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American Blues: A Novel
by Polly Hamilton HilsabeckA week after Easter 1973—following the lynching of Black church sexton Sam Jefferson—Lily Vida Wallace is dropped like an immigrant into Greenville, South Carolina. After returning home to Manhattan, Lily continues theological studies in anticipation of the overturn of a centuries-old, males-only priesthood and simultaneously struggles with her erratic engagement. When her fiancé flees following discovery of professional impropriety and Atlanta attorney Rodney Davis lands in her path, a new love grows—accelerating Lily’s understanding even as it challenges her naïveté about race. Some two decades later, high-profile interracial nuptials in Oakland, California, become the occasion for a reunion between the now Reverend Vida and Lucius Clay, the fiery journalist she met in South Carolina. Within weeks of their re-meeting, Lucius is dispatched to cover Black church burnings—beginning with Lily’s hometown in Texas. Writer Hilton Als recently commented: “We need to wake up to the fact that America is not one story. It is many, many, many stories.” American Blues offers no neat resolution. Instead, its timely story invites, as it tangles with, readers’ own assumptions and complex experiences of race and gender in America.
American Bomber Crewman 1941-45
by Gregory Barnes Sean O'BrogainGregory Fremont-Barnes examines the lives of the American Bomber Crewmen of the Eighth Air Force, "The Mighty Eighth", who crewed, maintained and repaired the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and the B-24 Liberators that flew from the airfields of Norfolk and Suffolk and other counties of England during World War II (1939-1945). He highlights the physical and psychological strain placed on these brave men. Long bombing missions called for brute strength to control the aircraft and extraordinary endurance to fly for hours at 20,000 feet at temperatures below freezing in unheated, unpressurized cabins. Then there were Luftwaffe fighters and anti-aircraft fire to contend with and it required incredible skill and some luck to return from a mission unscathed. This book is a fitting tribute to these often uncelebrated heroes who took the war deep into the Third Reich, as well as a fascinating historical account of the experiences they went through.
American Boundaries: The Nation, The States, The Rectangular Survey
by Bill Hubbard Jr.For anyone who has looked at a map of the United States and wondered how Texas and Oklahoma got their Panhandles, or flown over the American heartland and marveled at the vast grid spreading out in all directions below, American Boundaries will yield a welcome treasure trove of insight. The first book to chart the country's growth using the boundary as a political and cultural focus, Bill Hubbard's masterly narrative begins by explaining how the original thirteen colonies organized their borders and decided that unsettled lands should be held in trust for the common benefit of the people. Hubbard goes on to show--with the help of photographs, diagrams, and hundreds of maps--how the notion evolved that unsettled land should be divided into rectangles and sold to individual farmers, and how this rectangular survey spread outward from its origins in Ohio, with surveyors drawing straight lines across the face of the continent. Mapping how each state came to have its current shape, and how the nation itself formed within its present borders, American Boundaries will provide historians, geographers, and general readers alike with the fascinating story behind those fifty distinctive jigsaw-puzzle pieces that together form the United States.
American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life
by Jennifer LundenA Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was “just depressed.”After suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of brothers Henry James, the novelist, and William James, the father of psychology. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a “fashionable illness.”In this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice’s, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.Although science—and the politics behind its funding—has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet.
American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us
by David BromwichHow Trump got to the Oval Office—and how both parties and the mainstream media are keeping him thereDonald Trump’s residency in the White House is not an accident of American history, and it can’t be blamed on a single cause. In American Breakdown, David Bromwich provides an essential analysis of the forces in play beneath the surface of our political system. His portraits of political leaders and overarching narrative bring to life the events and machinations that have led America to a collective breakdown.The political conditions of the present crisis were put in place over fifty years ago, with the expansion of the Vietnam War and the lies and coverups that brought down Nixon. Since then, every presidency has further centralized and strengthened executive power. The truly catastrophic event in American life was the invention by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney of the War on Terror, designed to last for generations. Barack Obama’s practice of “reconciliation without truth”—sparing CIA torturers and Wall Street bankers—deepened the distrust and anger of an electorate that has rallied around Trump.An unsparing account of the degradation of US democracy, American Breakdown is essential to our evaluation of its prospects. Arguing that Trump’s re-election seems just as likely as impeachment, Bromwich turns his attention to the new struggles within the Democratic Party on immigration, foreign policy, and the Green New Deal.American Breakdown will be a crucial reference point in the political debate around the upcoming presidential election—a contest in which the forces that created Donald Trump show no sign of letting up.
American Brutus
by Michael W. KauffmanIt is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating.Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators.Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth's plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, "an American Caesar." In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth's house, and re-created key parts of Booth's escape. Thanks to Kauffman's discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation's history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible-until now.In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.From the Hardcover edition.
American Brutus
by Michael W. KauffmanIt is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating.Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators.Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth's plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, "an American Caesar." In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth's house, and re-created key parts of Booth's escape. Thanks to Kauffman's discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation's history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible-until now.In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.From the Hardcover edition.
American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies
by Michael W. KauffmanIt is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth's plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, "an American Caesar. " In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth's house, and re-created key parts of Booth's escape. Thanks to Kauffman's discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation's history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible-until now. In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history. From the Hardcover edition.
American Buddhist Rebel: The Story of Rama - Dr. Frederick Lenz
by Liz LewinsonWinner of the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award, this acclaimed biography of the brilliant, controversial Buddhist teacher Rama - Dr. Frederick Lenz (1950 - 1998) is this free-spirited adventure of a wild, sports jock teenager who transforms into an iconoclastic, innovative leader, boundary breaking is de rigueur as reported by the 100+ students and colleagues interviewed by author Liz Lewinson. Meditation, the empowerment of women and career as practice are but three of the core teachings covered in this book. Dr. Lenz ran into opposition, of course, but he kept his priorities straight. When he visited Nepal at age 19, he encountered an aged monk who informed him that he was a lineage bearer. He was to revive an ancient school of enlightenment. He was to find his many past life students and help them achieve joyous enlightenment in this life or at least set them securely on the path. He was to do this in the West, using Western means. In the East, centuries-old traditions maintain meditative pathways to enlightenment. In the West, facing a blank canvas, Dr. Lenz found new ways to build mental/meditative prowess through careers such as computer science, visits to American "places of power," knowledge about real gender equilibrium, movies, music, and dance. He taught these skills to American students and observed their success. When you read this fast-paced biography, you enter the inner teaching circle of baseline American Buddhism. "This fascinating biography captures the wisdom of a genuine, compelling teacher who combined absolute miracles with humor, fun, and adventure. When you read this fast-paced book, you feel you are there, learning and transforming. This is an original and exciting read." -- Lynn Andrews, author of The Medicine Woman Series
American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail (America in the Nineteenth Century)
by Sarah KeyesIn popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. As historian Sarah Keyes illuminates, their graves ultimately became the seeds of U.S. expansion.By the 1850s, cholera epidemics, ordinary diseases, and violence had remade the Trail into an American burial ground that imbued migrant deaths with symbolic power. In subsequent decades, U.S. officials and citizens leveraged Trail graves to claim Native ground. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples pointed to their own sacred burial grounds to dispute these same claims and maintain their land. These efforts built on anti-removal campaigns of the 1820s and 30s, which had established the link between death and territorial claims on which the significance of the Overland Trail came to rest.In placing death at the center of the history of the Overland Trail, American Burial Ground offers a sweeping and long overdue reinterpretation of this historic touchstone. In this telling, westward migration was a harrowing journey weighed down by the demands of caring for the sick and dying. From a tale of triumph comes one of struggle, defined as much by Indigenous peoples’ actions as it was by white expansion. And, finally, from a migration to the Pacific emerges instead a trail of graves. Graves that ultimately undergirded Native dispossession.
American Business Cycles 1945-50
by Conrad BlythAfter the end of the Second World War businessmen and economists throughout the world feared that the American postwar inflationary boom would end in a serious slump. The slump took a long time to come, and when it did appear in 1949 it was both mild and short lived. In its mildness and brevity it foreshadowed the American business recessions since that time and, indeed, may foreshadow the end of the business cycle as it has been known in the past. This book presents the first full-scale study of the 1948–49 recession in the United States, making it the focal point of a detailed, analytical account of American business fluctuations from the end of the Second World War until the beginning of the Korean War. The main part of the book is prefaced by a review of fluctuations from 1945 to 1967 and of the business cycle theory, which places the postwar events in perspective. Of special importance are the studies of the ending, in early 1948, of the period of re-stocking and re-equipment; of the impact of the changed farm situation in this deflationary atmosphere, and use of modern consumption theory to explain the changes in household spending after the war and during the recession. Dr. Blyth has drawn extensively upon the results of modern economic research, and has woven the econometric findings and the historical narrative together with a theoretical analysis. He conclusively rejects the theory that recent U.S. business cycles are the result of any largely self-perpetuating fluctuation in investment in stocks. Instead he draws attention to the persistent destabilizing roles of changes in defense expenditure and of changes in monetary policy-inventory investment performs the largely passive role of aggravating these changes. The book, first published in 1969, will be of value not only to specialists in business cycle studies, but to economists and others concerned with the problems of stability and growth in the international economy, as well as to economic historians.
American Business Since 1920: How It Worked (The American History Series #29)
by Thomas K. McCraw William R. ChildsTells the story of how America’s biggest companies began, operated, and prospered post-World War I This book takes the vantage point of people working within companies as they responded to constant change created by consumers and technology. It focuses on the entrepreneur, the firm, and the industry, by showing—from the inside—how businesses operated after 1920, while offering a good deal of Modern American social and cultural history. The case studies and contextual chapters provide an in-depth understanding of the evolution of American management over nearly 100 years. American Business Since 1920: How It Worked presents historical struggles with decision making and the trend towards relative decentralization through stories of extraordinarily capable entrepreneurs and the organizations they led. It covers: Henry Ford and his competitor Alfred Sloan at General Motors during the 1920s; Neil McElroy at Procter & Gamble in the 1930s; Ferdinand Eberstadt at the government’s Controlled Materials Plan during World War II; David Sarnoff at RCA in the 1950s and 1960s; and Ray Kroc and his McDonald’s franchises in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first; and more. It also delves into such modern success stories as Amazon.com, eBay, and Google. Provides deep analysis of some of the most successful companies of the 20th century Contains topical chapters covering titans of the 2000s Part of Wiley-Blackwell’s highly praised American History Series American Business Since 1920: How It Worked is designed for use in both basic and advanced courses in American history, at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
American By Degrees
by Robert J. YoungThe expressions of American hostility toward France after 9/11 are not new - Franco-American relations in the early twentieth century were also difficult, characterized by the same antagonistic depictions of the other's culture. Ambassador Jules Jusserand's years in Washington (1903-24) were defined by efforts to correct such misconceptions, whether they came from the venomous pens of French extremists or from members of William Randolph Hearst's press empire. In An American by Degrees Robert Young explores Ambassador Jusserand's life and legacy. Fluent in English, married to an American, and a historian who was a frequent guest at many American universities, Jusserand deftly cultivated American sympathies for France. His tasks as a diplomat were formidable, whether during the period of America's war-time neutrality - when France was nearly over-run by the German army - or when as allies they competed for control of the peace process or sought to resolve post-war issues like disarmament, war debts, and reparations. Jusserand relentlessly reminded Americans that France had been an ally during their Revolution and that their concept of "civilization" was part of France's intellectual and cultural legacy. His emphasis on their shared history was natural, as befitted the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History and only the second foreigner to serve as president of the American Historical Association.
American By Degrees: The Extraordinary Lives of French Ambassador Jules Jusserand
by Robert J. YoungThe expressions of American hostility toward France after 9/11 are not new - Franco-American relations in the early twentieth century were also difficult, characterized by the same antagonistic depictions of the other's culture. Ambassador Jules Jusserand's years in Washington (1903-24) were defined by efforts to correct such misconceptions, whether they came from the venomous pens of French extremists or from members of William Randolph Hearst's press empire. In An American by Degrees Robert Young explores Ambassador Jusserand's life and legacy. Fluent in English, married to an American, and a historian who was a frequent guest at many American universities, Jusserand deftly cultivated American sympathies for France. His tasks as a diplomat were formidable, whether during the period of America's war-time neutrality - when France was nearly over-run by the German army - or when as allies they competed for control of the peace process or sought to resolve post-war issues like disarmament, war debts, and reparations. Jusserand relentlessly reminded Americans that France had been an ally during their Revolution and that their concept of "civilization" was part of France's intellectual and cultural legacy. His emphasis on their shared history was natural, as befitted the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History and only the second foreigner to serve as president of the American Historical Association.
American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes
by Anne ByrnTaste your way through America with more than 125 recipes for our favorite historical cakes and frostings.Cakes in America aren't just about sugar, flour, and frosting. They have a deep, rich history that developed as our country grew. Cakes, more so than other desserts, are synonymous with celebration and coming together for happy times. They're an icon of American culture, reflecting heritage, region, season, occasion, and era. And they always have been, throughout history.In American Cake, Anne Byrn, creator of the New York Times bestselling series The Cake Mix Doctor, takes you on a journey through America's past to present with more than 125 authentic recipes for our best-loved and beautiful cakes and frostings. Tracing cakes chronologically from the dark, moist gingerbread of New England to the elegant pound cake, the hardscrabble Appalachian stack cake, war cakes, deep-South caramel, Hawaiian Chantilly, and the modern California cakes of orange and olive oil, Byrn shares recipes, stories, and a behind-the-scenes look into what cakes we were baking back in time. From the well-known Angel Food, Red Velvet, Pineapple Upside-Down, Gooey Butter, and Brownie to the lesser-known Burnt Leather, Wacky Cake, Lazy Daisy, and Cold Oven Pound Cake, this is a cookbook for the cook, the traveler, or anyone who loves a good story. And all recipes have been adapted to the modern kitchen.
American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC
by Shahan MuftiOne of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2022The riveting true story of America’s first homegrown Muslim terror attack, the 1977 Hanafi siege of Washington, D.C. Late in the morning of March 9, 1977, seven men stormed the Washington, D.C., headquarters of B’nai B’rith International, the largest and oldest Jewish service organization in America. The heavily armed attackers quickly took control of the building and held more than a hundred employees of the organization hostage inside. A little over an hour later, three more men entered the Islamic Center of Washington, the country’s largest and most important mosque, and took hostages there. Two others subsequently penetrated the District Building, a few hundred yards from the White House. When a firefight broke out, a reporter was killed, and Marion Barry, later to become mayor of Washington, D.C., was shot in the chest. The deadly standoff brought downtown Washington to a standstill. The attackers belonged to the Hanafi Movement, an African American Muslim group based in D.C. Their leader was a former jazz drummer named Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, who had risen through the ranks of the Nation of Islam before feuding with the organization’s mercurial chief, Elijah Muhammad, and becoming a spiritual authority to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Like Malcolm X, Khaalis had become sharply critical of the Nation’s unorthodox style of Islam. And, like Malcolm X, he paid dearly for his outspokenness: In 1973, followers of the Nation murdered seven Hanafis at their headquarters, including several members of Khaalis’s family. When they took hostages in 1977, one of the Hanafis’ demands was for the murderers, along with Muhammad Ali and Elijah’s son, to be turned over to the group to face justice. They also demanded that the American premiere of Mohammad: Messenger of God—an epic about the life of the prophet Muhammad financed and supported by the Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi—be canceled and the film destroyed. The lives of 149 hostages hung in the balance, and the United States’ fledgling counterterrorism forces—as yet untested—would have to respond. Shahan Mufti’s American Caliph gives a full account of the largest ever hostage taking on American soil and of the man who masterminded it. Informed by extensive archival research and access to hundreds of declassified FBI files, American Caliph is a riveting true-crime story that sheds new light on the disarray of the 1970s and its ongoing reverberations.
American Canopy: The Role of Trees in the Shaping of a Nation
by Eric RutkowThis fascinating and groundbreaking work tells the remarkable story of the relationship between Americans and their trees across the entire span of our nation's history. Like many of us, historians have long been guilty of taking trees for granted. Yet the history of trees in America is no less remarkable than the history of the United States itself--from the majestic white pines of New England, which were coveted by the British Crown for use as masts in navy warships, to the orange groves of California, which lured settlers west. In fact, without the country's vast forests and the hundreds of tree species they contained, there would have been no ships, docks, railroads, stockyards, wagons, barrels, furniture, newspapers, rifles, or firewood. No shingled villages or whaling vessels in New England. No New York City, Miami, or Chicago. No Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, or Daniel Boone. No Allied planes in World War I, and no suburban sprawl in the middle of the twentieth century. America--if indeed it existed--would be a very different place without its millions of acres of trees. As Eric Rutkow's brilliant, epic account shows, trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country's rise as both an empire and a civilization. Among American Canopy's many fascinating stories: the Liberty Trees, where colonists gathered to plot rebellion against the British; Henry David Thoreau's famous retreat into the woods; the creation of New York City's Central Park; the great fire of 1871 that killed a thousand people in the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin; the fevered attempts to save the American chestnut and the American elm from extinction; and the controversy over spotted owls and the old-growth forests they inhabited. Rutkow also explains how trees were of deep interest to such figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR, who oversaw the planting of more than three billion trees nationally in his time as president. As symbols of liberty, community, and civilization, trees are perhaps the loudest silent figures in our country's history. America started as a nation of people frightened of the deep, seemingly infinite woods; we then grew to rely on our forests for progress and profit; by the end of the twentieth century we came to understand that the globe's climate is dependent on the preservation of trees. Today, few people think about where timber comes from, but most of us share a sense that to destroy trees is to destroy part of ourselves and endanger the future. Never before has anyone treated our country's trees and forests as the subject of a broad historical study, and the result is an accessible, informative, and thoroughly entertaining read. Audacious in its four-hundred-year scope, authoritative in its detail, and elegant in its execution, American Canopy is perfect for history buffs and nature lovers alike and announces Eric Rutkow as a major new author of popular history.
American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation
by Eric RutkowThis fascinating and groundbreaking work tells the remarkable story of the relationship between Americans and their trees across the entire span of our nation's history. Like many of us, historians have long been guilty of taking trees for granted. Yet the history of trees in America is no less remarkable than the history of the United States itself--from the majestic white pines of New England, which were coveted by the British Crown for use as masts in navy warships, to the orange groves of California, which lured settlers west. In fact, without the country's vast forests and the hundreds of tree species they contained, there would have been no ships, docks, railroads, stockyards, wagons, barrels, furniture, newspapers, rifles, or firewood. No shingled villages or whaling vessels in New England. No New York City, Miami, or Chicago. No Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, or Daniel Boone. No Allied planes in World War I, and no suburban sprawl in the middle of the twentieth century. America--if indeed it existed--would be a very different place without its millions of acres of trees. As Eric Rutkow's brilliant, epic account shows, trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country's rise as both an empire and a civilization. Among American Canopy's many fascinating stories: the Liberty Trees, where colonists gathered to plot rebellion against the British; Henry David Thoreau's famous retreat into the woods; the creation of New York City's Central Park; the great fire of 1871 that killed a thousand people in the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin; the fevered attempts to save the American chestnut and the American elm from extinction; and the controversy over spotted owls and the old-growth forests they inhabited. Rutkow also explains how trees were of deep interest to such figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR, who oversaw the planting of more than three billion trees nationally in his time as president. As symbols of liberty, community, and civilization, trees are perhaps the loudest silent figures in our country's history. America started as a nation of people frightened of the deep, seemingly infinite woods; we then grew to rely on our forests for progress and profit; by the end of the twentieth century we came to understand that the globe's climate is dependent on the preservation of trees. Today, few people think about where timber comes from, but most of us share a sense that to destroy trees is to destroy part of ourselves and endanger the future. Never before has anyone treated our country's trees and forests as the subject of a broad historical study, and the result is an accessible, informative, and thoroughly entertaining read. Audacious in its four-hundred-year scope, authoritative in its detail, and elegant in its execution, American Canopy is perfect for history buffs and nature lovers alike and announces Eric Rutkow as a major new author of popular history.
American Capitalism: A Reader
by Louis Hyman Edward E. Baptist"Welcome to this collection of important documents and essays about the history of American capitalism. We hope you will find these to be useful supplements to courses on the history of capitalism in the United States and elsewhere. There is no one right way to read this book, and no one right way to use it as part of a course. We only hope that you will find these readings as illuminating as we have found them. Taken together, these are the bricks and mortar that allowed us to build more than a class about a specific subject, taught in a specific format. In fact, they have enabled us to shape our understandings of how capitalism has developed and changed and how it continues to change in the United States--and how those developments and changes shape lives, here and in the rest of the world." From the forward.
American Capitalism: New Histories (Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism)
by Edited by Sven Beckert Christine DesanThe United States has long epitomized capitalism. From its enterprising shopkeepers, wildcat banks, violent slave plantations, huge industrial working class, and raucous commodities trade to its world-spanning multinationals, its massive factories, and the centripetal power of New York in the world of finance, America has come to symbolize capitalism for two centuries and more. But an understanding of the history of American capitalism is as elusive as it is urgent. What does it mean to make capitalism a subject of historical inquiry? What is its potential across multiple disciplines, alongside different methodologies, and in a range of geographic and chronological settings? And how does a focus on capitalism change our understanding of American history?American Capitalism presents a sampling of cutting-edge research from prominent scholars. These broad-minded and rigorous essays venture new angles on finance, debt, and credit; women’s rights; slavery and political economy; the racialization of capitalism; labor beyond industrial wage workers; and the production of knowledge, including the idea of the economy, among other topics. Together, the essays suggest emerging themes in the field: a fascination with capitalism as it is made by political authority, how it is claimed and contested by participants, how it spreads across the globe, and how it can be reconceptualized without being universalized. A major statement for a wide-open field, this book demonstrates the breadth and scope of the work that the history of capitalism can provoke.
American Castle: One Hundred Years of Mar-a-Lago
by Mary C. ShanklinThe characters, scandals, and secrets that shaped America's most controversial residence. Emerging from family tragedy and newfound chances, the story of Mar-a-Lago starts when heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and investor E.F. Hutton built their ode to Roaring Twenties excess in south Florida. And as the hood ornament of Palm Beach society, not even a catastrophic hurricane could deter winter revelries there. No one could have predicted what followed: This 126-room wonder has withstood mutual adultery, high-stakes divorces, ruinous development plans, apathetic heirs, and financial collapse. All this...even before Donald Trump was given the keys to the front door. American Castle reveals a power couple's dream oasis colliding with the Kennedys, Lady Bird Johnson, Richard Nixon, the National Park Service, and Donald Trump--the man who fused a private club with a Winter White House and watched the FBI raid his own home.
American Catholic
by Charles Morris"A cracking good story with a wonderful cast of rogues, ruffians and some remarkably holy and sensible people." --Los Angeles Times Book ReviewBefore the potato famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, the Roman Catholic Church was barely a thread in the American cloth. Twenty years later, New York City was home to more Irish Catholics than Dublin. Today, the United States boasts some sixty million members of the Catholic Church, which has become one of this country's most influential cultural forces.In American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, Charles R. Morris recounts the rich story of the rise of the Catholic Church in America, bringing to life the personalities that transformed an urban Irish subculture into a dominant presence nationwide. Here are the stories of rogues and ruffians, heroes and martyrs--from Dorothy Day, a convert from Greenwich Village Marxism who opened shelters for thousands, to Cardinal William O'Connell, who ran the Church in Boston from a Renaissance palazzo, complete with golf course. Morris also reveals the Church's continuing struggle to come to terms with secular, pluralist America and the theological, sexual, authority, and gender issues that keep tearing it apart. As comprehensive as it is provocative, American Catholic is a tour de force, a fascinating cultural history that will engage and inform both Catholics and non-Catholics alike."The best one-volume history of the last hundred years of American Catholicism that it has ever been my pleasure to read. What's appealing in this remarkable book is its delicate sense of balance and its soundly grounded judgments." --Andrew GreeleyFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era
by Deirdre M. MoloneyTracing the development of social reform movements among American Catholics from 1880 to 1925, Deirdre Moloney reveals how Catholic gender ideologies, emerging middle-class values, and ethnic identities shaped the goals and activities of lay activists. Rather than simply appropriate American reform models, ethnic Catholics (particularly Irish and German Catholics) drew extensively on European traditions as they worked to establish settlement houses, promote temperance, and aid immigrants and the poor. Catholics also differed significantly from their Protestant counterparts in defining which reform efforts were appropriate for women. For example, while women played a major role in the Protestant temperance movement beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic temperance remained primarily a male movement in America. Gradually, however, women began to carve out a significant role in Catholic charitable and reform efforts. <P>The first work to highlight the wide-ranging contributions of the Catholic laity to Progressive-era reform, the book shows how lay groups competed with Protestant reformers and at times even challenged members of the Catholic hierarchy. It also explores the tension that existed between the desire to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with American values and the wish to preserve the distinctiveness of Catholic life.
American Catholic Women Religious: Radicalized by Mission
by Donna Maria MosesThis book depicts the significant role played by American Catholic Women Religious in the broader narratives of modern American history and the history of the Catholic Church. The book is a guide to fifty foreign missions founded by Dominican and Maryknoll Sisters in the twentieth century. Sister Donna Moses examines root causes for the radical political stances taken by American Catholic Women Religious in the latter half of the century and for the conservative backlash that followed. The book identifies key events that contributed to the present state of division within the American Catholic Church and describes current efforts to engage in dynamic dialogue.
American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Religion and American Public Life)
by D. G. HartAmerican Catholic places the rise of the United States' political conservatism in the context of ferment within the Roman Catholic Church. How did Roman Catholics shift from being perceived as un-American to emerging as the most vocal defenders of the United States as the standard bearer in world history for political liberty and economic prosperity? D. G. Hart charts the development of the complex relationship between Roman Catholicism and American conservatism, and shows how these two seemingly antagonistic ideological groups became intertwined in advancing a certain brand of domestic and international politics. Contrary to the standard narrative, Roman Catholics were some of the most assertive political conservatives directly after World War II, and their brand of politics became one of the most influential means by which Roman Catholicism came to terms with American secular society. It did so precisely as bishops determined the church needed to update its teaching about its place in the modern world. Catholics grappled with political conservatism long before the supposed rightward turn at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.Hart follows the course of political conservatism from John F. Kennedy, the first and only Roman Catholic president of the United States, to George W. Bush, and describes the evolution of the church and its influence on American politics. By tracing the roots of Roman Catholic politicism in American culture, Hart argues that Roman Catholicism's adaptation to the modern world, whether in the United States or worldwide, was as remarkable as its achievement remains uncertain. In the case of Roman Catholicism, the effects of religion on American politics and political conservatism are indisputable.