Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
Could you identify a sausage gun if you had to? How about a plate warmer or a well-sweep? Any idea how the term log-rolling really originated? Alice Morse Earle (1851-1911), a prolific popular historian and the first American to chronicle everyday life and customs of the colonial era, describes what these and many other obscure utensils were and how they were used. She also conveys a vivid picture of home production of textiles, colonial dress, transportation,...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771-1790) is the name given to the unfinished autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most influential founding fathers of the United States of America. Unpublished during his lifetime, the first edition of 1791 was in French and based on an imperfect transcription. Franklin's grandson then published the book in English in 1818, but not only did he miss a portion, but he also made revisions to his grandfather's...
Author
Language
English
Description
An iconoclastic look at America's past: overlooked episodes that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, these narratives bring to light little-known but fascinating, myth-busting facts. Read the story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists; the coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Told from the perspective of a cantankerous man named Deidrick Knickerbocker, A Knickerbocker's History of New York depicts a satirical history spanning from the world's creation to the end of the Dutch dynasty. Beginning with the start of time itself, Knickerbocker reveals historical anecdotes, both real and imagined featuring social commentary, fresh perspectives on the past, and conversations with powerful historical figures. With humor and intrigue,...
Author
Publisher
HarperCollins
Pub. Date
2009
Language
English
Formats
Description
A true crime account of the historic 1920s case from the killers' point of view, detailing their explosive relationship that culminated in murder.
It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals—too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were...
It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals—too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Written over a span of twenty years, "Of Plymouth Plantation" is the authoritative account of the founding of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts by its leader William Bradford. The journal, here translated into modern English by Harold Paget in 1920, was begun by Bradford in 1630 and tells the story of the Pilgrims from their 1608 settlement in the Dutch Republic in Europe, through their voyage in 1620 aboard the "Mayflower" to the New World, and...
Author
Series
Publisher
Everyman's Library/Knopf
Pub. Date
1991
Language
English
Description
The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth, and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. By reflecting upon the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the book touches upon such broad topics as the division of labour, productivity, and free markets....
8) John Adams under fire: the founding father's fight for justice in the Boston Massacre murder trial
Author
Language
English
Description
"'An expert, extremely detailed account of John Adams' finest hour.'--Kirkus Reviews. Honoring the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre The New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln's Last Trial and host of LivePD Dan Abrams and David Fisher tell the story of a trial that would change history. History remembers John Adams as a Founding Father and our country's second president. But in the tense years before the American Revolution, he was still...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the summer of 1754, deep in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a very young George Washington suffered his first military defeat, and a centuries-old feud between Great Britain and France was rekindled. The war that followed would be fought across virgin territories, from Nova Scotia to the forks of the Ohio River, and it would ultimately decide the fate of the entire North American continent-not just for Great Britain and France but also...
Author
Language
English
Description
One of our generation's best historical accounts of immigration in the United States from the earliest colonial days
"From almost every corner of the globe, in numbers great and small, America has drawn people whose contributions are as varied as their origins. Historians have spent much of the last generation investigating the separate pieces of that great story. Historian Roger Daniels has crafted a work that does justice to the whole." - San...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A sweeping, provocative new look at the pivotal years leading up to the American Revolution The Revolutionary War did not begin with the Declaration of Independence, but several years earlier in 1773. In this gripping history, Derek W. Beck reveals the full story of the war before American independence-from both sides. Spanning the years 1773-1775 and drawing on new material from meticulous research and previously unpublished documents, letters, and...
Author
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
An important new interpretation of the American colonists' 150-year struggle to achieve independence
"What do we mean by the Revolution?" John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson in 1815. "The war? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it." As the distinguished historian Thomas P. Slaughter shows in this landmark book, the long process of revolution reached back more than a century before 1776, and it touched on virtually...
Author
Publisher
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
A new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of Astoria. Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naive and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War--a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American...
Author
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Pub. Date
1960
Language
English
Description
In a pungent revision of the professional educator's school of history, Bailyn traces the cultural context of education in early American society and the evolution of educational standards in the colonies. His analysis ranges beyond formal education to encompass such vital social determinants as the family, apprenticeship, and organized religion.Originally published in 1960.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A freshly researched account of the dramatic rescue of the Jamestown settlers.
The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when in 1606 Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But, from the beginning the American...
Author
Publisher
Hill and Wang
Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
"A book that radically changes our understanding of North America before and after the arrival of Europeans Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were for centuries at the center of the North American universe. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really?...
Author
Pub. Date
2015
Language
English
Description
They were the most famous men in America. They came from separate countries, followed different philosophies, and led dissimilar lives. But they were fast friends. No two people did more to shape America in the mid-1700s.
Benjamin Franklin was the American prototype: hard-working, inventive, practical, funny, with humble manners and lofty dreams. George Whitefield was the most popular preacher in an era of great piety, whose outdoor preaching across...
Author
Publisher
The New Press
Pub. Date
2013
Language
English
Description
Americans on both sides of the aisle love to reference the Constitution as the ultimate source of truth. But which truth? What did the framers really have in mind? In a book that author R. B. Bernstein calls "essential reading," acclaimed historian Ray Raphael places the Constitution in its historical context, dispensing little-known facts and debunking popular preconceived notions. For each myth, Raphael first notes the kernel of truth it represents,...
Author
Publisher
Lyons Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
Who, what, when, where and why people were motivated to make a two-month crossing on the North Atlantic to carve a life in a largely uncharted, inhospitable wilderness? How and why did they build the varied societies that they did here in the New World colonies? How and why did we become America?
Author
Language
English
Description
First published in 1971 and long out of print, this classic account of Colonial-era New York chronicles how the state was buffeted by political and sectional rivalries and by conflict arising from a wide diversity of ethnic and religious identities. New York's highly volatile and contentious political life, Patricia U. Bonomi shows, gave rise to several interest groups for whose support political leaders had to compete, resulting in new levels of...