Jeffries paints a picture of a people emerging from the Great Depression and eager for a better life, yet often reluctant to abandon the touchstones of their past. His succinct, informative history is a welcome contribution to our understanding of this crucial moment in the American experience.

From Benjamin Franklin's campaign to combat pollution at the Philadelphia's docks in the 1750s to the movement against climate change today, American environmentalists have sought to protect the natural world and promote a healthy human society. In This Green and Growing Land, historian Kevin Armitage shows how the story of American environmentalism--part philosophy, part social movement--is in no small way a story of America itself, of the way citizens have self-organized, have thought of their communities and their government, and have used their power to protect and enrich the land....

Through war, depression, times of tumultuous upheaval and of great prosperity - baseball has reflected America's history and ideals. In this book, historians Martin Babicz and Thomas Zeiler find in baseball a window into America's past and into the values that allow both the sport and nation to endure: hope, tradition, escape, and revolution.

There is an "American Way" to religion and race unlike anyplace else in the world, and the rise of religious pluralism in contemporary American (together with the continuing legacy of the racism of the past and misapprehensions in the present) render its understanding crucial....