The years 1830-1914 witnessed a revolution in the manufacture and use of books as great as that in the 15th century. The essays in this volume show how books became cheap, how publishers used the magazine and newspaper markets to extend their influence, and how book ownership be…
Portrays how the 19th century struggle against slavery erupted in Washington DC, thrusting the ambitious District Attorney Francis Scott Key into a uniquely American battle for justice.
From the author of Lincoln: A Photobiography, comes a clear-sighted, carefully researched account of two surprisingly parallel lives and how they intersected at a critical moment in U.S. history. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were both selftaught, both great readers and…
William Tecumseh Sherman was more than just one of our greatest generals. Fierce Patriot is a bold, revisionist portrait of how this iconic and enigmatic figure exerted an outsized impact on the American landscape'and the American character. America's first "celebrity" general, …
Documents the story of mid-19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu, who after three years in the equatorial wilderness of West Africa emerged with definitive proof of the existence of the mythical gorilla, only to be swept up by the heated debate about Darwin's theory of evolution.
![Constable's England [New York, 1983]](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/0870993364-M.jpg?default=false)
Documents the story of Gilded Age con artist Ferdinand Ward, recounting how his large-scale pyramid operation and other sensational schemes triggered one of the greatest financial scandals in American history.
The incredible story of a flood of near-Biblical proportions-its destruction, its heroes and victims, and how it shaped America's natural-disaster policies for the next century. The storm began March 23, 1913, with a series of tornadoes that killed 150 people and injured 400. Th…
"From the revered historian-winner of nearly every award given in his field-the long-awaited conclusion of his magisterial three-volume history of slavery in Western culture that has been more than fifty years in the making. David Brion Davis is one of the foremost historians of…
Twelve years a slave
by Gates, Henry Louis Jr, Berlin, Ira, Northup, Solomon, McQueen, Steve
fromPenguin classics
Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast mo…
From the acclaimed author of The Pattons and Patriot Pirates: a book that celebrates America's forgotten war correspondents, men who were legends in their time; who, between 1860 and 1910, between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War'when empires fell and dynasties flouris…
From the acclaimed Civil War historian, a new history--the most intimate and richly readable account we have had--of the climactic three-day battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), which draws the reader into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier…
New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides returns with a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: the North Pole. No one knew what existed bey…
