US History: The American past in 100 Books



Lincoln election poster from The Library of Congress

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 »

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 »

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 »

6. Errand into the Wilderness By Perry Miller | Used Price: 80% Off The title of this book by Perry Miller, who is world-famous as an interpreter of the American past, comes close to posing the question it has been Mr. Miller's lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? In ... More »

7. 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 »

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. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 By Alfred W. Crosby | Used Price: 70% Off People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world--North America, Australia and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain because in many cases they were achieved by using firearms against spears. Alfred Crosby, ... More »

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 »

12. 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 »

14. 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 »

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 »

16. American Slavery, American Freedom By Edmund S. Morgan | Used Price: 80% Off "Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable."â€”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 »

17. 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 »

18. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution By Bernard Bailyn | Used Price: 80% Off To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment," as a Postscript. Here he discusses the intense, nation-wide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the ... More »

19. 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 allowâ€”or more deliberately, give more prominence toâ€”those groups at the bottom of colonial society to gain more equitable visibility. The effect is a striking view ... More »

20. The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution By Jack P. Greene Using the British Empire as a case study, this succinct study argues that the establishment of overseas settlements in America created a problem of constitutional organization that created deep and persistent tensions within the empire during the colonial era and that the failure to resolve it was the ... More »

21. 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 »

22. 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 »

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 »

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 »

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. 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 »

28. 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 Jeffersonâ€™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 â€œunfamiliarâ€Â Jefferson ... More »

29. The Age of Jackson By Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. | Price: $0.01 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Jackson. It is a triumph of historical scholarship, analysis, and interpretation and throws much new light on a host of Americans, well-known and less well-known, who come to life in remarkable portraits that are both brilliant and ... More »

30. 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 »

31. 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 »

32. Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 By Robert V. Remini | Used Price: 90% Off Available in paperback for the first time, these three volumes represent the definitive biography of Andrew Jackson. Volume One covers the role Jackson played in America's territorial expansion, bringing to life a complex character who has often been seen simply as a rough-hewn country general. Volume Two traces ... 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 »

34. 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 »

35. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery By Robert Fogel | Used Price: 70% Off "[Fogel's] exceedingly careful testing of all possible sources and his pioneering methodological approach have allowed [him] both to increase our knowledge of an institutions operation and disintegration and to renew our methods of research." â€”from the citation to Robert William Fogel for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic ... More »

36. 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 »

37. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made By Eugene Genovese | Used Price: 80% Off This landmark history of slavery in the Southâ€”a winner of the Bancroft Prizeâ€”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 »

38. Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South By James Oakes | Used Price: 80% Off "The most valuable and stimulating general interpretation of the Old South to appear in recent years."â€”George M. Fredrickson This pathbreaking interpretation of the slaveholding South begins with the insight that slavery and freedom were not mutually exclusive but were intertwined in every dimension of life in the South. ... More »

39. 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 »

40. Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism By Reginald Horsman | Used Price: 80% Off American myths about national character tend to overshadow the historical realities. Mr. Horsman's book is the first study to examine the origins of racialism in America and to show that the belief in white American superiority was firmly ensconced in the nation's ideology by 1850. ... More »

41. The Oregon Trail By Francis Parkman | Used Price: 60% Off The Oregon Trail is the gripping account of Francis Parkman's journey west across North America in 1846. After crossing the Allegheny Mountains by coach and continuing by boat and wagon to Westport, Missouri, he set out with three companions on a horseback journey that would ultimately take ... More »

42. The Frontier in American History By Frederick Jackson Turner | 90% Off In this volume, Faragher introduces and comments on ten of Frederick Jackson Turner's most significant essays, concluding with a comment on the debate over Turner's legacy and his effect on Americans' understanding of their national character. More »

43. 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 »

44. 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 »

45. 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 »

46. 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 »

47. 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 »

48. 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 »

49. 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 »

50. 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 »

51. 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 »

52. 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 »

53. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War By Edmund Wilson | Used Price: 80% Off Regarded by many critics as Edmund Wilson's greatest book, Patriotic Gore brilliantly portrays the vast political, spiritual, and material crisis of the Civil War as reflected in the lives and writings of some thirty representative Americans. Critical/biographical portraits of such notable figures as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, ... More »

54. 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 »

55. 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 »

56. The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America By John Bodnar | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "... an excellent broad overview... " â€”Journal of Social History"... powerfully argued... " â€”Moses Rischin"... imaginative and soundly based... " â€”Choice"Highly recommended... " â€”Library Journal"... an outstanding major contribution to the literature on immigration history." â€”History"... a very important new synthesis of American immigration history... " â€”Journal of ... More »

57. The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt By John Milton Cooper Jr. | Price: $0.01 The colossal figures who shaped the politics of industrial America emerge in full scale in this engrossing comparative biography. In both the depth and sophistication of intellect that they brought to politics and in the titanic conflict they waged with each other, Roosevelt and Wilson were, like Hamilton ... More »

58. 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 »

59. 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 »

61. 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 »

62. 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 »

63. 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 »

64. 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 »

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 »

66. The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 By Anthony Badger | Used Price: 80% Off Anthony Badgerâ€™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. Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920-1941 By Michael E. Parrish | Used Price: 80% Off "Impressively detailed. . . . An authoritative and epic overview."â€”Publishers Weekly In the convulsive years between 1920 and 941, Americans were first dazzled by unprecedented economic prosperity and then beset by the worst depression in their history. It was the era of Model T's, rising incomes, scientific management, ... More »

68. Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s By David J. Goldberg | Used Price: 80% Off It was a decade of great heroes like Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, and of passive leaders like Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. The exuberant freedom of flappers drinking bathtub gin and dancing the Charleston did little to counter such powers of oppression as the rapidly rising Ku ... More »

69. The Great Crash 1929 By John Kenneth Galbraith | 80% Off The classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, with an introduction by economist James K. Galbraith Â Of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929, the Atlantic Monthly said: "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, ... More »

70. 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. Â In the twenty-five years since its publication, critics and scholars have praised historian Robert McElvaineâ€™s sweeping and authoritative history of the ... More »

71. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s By Frederick Lewis Allen | Price: $0.01 Prohibition. Al Capone. The President Harding scandals. The revolution of manners and morals. Black Tuesday. These are only an inkling of the events and figures characterizing the wild, tumultuous era that was the Roaring Twenties. Originally published in 1931, Only Yesterday traces the rise ... More »

72. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: Appearances and Realities By Charles A. Beard Conceived by Charles Beard as a sequel to his provocative study of American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War outraged a nation, permanently damaging Beard's status as America's most influential historian. Beard's main argument is that both Democratic ... More »

73. 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 »

74. 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 »

76. 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 â€œa work of considerable power,â€Â Allen Matusow documents the rise and fall of 1960s liberalism. He offers deft treatments of the major topicsâ€”anticommunism, civil rights, Great Society programs, the countercultureâ€”making the most, throughout, of his subjectâ€™s ... More »

77. 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 »

78. 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 »

79. 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 »

80. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy By William Appleman Williams | 70% Off â€œA brilliant book on foreign affairs.â€Ââ€”Adolf A. Berle Jr., New York Times Book Review This incisive interpretation of American foreign policy ranks as a classic in American thought. First published in 1959, the book offered an analysis of the wellsprings of American foreign policy that shed light on ... More »

82. 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 »

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 »

84. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience By Gabriel Kolko | Under $1.00 After the Second World War the USA inherited the mantle of imperialism. Kolko described the phases of the war within the context this modern historical experience, making the Vietnam war not accidental, but a logical conclusion of American ambition and power. More »

85. 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 »

86. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb By Gar Alperovitz | Used Price: 80% Off Was the atomic bombing of Japan necessary? Gar Alperovitz argues, using evidence for the US Government archives, that it was not. Instead, Truman dropped the bomb as a warning to Soviets to help deal with them after the war. For more on this topic also see Racing ... More »

87. 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 »

88. 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 »

89. 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 »

90. Race Matters By Cornel West | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 With a new introduction, the groundbreaking classic Race Matters affirms its position as the bestselling, most influential, and most original articulation of the urgent issues in America?s ongoing racial debate.Cornel West is at the forefront of thinking about race. In Race Matters he addresses a range of issues, ... More »

91. The Strange Career of Jim Crow By C. Vann Woodward | Used Price: 70% Off C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most eminent Southern historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut's Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now, to honor his long and truly distinguished ... More »

92. 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 Roedigerâ€™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 »

93. Stories of Scottsboro By James Goodman | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "A rich and compelling narrative, as taut and suspenseful as good fiction. In places, Stories of Scottsboro is almost heartbreaking, not least because Goodman shows what people felt as well as what they thought." -- Washington Post Book WorldTo white Southerners, it was "a heinous and unspeakable crime" ... More »

94. 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 »

95. My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered By Howell Raines | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The almost unfathomable courage and the undying faith that propelled the Civil Rights Movement are brilliantly captured in these moving personal recollections. Here are the voices of leaders and followers, of ordinary people who became extraordinary in the face of turmoil and violence. From the Montgomery ... More »

96. 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 »

97. 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 »

98. 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 »

99. 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."â€”Michael Sherry, Northwestern Univ. "Both a fascinating account of the birth of gay liberation and a replay of the turbulent, society-changing 60s."â€”San Francisco Chronicle. More »

100. 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 »

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, then ending on the history of US foreign relations, race, women, and gender. Many of the big names of the past are included, such as Frederick Jackson Turner, Francis Parkman, Perry Miller, C. Vann Woodward, and Charles Beard; as well as many of the more recent luminaries, such as Eric Foner, William Appleman Williams, Richard Hofstadter, Edmund S. Morgan, Bernard Bailyn, Walter LaFeber, James M. McPherson, William Cronon, Gordon S. Wood, and Gabriel Kolko.Please let us know what you think of the list in the comments section below.