Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - General

From the "taming of the West" to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the portrayal of the past has become a battleground at the heart of American politics. What kind of history Americans should read, see, or fund is no longer merely a matter of professional interest to teachers, historians, and museum curators. Everywhere now, history is increasingly being held hostage, but to what end and why? In History Wars, eight prominent historians consider the angry swirl of emotions that now surrounds public memory. Included are trenchant essays by Paul Boyer, John W. Dower, Tom...

"Admirably comprehensive . . . The Price of Liberty shows that Hormats] knows his history."--Niall Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal

America's first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, identified the Revolutionary War debt as a threat to the nation's very existence. Ever since, Hamilton's principles for securing the country through sound finances have guided leaders from Madison and Lincoln to FDR and George H. W. Bush as they have fought to protect the United States--with the invention of the greenback, a progressive income tax, Victory Bond...

Once in a blue moon (which means a fairly long cycle in my case) one who deals professionally with new books comes upon something that seems to him truly noteworthy and memorable-a reading experience which he will cherish for the rest of his life. And when this book is original and, indeed, unique-when it achieves something that has never been done before-one's impulse is to rent a billboard, to hire a hall, in some way to underline and emphasize the excitement and enthusiasm of his discovery, so that other readers may share his pleasure.

"This has been my experience with The Ten...

In 1906 when the Creek Indian Chitto Harjo was protesting the United States government's liquidation of his tribe's lands, he began his argument with an account of Indian history from the time of Columbus, "for, of course, a thing has to have a root before it can grow." Yet even today most intelligent non-Indian Americans have little knowledge of Indian history and affairs those lessons have not taken root.

This book is an in-depth historical survey of the Indians of the United States, including the Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska, which isolates and analyzes the problems which have beset...

Beginning with archaeological sites in northeast Iowa, Martha Royce Blaine traces Ioway history from ancient to modern times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French, Spanish, and English traders vied for the tribe's favor and for permission to cross their lands. The Ioways fought in the French and Indian War in New York, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, but ultimately their influence waned as they slowly lost control of their sovereignty and territory. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ioway were separated in reservations in Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory. A...

American expansion, says Richard Drinnon, is characterized by repression and racism. In his reinterpretation of "winning" the West, Drinnon links racism with colonialism and traces this interrelationship from the Pequot War in New England, through American expansion westward to the Pacific, and beyond to the Phillippines and Vietnam. He cites parrallels between the slaughter of bison on the Great Plains and the defoliation of Vietnam and notes similarities in the language of aggression used in the American West, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia.

From Dr. Martin Luther King (1) and Harriet Tubman (12) to Louis Armstrong (68) and Arthur Ashe (98), here are the one hundred who have fundamentally altered the ways in which millions of Americans -- of all colors -- live in our society.

For each of the one hundred, Dr. Salley provides a biographical sketch and an account of the reasons for each individual's rank.

In The Origins of American Constitutionalism, Donald S. Lutz challenges the prevailing notion that the United States Constitution was either essentially inherited from the British or simply invented by the Federalists in the summer of 1787. His political theory of constitutionalism acknowledges the contributions of the British and the Federalists. Lutz also asserts, however, that the U.S. Constitution derives in form and content from a tradition of American colonial characters and documents of political foundation that began a century and a half prior to 1787.

Lutz builds his argument...

The only New Deal program to continue into the 1990s, the Historic American Buildings Survey has through the years drawn attention to the historical and artistic significance of buildings that contemporary taste might otherwise have ignored. Louisiana Buildings, 1720-1940 makes easily available the fruit of HABS's important and enduring efforts to record Louisiana's architectural heritage.

In the 1930s, the Louisiana HABS team concentrated on public edifices and grand plantation complexes threatened by destruction. Later records of HABS include still other habitations of the...