History of the Americas

For American teenagers, getting a driver''s license has long been a watershed moment, separating teens from their childish pasts as they accelerate...

In the years after the Revolutionary War, the fledgling republic of America was viewed by many Europeans as a degenerate backwater, populated by su...

Ratified in the years immediately following the American Civil War, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Const...

From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and ...

After living in San Francisco for 15 years, journalist Gordon Young found himself yearning for his Rust Belt hometown: Flint, Michigan, the birthpl...

Samuel Steward (1909-93) was an English professor, a tattoo artist for the Hells Angels, a sexual adventurer who shared his considerable range of e...

From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees mid-trunk, and...

The Chicago lakefront is one of America's urban wonders. The ribbon of high rise luxury apartment buildings along the Lake Michigan shore has few, ...

Anthony Comstock was Americas first professional censor. From 1873 to 1915, as Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comst...

The phrase midlife crisis today conjures up images of male indulgence and irresponsibility--an affluent, middle-aged man speeding off in a red spor...

The phrase midlife crisis today conjures up images of male indulgence and irresponsibility--an affluent, middle-aged man speeding off in a red sp...

In this dazzling multidisciplinary tour of Mexico City, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo focuses on the period 1880 to 1940, the decisive decades that shape...

Thomas Jefferson is still presented today as an enigmatic figure, despite being written about more than any other Founding Father. Lauded as the mo...

A brilliant look at the writers, artists, scientists, movie directors, and scholarsranging from Bertolt Brecht to Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, T...

The role of liberalized, ecumenical Protestantism in American history has too often been obscured by the more flamboyant and orthodox versions of t...

Originally published in 1964, The Struggle for Equality presents an incisive and vivid look at the abolitionist movement and the legal basis it pro...

On May 10, 1900, an enthusiastic Brooklyn crowd bid farewell to the Quito. The ship sailed for famine-stricken Bombay, carrying both tangible relie...

The United States witnessed an unprecedented failure of its political system in the mid-nineteenth century, resulting in a disastrous civil war tha...

After just four weeks of training, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders--a regiment of cowboys recruited into the First U.S. Volunteer Cava...

In early January 1904, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch traveled to Oklahoma City to meet with a washed-up relic of the Wild West: Edwar...

On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro, the rebel comandante who had just overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, addressed a crowd of jubilant supp...

Bella Abzugs promotion of womens and gay rights, universal childcare, green energy, and more provoked not only fierce opposition from Republicans b...

Barack Obamas galvanizing victory in 2008, coming amid the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, opened the door to major reforms. But the pres...

In spring 1914, a new ballpark opened in Chicago. Hastily constructed after epic political maneuvering around Chicago's and organized baseball's hi...

This is a little history with a big heart, meant to be savored more than studied, read out loud like poetry, or perhaps sung like a hymn. -Joseph ...

The first full-scale history of the Makah people of the Pacific Northwest, whose culture and identity are closely bound to the sea For the Makahs, ...

Americans have long considered themselves a people set apart, but American exceptionalism is built on a set of tacit beliefs about other cultures. ...

In a letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams judged the author of Common Sense as having a better hand at pulling down than building. Adamss dismiss...

Baltimore seen through the eyes of John Waters, Anne Tyler, Charles S. Dutton, Barry Levinson, David Simonand also ordinary citizens.The city of Ba...

In Continental Divide, Maurice Isserman tells the history of American mountaineering through four centuries of landmark climbs and first ascents. M...

A collection of rare archival images and biographical sketches of the dauntless women who served as nurses and caregivers during the Civil War.Duri...

How did we get into this mess? Every morning, many Americans ask this as, with a cringe, they pick up their phones and look to see what terrible th...

The idea that a Senator--Republican or Democrat--would put the greater good of the country ahead of party seems nearly impossible to imagine in our...

Since 2006, Venezuela has had the highest homicide rate in South America and one of the highest levels of gun violence in the world. Former preside...