America First History

Though it’s widely overlooked today, the U.S. has had a military presence in Asia for more than 200 years. The East Indies Squadron was formally established by President Andrew Jackson in 1835 to protect American property and trade in Asia, but U.S. warships were protecting American interests in Asia before then. In fact, American merchant vessels reached China as early as the 1780s.

In the fall of 1969, Gary Bray landed in South Vietnam as a recently married, freshly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. His assignment was not enviable: leading the platoon whose former members had committed the My Lai massacre--the murder of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians--18 months earlier. In this compelling memoir, he shares his experiences of Vietnam in the direct wake of that terrible event.

The secession of the South was one of the seminal events in American history, but it also remains one of the most controversial. The election of Abraham Lincoln was the impetus for secession, but that was merely one of many events that led up to the formation of the Confederacy and the start of the Civil War.

In 1607, three small ships - the Discovery, Godspeed, and Susan Constant - arrived on the shores of the eastern North American coast and established the first successful British settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. For two centuries, colonists faced the challenges of life in a new world - weather, Native Indian attacks, starvation, and disease - to establish the strongest economy in the American colonies.

Jamestown is fondly remembered today for being the first permanent English settlement in the colonies, but it was not fondly remembered by those who lived and died there. The English quickly learned it would be difficult to establish a permanent settlement because of the poor weather, the swampy terrain, the hostile natives living nearby, and the general inexperience and ineptitude of the English settlers.

On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Feared by settlers and natives alike, the Shawnee tribe have been misunderstood by people throughout history. Who were these conservative people? What was their daily life like? How were their villages organized? This informative book will answer these questions and more in the first volume of the We are Shawnee series.

From the acclaimed author of The Pattons and Patriot Pirates: a book that celebrates America’s forgotten war correspondents, men who were legends in their time; who, between 1860 and 1910, between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War - when empires fell and dynasties flourished - led romantic, thrilling lives on the edgiest frontiers of time and place: seeing the world, breaking the stories, making news themselves during the time when newspapers made the most foreign of landscapes available, and the circulation wars were revolutionizing contemporary life, shaping global events, and making history.

Cheated is a gripping story of single-minded politicians, uncompromising Indian Affairs officials, grasping government appointees, and well-connected Liberal speculators, set against a backdrop of politics, power, patronage, and profit. The Laurier government's settlement of western Canada can never be looked at the same way again.

Bertha Wilson and Claire L’Heureux-Dubé were the first women judges on the Supreme Court of Canada. Their 1980s judicial appointments delighted feminists and shocked the legal establishment. Polar opposites in background and temperament, the two faced many identical challenges. Constance Backhouse’s compelling narrative explores the sexist roadblocks both women faced in education, law practice, and in the courts. She profiles their different ways of coping, their landmark decisions for women’s rights, and their less stellar records on race.

In 1949, a newly minted branch of the CIA (the precursor of today’s National Clandestine Service), flush with money and burning with determination to roll back the Iron Curtain, embarked on the first paramilitary operation in the history of the agency. They hatched an elaborate plan, coordinated with the British Secret Intelligence Service, to foment popular rebellion and detach Albania, the weakest of the Soviet satellites in Europe, from Moscow’s orbit. The operation resulted in dismal failure and was shut down by 1954.

At the same time as the women's rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman. Yet, while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but forgotten Sarah Polk. Now, Amy Greenberg brings her story into vivid focus in this riveting biography and reveals Sarah Polk's complicated but essential part in American feminism.

In 1784, when Americans first voyaged to China, they confronted Chinese authorities who were unaware that the United States even existed. Nevertheless, a long, complicated, and fruitful trade relationship was born after American traders, missionaries, diplomats, and others sailed to China with lofty ambitions: to acquire fabulous wealth, convert China to Christianity, and even command a Chinese army. In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colourful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries.

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

Despite her distinction and other more notable accomplishments, many people today are not familiar with the groundbreaking actress Dorothy Dandridge, even though she was among the most charismatic and beautiful actresses of the era. Her alluring nightclub acts set pulses pounding across the globe, and she was Hollywood’s first black leading actress. Sadly, all of it came at a high price.

While Nantucket has long enjoyed an illustrious position in America's whaling history, Cape Cod's contribution to the industry is relatively unknown, yet it was a Cape Codder who taught the Nantucketers how to hunt whales. In Cape Cod Shore Whaling, authors Duncan Oliver and John Braginton-Smith uncover Cape Cod's integral role in shaping whalefishery, which began along the Cape's sandy shores and evolved into the far-flung whaling expeditions that drove Nantucket's economy into the nineteenth century.

Dig in on the deadly struggle for a Boston hilltop, Breed’s Hill, known as Bunker Hill. For the British Army, it was the deadliest battle of the American Revolutionary War. This battle, more than any other event, created the moment Massachusetts and the other colonies realized the American Revolution had begun. Meet a young Boston bookseller who believed he could bomb the mighty British army out of Boston. He became Washington’s Yankee, standing with him from Boston to victory at Yorktown.

Every president has had some experience as a parent. Of the 43 men who have served in the nation's highest office, 38 have fathered biological children, and the other five adopted children. Each president's parenting style reveals much about his beliefs as well as his psychological makeup. James Garfield enjoyed jumping on the bed with his kids. FDR's children, on the other hand, had to make appointments to talk to him.

This work by James Williams is one of very few autobiographical texts by Caribbean slaves or former slaves. It became one of the most powerful abolitionist tools for ending the system of apprenticeship which had replaced slavery. Williams argues that apprenticeship worsened the conditions of Jamaican ex-slaves as former owners used the legal system against them.

In "Squanto: The Untold Story of Thanksgiving," readers will discover the fascinating and often overlooked tale of Squanto, an English-speaking Indian who played a crucial role in the survival of the pilgrims. This book delves into the journey of the pilgrims as they landed in the new world and faced numerous challenges as settlers in an unfamiliar land. Through Squanto's assistance and guidance, the pilgrims were able to navigate the difficulties they encountered and ultimately establish a lasting relationship with the Native Americans. This captivating narrative sheds light on the untold ...