EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Cradle of America

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter Wallenstein
  • Publisher : University Press of Kansas
  • Release : 2014-08-15
  • ISBN : 0700619941
  • Pages : 552 pages

Download or read book Cradle of America written by Peter Wallenstein and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, the birthplace of a presidential dynasty, and the gateway to western growth in the nation’s early years, Virginia can rightfully be called the “cradle of America.” Peter Wallenstein traces major themes across four centuries in a brisk narrative that recalls the people and events that have shaped the Old Dominion. The second edition is updated with new material throughout, including a new chapter on Virginia and world affairs from the Korean War through 9/11 and beyond, and, an expanded bibliography. Historical accounts of Virginia have often emphasized harmony and tradition, but Wallenstein focuses on the impact of conflict and change. From the beginning, Virginians have debated and challenged each other’s visions of Virginia, and Wallenstein shows how these differences have influenced its sometimes turbulent development. Casting an eye on blacks as well as whites, and on people from both east and west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he traces such key themes as political power, racial identity, and education. Bringing to bear his long experience teaching Virginia history, Wallenstein takes readers back, even before Jamestown, to the Elizabethan settlers at Roanoke Island and the inhabitants they encountered, as well as to Virginia’s leaders of the American Revolution. He chronicles the state’s dramatic journey through the Civil War era, a time that revealed how the nation’s evolution sometimes took shape in opposition to the vision of many leading Virginians. He also examines the impact of the civil rights movement and considers controversies that accompany Virginia into its fifth century. The text is copiously illustrated to depict not only such iconic figures as Pocahontas, George Washington, and Robert E. Lee, but also such other prominent native Virginians as Carter G. Woodson, Patsy Cline, and L. Douglas Wilder. Sidebars throughout the book offer further insight, while maps and appendixes of reference data make the volume a complete resource on Virginia’s history.

Book American Work

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jacqueline Jones
  • Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
  • Release : 1999
  • ISBN : 9780393318333
  • Pages : 548 pages

Download or read book American Work written by Jacqueline Jones and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1999 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Jones's] painstakingly researched volume is an invaluable antidote to those who argue that our shameful past has no relevance to our perplexing present." --David Kusnet, Baltimore Sun

Book Becoming Americans

Download or read book Becoming Americans written by Ilan Stavans and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprised mostly of memoirs with some fiction, this volume gathers selections from the writings of 85 immigrants from 45 countries that illustrate the changing views of immigrants in the United States.

Book Norfolk

    Book Details:
  • Author : Thomas C. Parramore
  • Publisher : University of Virginia Press
  • Release : 2000-01-29
  • ISBN : 9780813919881
  • Pages : 540 pages

Download or read book Norfolk written by Thomas C. Parramore and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000-01-29 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a history of Norfolk from the time of the first contact between a Spanish sailor and a native American Chiskiack in 1561, to the city's late 20th-century concerns, including pollution of Chesapeake Bay, urban development, traffic in illegal guns, and racial tensions.

Book Mission and Menace

Download or read book Mission and Menace written by Robert Jewett and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Comparable to Howard Zinn's, A People's History of the United States * Includes black and white illustrations

Book Four Centuries of Quilts

Download or read book Four Centuries of Quilts written by Linda Baumgarten and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exquisite and authoritative look at four centuries of quilts and quilting from around the world Quilts are among the most utilitarian of art objects, yet the best among them possess a formal beauty that rivals anything made on canvas. This landmark book, drawn from the world-renowned collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, highlights the splendor and craft of quilts with more than 300 superb color images and details. Fascinating essays by two noted scholars trace the evolution of quilting styles and trends as they relate to the social, political, and economic issues of their time. The collection includes quilts made by diverse religious and cultural groups over 400 years and across continents, from the Mediterranean, England, France, America, and Polynesia. The earliest quilts were made in India and the Mediterranean for export to the west and date to the late 16th century. Examples from 18th- to 20th-century America, many made by Amish and African-American quilters, reflect the multicultural nature of American society and include boldly colored and patterned worsteds and brilliant pieced and appliquéd works of art. Grand in scope and handsomely produced, Four Centuries of Quilts: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection is sure to be one of the most useful and beloved references on quilts and quilting for years to come.

Book How Cities Won the West

    Book Details:
  • Author : Carl Abbott
  • Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
  • Release : 2011-03-03
  • ISBN : 0826333141
  • Pages : 360 pages

Download or read book How Cities Won the West written by Carl Abbott and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities rather than individual pioneers have been the driving force in the settlement and economic development of the western half of North America. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, western urban centers served as starting points for conquest and settlement. As these frontier cities matured into metropolitan centers, they grew from imitators of eastern culture and outposts of eastern capital into independent sources of economic, cultural, and intellectual change. From the Gulf of Alaska to the Mississippi River and from the binational metropolis of San Diego-Tijuana to the Prairie Province capitals of Canada, Carl Abbott explores the complex urban history of western Canada and the United States. The evolution of western cities from stations for exploration and military occupation to contemporary entry points for migration and components of a global economy reminds us that it is cities that "won the West." And today, as cultural change increasingly moves from west to east, Abbott argues that the urban West represents a new center from which emerging patterns of behavior and changing customs will help to shape North America in the twenty-first century.

Book Four Centuries of Dutch American Relations

Download or read book Four Centuries of Dutch American Relations written by Hans Krabbendam and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Henry Hudson landed on Manhattan in 1609, the peoples of the Netherlands and North America have been inextricably linked. Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, written by a team of nearly one hundred Dutch and American scholars, is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of this bilateral relationship. This volume covers the main paths of contacts, conflicts, and common plans, from the first exploratory contacts in the early seventeenth century to the intense and multifaceted exchanges in the early twenty-first. Based on the most up-to-date research, Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations will be for years to come a valuable and much-used reference work for anyone interested in the history and culture of the United States and the Netherlands and the larger transatlantic interdependent framework in which they are embedded.

Book The Jews in America

    Book Details:
  • Author : Arthur Hertzberg
  • Publisher : Columbia University Press
  • Release : 1997
  • ISBN : 9780231108416
  • Pages : 436 pages

Download or read book The Jews in America written by Arthur Hertzberg and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, challenging revisionist history of the Jewish experience in America by Arthur Hertzberg, political leader, rabbi, social historian, and one of America'a most eminent Jewish thinkers.

Book Albion s Seed

    Book Details:
  • Author : David Hackett Fischer
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 1991-03-14
  • ISBN : 019974369X
  • Pages : 981 pages

Download or read book Albion s Seed written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-14 with total page 981 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Book A Visionary Nation

    Book Details:
  • Author : Zachary Karabell
  • Publisher : Harper Collins
  • Release : 2002-06-18
  • ISBN : 0060084421
  • Pages : 258 pages

Download or read book A Visionary Nation written by Zachary Karabell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2002-06-18 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this penetrating volume, Zachary Karabell examines the continuous thread that runs through the tapestry of the American experience -- the belief that we can create a perfect society -- and envisions what the next great era will be. Just as the Puritan vision of a city on a hill was supplanted by the Founding Fathers' vision of individuality, just as the expansive vision of a government-led Great Society was eclipsed by the New Economy of the 1990s, so too is the New Economy being replaced by what Karabell contends will be a period when community and spirituality occupy center stage.

Book Black Nature

    Book Details:
  • Author : Camille T. Dungy
  • Publisher : University of Georgia Press
  • Release : 2009
  • ISBN : 0820332771
  • Pages : 424 pages

Download or read book Black Nature written by Camille T. Dungy and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry--anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole. A Friends Fund Publication.

Book Four Centuries of American Education

Download or read book Four Centuries of American Education written by David Barton and published by Wallbuilder Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For four centuries, imparting the three essential elements of religion, morality, and knowledge was the core of America's educational system. In recent decades, secularization of education has become the new American paradigm. In this title, learn about the effects of both philosophies as well as our early educational heroes.

Book North Carolina Through Four Centuries

Download or read book North Carolina Through Four Centuries written by William S. Powell and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-01-20 with total page 671 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This successor to the classic Lefler-Newsome North Carolina: The History of a Southern State, published in 1954, presents a fresh survey history that includes the contemporary scene. Drawing upon recent scholarship, the advice of specialists, and his own knowledge, Powell has created a splendid narrative that makes North Carolina history accessible to both students and general readers. For years to come, this will be the standard college text and an essential reference for home and office.

Book Unleashing the Second American Century

Download or read book Unleashing the Second American Century written by Joel Kurtzman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political gridlock in Washington... the lingering effects of the financial crisis . . . structural problems such as unemployment and the skills gap of our work force . . . the mediocre K-12 educational system. Are our best days behind us? Joel Kurtzman persuasively shows why all the talk about America's decline is not only baseless but dead wrong. Our best days, are, in fact, ahead of us. Four transformational forces -- unrivaled manufacturing depth, soaring levels of creativity, massive new energy sources, and gigantic amounts of capital waiting to be invested -- have been gathering steam. When combined they will provide the foundation for a much stronger economy, robust growth, and broad-based prosperity that will propel the United States to new heights. One endlessly repeated anxiety is that "we don't make anything here, anymore." The reality, though, is that the US is the world's dominant manufacturing power -- and growing. American companies produce 20 percent of the world's goods in the US and perhaps another 15 to 20 percent outside our country. And much of what we make is recession-proof -- such as software, jetliners, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food. Kurtzman reveals the stories of the unsung heroes who are the creative force leading the second American century, describing the payoff of the investment in our best minds. American companies have stunning levels of talent and creativity at work in the world's fastest growing economic sectors -- biotech, pharmaceuticals, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, advanced manufacturing, materials science, and aeronautical and space engineering. In these fields, Americans are without peer and consistently break new ground. We are coming to the realization that America is no longer beholden to the despots of foreign energy. Thanks to advances in technology developed in the US, we now have among the world's largest energy reserves, and are richer in energy resources than Saudi Arabia and second only to Russia. These three strengths -- manufacturing, soaring levels of creativity, and energy independence -- will be magnified and synergistically combined with the unprecedented amount of capital that now lies idle. US companies of all types are hoarding cash and securities worth more than 4 trillion -- an amount larger than the world's fourth largest economy, Germany. When the money starts flowing and is invested, it will rapidly propel every part of the economy forward.

Book New Mexico

    Book Details:
  • Author : Warren A. Beck
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2013-01-05
  • ISBN : 9780806143835
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book New Mexico written by Warren A. Beck and published by . This book was released on 2013-01-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of New Mexico is the story of three contrasting cultures-Indian, Spanish, and Anglo-American-clashing, coexisting, and blending. Here the Indians of Hawikuh-the first Zuñi pueblo encountered by Coronado's soldiers-gave battle to the Europeans in 1540. Here also Indians last took a stand against federal troops in 1913. A rich and colorful Spanish tradition, including institutions of family and church, social organizations, and the Spanish language, continues strong a century and a half after the acquisition of the territory by the United States. Anglo-Americans have also made their mark upon the land with public works, highways, and rapidly developing towns and cities. This history of New Mexico is intended for readers who want a brief, yet comprehensive treatment of the state's development. Warren A. Beck takes a balanced approach to all the themes in the state's varied history. He allows the whole story to emerge from the facts-in a concise and readable format. "Here is a book that every traveler in the state of New Mexico will want handy in his glove compartment, and every resident of the state who entertains visitors will want on his bookshelf. . . . It is loaded with information." Hispanic American Historical Review "A readable account of New Mexico history that hits the high spots of the past 400 years." New Mexico Magazine "Beck's book gives appropriate weight to each of five distinct divisions of the area's history-the Indian, the Spanish, the Mexican, the Territorial, and the Statehood periods. . . . The presentation is clear, pointed, and the story is carried through with the minimum of digression." Journal of the West Warren A. Beck (1918-91) was Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton. He is the co-author, with Ynez D. Haase, of Historical Atlas of New Mexico, Historical Atlas of California, and Historical Atlas of the West.

Book American Fun

    Book Details:
  • Author : John Beckman
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2014-11-04
  • ISBN : 0345803779
  • Pages : 434 pages

Download or read book American Fun written by John Beckman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is an animated and wonderfully engaging work of cultural history that lays out America’s unruly past by describing the ways in which cutting loose has always been, and still is, an essential part of what it means to be an American. From the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Americans have defied their stodgy rules and hierarchies with pranks, dances, stunts, and wild parties, shaping the national character in profound and lasting ways. In the nation’s earlier eras, revelers flouted Puritans, Patriots pranked Redcoats, slaves lampooned masters, and forty-niners bucked the saddles of an increasingly uptight middle class. In the twentieth century, fun-loving Americans celebrated this heritage and pushed it even further: flappers “barney-mugged” in “petting pantries,” Yippies showered the New York Stock Exchange with dollar bills, and B-boys invented hip-hop in a war zone in the Bronx. This is the surprising and revelatory history that John Beckman recounts in American Fun. Tying together captivating stories of Americans’ “pursuit of happiness”—and distinguishing between real, risky fun and the bland amusements that paved the way for Hollywood, Disneyland, and Xbox—Beckman redefines American culture with a delightful and provocative thesis. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)