America First History

Deadwood, 1876: a notorious little mining town in modern-day South Dakota that was a hive of criminal activity. Thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, and murderers ran rampant among its booming streets. There were over 300 murders in this town during the first year of its existence. When Wild Bill Hickok was brutally shot and killed at point-blank range in the back of the head, it was obvious that someone had to rise up and save the town of Deadwood from itself.

The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover: The History and Legacy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Under Its First Director examines the events that led to the formation of the FBI, the most important cases it was involved in, and the controversies surrounding Hoover’s methods. You will learn about the FBI under Hoover like never before.

In Voyage of Mercy, Stephen Puleo tells the incredible story of the famine, the Jamestown voyage, and the commitment of thousands of ordinary Americans to offer relief to Ireland, a groundswell that provided the collaborative blueprint for future relief efforts, and established the United States as the leader in international aid. The USS Jamestown’s heroic voyage showed how the ramifications of a single decision can be measured not in days, but in decades.

To Provide and Maintain a Navy, a succinct but encompassing treatise on sea power by Dr. Henry J. "Jerry" Hendrix, goes beyond the numbers to reveal the crucial importance of Mare Liberum (Free Sea) to the development of the Western thought and the rules based order that presently governs the global commons that is the high seas. Proceeding from this philosophical basis, Hendrix explores how a "free sea" gave way to free trade and the central role sea borne commercial trade has played in the overall rise in global living standards.

This is the history of George Washington who was a president, a general, and a Founding Father of a new nation. But, most of all, it is the story of George Washington the man. Many of the anecdotes related are true stories told by the people who were his own family and friends. This captivating history audiobook covers topics such as: she was horrified, from tranquility to turmoil, two if by sea, one shot starts the revolution, Canada to New Jersey, a year of hardship, and more.

You probably know that the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case was an important part of ending segregation in schools. But it wasn’t the only one. In 1947, Mendez v. Westminster helped end segregation in California’s schools. With key biographical information and related historical events, this Capstone Captivate book will uncover Mendez’s story and show how it connects to Brown v. Board of Education.

Editor and investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has been widely published in national periodicals and is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction work Our Man in Mexico. An eye-opening look at Washington’s first race riot, Snow-Storm in August also offers revealing profiles of Arthur Bowen, the slave blamed for the riot, and “Star Spangled Banner” lyricist Francis Scott Key, a defender of slavery who sought capital punishment for Bowen.

Built of titanium and a chrome-nickel alloy known as Inconel X, the X-15 was the fastest plane ever built, streaking through the lower reaches of outer space even before the first space capsules reached orbit. First tested in 1959, the X-15 proved to be a crucial testing ground for the astronauts and hardware in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and even the Space Shuttle programs. Celebrated reporter Richard Tregaskis spent time with the pilots, engineers, and other key personnel involved in the project.

For America, the gun is a story of innovation, power, violence, character, and freedom. From the founding of the nation to the pioneering of the West, from the freeing of the slaves to the urbanization of the 20th century, our country has had a complex and lasting relationship with firearms. Now, in First Freedom, nationally syndicated columnist and veteran writer David Harsanyi explores the ways in which firearms have helped preserve our religious, economic, and cultural institutions for more than two centuries.

Amidst the nonstop turmoil of the War of 1812, the decisive First Lady takes action and inspires an anxious nation. Dolley Madison faces a bitterly divided Washington City when her husband, James Madison, becomes our fourth president. The prospect of war against Great Britain threatens to tear our fragile republic apart. The "Presidentess" hosts open parties in the new President's House to unite political foes and cultivate an American identity.

Tony Silber's account starts on April 14, 1861, with President Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand militia troops. Washington, a Southern slaveholding city, was the focal point. The capital was barely defended, by about two thousand local militia troops of dubious training and loyalty. In Charleston, the Confederates had an organized army that was larger and ready to fight.

More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just 14 words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.

"Hassler's history will survive as our most detailed narrative of the first day's battle, examining the day's action so minutely that no succeeding historian of Gettysburg will be able to ignore it. Hassler's book has solid virtues in addition to its thoroughness of detail: it offers a persuasive argument that the first day's events largely determined the eventual outcome of the battle...." ( American Historical Review)

World War II was raging, with thousands of American soldiers fighting overseas against the injustices brought on by Hitler. Back on the home front, the injustice of discrimination against African Americans was playing out as much on Main Street as in the military. Enlisted black men were segregated from white soldiers and regularly relegated to service duties. At Fort Benning, Georgia, First Sergeant Walter Morris’s men served as guards at The Parachute School while the white soldiers prepared to be paratroopers.

The causes of the American Civil War, which lasted from April 1861 to May 1865, were many and complex. At the heart of the disagreement, however, was slavery. The Southern states of the newly formed but illegal Confederacy were prepared to fight the US federal government to the death to retain their right to keep slaves for their plantations. The election of President Abraham Lincoln in late 1860, whose open intention was to abolish slavery, created a military upheaval south of Washington, DC, and civil war ensued.

Freedom’s Detective reveals the untold story of the Reconstruction-era US Secret Service and their battle against the Ku Klux Klan, through the career of its controversial chief, Hiram C. Whitle.

The year: 1638. The setting: Providence, near Plymouth Colony. A young Nipmuc tribesman returning home from trading beaver pelts is fatally stabbed in a robbery in the woods near Plymouth Colony by a vicious white runaway indentured servant. The tribesman, fighting for his life, is able with his final breaths to reveal the details of the attack to Providence’s governor, Roger Williams. A frantic manhunt by the fledgling government ensues to capture the killer and his gang, now the most hunted men in the New World.

After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of 25 White men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in Southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target was George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years and who had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's home, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.

Every November, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving Day. But what actually happened at the first Thanksgiving? And when did it happen? Discover the facts and find out the fiction surrounding one of America’s favorite holidays.

In Voices from Hudson Bay Cree elders recall the daily lives and experiences of the men and women who lived and worked at the Hudson’s Bay Company post at York Factory in Manitoba. Their stories, their memories of family, community, and daily life, define their past and provide insights into a way of life that has largely disappeared in northern Canada. The era the elders describe, from the end of World War I to the closing of York Factory in 1957, saw dramatic changes—both positive and negative—to Indigenous life in the North.