US History: The American past in 100 Books


Abraham Lincoln election poster
Lincoln election poster from The Library of Congress


The US History: The American past in 100 Books is a thorough list covering nearly all of the American experience. The list begins with several general histories (the first book is an excellent US history textbook) before chronologically passing through every period of American history from start to finish, including books on the history of US foreign relations, race, women, and gender. Many of the big names of the field are included, such as Eric Foner, Drew Gilpin Faust, William Appleman Williams, Sara M. Evans, Richard Hofstadter, Edmund S. Morgan, Walter LaFeber, William Cronon, Gordon S. Wood, James T. Patterson, and Gabriel Kolko.

1. Give Me Liberty!: An American History

By Eric Foner

The leading text, in a compact, value edition. Clear, concise, integrated, and up-to-date, Give Me Liberty! is a proven success with teachers and students. Eric Foner pulls the pieces of the past together into a cohesive picture, using the theme of freedom throughout. The Fourth Edition features stronger ... More »

Give Me Liberty!: An American History
A People's History of the United States

2. A People's History of the United States

By Howard Zinn | Used Price: 70% Off

A People's History of the United States is an attempt by Howard Zinn to present an alternative history of America from below. It's a view of US history from the perspective of ordinary and oppressed people. It's extremely popular and - in addition to being on many high ... More »

3. The Contours of American History

By William Appleman Williams | 70% Off

William Appleman Williams was one of the greatest opponents of US imperialism. The Modern Library chose The Contours of American History as one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the Twentieth Century. More »

The Contours of American History
The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it

4. The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it

By Richard Hofstadter | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It is a book by Richard Hofstadter, published in 1948. Hofstadter proposes that, while most historians have made political conflict central to political history, political consensus on a dominant free market ideology better defines the political history of America. ... More »

5. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America

By Ronald Takaki | Under $1.00

Upon its first publication, A Different Mirror was hailed by critics and academics everywhere as a dramatic new retelling of our nation's past. Beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounted the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States--Native ... More »

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
Born for Liberty

6. Born for Liberty

By Sara M. Evans | Under $1.00

The most concise and comprehensive one-volume history of American women--from the indigenous women of the 16th-century wilderness to the dual-role career women and mothers of contemporary times--this book brings American womanhood to center stage, exploring the lives of pioneers and slaves, immigrants and factory workers, executives and homemakers. ... More »

7. A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

By Lizabeth Cohen

In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its ... More »

A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
American Colonies: The Settling of North America, Vol. 1

8. American Colonies: The Settling of North America, Vol. 1

By Alan Taylor | Used Price: 70% Off

With this volume, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America. Transcending the usual Anglocentric version of our colonial past, he recovers the importance of Native American tribes, African slaves, and the rival empires of France, Spain, the ... More »

9. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750

By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich | Price: $0.01

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away those abstractions to reveal the hidden -- and not always stoic -- face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In these pages we encounter the awesome burdens -- and the considerable power -- of a New England housewife's domestic life and ... More »

Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750
American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

10. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

By David E. Stannard | Used Price: 50% Off

European colonisation of the Americas meant the destruction of the native peoples and was the greatest genocide in human history. Stannard opens with an account of the Americas before their discovery by Europeans and then outlines the consequences of colonialism and genocide in South, Central and North America. More »

11. First Peoples, First Contacts: Native Peoples of North America

By J.C.H. King | Under $1.00

From the Big-Game Hunters who appeared on the continent as far back as 12,000 years ago to the Inuits plying the Alaskan waters today, the Native peoples of North America produced a culture remarkable for its vibrancy, breadth, and diversity--and for its survival in the face of ... More »

First Peoples, First Contacts: Native Peoples of North America
The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest

12. The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest

By Francis Jennings | Used Price: 90% Off

Studies the cultural devastation of Atlantic coastal Indian tribes by European civilization, particularly New England Puritans, and the creation of an ideology to justify the cruelty. More »

13. American Slavery: 1619-1877

By Peter Kolchin | Used Price: 70% Off

Peter Kolchin's American Slavery remains the best introductory book on the topic that is central to the American story. More »

American Slavery: 1619-1877
American Slavery, American Freedom

14. American Slavery, American Freedom

By Edmund S. Morgan | Used Price: 80% Off

"Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable."—New York Times Book Review In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also ... More »

15. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

By Edward Baptist

A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of slavesWinner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American HistoriansWinner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman PrizeAmericans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution--the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated ... More »

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

16. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

By Eugene Genovese | Used Price: 80% Off

This landmark history of slavery in the South—a winner of the Bancroft Prize—challenged conventional views of slaves by illuminating the many forms of resistance to dehumanization that developed in slave society.Rather than emphasizing the cruelty and degradation of slavery, historian Eugene Genovese investigates the ways that slaves forced ... More »

17. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

By Daniel K. Richter

In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most ... More »

Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815

18. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815

By Gregory Dowd | Used Price: 80% Off

In the early 1800s, when once-powerful North American Indian peoples were being driven west across the Mississippi, a Shawnee prophet collapsed into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he told friends and family of his ascension to Indian heaven, where his grandfather had given him a warning: "Beware ... More »

19. The American Revolution

By Edward Countryman | Under $1.00

A newly revised version of a classic in American historyWhen The American Revolution was first published in 1985, it was praised as the first synthesis of the Revolutionary War to use the new social history. Edward Countryman offered a balanced view of how the Revolution was made by ... More »

The American Revolution
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

20. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

By Pauline Maier

Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard ... More »

21. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism

By Alfred F. Young | Used Price: 90% Off

The eleven original essays presented here serve to enlarge the canvas upon which American history is to be portrayed so that it will allow—or more deliberately, give more prominence to—those groups at the bottom of colonial society to gain more equitable visibility. The effect is a striking view ... More »

The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism
Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

22. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

By Linda Kerber | Used Price: 80% Off

Women of the Republic views the American Revolution through women's eyes. Previous histories have rarely recognized that the battle for independence was also a woman's war. The "women of the army" toiled in army hospitals, kitchens, and laundries. Civilian women were spies, fund raisers, innkeepers, ... More »

23. The Radicalism of the American Revolution

By Gordon S. Wood | Used Price: 80% Off

Awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History, The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood argues that the American Revolution by rights deserves a place among the French, Industrial and Russian Revolutions as one of the great events in history. Wood synthesizes all the pertinent issues ... More »

The Radicalism of the American Revolution
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789

24. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789

By Robert Middlekauff | Used Price: 60% Off

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic. Beginning with the French and Indian War and continuing to the ... More »

25. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic

By John Ferling | Used Price: 80% Off

It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations.In A ... More »

A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic
Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia

26. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia

By Woody Holton | Used Price: 60% Off

In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions against their own ... More »

27. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800

By Stanley Elkins; Eric McKitrick | 80% Off

When Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office for the presidency in 1801, America had just passed through twelve critical years, years dominated by some of the towering figures of our history and by the challenge of having to do everything for the first time. Washington, Hamilton, ... More »

The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800
The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present

28. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present

By Walter LaFeber | Under $1.00

This is the absolute leading text on US foreign policy. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, LaFeber gives a complete history to the present, examining all areas of foreign policy with great continuity and cohesiveness. More »

29. Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side

By Leonard W. Levy | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

In the most controversial analysis ever written of the apostle of American liberty, the distinguished constitutional historian Leonard W. Levy examines Jefferson’s record on civil liberties and finds it strikingly wanting. Clearing away the saintliness that surrounds the hero, Mr. Levy tries to understand why the “unfamiliarâ€Â Jefferson ... More »

Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side
Capitalism and a New Social Order

30. Capitalism and a New Social Order

By Joyce Appleby | Used Price: 90% Off

In 1800 the Jeffersonian Republicans, decisive victors over what they considered elitist Federalism, seized the potential for change in the new American nation. They infused in it their vision of a society of economically progressive, politically equal, and socially liberated individuals. This book examines the fusion of ideas ... More »

31. A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837

By Paul Johnson | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

A quarter-century after its first publication, A Shopkeeper's Millennium remains a landmark work--brilliant both as a new interpretation of the intimate connections among politics, economy, and religion during the Second Great Awakening, and as a surprising portrait of a rapidly growing frontier city. The religious revival that transformed ... More »

A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age

32. Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age

By John William Ward | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Was the man who lent his name to "Jacksonian America" a rough-hewn frontiersman? A powerful, victorious general? Or merely a man of will? Separating myth from reality, John William Ward here demonstrates how Andrew Jackson captured the imagination of a generation of Americans and came to represent not ... More »

33. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846

By Charles Sellers | Used Price: 90% Off

The Market Revolution offers a sweeping, comprehensive overview of the Jacksonian period in a synthesis of political, social, economic, and cultural history. This book examines the tensions between democracy and capitalism that arose during this period after the war of 1812 and the massive transformation of American society ... More »

The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846
Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian

34. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian

By Michael Paul Rogin | Used Price: 70% Off

Rogin shows us a Jackson who saw the Indians as a menace to the new nation and its citizens. This volatile synthesis of liberal egalitarianism and an assault on the American Indians is the source of continuing interest in the sobering and important book. More »

35. Artisans into Workers: Labour in 19th Century America

By Bruce Laurie | Used Price: 90% Off

'The first serious attempt to integrate the findings of the 'new' labor history into the established framework of nineteenth-century American labor history...Will be welcomed and widely read by students of nineteenth-century America' - David Brody, author of "Labor in Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919". More »

Artisans into Workers: Labour in 19th Century America
America's Frontier Heritage

36. America's Frontier Heritage

By Ray Allen Billington | Price: $0.01

The hypothesis advanced in Frederick Jackson Turner's famous 1893 essay, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, has been debated by three generations of scholars. The pioneering experience, Turner suggested, accounted for some of the distinctive characteristics of the American people: during three centuries of expansion their ... More »

37. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth

By Henry Nash Smith | Under $1.00

The spell that the West has always exercised on the American people had its most intense impact on American literature and thought during the nineteenth century. Smith shows, with vast comprehension, the influence of the nineteenth-century West in all its variety and strength, in special relation to ... More »

Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
And Still the Waters Run

38. And Still the Waters Run

By Angie Debo | Used Price: 70% Off

Debo's classic work tells the tragic story of the spoliation of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole nations at the turn of the last century in what is now the state of Oklahoma. After their earlier forced removal from traditional lands in the ... More »

39. Women and Men on the Overland Trail

By John Mack Faragher | Used Price: 80% Off

This classic book offers a lively and penetrating analysis of what the overland journey was really like for midwestern farm families in the mid-1800s. Through the subtle use of contemporary diaries, memoirs, and even folk songs, John Mack Faragher dispels the common stereotypes of male and female roles ... More »

Women and Men on the Overland Trail
The Indian Frontier 1846-1890

40. The Indian Frontier 1846-1890

By Robert M. Utley | Under $1.00

First published in 1984, Robert Utley's The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890, is considered a classic for both students and scholars. For this revision, Utley includes scholarship and research that has become available in recent years.What they said about the first edition:"[The Indian Frontier of the ... More »

41. The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846

By David J. Weber | Used Price: 80% Off

The quarter-century of Mexican sovereignty over the land that is today the American Southwest was a period of turmoil and transition. Between 1821 and 1846, Mexico City's ties to the far northern frontier were steadily weakened by domestic political and social strife as well as by foreign economic ... More »

The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846
Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West

42. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West

By Donald Worster | Used Price: 70% Off

When Henry David Thoreau went for his daily walk, he would consult his instincts on which direction to follow. More often than not his inner compass pointed west or southwest. "The future lies that way to me," he explained, "and the earth seems more unexhausted and ... More »

43. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

By William Cronon | Used Price: 60% Off

William Cronin's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West is a classic work of environmental history. In it he examines the environmental history of 19th-century America. More »

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
The Political Crisis of the 1850s

44. The Political Crisis of the 1850s

By Michael Holt

Professor Holt's book provides a lucid and provocative interpretation of the coming of the Civil War.Holt sees the Civil War as representing a breakdown in America's democratic political process, more specifically the Second Party System of Whigs and Democrats. He demonstrates this system's success, beginning in the 1820s ... More »

45. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

By James M. McPherson | Used Price: 70% Off

James McPherson's classic account of the Civil War era focusses not just on the war but the lead up too. Another fundamental theme is the many interpretations of liberty, as both sides believed they were fighting for the freedoms won in the Revolution. Battle Cry of Freedom won ... More »

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

46. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

By Drew Gilpin Faust

More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of ... More »

47. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877

By Eric Foner | Used Price: 50% Off

Newly Reissued with a New Introduction: From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped modern America.Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" ... More »

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

48. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

By Donald Blackmon | Used Price: 50% Off

A Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the “Age of Neoslavery,” the American period following the Emancipation Proclamation in which convicts, mostly black men, were “leased” through forced labor camps operated by state and federal governments.In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most ... More »

49. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class

By David Roediger | Used Price: 50% Off

Combining classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the new labor history pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, David Roediger’s widely acclaimed book provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. This, he argues, cannot be explained simply with reference to economic ... More »

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
Votes For Women: The Struggle for Suffrage

50. Votes For Women: The Struggle for Suffrage

By Jean H. Baker

In Votes For Women, Jean H. Baker has assembled an impressive collection of new scholarship on the struggle of American women for the suffrage. Each of the eleven essays illuminates some aspect of the long battle that lasted from the 1850s to the passage of the suffrage amendment ... More »

51. The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

By John Bodnar | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

"... an excellent broad overview... " —Journal of Social History"... powerfully argued... " —Moses Rischin"... imaginative and soundly based... " —Choice"Highly recommended... " —Library Journal"... an outstanding major contribution to the literature on immigration history." —History"... a very important new synthesis of American immigration history... " —Journal of ... More »

The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America
The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925

52. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925

By David Montgomery | Used Price: 90% Off

By studying the ways in which American industrial workers mobilized concerted action in their own interest, the author focuses on the workplace itself, examining the codes of conduct developed by different types of workers and the connections between their activity at work and their national origins ... More »

53. The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy

By Morton J. Horwitz | Used Price: 90% Off

When the first volume of Morton Horwitz's monumental history of American law appeared in 1977, it was universally acclaimed as one of the most significant works ever published in American legal history. The New Republic called it an "extremely valuable book." Library Journal praised it as "brilliant" and ... More »

The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy
The Search for Order, 1877-1920

54. The Search for Order, 1877-1920

By Robert Wiebe | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

At the end of the Reconstruction, the spread of science and technology, industrialism, urbanization, immigration, and economic depressions eroded Americans' conventional beliefs in individualism and a divinely ordained social system. In The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe shows how, in subsequent years, during theProgressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt ... More »

55. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916

By Martin J. Sklar | Used Price: 70% Off

At the turn of the twentieth century American politics underwent a profound change, as both regulatory minimalism and statist command were rejected in favor of positive government engaged in both regulatory and distributive roles. Through a fresh examination of the judicial, legislative, and political aspects of the antitrust ... More »

The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916
The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916

56. The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916

By Gabriel Kolko | Under $1.00

A radically new interpretation of the Progressive Era which argues that business leaders, and not the reformers, inspired the era’s legislation regarding business. More »

57. Over Here: The First World War and American Society

By David M. Kennedy

The Great War of 1914-1918 confronted the United States with one of the most wrenching crises in the nation's history. It also left a residue of disruption and disillusion that spawned an even more ruinous conflict scarcely a generation later. Over Here is the single-most comprehensive discussion of ... More »

Over Here: The First World War and American Society
To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order

58. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order

By Thomas J. Knock

A close look at Woodrow Wilson's political thought and international diplomacy In the widely acclaimed To End All Wars, Thomas Knock provides an intriguing, often provocative narrative of Woodrow Wilson's epic quest for a new world order. This book follows Wilson's thought and diplomacy from his policy ... More »

59. America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

By Alfred W. Crosby

Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives - more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In ... More »

America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era

60. A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era

By Steven J. Diner | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

The early twentieth century was a time of technological revolution in the United States. New inventions and corporations were transforming the economic landscape, bringing a stunning array of consumer goods, millions of additional jobs, and ever more wealth. Steven J. Diner draws on the rich scholarship of recent ... More »

61. American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

By Christine Stansell

In the early twentieth century, an exuberant brand of gifted men and women moved to New York City, not to get rich but to participate in a cultural revolution. For them, the city's immigrant neighborhoods--home to art, poetry, cafes, and cabarets in the European tradition--provided a place where ... More »

American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

62. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

By George Chauncey | Used Price: 70% Off

Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, this book is ... More »

63. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America

By Lillian Faderman | Used Price: 50% Off

This is Lillian Faderman's classic history of lesbianism in 20th century America. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers was named one of the top ten radical history books in The Guardian by Sheila Rowbothan in 2016 and it was a New York Times Notable Book of 1992. More »

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s

64. Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s

By Lynn Dumenil; Eric Foner

When most of us take a backward glance at the 1920s, we may think of prohibition and the jazz age, of movies stars and flappers, of Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford, of Lindbergh and Hoover--and of Black Friday, October 29, 1929, when the plunging stock market ushered in ... More »

65. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940

By William Leuchtenburg | 80% Off

When the stability of American life was threatened by the Great Depression, the decisive and visionary policy contained in FDR's New Deal offered America a way forward. In this groundbreaking work, William E. Leuchtenburg traces the evolution of what was both the most controversial and effective socioeconomic initiative ... More »

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940
The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940

66. The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940

By Anthony Badger | Used Price: 80% Off

Anthony Badger's notably successful history is not simply another narrative of the New Deal, nor does the figure of Franklin Roosevelt loom as large in his account as in some others. What Mr. Badger does so well is to consider important aspects of New Deal activity agriculture, welfare, ... More »

67. The Great Depression: America 1929-1941

By Robert S. McElvaine | Under $1.00

One of the classic studies of the Great Depression, featuring a new introduction by the author with insights into the economic crises of 1929 and today.   In the twenty-five years since its publication, critics and scholars have praised historian Robert McElvaine's sweeping and authoritative history of the ... More »

The Great Depression: America 1929-1941
The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980

68. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980

By Gary Gerstle; Steve Fraser | Under $1.00

"As the twenty-first century approaches, a new generation of scholars is providing fresh historical perspectives on the twentieth. The contributors to The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order move beyond both the self-congratulation of traditional liberals and the hostility of New Left radicals. This collection of ... More »

69. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II

By Gerhard L. Weinberg

Widely hailed as a masterpiece, this is the first history of World War II to provide a truly global account of the war that encompassed six continents. Starting with the changes that restructured Europe and her colonies following the First World War, Gerhard Weinberg sheds new light on ... More »

A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s

70. Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s

By Susan Hartmann

Describes the experiences of American women during World War II, examines their role in the military, industry, education, and politics, and discusses their legal rights and family life More »

71. Warfare State: World War II Americans And The Age Of Big Government

By James T. Sparrow

Although common wisdom and much scholarship assume that "big government" gained its foothold in the United States under the auspices of the New Deal during the Great Depression, in fact it was the Second World War that accomplished this feat. Indeed, as the federal government mobilized for war ... More »

Warfare State: World War II Americans And The Age Of Big Government
A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State

72. A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State

By Michael J. Hogan | Used Price: 90% Off

A Cross of Iron provides the fullest account yet of the national security state that emerged in the first decade of the Cold War. Michael J. Hogan traces the process of state-making through struggles to unify the armed forces, harness science to military purposes, mobilize military manpower, control ... More »

73. The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience

By Stephen A. Marglin; Juliet B. Schor

The period after World War Two, with its sustained growth and high employment rate, has been referred to as the "golden age" of capitalism. Blending historical analysis with economic theory, this work presents essays that scrutinize the institutions that fostered this growth and high employment as well as ... More »

The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience
A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

74. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

By Melvyn Leffler | Used Price: 80% Off

In the 1970s an enormous declassification of US Government documents took place on the Cold War. Melvyn Leffler used these documents to compile the most comprehensive history of the Truman administrations Cold War policy. More »

75. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times

By Odd Arne Westad

The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States indelibly shaped the world we live in today--especially international politics, economics, and military affairs. This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's key ... More »

The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times
A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights

76. A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights

By Elizabeth Borgwardt

In a work of sweeping scope and luminous detail, Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War II American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime. Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and its Anglo-American vision ... More »

77. The Korean War: A History

By Bruce Cumings | Used Price: 70% Off

Bruce Cumings in The Korean War explains a war that is largely forgotten or misunderstood. This is the definitive account of a war that had a major impact on Asia. More »

The Korean War: A History
Seeds of the Sixties

78. Seeds of the Sixties

By Andrew Jamison | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

"The Sixties." The powerful images conveyed by those two words have become an enduring part of American cultural and political history. But where did Sixties radicalism come from? Who planted the intellectual seeds that brought it into being? These questions are answered with striking clarity in Andrew Jamison ... More »

79. The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996

By Martin P. Wattenberg | Price: $0.01

"The major theme of Chapter 12, new to this edition, is the missed opportunities for the parties in the 1996 elections. The year started with a highly visible confrontation over the budget that could have revitalized the party coalitions if the issues had been carried over to ... More »

The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996
The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s

80. The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s

By Allen J. Matusow | Used Price: 70% Off

In a book that William E. Leuchtenburg, writing in the Atlantic, called “a work of considerable power,â€Â Allen Matusow documents the rise and fall of 1960s liberalism. He offers deft treatments of the major topics—anticommunism, civil rights, Great Society programs, the counterculture—making the most, throughout, of his subject’s ... More »

81. Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy

By Robert Wiebe | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Something profoundly important occurred in early 19th century America that came to be called democracy. Since then hundreds of millions of people worldwide have operated on the assumption that democracy exists. Yet definitions of democracy are surprisingly vague and remarkably few reckon with its history. In Self-Rule, Robert ... More »

Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy
The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America

82. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America

By Ruth Rosen

In this enthralling narrative-the first of its kind-historian and journalist Ruth Rosen chronicles the history of the American women's movement from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present. Interweaving the personal with the political, she vividly evokes the events and people who participated in our era's most ... More »

83. Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis

By Raymond Garthoff | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Raymond L. Garthoff – who was involved in US government discussions on the crisis – delivers a stunning history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, using both US sources and newly opened Soviet government sources too. This text widens the scope of our understanding of US - Soviet interactions ... More »

Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Struggle for Black Equality

84. The Struggle for Black Equality

By Harvard Sitkoff | Under $1.00

The Struggle for Black Equality is a dramatic, memorable history of the civil rights movement. Harvard Sitkoff offers both a brilliant interpretation of the personalities and dynamics of civil rights organizations and a compelling analysis of the continuing problems plaguing many African Americans. With a new foreword and ... More »

85. Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement

By Tomiko Brown-Nagin

In this Bancroft Prize-winning history of the Civil Rights movement in Atlanta from the end of World War II to 1980, Tomiko Brown-Nagin shows that long before "black power" emerged and gave black dissent from the mainstream civil rights agenda a name, African Americans in Atlanta questioned the ... More »

Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement
To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City

86. To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City

By Martha Biondi

The story of the civil rights movement typically begins with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and culminates with the 1965 voting rights struggle in Selma. But as Martha Biondi shows, a grassroots struggle for racial equality in the urban North began a full ten years before the ... More »

87. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality

By Richard Kluger | Used Price: 80% Off

Simple Justice is the definitive history of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the epic struggle for racial equality in this country. Combining intensive research with original interviews with surviving participants, Richard Kluger provides the fullest possible view of the human and legal drama in ... More »

Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States

88. Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States

By Premilla Nadasen

A history of the welfare rights programme of the 1960s which sought to organize the poor to make demands upon the system and in the process create a more humane welfare program. More »

89. Stonewall

By Martin Duberman | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

"As scholars we should read Stonewall, and as teachers we should assign it. All of us will be challenged to build on it."—Michael Sherry, Northwestern Univ. "Both a fascinating account of the birth of gay liberation and a replay of the turbulent, society-changing 60s."—San Francisco Chronicle. More »

Stonewall
Vietnam Wars 1945-1990

90. Vietnam Wars 1945-1990

By Marilyn Young | Used Price: 90% Off

The first book to give equal weight to the Vietnamese and American sides of the Vietnam war. More »

91. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

By Judith Stein

In this fascinating new history, Judith Stein argues that in order to understand our current economic crisis we need to look back to the 1970s and the end of the age of the factory-the era of postwar liberalism, created by the New Deal, whose practices, high wages, and ... More »

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies
Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East

92. Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East

By Geoffrey Wawro | Under $1.00

An unprecedented history of our involvement in the Middle East that traces our current quandaries there-in Iraq, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere-back to their roots almost a century ago. Geoffrey Wawro approaches America's role in the Middle East in a fundamentally new way-by encompassing the last ... More »

93. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

By Michelle Alexander | Used Price: 60% Off

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges ... More »

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies

94. Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies

By Cheryl Hudson; Gareth Bryn Davies

By the end of the 1980s, many Americans looked at the state of the nation with a renewed optimism. America was the world's only superpower, Communism had been defeated, the economic misery and inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s had given way to prosperity and vast ... More »

95. Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America

By Joseph A McCartin

In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating ... More »

Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America
Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal

96. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal

By Kim Phillips-Fein

In the wake of the profound economic crisis known as the Great Depression, a group of high-powered individuals joined forces to campaign against the New Deal-not just its practical policies but the foundations of its economic philosophy. The titans of the National Association of Manufacturers and the chemicals ... More »

97. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

By Lisa McGirr

In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers's accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman ... More »

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right
Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore

98. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore

By James T. Patterson

James Patterson's Bancroft Prize-winning Grand Expectations, the penultimate volume in the Oxford History of the United States, was hailed by The New York Times as "a spirited, sprawling narrative of American life" and by The Wall Street Journal as "a tour de force." Now, in the final chronological ... More »

99. The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, And The Governance Of Social Policy

By Kimberly J. Morgan; Andrea Louise Campbell

Why are so many American social programs delegated to private actors? And what are the consequences for efficiency, accountability, and the well-being of beneficiaries? The Delegated Welfare State examines the development of the American welfare state through the lens of delegation: how policymakers have avoided direct governmental provision ... More »

The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, And The Governance Of Social Policy
The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History

100. The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History

By Jill Lepore

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution--so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty--so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's ... More »