History of the Americas Books

"This book is very tough." - President Donald Trump The Bush Crime Family smashes through the layers of lies and secrecy that have surrounded and protected our country's most successful political dynasty for nearly two centuries. New York Times...

The Shocking Reexamination of Unexplored Failures by Government Officials to Use Available Intelligence to Stop the Events of September 11thIn 2009, documentarians John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski arrived at the offices of Richard Clarke, the former...

Incredible stories from those who thrived in the Wild West.The "mountain men" were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild...

Renowned author Franca Iacovetta provides a new perspective on multiculturalism by examining the hopes and challenges of women activists associated with the Toronto International Institute.For almost two decades before Canada officially adopted...

This book examines how embodied, heterosexual, married sexual experiences were constructed for, and by, Canadian women in the postwar era.Sex who was having it, who shouldn't have it, and who was supposed to be having it but wasn't was a major concern to...

Is a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? Andrew L. Seidel, a constitutional attorney and author of the critically acclaimed book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American, dives into the debate on...

A commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11as told through stories and photographs from The Associated Press - covering everything from the events of that tragic day to the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and beyond.This important and...

The story of Sapelo Island, Georgia, is a compelling story that holds an endless fascination for many people, whether they be serious historians, occasional visitors, or local residents. This book is a review of one segment of Sapelo's history that is in...

A bullet train of a book, fast-paced, hilarious, rich with action. A harbinger of good things to come in mysterious ways.It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner's for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies,...

"It is exhilarating to be invited into a world so large and muscular, so rooted in history, a world where so much is at stake."-Brigit Pegeen Kelly, National Poetry Series judgeA biography in poems, leadbelly examines the life and times of the legendary...

With twenty-eight speeches spanning the Reagan era, The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan provides readers with a direct source into President Reagan's profound belief in God, freedom, individualism, limited government, and his great love for his...

An inside look at one of the nation's most famous public hospitals, Cook County, as seen through the eyes of its longtime Director of Intensive Care, Dr. Cory Franklin.Filled with stories of strange medical cases and unforgettable patients culled from a...

The triumphs and tragedies of growing up as the son of a famous Beat artist.Tosh is a memoir of growing up as the son of an enigmatic, much-admired, hermetic, and ruthlessly bohemian artist during the waning years of the Beat Generation and the heyday of...

Published on the 149th anniversary of the catastrophe, Chicago's Great FireWill appeal to readers of great narrative historians who have chronicled disasters like Erik Larson (Isaac's Storm) and David McCullough, whose first major book was The Johnstown...

In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II, a strong strain of isolationism existed in Congress and across the country. The U.S. Army stood at fewer than 200,000 men-unprepared to defend the country, much less carry...

This major new study fills a significant gap in the academic literature on the Cold War by considering President Lyndon Johnson's policy towards the Soviet Union. The author examines the attitudes of Johnson and his leading advisers toward the Soviet...

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States.Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and...

From the New York Times bestselling author, the fascinating story of U.S. economic policy from Kennedy to Biden filled with lessons for today.In this book, Alan Blinder, one of the world's most influential economists and one of the field's best writers,...

One of the nation's foremost urban historians traces the history of cooperative housing in New York City from the 1920s through the 1970s.As World War II ended and Americans turned their attention to problems at home, union leaders and other prominent...

Tracing the rise of evangelicalism and the decline of mainline Protestantism in American religious and cultural lifeHow did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of...

How Black poets have charted the direction of American poetics for the past two centuriesBefore Modernism examines how Black poetics, in antagonism with White poetics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, produced the conditions for the...

A revelatory history of the first artist collective in the United States and its effort to reshape nineteenth-century art, culture, and politicsThe American Pre-Raphaelites founded a uniquely interdisciplinary movement composed of politically radical...

Leading historians provide perspective on Trump's four turbulent years in the White HouseThe Presidency of Donald J. Trump presents a first draft of history by offering needed perspective on one of the nation's most divisive presidencies. Acclaimed...

A major new history of capitalism from the perspective of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, who sustained and resisted it for centuries The Mexican Heartland provides a new history of capitalism from the perspective of the landed communities surrounding...

A sweeping history of Latin American republicanism in the nineteenth centuryBy the 1820s, after three centuries under imperial rule, the former Spanish territories of Latin America had shaken off their colonial bonds and founded independent republics. In...

A panoramic history of American individualism from its nineteenth-century origins to today's bitterly divided politicsIndividualism is a defining feature of American public life. Its influence is pervasive today, with liberals and conservatives alike...

A necessary reckoning with America's troubled history of injustice to Indigenous people.After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation...

From their acclaimed biographer, a final, powerful book about how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James forged resilience from devastating loss, changing the course of American thoughtIn Three Roads Back, Robert Richardson, the author of magisterial...

The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religion.In The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in...

Up from the Depths tells the interconnected stories of two of the most important writers in American history-the novelist and poet Herman Melville (18191891) and one of his earliest biographers, the literary critic and historian Lewis Mumford (18951990)...

How nineteenth-century "disciplines of attention" anticipated the contemporary concern with mindfulness and being "spiritual but not religious"Today, we're driven to distraction, our attention overwhelmed by the many demands upon it-most of which emanate...

The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had createdAmericans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate...

A War on Global Poverty provides a fresh account of U.S. involvement in campaigns to end global poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. From the decline of modernisation programs to the rise of microcredit, Joanne Meyerowitz looks beyond familiar histories of...

The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free marketsOriginally published in 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America's founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national...

A richly illustrated celebration of the paintings of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle ObamaFrom the moment of their unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery in early 2018, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama have become two of the...

As Featured on Wall Street Journal's Holiday Books Round-up Nature The enduring influence of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American art, culture, and politics.Alexander von Humboldt (17691859) was one of the most influential...

From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us-and how it could unite usToday, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts...

An in-depth look at how politics and economics shape the relationship between Congress and the Federal ReserveBorn out of crisis a century ago, the Federal Reserve has become the most powerful macroeconomic policymaker and financial regulator in the...

The unknown history of deportation and of the fear that shapes immigrants' livesConstant headlines about deportations, detention camps, and border walls drive urgent debates about immigration and what it means to be an American in the twenty-first...

An original and engaging account of the Obama years from a group of leading political historiansBarack Obama's election as the first African American president seemed to usher in a new era, and he took office in 2009 with great expectations. But by his...

The racist legacy behind the Western idea of freedom.The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of...

How silver influenced two hundred years of world history, and why it matters todayThis is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the nineteenth century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American...

The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nation.On a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI...

In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and...

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow...

Political Islam has often been compared to ideological movements of the past such as fascism or Christian theocracy. But are such analogies valid? How should the Western world today respond to the challenges of political Islam? Taking an original...

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany 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. In...

As a child growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line, ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood. Decades later, his love for exploring the city is as...