Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)

In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional...

In her investigation of the social history of the common British soldier in the era of the American Revolution, Sylvia Frey has extensively surveyed recruiting records, contemporary training manuals, statutes, and memoirs in an attempt to provide insight into the soldier's "life and mind." In the process she has discovered more about the common soldier than anyone thought possible: his social origins and occupational background, his size, age, and general physical condition, his personal economics and daily existence. Her findings dispel the traditional assumption that the army was made up...

The second volume of The Selected Papers of John Jay opens in January 1780 with Jay's arrival in Spain on his first diplomatic mission abroad. It ends in June 1782 with his departure for France to join Benjamin Franklin in negotiating a peace treaty with Great Britain. Jay's mission in Spain was to seek recognition of American independence, a treaty of alliance, and financial aid, despite Spain's refusal to receive any American diplomat as representative of an independent nation. His personal letters supplement the public correspondence with American, Spanish, and French officials...

In 1823, the "History of the Celebrated Mrs. Ann Carson" rattled Philadelphia society and became one of the most scandalous, and eagerly read, memoirs of the age. This tale of a woman who tried to rescue her lover from the gallows and attempted to kidnap the governor of Pennsylvania tantalized its audience with illicit love, betrayal, and murder.

Carson's ghostwriter, Mary Clarke, was no less daring. Clarke pursued dangerous associations and wrote scandalous exposes based on her own and others' experiences. She immersed herself in the world of criminals and disreputable actors, using her...

In the middle of the nineteenth century, middle-class Americans embraced a new culture of domestic consumption, one that centered on chairs and clocks as well as family portraits and books. How did that new world of goods, represented by Victorian parlors filled with overstuffed furniture and daguerreotype portraits, come into being? A New Nation of Goods highlights the significant role of provincial artisans in four crafts in the northeastern United States chairmaking, clockmaking, portrait painting, and book publishing to explain the shift from preindustrial society to an entirely...