Presents the history of the United States from the point of view of those who were exploited in the name of American progress.

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,...

"The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. Racist ideas are woven into the fabric of this country, and the first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America's racist past and present. This book takes you on that journey, showing how racist ideas started and were spread, and how they can be discredited"--Dust jacket flap. "A history of racist and antiracist...

In "American Gun", the deadliest sniper in U.S. history tracks down and shoots the most important American firearms, from a flintlock rifle to a Colt revolver to the latest high-tech weapon he used as a SEAL. Chris Kyle uses these guns as a window on United States history, making the sweeping argument that the American story has been tied to and shaped by the gun.

"The current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America, Meacham shows us how what Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and others, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists...

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,...

"In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian ... Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself--a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence--at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests...

"Sally Grissom is a top secret service agent in charge of the Presidential Protection team. She knows that something is amiss when she is summoned to a private meeting with the President and his Chief of Staff without any witnesses. But she couldn't have predicted that she'd be forced to take on an investigation surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the First Lady with strict orders to keep it a secret. The First Lady's absence comes in the...

Reflecting on his career, Stephen E. Ambrose - one of the country's most influential historians - confronts America's failures and struggles as he explores both its moral and pragmatic triumphs. To America celebrates the men and women who invented the United States and made it exceptional. Taking a few swings at today's political correctness, Ambrose grapples with the country's historic sins of racism, its neglect and ill treatment of Native Americans,...

In 1831, the then twenty-seven year old Alexis de Tocqueville, was sent with Gustave de Beaumont to America by the French Government to study and make a report on the American prison system. Over a period of nine months the two traveled all over America making notes not only on the prison systems but on all aspects of American society and government. From these notes, Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America", an exhaustive analysis of the successes...