American & Canadian History

The Jerusalem Files is a non-fiction Da Vinci Code for the 21st century. This thrilling treasure hunt traces the voyage of the legendary Jewish Menorah from the Jerusalem of the Knights Templar through France, Portugal, and North America, providing mind-blowing history and mystery for fans of The Curse of Oak Island. The Jewish Menorah is one of the world's most...

A stunning musical biography of Stevie Nicks that paints a portrait of an artist, not a caricature of a superstar. Reflective and expansive, Mirror in the Sky situates Stevie Nicks as one of the finest songwriters of the twentieth century. This biography from distinguished music historian Simon Morrison examines Nicks as a singer and songwriter before and beyond her career...

 'I don't know how to write love letters. But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty . . . love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain' Since her death Frida Kahlo has become an iconic cultural figure, renowned...

Violence was a constant on all colonial frontiers, from the British expansion into the Australian and African continents, to the expansion of the United States and the Napoleonic Empire’s many incursions into Europe. Yet how did the forms of violence perpetrated in these four corners of the world compare? Did the oppression and exploitation of colonised peoples constitute a new...

The Definitive Account of the Trump Trial. Your behind-the-scenes look at the historic showdown between President Donald Trump and the criminal justice system, told through the eyes of the journalist who was in the courtroom each day, capturing every dramatic twist and turn. A panoramic New York thriller unlike any other. "A drama for the ages . . . Dragon...

'The reigning Queen of Classics' - Spectator 'Mary Beard is the best in the business' - Dan Snow 'Excellent' - Guardian 'Enthralling' - Sunday Times Britain's most famous classicist asks: what are civilisations? Central to this huge question are the ways in which we have depicted the human and the divine from prehistory to the present day. Across such iconic...

Judged by contemporaries to be a 'perfidious rogue', Sir George Downing rose to prominence during the English Civil War as Oliver Cromwell's chief of military intelligence. In the Interregnum, he proved himself a double-dealer who bribed and blackmailed his way to diplomatic success across Europe, pioneering the practice of judicial kidnapping and starting two major wars in the process, before...

The Secret Team, L. Fletcher Prouty's exposé of the CIA's brutal methods of maintaining national security during the Cold War, was first published in the 1970s. However, virtually all copies of the book disappeared upon distribution, having been purchased en masse by shady "private buyers." Certainly, Prouty's allegations—such as how the U-2 Crisis of 1960 was fixed to sabotage the...

Imagine an American president who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy, and tried to upend the law so that he could commit crimes with impunity. In this propulsive and eminently readable history, constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider provides a thoroughly researched account of assaults on democracy by not one such president but five. John Adams...

THE INSTANT NYT BESTSELLER 'Fascinating' - The Guardian A gripping account of the little-known plot that could have put an end to JFK's historic presidency — before it even began. From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Nazi Conspiracy comes a true, little-known story about the first assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy, right before his inauguration. Kennedy...

From the author of Lakota America, an award-winning history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Comanche empire. “Cutting-edge revisionist western history.”—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books “A landmark study that will make readers see the history of southwestern America in an entirely new way.”—David J. Weber, author of Bárbaros In the eighteenth and early nineteenth...

On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities—fundamentalist Mormons whose...

The Assassins' Gate is the main entrance to the Green Zone, the fortified enclave of Saddam's former palaces that now houses the US military and political leadership in Baghdad. George Packer's remarkable book is an account of how America found itself in occupation of Iraq, using the country as a laboratory for the dissemination of democracy in the Middle East....

Incredible stories from those who thrived in the Wild West. The "mountain men" were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild animals, to sell or barter for goods. The lifestyle of the mountain men could be harsh, existing...

...a gripping narrative...this is a fascinating, albeit dispiriting read, a searing portrait of the appalling inequalities of the American Dream gone sour, a three-act tragedy played out against a soundtrack of gangsta rap. Mail on Sunday In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the South Bronx had one of the highest per capita murder rates in America. As the use...

A vivid tour of US military efforts to understand, survive, and command harsh environments worldwide—and beyond. Deserts, the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US military had navigated during World War II, the United...

In an illuminating study that blends diplomatic, military, technology, and business history, Jonathan Reed Winkler shows how U.S. officials during World War I discovered the enormous value of global communications. At the outbreak of war in 1914, British control of the cable network affected the Americans' ability to communicate internationally, and the development of radio worried the Navy about hemispheric...

Native America presents an infinitely surprising and fascinating deep history of the continent's Indigenous peoples. Kenneth Feder, a leading expert on Native American history and archaeology, draws on archaeological, historical, and cultural evidence to tell the ongoing story, more than 20,000 years in the making, of an incredibly resilient and diverse mixture of peoples, revealing how they have ingeniously adapted...

Most wonder how Dale Varnam stayed alive. Dale wonders why. Back in the eighties, the quaint fishing village of Varnamtown, North Carolina—full of zany Southern characters—got rich, and so did town clown Dale Varnam, who perfected his own brand of crazy. Dale rose to the top of the heap in the drug smuggling biz, helping the town’s livelihood of shrimping...

Jack Ruby changed history with one bold, violent action: killing accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV two days after the 22nd November 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy. But who was Jack Ruby—and how did he come to be in that spot on that day? As we approach the sixtieth anniversaries of the murders of Kennedy...

A Times History Book of the Year How did America end up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories, in which millions see the government as an evil ‘deep state’? In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, a group of New York writers concocted what appeared to be a top-secret government report into what would happen to the...

A former public defender testifies to the vivid human suffering at the heart of America’s criminal justice system. As a public defender, Allen Goodman faced cross-examination from family and friends every day: how could he live with himself? How could he work to help criminals? Presumed guilty by association, Goodman quickly learned that such interrogations were stacked against him. People...

Argo meets Spotlight, as New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and Iran, raising urgent questions about what happens when foreign meddling in elections goes unpunished. Argo meets Spotlight, as New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between...

The 1830 murder of wealthy slaver Joseph White shook all of Salem, Massachusetts. Soon, the crime drew national attention when it was discovered that two of the conspirators came from Salem's influential Crowninshield family: a clan of millionaire shipowners, cabinet secretaries, and congressmen. A prosecution team led by famed Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster made the case even more newsworthy. Meanwhile,...

Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews...

The origins and evolution of Irish American identity, from colonial times through the twentieth century Subtly provocative. . . . [Meagher] traces the making and remaking of Irish America through several iterations and shows the impact of religion on each.—Terry Golway, Wall Street Journal As millions of Irish immigrants and their descendants created community in the United States over the...

All aboard for the first comprehensive history of the hard-working and wildly influential Northeast Corridor. Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America's most famous railway, but its influence goes far beyond the right-of-way. David Alff welcomes readers aboard to see how nineteenth-century train tracks did more than connect Boston to Washington, DC....

A dynamically written visual history of the world's largest transit system in all its intriguing, colourful, and even seedy glory packed with compelling information, as well as fascinating graphics and illustrations. New York wouldn't be New York without the subway. This one-time engineering marvel that united and expanded the city has been a cultural touchstone for the last 114 years....

An adventurous, dazzling and original continent-sized history that brings South America's untold past and fascinating present to life. Stretching from the edge of Antarctica to the shores of the Caribbean, South America is a continent of stunning natural beauty and biodiversity, a cultural and culinary powerhouse that feeds, fuels and cools the planet. Yet this vast region remains an enigma...

'The history of San Francisco I've been waiting for. It not only reorients our conceptions of the past, it gives us walking tour itineraries so we can viscerally experience how we are participants in the region's remaking.' - Sean Burns, writer and filmmaker San Francisco is an iconic city. But beyond the picture postcards of the Golden Gate Bridge, the...

In the feverish, money-making age of railroad barons, political machines, and gold rushes, corruption was the rule, not the exception. Yet the Republican mogul 'Big Alex' McKenzie's audacity was remarkable. Charismatic and shameless, he arrived in the recently purchased Alaskan territory with a federal district judge in his pocket, intent on claiming stewardship over any ambiguously claimed gold mines and...

How did the Nutrition Facts label come to appear on millions of everyday American household products? As Xaq Frohlich unearths, this legal, scientific, and seemingly innocuous strip of information is in fact a prism through which to view the high-stakes political battles and development of scientific ideas that shaped the realms of American health, nutrition, and public communication. From Label...

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education. On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session,...

The definitive history of U.S. defense strategy—deployments and operations, wartime plans and campaigns, budgets, people, deterrence concepts, innovation and modernization Much of the history of U.S. defense over the course of 250 years has been a story of success. Insulated by two oceans and mostly friendly neighbors, but constantly ambitious abroad, America has dared mighty things and often achieved them,...

Reveals the surprising historical roots of US immigration policy and discourse. Unfortunately, we're all too familiar with the US's legacy of maligning immigrants. Some Americans see immigrants as inherently threatening, a blank screen onto which the nation's worst fears are projected. But this phenomenon is neither timeless nor static. Instead, it arose and transformed alongside the unprecedented arrival of immigrants...

A revelatory account of Black Atlantic political thought in the era of decolonisation, revealing how West African and Caribbean newspapers invigorated debates about imperialism, capitalism, and Black freedom. In the 1930s and 1940s, amid intensifying anticolonial activism across the British Empire, dozens of new West African and Caribbean newspapers printed their first issues. With small staffs and shoestring budgets, these...

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, US officials identified the so-called battle for hearts and minds as the “second front” in the war on terror. A wave of funding flowed into public diplomacy in the Middle East, seeking to change views of the United States through Arabic-language communications—often while hiding the traces of American origins. To what extent...

A "piercing, unsentimental" (New Yorker) history that boldly challenges the idea of a rural American crisis. It seems everyone has an opinion about rural America. Is it gripped in a tragic decline? Or is it on the cusp of a glorious revival? Is it the key to understanding America today? Steven Conn argues that we're missing the real question: Is...

"Essential reading." - Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America "A broadly thought-provoking book." - Asian Review of Books "Fascinating… While expertly summarising and engaging existing historical studies, the author also indicates new avenues of research… [This] book thus stands as a bellwether for shifting trajectories of analysis that invite micro-historical follow-up." - H-Net Reviews "[This book] offers...

Fifty years ago, a government investigation led by US senator Frank Church uncovered some of the darkest state secrets of the twentieth century. The Church Committee confirmed the nation's worst fears about the unchecked power of its intelligence agencies: at the FBI, surveillance campaigns against civil rights leaders and clandestine attempts to disrupt antiwar protests; at the CIA, assassination plots...

If you haven’t followed the money, chances are you don’t know the real story of America and its Revolution. Nothing gives a clearer insight into this history than the life of early America’s dominant merchant trader, first bank president, and first central banker, Thomas Willing. In The Banker Who Made America, Richard Vague shows how Willing bankrolled – and in...

In the nineteenth century, global systems of capitalism and empire knit the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds into international networks in contest over the meanings of slavery and freedom. Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves mines multinational archives to illuminate the Atlantic reverberations of US mercantile projects, "free labor" experiments, and slaveholding in western Indian Ocean societies. Gunja SenGupta and Awam...

A gripping biography of a man who escaped slavery to become an influential abolitionist, famously known as the "King of the Underground Railroad". Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813–1872) was a fugitive from slavery, an abolitionist, and a minister, teacher, and political activist. He worked alongside Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, and his home in Syracuse, New York, was among the most...

Huey P. Newton was called many things in his time: revolutionary, genius, criminal, even the most surveilled human being in world history. Yet, little is known about him still because of persistent distortions to his name and legacy as co-founder of the Black Panther Party. In this new and much-needed intellectual biography, political theorist Delio Vásquez establishes Newton as a...

Health as Property shows how responses to racism can be predatory, harmful, and dangerous to poor people of colour. Nic Ramos examines a Black-led academic medical centre known as King-Drew that was built in response to the 1965 Watts Uprising. Forged by the political willingness of white voters to experiment with anti-poverty programmes in poor neighbourhoods of colour, the health...

A richly detailed transoceanic history of the early French Empire, illuminating how it became bound by a common legal culture of race—as well as how enslaved and free people critically shaped the development of the colonies. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history...

A radically original solution to our most intractable economic problems: wage stagnation, productive atrophy, and wealth inequality This sweeping and ambitious book locates the source of American economic and social decline in a simple but profound observation: the nation's forms of citizen ownership have not kept up with its sources of wealth. In the early republic, the Jeffersonian ideal of...

How did Americans come to elect Barack Obama—and then Donald Trump? Those choices capture what Paul Starr calls the American contradiction. The whole truth about America, Starr argues in this new history of the United States since the 1950s, has never been contained in one consistent set of values or interests. Our nation was born in the contradiction between freedom...

A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service’s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or...

Decades before the impeachment of an American president for a similar offense, Angelo Herndon was charged under Georgia law with "attempting to incite insurrection"—a crime punishable by death. In 1932, the eighteen-year-old Black Communist Party organiser was arrested, his room illegally searched, and his radical literature seized. Charged under an old slave insurrection statute, Herndon was convicted by an all-white...

Like coffee or tea, yerba mate is one of the world's most beloved caffeinated beverages. Once dubbed a "devil's drink" by Spanish missionaries in South America only to be later hailed by capitalists and politicians as "green gold," it has a long and storied history. And no country consumes and celebrates yerba mate quite like Argentina. Yerba Mate is the...

In 1918, Woodrow Wilson's image as leader of the free world and the image of America as dispenser of democracy spread throughout Italy, filling an ideological void after the rout of Caporetto and diverting attention from a hapless ruling class. Wilson's popularity depended not only on the modernity of his democratic message, but also on a massive propaganda campaign he...

A comprehensive history of the struggle to define womanhood in America, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century “Exhaustively researched and finely written.”—Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times “An intelligently provocative, vital reading experience. . . . This highly readable, inclusive, and deeply researched book will appeal to scholars of women and gender studies as well as anyone seeking to understand...

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. William Perkins's Journal of Life at Sonora, 1849 -...

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived programme, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. William Perkins's Journal of Life at Sonora, 1849 -...

Harriet Tubman, forced to labour outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous women's basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World's Fair. Celebrating women like...

A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them. If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for...

A surprising history of human hair in nineteenth-century America, where length, texture, colour, and coiffure became powerful indicators of race, gender, and national belonging. Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on decisive new significance as the young nation wrestled with its identity. During the colonial period, hair was usually seen as bodily...

A riveting, blow-by-blow account of how the network broadcasts of the 1968 Democratic convention shattered faith in American media. “The whole world is watching!” cried protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention as Chicago police beat them in the streets. When some of that violence was then aired on network television, another kind of hell broke loose. Some viewers were stunned...

A riveting, blow-by-blow account of how the network broadcasts of the 1968 Democratic convention shattered faith in American media. "The whole world is watching!" cried protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention as Chicago police beat them in the streets. When some of that violence was then aired on network television, another kind of hell broke loose. Some viewers were stunned...

Winner of the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award "Deeply researched and forcefully written . . . deftly explains the confused politics and diplomacy that bedeviled the war against the Nazis." – Wall Street Journal "Neiberg is one of the very best historians on wartime France, and his approach to the fall of France and its consequences is truly...

What is slavery? It seems a simple enough question. Despite the long history of the institution and its widespread use around the globe, many people still largely associate slavery, outside of the biblical references in the Old Testament, with the enslavement of Africans in America, particularly the United States. Slavery proved to be essential to the creation of the young...

Scholarship on African American history has changed dramatically since the publication of George Washington Williams’ pioneering A History of the Negro Race in America in 1882. Organized chronologically and thematically, What is African American History? offers a concise and compelling introduction to the field of African American history as well as the black historical enterprise—past, present, and future. Pero Gaglo...

The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and...

A fresh, original look at George Washington as an innovative land manager whose singular passion for farming would unexpectedly lead him to reject slavery. George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For over forty years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture, which he saw as the means...

A history of the United States’ greatest archival project and how it has shaped what we know about the Civil War The Civil War generated a vast archive of official records—documents that would shape the postwar era and determine what future generations would know about the war. Yael Sternhell traces these records from their creation during wartime through their deployment...

Learn the unbelievable true history of the great warrior tribes of Mexico. More than thirteen centuries of incredible spellbinding history are detailed in this intriguing study of the rulers and warriors of Mexico. Dozens of these charismatic leaders of nations and armies are brought to life by the deep research and entertaining storytelling of Peter Tsouras. Tsouras introduces the reader...

Today, gun control is one of the most polarising topics in American politics. However, before the 1960s, positions on firearms rights did not necessarily map onto partisan affiliation. What explains this drastic shift? Patrick J. Charles charts the rise of gun rights activism from the early twentieth century through the 1980 presidential election, pinpointing the role of the 1968 Gun...

Visions of Nature revives the work of late nineteenth-century landscape photographers who shaped the environmental attitudes of settlers in the colonies of the Tasman World and in California. Despite having little association with one another, these photographers developed remarkably similar visions of nature. They rode a wave of interest in wilderness imagery and made pictures that were hung in settler...

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the centre of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that...

Interrogates the connections between a city's physical landscape and the poverty and social problems that are often concentrated at its literal lowest points. In Urban Lowlands, Steven T. Moga looks closely at the Harlem Flats in New York City, Black Bottom in Nashville, Swede Hollow in Saint Paul, and the Flats in Los Angeles to interrogate the connections between a...

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists...

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists...

A dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought down the Wobblies—and how the destruction of their union haunts us to this day. In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and...

2022 International Labour History Association Book of the Year A dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought down the Wobblies—and how the destruction of their union haunts us to this day. In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim...

Winner of the Bancroft Prize Winner of the David J. Langum Prize Winner of the OAH Liberty Legacy Foundation Award A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "This extraordinary book is a powerful addition to the history of travel segregation. Mia Bay shows that Black mobility has always been a struggle." - Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to...

Fifty years ago, a single bullet robbed us of one of the world's most eloquent voices for human rights and justice. To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King, Jr., as an advocate of racial harmony, to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class and his call for "nonviolent resistance" to all...

The story of how FDR and fellow New Dealers created the idea of national security, transforming the meaning of defense and vastly expanding the US government's responsibilities. National security may seem like a timeless notion. States have always sought to fortify themselves, and the modern state derives its legitimacy from protecting its population. Yet national security, in fact, has a...

By turns entertaining and tragic, this beautifully written history reveals the origins of a great university in the dilemmas of Virginia slavery. It offers an incisive portrait of Thomas Jefferson set against a social fabric of planters in decline, enslaved black families torn apart by sales, and a hair-trigger code of male honour. A man of "deft evasions" who was...

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History: a bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy. “Stunning.”—Rebecca Onion, Slate “Makes a vital contribution to our understanding of our past and present.”—Parul Sehgal, New York Times “Bracingly revisionist. . . . [A] startling corrective.”—Nicholas Guyatt, New York Review of Books Bridging women’s...