Early America

The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled “lost tribes of Israel” - Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE - took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America.

When Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Quebec in 1608, he established elaborate gardens where he sowed French seeds he had brought with him and experimented with indigenous plants that he found in nearby fields and forests. In A Not-So-New World, Christopher Parsons observes how it was that French colonists began to learn about Native environments and claimed a mandate to cultivate vegetation that did not differ all that much from that which they had left behind.

In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called "the American Century." Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For "one brief, shining moment" in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon give way, however, to a new reality involving assassinations, the Vietnam War, Cold War crises, the civil rights movement, a new feminist movement, and various culture wars.

Near the start of the 19th century, as the newly established United States looked outward toward the wider world, a group of eminent Protestant ministers formed a grand scheme for gathering the rest of mankind into the redemptive fold of Christianity and "civilization". Its core element was a special school for "heathen youth" drawn from all parts of the Earth, including the Pacific Islands, China, India, and increasingly, the native nations of North America. If all went well, graduates would return to join similar projects in their respective homelands.

Between 1800 and 1920, an extraordinary cast of bold innovators and entrepreneurs - individuals such as Cyrus McCormick, Brigham Young, Henry Wells and James Fargo, Fred Harvey, Levi Strauss, Adolph Coors, J. P. Morgan, and Buffalo Bill Cody - helped lay the groundwork for what we now call the American West. They were people of imagination and courage, adept at maneuvering the rapids of change, alert to opportunity, persistent in their missions.

In the 1920s, the burgeoning movie industry was starting to come into its own, and virtually no actor was as famous - or infamous - as John Barrymore. Like many other film stars his age, Barrymore’s career had started in other forms of entertainment, in his case theater. By the time movies were becoming popular, Barrymore was one of the world’s foremost Shakespearean actors.

The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries.

Debates over paper money and banking are older than the United States of America itself. Eighteenth and 19th century Americans were deeply ambivalent about paper money and central banks, and political fights over these issues were among the bitterest in American history. In fact, controversies over the country’s central bank birthed both the first (1792-1824) and second (1828-1852) party systems. Frequently, policymakers crafted responses to the crisis at hand, and as a result, they implemented policies that were inadequate to the challenges the country faced in the future.

For his part in the victory of Battle of Lake Erie fought in September 1813, Perry would forever be remembered as the “hero of Lake Erie” even as he and compatriot Captain Jesse Elliot would feud over their respective actions during the battle for the rest of Perry’s life. Perry received a Congressional Gold Medal and the Thanks of Congress for compelling the surrender of the entire British squadron, the first time that had ever happened, but he wouldn’t have much time to enjoy it.

Special delivery: Danger! When Stanley's mother needs the secret ingredient for a special recipe, Stanley mails himself to Mexico to track down its mysterious maker. But when a band of spies threatens to steal the secret, Stanley's simple trip becomes a race against an opponent that even a flat boy like himself can't slip past!!

Playing for Keeps is an insightful, in-depth account of the game that became America's premier spectator sport for nearly a century. Reconstructing the culture and experience of early baseball through a careful reading of the sporting press, baseball guides, and the correspondence of the player-manager Harry Wright, Warren Goldstein discovers the origins of many modern controversies during the game's earliest decades.The 20th Anniversary Edition includes information about the changes that have occurred in the history of the sport since the 1980s.

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the US effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly.

In 1805 and 1806, Aaron Burr, former vice president of the newly formed American republic, traveled through the Trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he was arrested and tried for treason in 1807. This book explores the political and cultural forces that shaped how Americans made sense of the uncertain rumors and reports about Burr's intentions and movements, and examines what the resulting crisis reveals about their anxieties concerning the new nation's fragile union and uncertain republic.

A novel in the historical fiction genre set in the rural landscape of Gilead during the early 20th century. "Under the River's Gaze" is a poignant tapestry of life in the tranquil village of Gilead. Set primarily along the serene Moosatuk River, spanning the early 1900s, the novel details the intersecting lives of its characters against the backdrop of an untouched natural landscape edging into modernization. Central to the story are Robert Lawson and Dr. Russell, two seasoned outdoorsmen who engage in deep, philosophical reflections while hunting, serving as witnesses to Gilead’s looming...

The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.

The Early Explorers Book 1 includes biographical sketches of some of the first explorers that penetrated the American mainland, both South America and North America. The history of Colonial America would not be complete without biographical information on some of the explorers of North America. These New World adventurers laid the foundations of the future United States and Canada, as pioneers followed after them building settlements as they colonized the interior.

Daniel Crown, born of an English settler and a Lenni Lenape warrior, left New Eden as a child. He grew to his majority as the son of a wealthy English peer, yet never felt settled, at ease in his role, believing there must be more for him…wondering if he’d find what he was searching for in the land of his birth. The Indian raids have faded into memory, the colonies have won their independence from England, and New Eden is now a thriving town surrounded by rich farmland. Brianna Cassidy rides the fields unfettered, beloved by all who know her, believing nothing impossible or out of reach...

This particular volume (Volume One) begins with the period in the early 1600s when two very different English societies were established in the New World, one in Virginia and one in New England. The Virginia society simply re-created the rigidly class-based feudal society of the times. The New England society was a most unusual democracy of social equals, covenanted to live under God's—not man's—personal rule. These two American social types would find themselves in rather constant struggle....

“Reconstruction” is employed as a generic term for the period that followed the American Civil War. Suggesting a successful rejuvenation of a war-ravaged South, it lamentably gave way to a resurrection of the same white ruling class and slave-owner mentality, protecting the status quo in the legislatures and courts. With the distortion of Reconstruction’s intent came a body of racial policy and a tacitly understood social code that barred the pre-war slave class from personal freedom and opportunity, at the risk of great personal violence for anyone who objected.

Five years after an Indian raid catapulted a young Brighid Cassidy into the world of the Lenni Lenape, a treaty between the British and the Original People forced her return to New Eden, where her family had become victims of a massacre. She was suddenly a woman without a home, belonging nowhere. Philip Crown had been charged with returning Brighid to her cousin, a simple enough task until he realized he might have to rescue her again and again. From herself, from her half-forgotten past, and from those who condemned her for having been taken at all. Thanks for reading! Book Categories: ...