After the War of 1812 the United States remained a cultural and economic satellite of the world’s most powerful empire. Though political independence had been won, John Bull intruded upon virtually every aspect of public life, from politics to economic...

A "gut-clenching and meticulously detailed" (USA Today) account from the Korean War and how Captain William Barber led 246 courageous Marines of the Seventh Marine Regiment in the perilous defense of Fox Hill. November 1950, the Korean Peninsula: After...

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the AmazonIn 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice...

"Quite possibly the finest book on presidential politics ever written, combining meticulous reporting and compelling, at times soaringly lyrical, prose." -- Cleveland Plain DealerAn American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It...

"Fascinating.... A major work by a leading historian at the top of his game—at once engaging and tightly argued." —The New York Times Book Review“Dazzling cultural history: smart, provocative, and gripping. It is also a book for our times, historically...

“If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln.”—USA TodayNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe Washington Post • The Philadelphia Inquirer • The Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE...

In America’s Constitution, one of this era’s most accomplished constitutional law scholars, Akhil Reed Amar, gives the first comprehensive account of one of the world’s great political texts. Incisive, entertaining, and occasionally controversial, this...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDIn this groundbreaking biography, T.J. Stiles tells the dramatic story of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, the combative man and American icon who, through his genius and force of will, did more than...

National Bestseller The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of...

Few issues in our history have proved as shameful as the white man's long conflict with Native Americans. The Indian Removal Act passed by Congress in 1830 was actively fostered by President Andrew Jackson. It called for eastern Indians to relocate west...

From its shocking curtain-raiser—the conflagration that consumed Lower Manhattan in 1835—to the climactic centennial year of 1876, when Americans staged a corrupt, deadlocked presidential campaign (fought out in Florida), Walter A. McDougall's Throes of...

Alexander Hamilton, the worldly New Yorker; John Adams, the curmudgeonly Yankee; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary Virginia squire―each steered their public lives under the guideposts and constraints of Enlightenment principles, and for each their...

Religion has played a crucial role in American immigration history as an institutional resource for migrants' social adaptation, as a map of meaning for interpreting immigration experiences, and as a continuous force for expanding the national ideal of...

A searing history of life under Jim Crow that recalls the bloodiest and most repressive period in the history of race relations in the United States—and the painful record of discrimination that haunts us to this day. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning...

The religious revival that flourished in the early nineteenth century and changed American life found its most spectacular expression in Rochester, New York. The revival, in Rochester and elsewhere, made the United States the most militantly Protestant...

Volume II gathers documents from the period of the Revolution through the Jacksonian era, up to the Civil War and the Emancipation. To fit both Colonial and Early National courses, documents covering 1765-1776 appear at the beginning of this volume and...

"Starting in the mid-1930s, a handful of prominent American businessmen forged alliances with the aim of rescuing America--and their profit margins--from socialism and the nanny state. Long before the culture wars usually associated with the rise of...

Read Martha A. Sandweiss's posts on the Penguin BlogThe secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he lovedClarence King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity, a brilliant scientist and explorer once described by...

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates...

This monumental work, the second of two Library of America volumes, culminated Henry Adams’s lifelong fascination with the American past. Writing at the height of his powers, Adams understood the true subject as the consolidation of the American nation...