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American History: the Index

May 13, 2016 11:51 am

Across the Bering:  Native America

• Twilight of the Mammoths,  Paul Martin
• The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, James Wilson
• Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: Peopling the Americas, Brian Fagan
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann

The Age of Discovery and Colonization

• American Colonies,  Alan Taylor
• The Americans: the Colonial Experience, Daniel Boorstin
• Tobacco:  A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant TSeduced Civilization, Iain Gately
• Everyday Life in Early America, David Freeman Hawke

The American Revolution

• The Birth of the United States, Isaac Asimov
• The Cost of Liberty: the Life of John Dickinson, William Murchinson
• Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation, Joseph Ellis
• Chainbreaker’s War: A Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution, Jeanne Adler
• 1776, David McCullough
• A People’s History of the American Revolution,  Ray Ralphael
• American Cicero: the Life of Charles Carroll, Brad Birzer
• His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph Ellis
• John Adams, David McCullough
• American Sphinx: the Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis

Early American Republic

• The First Congress: How a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government, Marcus Bordewich
• American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies, Joseph Ellis
• Founding Rivals: Madison vs Monroe, Chris DeRose
• Alexander Hamilton, Rob Chernow
• The Artificial River: the Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, Carol Sheriff

Sectional Division and Civil War

• Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, John Hope Franklin
• Look Away!  A History of the Confederate States of America, William C. Davis
• Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War, David Williams
• A People’s History of the Civil War, David Williams
• The Yellowhammer War: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama,  Kenneth Noe
• The Most Glorious Fourth, Duane Schultz
• The South Since the War,  Sidney Andrews

Reconstruction and the Gilded Age

• The Golden Door, Isaac Asimov
• Stagecoach: Wells-Fargo and the American West, Phillip Fradkin
• Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America, Ann Norton
• The Great Railroad Revolution, Christian Wolmar
• The Strange Career of Jim Crow, C.Van Woodward
• The Spanish-American War, Albert Marrin
• The Gangs of New York, Herbert Ashbury

Early Modern

• Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition in America, Daniel Okrent
• Disaster 1906: The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Edward. F. Dolan

American Zenith

• A Man on the Moon, Neil Chakin

          =============== Special Topics =============

• Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College, Gary Gregg II
• The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, Joseph Ellis
• The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy
• Nullification: Resisting Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, Tom Woods

Ethnographies

• The Scotch-Irish: A Social History, James Leyburn
• Dixie’s Forgotten People: the South’s Poor Whites, Wayne Flynt
• The Redneck Manifesto, Jim Goad
• Poor but Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites, Wayne Flynt

Intellectual and Social Movements

• Ain’t My America: the Long and Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism, Bill Kauffman
• Selma 1965: The March that Changed America, Chuck Fager

Social History

• More Work for Mother: The Ironies of American Housework, Ruth Cowan
• A Consumer’s Republic, Lizbeth Cohen
• Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth Jackson
• Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, Susan Strasser
• Never Done: A Social History of American Housework, Susan Strasser
• Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, Laura Shapiro
• The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler

Surveys

• A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddaeus Russell
• A People’ History of American Empire, Howard Zinn

Posted by smellincoffee

Categories: history, Reviews

Tags: America, history, Index

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3 Responses to “American History: the Index”

1. With my focus very much on Europe I have precious few non-fiction books on America or American subjects. One (at least) on the Civil War, a few on Native Americans and an upcoming triple on our countries sometimes less than 'special' relationship but that's about it.

   By CyberKitten on May 13, 2016 at 10:17 am

2. Most of my histories about Europe have been war-related, unfortunately, unless they're bout the Roman and medieval periods. Will Durant's epic series is exceptional, of course.

   How are native Americans perceived in the UK, generally? Do they have the stereotypes of teepees and noble savages, that sort of thing? I remember it was an English book, “Indian in the Cupboard”, that schooled me fairly early on with the fact that few Indians actually lived in tipis. I was reminded of this recently when reading Cousteau's book on seals: one of his crewmembers was surprised to learn that no Eskimo in living memory had ever constructed an igloo. Igloos were more of an in-land thing, apparently.

   By Stephen on May 13, 2016 at 5:33 pm

3. Not sure about generally but mostly I'd say as the 'noble savage' – although that's probably from movies rather than anything else – and as an oppressed people in what is in effect their own country.

   By CyberKitten on May 14, 2016 at 5:18 am

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