American & Canadian History

The explosive and bloody true history of Texas Rangers Company F, made up of hard men who risked their lives to bring justice to a lawless frontier. Between 1886 and 1888, Sergeant James Brooks of Texas Ranger Company F was engaged in three fatal gunfights, endured disfiguring bullet wounds, engaged in countless manhunts, was convicted of second-degree murder, and rattled...

Palm Springs Tiki presents a visual exploration of a midcentury tropical paradise in the California desert. From the 1930s through the 1970s, Palm Springs and other desert communities embraced the midcentury fantasy of a home-grown Polynesian paradise. The concept of the oasis and that of the tropical island shared the qualities of exotic escapism for the urban dweller, these would-be...

The extraordinary untold story of how Irish and Jewish immigrants worked together to secure legitimacy in America. Popular belief holds that the various ethnic groups that emigrated to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century regarded one another with open hostility, fiercely competing for limited resources and even coming to blows in the crowded neighborhoods of major...

Now a New York Times bestseller "A blisteringly personal memoir...a thoughtful exploration of what it feels like to become a main character in a major American reckoning." - The Washington Post "An insightful tour de force." - People On September 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was considering the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh...

A bold reinterpretation of the causes and legacy of Nat Turner's rebellion—and the new definitive account. In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which their enslavers lived and attempted to march on the county seat of Jerusalem, from which they planned to launch...

In 1804, John Colter set out with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first US expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the 28-month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind. He spent two more years trekking alone through...

The Instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller! What really happened at the notorious Salem witch trials. With over 19 million copies in print and a remarkable record of #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestsellers, Bill O'Reilly's Killing series is the most popular series of narrative histories in the...

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller Humans of New York began in the summer of 2010, when photographer Brandon Stanton set out to create a photographic census of New York City. Armed with his camera, he began crisscrossing the city, covering thousands of miles on foot, all in an attempt to capture New Yorkers and their stories. The result...

When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Nixon White House in 1972 about the Bureau's surveillance of John Lennon, he began by explaining that Lennon was a "former member of the Beatles singing group". When a copy of this letter arrived in response to Jon Wiener's 1981 Freedom of Information request, the entire text was withheld—along with almost...

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...

Every American president, from Washington to Biden: Their lives, policies, foibles, and legacies, assessed with clear-eyed authority and wit. Authors of the acclaimed Killing books, the #1 bestselling narrative history series in the world, Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard begin a new direction with Confronting the Presidents. From Washington to Jefferson, Lincoln to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Kennedy to Nixon, Reagan...

A closely observed, gripping chronicle of politics and journalism during a decade of turmoil. - The New York Times Book Review Politics. Money. Media. Tech. It's all here in Collision of Power. All the President's Men for a new generation. - Town & Country Marty Baron took charge of The Washington Post newsroom in 2013, after nearly a dozen years...

Born in the USA delves into the pressing question: Who belongs in America? As the latest instalment of the World Citizen Comics Line, this enlightening book tracks the history of immigration to the United States, highlighting the twists and turns in the nearly three-hundred-year-old national debate to decide who gets to call themselves a US citizen. The words carved into...

Jonathan Raban's enthralling journey into the history of the Great Plains of Montana - the least populated, most uncharted region of the United States - uncovers the heart and soul of the country. Bringing to life the extraordinary landscape of the prairie and the homesteaders whose dreams foundered there, and reaching through history to the present day, Bad Land uncovers...

Living with the dual burdens of racism and sexism, slave women in the plantation South assumed roles within the family and community that contrasted sharply with traditional female roles in the larger American society. This revised edition of Ar'n't I a Woman? reviews and updates the scholarship on slave women and the slave family, exploring new ways of understanding the...

It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days...

A striking narrative of New York City's history, urban planning, and architecture told through maps, guides, and more. A visual chronicle of New York City's urban development, Wish You Were Here showcases the metropolis through historical guidebooks, maps, viewbooks, and photo books. The rapidly changing city landscape is lavishly illustrated in evolving contemporary media, from copperplate engravings of maps and...

An expansive and subversive history of the Pan-American Highway. A century after the Pan-American Highway was first conceived, its story remains largely unknown—even to the hundreds of motorists who annually attempt the 30,000-kilometre drive from far northern Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. There is more to the highway, however, than the persistent allure of the open road....

The first and only successful slave revolution in the Americas began in 1791 when thousands of brutally exploited slaves rose up against their masters on Saint-Domingue, the most profitable colony in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Within a few years, the slave insurgents forced the French administrators of the colony to emancipate them, a decision ratified by revolutionary Paris in 1794....

"An old-fashioned jungle adventure, one with rare immediacy and depth of feeling for the people and creatures [Rosolie] encounters." — Wall Street Journal For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie's extraordinary jungle adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon — a true...

A NEW YORK TIMES PICK FOR TOP 22 NONFICTION BOOKS TO READ THIS FALL! A Navajo Ranger’s chilling and clear-eyed memoir of his investigations into bizarre cases of the paranormal and unexplained in Navajoland. As a Native American with parents of both Navajo and Cherokee descent, Stanley Milford Jr. grew up in a world where the supernatural was both expected...

Drawn from his New York Times bestseller A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn's The Other Civil War offers the historian and activist's view of the social and civil background of the American Civil War—a view that is rarely provided in standard historical texts. This set of essays recounts the history of American labour, free and not free,...

The return of a revered revolutionary and the meaning of independence in a divided nation—in the 1820s and today In 1824, the legendary French hero of the American Revolution, Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, commenced an epic tour of the United States at the invitation of President James Monroe. On this fourteen-month trip across all twenty-four states, Lafayette (1757–1834) witnessed...

For more than 25 years, Survivor has reigned supreme as one of the most influential shows on American television. Each season, castaways from across the country arrive on a secluded island with the same ultimate goal: to outwit, outplay, and outlast for the $1 million prize. The game is physically gruelling and psychologically unforgiving. While the structure of the game...

Why have US wars so often failed to go as planned? Four of the major conflicts in the post–World War II era—Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—lasted far longer, cost far more, and yielded far poorer results than what prewar predictions anticipated. Shots in the Dark offers a new analysis of the pervasive biases that have afflicted decision-making in the lead-up...

A first-ever documentary history of antisemitism in the United States, spanning five centuries In a 1790 letter to Rhode Island Jewish leader Moses Seixas, President George Washington responded to Seixas's concerns about Jewish persecution. He assured him that America "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, [and] requires only that they who live under its protection should demean...

An eye-opening look at how Republican policies have affected health outcomes in rural communities and why poor, rural white voters are turning to the Republican Party—not despite this harm, but because of it. Over the last four decades, the health of rural Americans has been in free fall. Just as opioid and gun deaths have ripped apart rural communities, hospitals...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. We are living through a period of perpetual crises and explosive struggles for liberation on a global scale. This transdisciplinary collection explores what W. E. B. Du Bois's groundbreaking 1935 work, Black Reconstruction in America, tells...

A revelatory account of how words and actions combined to destroy Britain’s colonial rule and secure Washington’s American victory Propaganda Wars of the American Revolution shows that the American Revolution was not only fought on bloody battlefields, but was also waged with the ink of pen and print. George Goodwin illustrates how the leaders of the American Revolution brilliantly weaponised...

When Mary Kay Ash founded her company, Beauty by Mary Kay, in 1963, women had limited options in a male-dominated business world. By the 1970s, the cosmetics and skincare company had a salesforce of tens of thousands and became the first woman-founded firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Mary Kay and the pink Cadillac turned into cultural icons,...

For decades Frank X. Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers—including his own ancestors—who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation. Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reconstruction, Walker braids the voices of the United States Colored Troops with their...

From an award-winning biographer, a riveting and deeply researched portrait of Mormonism's charismatic founder. Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844) was one of the most successful and controversial religious leaders of nineteenth-century America, publishing the Book of Mormon and starting what would become the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He built temples, founded a city-state in Illinois, ran for president,...

In 1991, the China analyst and journalist Orville Schell worked on an in-depth 60 Minutes investigation of the People's Republic of China's vast prison camp system, revealing that products made with forced labour were being surreptitiously and illegally sold to the United States. Inside China's Secret Prisons is his gripping account of this milestone exposé—and how its findings still reverberate...

In June 1968, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan B. Sirhan assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, marking yet another killing in a decade haunted by political violence. As he was being subdued, Sirhan shouted, "I can explain. I did it for my country," by which he meant Palestine. On trial, he testified that his motives included opposition to Zionism, with...

A sweeping look at the Ghost Dance, the first instance of modern, collective racial self-consciousness for Native peoples in the United States. From the Sand Creek Massacre (1864) to the Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890), Indigenous religious practices—legally banned after 1883—took on new meanings as acts of defiance against colonialism and white supremacy. By reexamining the familiar story of the...

In the 1930s, the airship was viewed as the future of transatlantic travel and a brave new era of global connectedness. Germany's safe, fast and efficient airships brought it back into the international fold after its humiliation in World War I. But on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg airship caught fire in the sky over New Jersey in a blaze...

Trade lead with explosive card combos and quick-fire abilities in a riotous Wild West shootout. Tensions are high in the town of Rattlesnake. The sun beats down and tempers fray. Two figures start moving, hands flashing to the pistols at their hips… The first shot rings out… Players: 2 | Ages: 14+ | Playing time: 15 minutes Rattlesnake is a...

Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner's status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an...

In the new "baby boomer" era of postwar North America, newly prosperous young families in the US and Canada purchased cars in the millions, using the vast new network of interstate highways to move to a better life in the suburbs. Almost unlimited demand in the 1950s brought automobile production to record levels, with the main effort going towards four-door...

The greatest naval conflict in history occurred during World War II from 1939 to 1945. Most people are familiar with the famous Battle of the Atlantic and epic naval engagements in the Pacific like Midway and Leyte Gulf, all of which receive ample coverage in this panoramic work. However, author Vince O'Hara offers a truly global perspective of World War...

The American Civil War may have been more consequential to American history (and its global supremacy) than its Revolutionary War and participation in all other world wars. The influence of this war is not just reduced to the victory of the north and its economic infrastructure, but the fact of Union success ushered in the notion of 'what it means...

An incisive history of early American archaeology—from reckless looting to professional science—and the field's unfinished efforts to make amends today, told "with passion, indignation, and a dash of suspense" (New York Times). American archaeology was forever scarred by an 1893 business proposition between cowboy-turned-excavator Richard Wetherill and socialites-turned-antiquarians Fred and Talbot Hyde. Wetherill had stumbled upon Mesa Verde's spectacular cliff...

A fully-revised and updated new edition of a concise and insightful socio-historical analysis of the Cuban revolution, and the course it took over five and a half decades. A History of the Cuban Revolution is now available in a fully-revised second edition, including new material to add to the book’s coverage of Cuba over the past decade under Raul Castro....

A self-proclaimed vampire. His harem of "witches." And the small-town murder that shocked America. When twenty-four-year-old Sydney Loofe disappeared after a Tinder date, the quiet town of Wilber, Nebraska was stunned. Days later, her dismembered body was found scattered across nearby fields—and the horrifying truth began to emerge. Sydney hadn't just met the wrong man. She had crossed paths with...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The American Story and How to Lead and host of PBS's History with David Rubenstein — David Rubenstein interviews living American presidents and top historians and journalists who reflect on the US presidency, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Maggie Haberman, Ron Chernow, and more. For years, bestselling author David...

Cofounder of The Carlyle Group, patriotic philanthropist, and bestselling author of The American Experiment David M. Rubenstein takes readers on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story through revealing conversations with our greatest historians. In these lively dialogues, the biggest names in American history explore the subjects they’ve come to so intimately know and understand. David...

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...

A detailed guide to the real story of the most well-known battles of the American Revolution, popularized by Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton. By 1781 Britain's struggle to contain the rebels in her American colonies had reached an inglorious stalemate. Six years on from the British defeat by the New England militia at Boston, George Washington's rebuilt Continental Army, with support from...

The Long Sixties is a concise and engaging treatment of the major political, social, and cultural developments of this tumultuous period. A comprehensive yet concise overview that offers coverage of a variety of topics, from the beginnings of the Cold War shortly after World War II, through the civil rights, women's, and Chicano civil rights movements, to Watergate, an event...

A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr. Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase...

Soon after the American Revolution, certain of the founders began to recognise the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the centre of the continent,...

An authoritative selection of the writings of one of the most important early American writers “A brilliant collection that reveals the extraordinary range of Cotton Mather’s interests and contributions—by far the best introduction to the mind of the Puritan divine.”—Francis J. Bremer, author of Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism Cotton Mather (1663–1728) has a wide presence in American...

New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Top Ten Book of the Year A True West Magazine Best Historical Non-Fiction Book and Best Author of the Year Western Heritage Award for "Outstanding Nonfiction Book" Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction From the author of The Apache Wars, the true story of the American...

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes the first definitive history of the Western hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both continents. 'Dazzling. Sweeping. Mind-altering. World-changing. This is a once-in-a-generation contribution' Naomi Klein 'America, América reads at times as the historical equivalent of the great epic novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.' Irish...

From the first shots at Fort Sumter to the mourning of Lincoln’s death—experience the Civil War as it happened, through the voices of those who were there. History comes to life in the words of those who lived through the American Civil War. The Civil War was one of the great events of United States history, and the widespread literacy...

Who Tells Your Story gathers contemporary analyses of monument and commemoration controversies from across the United States and the world. Sanford Levinson and the contributors in this volume ask whose stories get to be told, who gets to tell them, what happens when monuments disappear, and how these memorials impact national narratives. From the removal of Confederate statues in the...

Facing persistent exploitation, discrimination, and marginalisation in the second half of the twentieth century, generations of Puerto Rican organisers and activists drew on multiple competing versions of nationalism to challenge the racial order in Chicago, one of America’s most segregated cities. Initially, both supporters and opponents of Puerto Rican independence promoted the assimilation of fellow migrants as white citizens. The...

Facing persistent exploitation, discrimination, and marginalisation in the second half of the twentieth century, generations of Puerto Rican organisers and activists drew on multiple competing versions of nationalism to challenge the racial order in Chicago, one of America’s most segregated cities. Initially, both supporters and opponents of Puerto Rican independence promoted the assimilation of fellow migrants as white citizens. The...

What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur'an - A History of Islam & the United States You will be fascinated by this fast-paced, objective history of the world from a perspective you have never imagined. Current events will come into focus in the backdrop of 1,400 years of inconceivable yet true events and conflicts. Thousands of books, documents,...

George Harrison met Muhammad Ali in 1964, when both men were on the cusp of worldwide fame. Ten years later, the two men simultaneously staged comebacks, demonstrating just how much they embodied the promises and perils of their era. In doing so, Tracy Daugherty suggests, they revealed the scope and the limits of political courage and commitment to faith in...

The stories of Cuban refugees who journeyed across the Straits of Florida in search of a better future Between April and September 1980, more than 125,000 Cuban refugees fled their homeland, seeking freedom from Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. They departed in boats from the port of Mariel and braved the dangerous 90-mile journey across the Straits of Florida. Told in the...

The first biography of a neglected but crucial revolutionary figure and fascinating window into his world Study the American Revolution and you might miss the name Robert Carter Nicholas; study Robert Carter Nicholas and you will see the entire revolution. This is the first biography of the Virginia patriot who served in the House of Burgesses and has gone down...

What does it mean to trust in a world shaped by violence and inequality? This book investigates the fraught pursuit of democratic policing in Brazil, where trust is both a necessity and a precarious gamble. Marta-Laura Haynes follows police officers and favela residents through patrols, crime scenes, fishing trips, drumming circles, and neighbourhood gatherings to reveal how trust is not...

Discover the untold stories of the Revolutionary War's Battle of Sullivan's Island: Unveiling the significant contributions of unsung heroes in shaping America's history. Step into a time of revolution and intrigue with this meticulously interpreted exploration of an overlooked milestone in American history. Unsung brings into sharp focus the events surrounding the Battle of Sullivan's Island, a critical juncture in...

A shocking story of social engineering in the era of Jim Crow The eugenics movement, in which the state arrogated to itself the right to determine who could and who could not have children, was a dark, shameful chapter in American history. Virginia was infamous as an epicenter of eugenic thought; the case of Buck v. Bell, which resulted in...

A shocking story of social engineering in the era of Jim Crow The eugenics movement, in which the state arrogated to itself the right to determine who could and who could not have children, was a dark, shameful chapter in American history. Virginia was infamous as an epicentre of eugenic thought; the case of Buck v. Bell, which resulted in...

In the popular literature and scholarship of the Civil War, the days immediately after the surrender at Fort Sumter are overshadowed by the great battles and seismic changes in American life that followed. The twelve days that began with the federal evacuation of the fort and ended with the arrival of the New York Seventh Militia Regiment in Washington were...

“An insightful study of a president who listened to even his harshest critics with grace and humility.”—The Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GLAMOUR Every evening for eight years, at his request, President Obama was given ten handpicked letters written by ordinary American citizens—the unfiltered voice of a nation—from his Office of Presidential Correspondence....

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • LOS ANGELES TIMES’S #1 NONFICTION...

From the bestselling author of The Indispensables, this is the unknown and dramatic story of irregular guerrilla warfare that altered the course of the Civil War and inspired the origins of America's modern special operations forces. The Civil War is most remembered for the grand battles that have come to define it: Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, among others. However, as bestselling...

In the nearly two centuries since the first building’s completion in Thomas Jefferson’s academical village, programmes and facilities at the University of Virginia have been continually expanded and updated. This second edition of Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s The University of Virginia: A Pictorial History, first published in 1999 and updated in 2003, traces Mr. Jefferson’s favourite project through an appropriately rich...

While the Kansas City Chiefs are the NFL’s newest dynasty, winning three Super Bowls since 2020, most fans don’t recall the team’s earliest successful years before decades of futility. What about the underdog losers of that very first Super Bowl? When the Kansas City Chiefs played the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I in 1967, they had only been...

The death of Carlos II in 1700 and the rise of Felipe V to the Spanish throne sparked a global war—and in New Spain, a cultural and political upheaval. As Bourbon loyalists staged elaborate ceremonies and circulated propaganda to legitimise the new dynasty, priests, artists, and local elites reimagined sacred kingship through vivid metaphors of death, rebirth, and regeneration. Sermons,...

The Ragged Edge of Freedom explores the long shadow of slavery in the Lower Midwest. In the decades after the Civil War, elites in southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois constantly raised the spectre of "cheap" Black labour to divide workers, discipline markets, and gain political advantage. At the same time, powerful outsiders depicted the borderland as dirty and degraded, pathologising...

Winner: Laney Prize In this fifth and final volume of his renowned series detailing the campaign for Vicksburg, Tim Smith sheds much-needed light on this often-misunderstood episode of the Union’s efforts to take Vicksburg. In the entire nine-month-long campaign, there was no more tension and drama than in these seventeen days when Grant’s Army of the Tennessee marched through the...

The HBCU Sisterhood: Testimonies of Triumph and Transformation is a powerful, first-of-its-kind anthology that pulls back the curtain on one of the most extraordinary leadership legacies in American history. For the first time, eight pioneering Black women presidents—Dr. Sebetha Jenkins, Dr. Dianne Boardley Suber, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, Dr. Brenda Allen, Dr. Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, Dr. Cheryl Davenport Dozier, Dr. Colette...

Spanning 417 years from the first entry in 1353 to the last in 1770, the Sinclair/Wemyss journals tell the personal stories of how fifteen generations within two Scottish clans completed a sacred mission to establish a sanctuary in the lands "far to the west." That mission was to bring Templar treasures that disappeared from France on October 13, 1307, to...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Future in Their Hands is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have European or US degrees. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth...

Civil society organizations report that fourteen children disappear every day in Mexico. This book studies the origins of this social phenomenon and its consequences, not only in the emotional sphere, but also in how children have been treated. Focusing on children’s special positions within Mexican society rather than criminal acts or the implementation of the law, Sosenski links social and...

As Detroit reached dizzying new heights of industrial success and urban growth at the turn of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of migrants flocked to the Motor City. In response, organizations such as the YMCA and Ford Motor Company launched wide-reaching Americanization programs to instil patriotism, conservative gender roles, traditional family values, and industry-favourable labour relations in the city’s...