America First History

From colonization to the space race, this is the story of America’s successes and failures. Learn how a little settlement of a few hundred colonists grew to be one of the most powerful nations in the world. US History: An Overview of the Most Important People and Events in the History of United States, from Indians to Contemporary History of America follows the roller-coaster of events that drove the United States to become a modern superpower.

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.

In 1984, at the age of 24, Clarence Louie was elected Chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band in the Okanagan Valley. Nineteen elections later, Chief Louie has led his community for nearly four decades. The story of how the Osoyoos Indian Band - “The Miracle in the Desert” - transformed from a Rez that once struggled with poverty into an economically independent people is well-known. Guided by his years growing up on the Rez, Chief Louie believes that economic and business independence are key to self-sufficiency, reconciliation, and justice for First Nations people.

A grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter take us on a remarkable journey in which the cycles of life—childhood, adolescence, marriage, birthing and child rearing—are presented against the contrasting experiences of three successive generations. Their memories and reflections give us poignant insight into the history of the people of the new territory of Nunavut.

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.

Yellowstone remains a national icon, one of the few entities capable of bridging ideological divides in the United States. Yet the park's history is also filled with episodes of conflict and exclusion, setting precedents for Native American land dispossession, land rights disputes, and prolonged tensions between commercialism and environmental conservation. Yellowstone's legacies are both celebratory and problematic. A Place Called Yellowstone tells the comprehensive story of Yellowstone National Park as the story of the nation itself.

The fourth volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography vividly recounts Jefferson's eventful first presidential term. Though characterized by calmer seas than his second presidential voyage, Jefferson's first years in office find him confronting a nation deeply divided following the administrations of Washington and Adams, and many subsequent conflicts. He acquires the vast territory of Louisiana for the United States and challenges the growing power of the federal judiciary.

"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)

In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first American woman to obtain a medical degree. Following in her footsteps in the early 1980s, Brenda Berkman was the first woman to challenge New York City’s ban on female firefighters. During the last few centuries, countless women have made amazing contributions to society. Women are now Nobel Peace Prize winners, world-class athletes, and talented inventors and adventurers.

Al interior de majestuosas y vibrantes ciudades como Teotihuacan —una megalópolis con características únicas, algo así como el Nueva York de aquellos tiempos—, Monte Albán o Tikal, el poder económico, político y religioso se concentró en las élites gobernantes, que experimentaron una abundancia sin precedentes.

The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever heard before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can—through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide.

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.

In the years following the Revolutionary War, the young American nation was in a state of chaos. Citizens pleaded with government leaders to reorganize local infrastructures and heighten regulations, but economic turmoil, Native American warfare, and political unrest persisted. By 1784, one group of North Carolina frontiersmen could no longer stand the unresponsiveness of state leaders to their growing demands. This ambitious coalition of Tennessee Valley citizens declared their region independent from North Carolina, forming the state of Franklin.

By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in the state shattered the myth of their inferiority. Their brilliant coach had fashioned an unbeatable team from a group of boys born in the South and raised in poverty. Anchored by the astonishing Oscar Robertson, a future college and NBA star, the Crispus Attucks Tigers went down in history as the first state champions from Indianapolis and the first all-black team in U.S. history to win a racially open championship tournament.

Margaret Olemaun Pokiak-Fenton’s powerful story of an Inuvialuit girl standing up to the bullies of residential school in the far North has been reissued to commemorate the memoir’s 10th anniversary with updates to the text, reflections on the book’s impact, and a bonus chapter from the acclaimed follow-up, A Stranger at Home.

Today, the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 "winning" the race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the solar system. Moreover, the notion that America "won" the Space Race at the end of the 1960s overlooks just how competitive the Space Race actually was in launching people into orbit.

The Great Match Race is a captivating account of America's first sports spectacle, a horse race that pitted North against South in three grueling heats. On a bright afternoon in May 1823, an unprecedented sixty thousand people showed up to watch two horses run the equivalent of nine Kentucky Derbys in a few hours' time. Eclipse was the majestic champion representing the North, and Henry, an equine arriviste, was the pride of the South.

With the end of the war, concern over German subversives was replaced with concerns over communist subversives. In this powder keg, all that was needed was a spark to create full-blown hysteria, and the spark came on June 2, 1919, when the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was bombed, injuring Palmer and killing the bomber. The anarchist leaflets he was carrying were scattered in the bomb debris, and this attack on his home prompted Palmer, who had been a reformist Quaker, to launch an all-out war against left-wing radicals. The Red Scare had begun in earnest.

Our first President is often remembered as a humble, grey wigged, elder statesman. But by the end of 1776 the American Revolution almost came to an end. General Washington made a bold move that saved the American cause. The Continental Army Crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day to attack the Hessians in Trenton. This was America's First D-day.

Robert Carter III, also known as Councillor Carter, was one of the wealthiest men in the United States in the 1700s. He emancipated more than 500 of his enslaved African Americans. And in today's world, his wisdom and teachings are needed more than ever. A Man Named Robert chronicles the actions of Robert Carter III's life and identifies the key leadership lessons he displayed. This book is part history and part guide to becoming a great leader, inspired by Robert Carter III, an advocate of peaceful change while never wavering in making the opposition listen and give in.