A sweeping narrative history of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhumane conditions. Many...

A Pulitzer Prize finalist in History, this eye-opening rethinking of nineteenth-century American history reveals the interdependence of the Northern industrial economy and Southern slave labor. The industrializing North and the agricultural...

This collection of 6 essays provides a definitive analysis of the doctrinal development of the law of treason in the U.S., beginning with its English origins and concluding with the present day. The author traces the materials available for studying the...

“Thomas Paine, a singularly injudicious man, requires an exceptionally judicious biographer, and in Mr. Hawke he has at last got one. . . . An absorbing narrative that moves briskly through two revolutions and three countries.” ―The New Yorker John Adams...

"It is really worth a read…" -- Former Vice President Joe Biden, interviewed on Pod Save AmericaNow in paperback with a new Foreword by Mark Cuban and a new Preface by the author, White Working Class explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the...

A surprising history unfolded in New Deal– and World War II–era New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than...

A sweeping history of the electric light revolution and the birth of modern AmericaThe late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but more than any other invention, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb marked the...

A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award"The definitive book about Depression culture for our time." ―San Francisco ChronicleHailed as one of the best books of 2009 by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, this vibrant portrait of...

The Smithsonian Institution is America's largest, most important, and most beloved repository for the objects that define our common heritage. Now Under Secretary for Art, History, and Culture Richard Kurin, aided by a team of top Smithsonian curators...

A New York Times Notable Book of 2013A Kirkus Best Book of 2013A Bookpage Best Book of 2013Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation illuminates one of the most dramatic and momentous chapters in America's past, when the country dreamed big, craved new lands...

Starting from a photograph and writings left by her grandmother, acclaimed African-American novelist Thulani Davis goes looking for the “white folk” in her family, a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer...

Explores the little-known connection between Lincoln and the JewsLincoln and the Jews provides the first full-scale history of Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with American Jews. Newly republished in a second revised edition and incorporating rarely seen...

Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church HistoryS-USIH Book Award, Society for U.S. Intellectual HistoryMerle Curti Award in Intellectual History, Organization of American Historians“A fascinating book…Gin Lum suggests that, in many times and...

A New York Times BestsellerA vital and urgent call to action about the precarious state of American democracy, charting its historical challenges and current threats, from one of our era’s most important and insightful historians, with a new afterword by...

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members--mostly men--and their families and neighbors. They...

The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 was a monumental achievement. Linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, it transformed New York City into a hub of international trade, drove the rise of industrial cities in once sparsely populated areas,...