Books on U.S. History

102 Minutes, by New York Times journalists Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, is a nonfiction account that chronicles 102 minutes inside and outside the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Published in 2005, it was a National Book Award finalist that year.  The day begins like many others, with workers inside the buildings comprising over 220 vertical acres checking emails and sipping coffee at 8:30 a.m. Others arrive after dropping off their children at... Read 102 Minutes Summary

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Published in 2005, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus was written by Charles C. Mann. A companion work, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, was released in 2011. The first chapter introduces many of the problems and inadequacies surrounding popular accounts of native societies. The author describes the tendency to minimize the cultures that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans. Native cultures are seen as simpler and less sophisticated than contemporary... Read 1491 Summary

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1776 is a biography of the American Revolutionary War written by historian David McCullough. Published in 2006, the book is a companion piece to John Adams (2001), a biography McCullough wrote about the second US president. Though the Revolutionary War did not officially end until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, the text follows George Washington, King George III, Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox, and other key figures as it examines crucial military events... Read 1776 Summary

This study guide references the 1990 Oxford University Press edition of James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. The book is a collection of seven essays originally delivered as lectures, all on the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and his role in the Civil War (1861-1865). The book calls the Civil War era the “Second American Revolution” because, with Lincoln’s help, it brought about a fundamental transformation in the... Read Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution Summary

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A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki is a revisionist account of American history that provides an in-depth view of America as a country populated and built by diverse peoples of the world. Originally published in 1993 by Little, Brown and Company, this study guide uses the updated 2008 edition. In 1994 A Different Mirror received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for its contributions to advancing understandings of racism and human diversity.Takaki’s... Read A Different Mirror Summary

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A Dream Called Home is a memoir published in 2018 by the award-winning Mexican American author Reyna Grande. The book is the sequel to her bestselling 2012 memoir, The Distance Between Us, which addresses Reyna’s experiences crossing the US-Mexico border as a child. The title alludes to the American dream while also gesturing to varied concepts of home. This summary refers to the 2018 English-language edition published by Atria Books.Plot SummaryReyna divides her memoir into... Read A Dream Called Home Summary

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Michael McGerr’s 2003 nonfiction book, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920, is titled after a phenomenon President Theodore Roosevelt observed in the early 20th century. The book’s epigraph quotes President Roosevelt in 1906:  So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a firm determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics... Read A Fierce Discontent Summary

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A Land Remembered (1984) is a historical fiction novel by Patrick D. Smith. In 1968, the wealthy 85-year-old real estate developer Solomon “Sol” MacIvey arrives at his cabin in Punta Rassa, Florida, where he plans to live out his final days. As Sol reflects on his family’s history, the narrative moves to 1863, to the central Florida homestead of Tobias MacIvey, Sol’s grandfather. With his wife, Emma, and their six-year-old son, Zech, Tobias struggles to... Read A Land Remembered Summary

Alas, Babylon is a 1959 novel by Pat Frank. Written during the Cold War, it is one of the earliest post-apocalyptic novels to deal with the potential consequences of nuclear war. It examines themes of nationalism, natural selection, deterrent force, and resilience and contains elements of dystopian literature.Plot SummaryAs the novel begins, Mark Bragg sends a telegram to his brother, Randy. The telegram includes the words, “Alas, Babylon,” their code for the onset of a... Read Alas, Babylon Summary

Alexander Hamilton is a 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, written by Ron Chernow. Beginning with Hamilton’s birth in the Caribbean, the book traces Hamilton’s story from his childhood, to his early years in America, to his rise as one of the most admired—and reviled—politicians and statesmen that the country would ever see. The popular music Hamilton is based on the story told in Chernow’s book, and shows the development of both America, and one of its... Read Alexander Hamilton Summary

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All the President’s Men (1974) is the story of the most famous American political scandal of the 20th century. Written by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the book follows in exacting detail their investigation into the Watergate Hotel break-in and subsequent coverup of that crime. The case began with a story on an unusual burglary attempt at the Democratic National Headquarters in the summer of 1972. It eventually evolved into an investigation... Read All the President's Men Summary

Always Running is the autobiography of Luis J. Rodriguez, a Mexican-American former gang member who grew up in dangerous East Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s. Luis’ family moved to Los Angeles from Mexico after Luis’ father was accused of theft, and Luis spends his early years in Watts, a particularly crime-ridden LA neighborhood. Luis’ father struggles to find work, and the family struggles to find adequate shelter and food. After they are evicted... Read Always Running Summary

A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign, written by Edward A. Larson and published in 2007, documents the US presidential election of 1800, a highly-contested political drama, preceded by what is considered the first political campaign in American history. The front-runners in the contest were widely considered to be the then-current President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. Although the two men were serving together in the Executive branch... Read A Magnificent Catastrophe Summary

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American Buffalo is a 1975 off-Broadway play written by American playwright David Mamet. It first premiered in Chicago’s Goodman Theater in 1975, reaching Broadway in 1977. Along with two other plays, The Duck Variations (1971) and Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974), American Buffalo established Mamet as a reputable writer. The play explores friendship and greed among the working classes. The 1976 publication from Grove Press (New York) serves as the basis for this guide.The play... Read American Buffalo Summary

American Colonies: The Settling of North America is the first volume of the five-part Penguin History of the United States series. In it, Pulitzer-prize-winning historian Alan Taylor surveys the history of the Americas before the formation of the United States. Other work by this author includes the American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.Taylor aims to expand, enrich, and complicate our understanding of this period. American Colonies covers a broader temporal and geographical range than most... Read American Colonies Summary

American Creation is a 2007 nonfiction book by Joseph Ellis that covers the successes and failures of the founders of the United States from 1775 to 1803. Ellis starts with the year and three months that set in motion the colonies’ declaration of independence and subsequent revolution. In this eventful year, the British played the worst possible hand they could, removing the possibility of reconciliation. The colonists included fiery and impetuous rebels such as Patrick... Read American Creation Summary

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American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of President Andrew Jackson written in 2008 by historian Jon Meacham. The book focuses on Jackson’s transformative and often controversial time in the White House, exploring themes of democracy, the Expansion of Executive Power, leadership, and the interaction of the personal and public, including the Impact of Personal Character on Public Duty and the Intersection of Private Lives and Public Roles. Meacham... Read American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Summary

Colin Woodard’s 2011 book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America takes a fascinating look at American regionalism and the 11 territories that continue to shape North America. Woodard asserts that North America comprises 11 distinct nations, each containing its own unique history. Taking readers on a journey that reveals the origins of our fractured continent, Woodard offers a revelatory perspective on American identity and the ways the conflicts... Read American Nations Summary

American Pastoral (1997) by Philip Roth examines in detail one man’s quest for the American dream and the fragility of the entire enterprise. Roth, one of the most critically acclaimed novelists of the 20th century, focuses his narrative microscope through the eyes of Nathan Zuckerman, his literary alter ego from whose perspective he has written 10 other novels, including Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), The Human Stain (2000), and The Plot Against America... Read American Pastoral Summary

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Following in the literary footsteps of John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy, Philipp Meyer’s American Rust (2010) explores the catastrophic effects of economic devastation on the lives of six characters in Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley, once home to a thriving steel and coal industry (and a solid-middle class) but now populated by broken lives and shuttered businesses. The novel was a winner of the Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a Washington Post Top Ten... Read American Rust Summary

American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997) is a nonfiction history by Pauline Maier (1938-2013), a historian specializing in the American Revolution. A revisionist historian, Maier uses narrative techniques to bring to life the era in which the Declaration of Independence was created, seeking to demystify this foundational American document and to raise questions about how history is constructed. American Scripture was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997. This study... Read American Scripture Summary

Edmund S. Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia was originally published in 1975 by W. W. Norton & Company Inc. This summary references the Norton paperback edition reissued in 2003. Morgan seeks to discover how America’s Founding Fathers came to advocate for freedom and equality when many of them owned slaves. Morgan chose to study Virginia’s Founding Fathers because they were among the most vocal in their opposition to the monarchy, because... Read American Slavery, American Freedom Summary

American Sniper is the autobiography of Chris Kyle, the single deadliest sniper in the history of the United States military. The narrative, co-written by Chris Kyle, Jim deFelice, Scott McEwen, and Chris’s wife Taya, opens with events that took place in 2003 in Iraq. At the time, Chris was providing protective fire for a group of Marines; a female insurgent attempted to attack the Marines with a grenade, but Chris shot her, registering his first... Read American Sniper Summary

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Published in 2016, America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie is the fictionalized biography of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, known to her family as Patsy. Based on true events, the novel tells the story of Patsy and her relationship with her father, one of America’s Founding Fathers and earliest presidents.In 1826, shortly after Jefferson’s death, Patsy begins the arduous task of sorting through her father’s papers—burning some and editing others... Read America's First Daughter Summary

A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812 is a 1990 nonfiction biography of midwife Martha Ballard by American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Using Martha Ballard’s diary as a primary source, Ulrich utilizes a microhistorical approach to evaluate the life of Ballard, the history of Maine’s Kennebec River region, and the themes of social medicine, women’s role in the economy, and religion’s place in everyday life. A Midwife’s Tale won... Read A Midwife's Tale Summary

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“A Modell of Christian Charity” is a sermon written by John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer who served as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English colonial settlement around present-day Boston, and the second settlement in New England. A sermon is a speech on a religious subject, usually used for those delivered by clergy in Christian church services. The sermon’s epigraph (a short, introductory quotation or informational text) tells us Winthrop wrote on... Read A Model of Christian Charity Summary

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Published in 2003, Jim Murphy’s An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 is a historical nonfiction book for young adults that provides a detailed look into Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793. As Murphy documents how yellow fever emerged and spread throughout the city, he demonstrates how society operated in what was then the nation’s capital and largest city in the late 1700s. He focuses on urban... Read An American Plague Summary

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back is physician and journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal’s overview and critique of the American healthcare system. It was initially published in April 2017, arriving during a time in which healthcare reform became a prominent cornerstone of both Democratic and Republican political campaigns. The book offers a mixture of testimonials from a myriad of people impacted by the health industry, including medical professionals... Read An American Sickness Summary