrigs afslutning.

Margaret Leech · 1960 · 686 pp

A biography of President William McKinley, President during the Spanish-American War, which led to the annexation of the Philppines, Guam and Puerto Rico. McKinley was assassinated while still in office and followed by his Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt.

Leonard D. White · 1959 · 418 pp

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Bray Hammond · 1958 · 792 pp

This is a book about politics and banks and history. Yet politicians who read it will see that the author is not a politician, bankers who read it will see that he is not a banker, and historians that he is not an historian. Economists will see that he is not an economist and lawyers that he is not a lawyer. With this rather cryptic and exhaustive disclaimer, Bray Hammond began his classic investigation into the role of banking in the formation of American society. Hammond, who was assistant secretary of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1944 to 1950, presented in this 771-page book the definitive account of how banking evolved in the United States in the context of the nation's political and social development. Hammond combined political with financial analysis, highlighting not only the in.uence politicians exercised over banking but also how banking drove political interests and created political coalitions. He captured the entrepreneurial, expansive, risk-taking spirit of the United States from earliest days and then showed how that spirit sometimes undermined sound banking institutions. In Hammond's view, we need central banks to keep the economy on an even keel. Historian Richard Sylla judged the work to be "a wry and urbane study of early U.S. financial history, but also a timeless essay on how Americans became what they are." Banks and Politics in America won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1958.

George F. Kennan · 1957 · 544 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, the George Bancroft Prize, and the Francis Parkman Prize, this absorbing volume explores the complexities of the Soviet-American relationship between the November Revolution of 1917 and Russia's final departure in March 1918 from the ranks of the warring powers. These four months, which witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's departure from the warring powers, set the stage for future relations between the two emerging superpowers. Volume 2 of Soviet American Relations, entitled The Decision to Intervene (Princeton, 1958), explored U.S. intervention in northern Russia and Siberia between 1918 and 1920.The distinguished scholar and public servant George F. Kennan opens the way to an understanding not only of these events but of the subsequent pattern of Soviet-American relations and the complex process of international diplomacy generally. Kennan became the U.S. government's key analyst of the Soviet Union after a two-year stint in the Foreign Service there (1944-1946), which had been preceded by service in the American embassy in Moscow before World War II. His "long telegram" to his superiors at the State Department, written in 1946 and published a year later in revised form in Foreign Affairs as the famous "X" article, was perhaps the most influential statement in the early years of the Cold War. After leaving the Foreign Service, Kennan joined the faculty at the School for Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he wrote Russia Leaves the War and subsequent books.

Richard Hofstadter · 1956 · 368 pp

This analysis of the reform movements in American politics from 1890-1940 reviews: (1) The agrarian uprising that found its expression in the Populist movement of the 1890's; (2) The Progressive movement from about 1900 to 1914; (3) The New Deal of the 1930's. Emphasis is placed upon the ideas of the leading political reformers, their aims and techniques, and the combined effect of all of these things upon American thinking.

Paul Horgan · 1955

An epic history of the American southwest. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History (1954) Winner of the Bancroft Prize in History (1954) Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize for History, Great River was hailed as a literary masterpiece and enduring classic when it first appeared in 1954. It is an epic history of four civilizations—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—that people the Southwest through ten centuries. With the skill of a novelist, the veracity of a scholar, and the love of a long-time resident, Paul Horgan describes the Rio Grande, its role in human history, and the overlapping cultures that have grown up alongside it or entered into conflict over the land it traverses. Now in its fourth revised edition, Great River remains a monumental part of American historical writing.

Bruce Catton · 1954

In the final volume of the Army of the Potomac trilogy, Bruce Catton takes readers through the battles of the Wilderness, the Bloody Angle, Cold Harbor, the Crater and on through Appomattox.

George Dangerfield · 1953 · 552 pp

Winner of the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes, this book is the standard history of the years between Jefferson and Jackson.

Oscar Handlin · 1952 · 211 pp

“The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People, which won the 1952 Pulitzer for history, was aimed at an audience of general readers in making his case that immigration — more than the frontier experience, or any other episode in its past — was the continuing, defining event of American history. Dispensing with footnotes and writing in a lyrical style, Dr. Handlin emphasized the common threads in the experiences of the 30 million immigrants who poured into American cities between 1820 and the turn of the century. Regardless of nationality, religion, race or ethnicity, he wrote, the common experience was wrenching hardship, alienation and a gradual Americanization that changed America as much as it changed the newcomers. The book used a form of historical scholarship considered unorthodox at the time, employing newspaper accounts, personal letters and diaries as well as archives.” — Paul Vitello, The New York Times “[Oscar Handlin] has charged his pages with poetry and feeling... The Uprooted is history with a difference — the difference being its concern with men’s hearts and souls no less than an event.” — Milton Rugoff, The New York Times “Seldom in our historical literature have we been offered such detailed, realistic pictures of what it meant to come to the New World. The crossing itself, the struggle to make a living in the New World, the problems of housing, social fellowship, religion, adjustment to democracy — a chapter is devoted to each of these. The social and political pressures, the friction and misunderstanding between generations, the awful realization that the adjustment was too great — this reviewer knows of no book that captures these moods and situations with such sympathy and understanding... This is not, in either style or format, conventional or scholarly history... The style is not pedantic or heavy. The author is imaginative, sensitive, understanding. A tremendous amount of research and real depth of understanding lies behind the book.” — Ralph Adams Brown, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “[S]trong stuff, handled in a masterly and quite moving way.” — The New Yorker “This is a book of fundamental importance. For the first time it attempts to get at the inner meaning of an experience crucial in the development of the United States. It makes the attempt with a back- ground of imaginative research, a perceptiveness, and a literary skill rare in the modern writing of history... no one should attempt serious work in modern American history without fully reckoning with The Uprooted.” — Eric F. Goldman, The Journal of Southern History “Dr. Handlin’s The Uprooted deserves every bit of the praise and honors that have been heaped upon it. Dealing with an important area of American history without deviating from scholarly standards, the author succeeded in penetrating the façade of historical data to reach the drama of the historical process. The book is not only beautifully written and alive with human interest, but also highly pertinent to current social and political events in the United States... [Dr. Handlin] has handled his material magnificently, and every immigrant and descendant of an immigrant — that is, every American — ought to read this book in order the better to understand himself and his ancestors.” — Solomon Grayzel, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society “[T]he best historical interpretation of the inner meaning of migration.” — John Higham, Pacific Historical Review “Dr. Handlin has discharged his responsibility admirably. An able scholar of immigration history, Dr. Handlin, in the present work... reveals a mastery of historical data and rare insight and understanding of the manifold problems of the immigrant. The book is beautifully written, and many passages are truly moving... Americans would understand their country better if they would read this book and benefit from the humane spirit in which it is written.” — Carl Wittke, The New England Quarterly

R. Carlyle Buley · 1951 · 680 pp

Oliver W. Larkin · 1950 · 547 pp

Roy Franklin Nichols · 1949 · 652 pp

Bernard Devoto · 1948

James Phinney Baxter 3rd · 1947 · 473 pp

Arthur Meier Schlesinger · 1946 · 545 pp

This volume by the great American historian Arthur M. Schlesinger embraces the Age of Andrew Jackson from its inception to its influence upon the history of our country. It captures the historical, cultural, economic and political life of the United States as it grew from Jefferson's day to the violent early eruptions of financial and industrial forces that threatened the basic principles of our constitutional democracy. -- from http://www.amazon.com (Sep. 6, 2011).

Stephen Bonsal · 1945 · 415 pp

The story of the League of Nations. Excerpts from the author's diary written when he was President Wilson's confidential interpreter at the Peace conference of 1919. The armistice -- The first draft of the covenant -- Clemenceau -- With General Smuts to southeastern Europe -- The battle for the final draft of the world compact -- Berlin -- Blackout in Washington Pulitzer Prize, History, 1945

Merle Curti · 1944 · 972 pp

Esther Forbes · 1943 · 530 pp

This vivid account of the life and times of Paul Revere was first published in 1942 to great acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize. An elegant storyteller and expert historian, Edith Forbes paints a memorable portrait of American colonial history and of this most legendary of revolutionary heroes -- "not merely one man riding one horse on a certain lonely night of long ago, but a symbol to which his countrymen can yet turn."

Margaret Leech · 1942 · 532 pp

A surprisingly good book! If you are interested in what life was like in Washington during the time of the civil war, and if you can take what is said in the book as being accurate, then quite an interesting read. The day to day life of Washington, what is was like to live there at the time, and the other interesting personalities that populated it makes for entertainment of a different style. Enjoyed this book.

Marcus Lee Hansen · 1941 · 434 pp

No detailed description available for "The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860".

Carl Sandburg · 1940 · 476 pp

Presents the life of the Civil War president, detailing his childhood, his education, career as a lawyer and legislator, his marriage, political campaigns, presidential years, and assassination.

Frank Luther Mott · 1939 · 698 pp

"The five volumes of A History of American Magazines constitute a unique cultural history of America, viewed through the pages and pictures of her periodicals from the publication of the first monthly magazine in 1741 through the golden age of magazines in the twentieth century"--Page 4 of cover.

Paul Herman Buck · 1938 · 342 pp

A survey stressing the factors that brought about reconciliation between North and South.

Van Wyck Brooks · 1937 · 570 pp

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Andrew C. McLaughlin · 1936 · 393 pp

Charles McLean Andrews · 1935 · 580 pp

"I have approached the subject from the English end, from the land whence the colonists came and of which they were always legally a part, and have broadened the scope of my inquiry to include all England's colonial possessions in the West that were founded in the seventeenth century. I have done this because I believe that final conclusions must always rest upon the experiences England had with all, not a part, of her colonies. That some of these colonies remained British while others became American does not, historically speaking, enter in as a determining factor."--Author's preface, v. 1.

Herbert Agar · 1934 · 376 pp

This work discusses how politics, democracy, and the presidency evolved in the United States from 1789 to 1923.

Frederick J. Turner · 1933

John J. Pershing · 1932 · 436 pp

Bernadotte E. Schmitt · 1931 · 515 pp

Claude H. Van Tyne · 1930

Fred Albert Shannon · 1929 · 358 pp

Vernon Louis Parrington · 1928

Samuel Flagg Bemis · 1927 · 456 pp

"Pinckney's Treaty: A Study of America's Advantage From Europe's Distress, 1783-1800" is a definitive analysis of the diplomatic maneuvers that secured vital territorial and navigational rights for the young United States. Written by historian Samuel Flagg Bemis, this work explores the complex geopolitical landscape of the late 18th century, focusing on the high-stakes negotiations between the United States and Spain. The narrative details how the United States leveraged the conflicts and "distress" within Europe to achieve the Treaty of San Lorenzo, commonly known as Pinckney's Treaty. This agreement was crucial for establishing the southern boundary of the United States and granting American citizens the right to navigate the Mississippi River-a development that proved essential for the expansion and economic stability of the early republic. Bemis provides a meticulous account of the diplomatic tensions, the role of key figures like Thomas Pinckney, and the broader implications of European power struggles on American sovereignty. This scholarly study remains a cornerstone for understanding early American foreign policy and the strategic successes that defined the nation's growth during the post-Revolutionary era. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you may see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Edward Channing · 1926

Frederic L. Paxson · 1925

A Masterwork and Winner of The Pulitzer Prize for History Frederic L Paxson's History of the American Frontier offers a sweeping account of the American West and the country's westward expansion from 1763-1893. This gripping journey through the heart of America's past is a must-read for every student of American history. Paxson masterfully paints a picture of how the land of the United States was settled over approximately 150 years, starting with the English settlers in New England and tracing the expansion across the continent, ending at the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Paxton's literary genius shines through in this meticulously researched chronicle as he takes a historical, geographic, and pragmatic view of Westward expansion. He masterfully illuminates the untamed expanses, courageous pioneers, and the pivotal events in American history, from the War for Independence to the Louisiana Purchase, regional conflicts with Native Americans as well as the Civil War. In addition to these events that shaped American history, Paxton offers keen insight into the intricacies behind the scenes of frontier finance, executive orders from Presidents Washington to Roosevelt, and an inside look at the corporations who constructed and managed the canals and railroads. The vivid portrait Paxton paints of this captivating era in American history was worthy of The Pulitzer Prize he received in History for his portrayal of the intense struggles, the hard won triumphs and the pioneer spirt. This beautifully designed edition includes 10 easy to read maps so the reader can follow along on the journey west.

Charles Howard McIlwain · 1924 · 214 pp

In this work, which won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize in history, McIlwain argues that the central problem in the genesis of the American Revolution was the determination of the exact nature of the British Empire's constitution. "After a searching examination of a wealth of judicial precedents drawn largely from Ireland's relations with the English king and parliament, the author reaches the conclusion that 'there was a bona fide constitutional issue which preceded the American Revolution, and from which it in part resulted.' He contends that, strictly from the legal standpoint, the colonists had a number of good constitutional precedents to support their position.": Allison, Fay, [et. al.] A Guide to Historical Literature cited in Marke, A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University (1953) 377.

Charles Warren · 1923 · 578 pp

The complete text of the U.S. Constitution including the Bill of Rights and all the Amendments handlettered and decorated with drawings and sketches.

James Truslow Adams · 1922 · 684 pp

The Founding of New England is a comprehensive and engaging historical account that explores the origins and development of one of America’s earliest regions. James Truslow Adams examines the social, political, and religious forces that shaped the establishment of New England, highlighting the lives and motivations of its early settlers. Through detailed research and clear narrative, the book provides insight into the challenges, ideals, and conflicts that defined the colonial experience. This work offers readers a deeper understanding of the foundations of American society and the enduring legacy of New England’s beginnings.

William Sowden Sims in collaboration with Burton J. Hendrick · 1921

Justin H. Smith · 1920 · 632 pp

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

James Ford Rhodes · 1918 · 532 pp

1917 Pulitzer Prize?winner is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding studies ? and first unbiased history ? of the Civil War. "...very attractive volume." ? American Historical Review. Notes. 2 maps. Introduction.

J.J. Jusserand · 1917 · 174 pp

Reproduction of the original: With Americans of Past and Present Days by J.J. Jusserand