Teri Kanefield

Thurgood Marshall, the great grandson of a slave, was born at a time when African Americans were denied equal rights in America. Segregation was legal. Lynching was common. In some places, African Americans were entirely excluded from public life; they were forbidden to enter public parks and museums or use public swimming pools and restrooms.After being denied admission to the...

Andrew Jackson, a 2018 Grateful American Book Prize Honorable Mention, tells the story of one of our most controversial presidents. Born in the Carolina backwoods, Jackson joined the American Revolutionary War at the age of thirteen. After a reckless youth filled with gunfights, gambling, and general mischief, he rose to national fame as the general who defeated the British in...

Book six in the Making of America series tells the story of Supreme Court justice and civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was a US Supreme Court justice and important civil rights activist. The book traces his life from his childhood in Baltimore, where he faced racial segregation at school, to his years at Howard University School of...

The third instalment of the Making of America series, Abraham Lincoln, tells of one of our most beloved presidents. Born in a cabin deep in the backwoods of Kentucky, and growing up in a family considered "the poorest of the poor," Lincoln rose to become the sixteenth president of the United States. As president, he guided the United States through...

The America that Alexander Hamilton knew was largely agricultural and built on slave labour. He envisioned something else: a multi-racial, urbanised, capitalistic America with a strong central government. He believed that such an America would be a land of opportunity for the poor and the newcomers. But Hamilton's vision put him at odds with his archrivals who envisioned a pastoral...