Download or read book True Stories from the American Past Since 1865 written by Altina Laura Waller and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages. This book was released on 1997 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume reader consists of original essays, with decade of American history represented by at least one essay. The stories cover a range of topics such as: popular culture; women's history; urban history; and the history of science and technology. The essays also shed light on political, social, economic and cultural trends.
Download or read book Still More Real American Stories written by Bob Quirk and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book contains almost fifty stories whose topics are drawn from world history, local history and family history. They cover the author's travel adventures and those of his family members. He writes about the local impact of big events such as World War II and of smaller things like a graduation ceremony or a drive-in movie. Big-city life and rural America each have stories included. Articles on sporting events are scattered throughout the book and include players and games ranging from local high school basketball through professional baseball.
Download or read book American Stories written by Kafū Nagai and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nagai Kafu is one of the greatest modern Japanese writers, but until now his classic collection, American Stories, based on his sojourn from Japan to Washington State, Michigan, and New York City in the early years of the twentieth century, has never been available in English. Here, with a detailed and insightful introduction, is an elegant translation of Kafu's perceptive and lyrical account. Like de Tocqueville a century before, Kafu casts a fresh, keen eye on vibrant and varied America—world fairs, concert halls, and college campuses; saloons, the immigrant underclass, and red-light districts. Many of his vignettes involve encounters with fellow Japanese or Chinese immigrants, some of whom are poorly paid laborers facing daily discrimination. The stories paint a broad landscape of the challenges of American life for the poor, the foreign born, and the disaffected, peopled with crisp individual portraits that reveal the daily disappointments and occasional euphorias of modern life. Translator Mitsuko Iriye's introduction provides important cultural and biographical background about Kafu's upbringing in rapidly modernizing Japan, as well as literary context for this collection. In the first story, "Night Talk in a Cabin," three young men sailing from Japan to Seattle each reveal how poor prospects, shattered confidence, or a broken heart has driven him to seek a better life abroad. In "Atop the Hill," the narrator meets a fellow Japanese expatriate at a small midwestern religious college, who slowly reveals his complex reasons for leaving behind his wife in Japan. Caught between the pleasures of America's cities and the stoicism of its small towns, he wonders if he can ever return home. Kafu plays with the contradictions and complexities of early twentieth-century America, revealing the tawdry, poor, and mundane underside of New York's glamour in "Ladies of the Night" while celebrating the ingenuity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom of the American city in "Two Days in Chicago." At once sensitive and witty, elegant and gritty, these stories provide a nuanced outsider's view of the United States and a perfect entrance into modern Japanese literature.
Download or read book The American Story 100 True Tales from American History written by Jennifer Armstrong and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2006-08-22 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American history comes alive in these 100 true stories that define our country. This magnificent treasury tells the story of America through 100 true tales. Some are tales of triumph—the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the Wright brothers taking to the air, Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. Some are tales of tragedy—the fate of the Donner Party, the great fire in Chicago, the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. There are stories of inventors and athletes and abolitionists and artists. Stories about struggling for freedom—again and again, in so many ways. With full-color illustrations on nearly every page and short, exciting stories, this book is perfect for browsing by the entire family. Notes at the end of each story direct readers to related stories. And a guide to thematic story arcs offers readers (and teachers) an easy way to follow their particular interests throughout the book. A treasure trove of a book that belongs in every home! “This lively and engaging collection of stories recounting American history is a wonderful gift not only to the children of this country but also their parents. I can’t wait to share it with my grandchildren.” —Tom Brokaw
Download or read book American Story written by Bob Dotson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “These are remarkable and poignant stories that need to be told.” —Ken Burns More than six million people watch Bob Dotson’s Emmy award-winning segment, American Story, on NBC’s Today Show. For the last four decades, Dotson has traveled the country searching out inspiring individuals who quietly perform everyday miracles. In the process, he has become the treasured cartographer of America’s heart and soul. Today’s news is overwhelmingly grim; it’s also told by journalists who travel in herds as they trail politicians and camp out at big stories. In American Story, Dotson shines a light on America’s neglected corners, introducing readers to the ordinary Americans who have learned to fix what really matters.
Download or read book Fantasyland written by Kurt Andersen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell How did we get here? In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. Over the course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails. Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE “This is a blockbuster of a book. Take a deep breath and dive in.”—Tom Brokaw “[An] absorbing, must-read polemic . . . a provocative new study of America’s cultural history.”—Newsday “Compelling and totally unnerving.”—The Village Voice “A frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping into their beards.”—The Guardian “This is an important book—the indispensable book—for understanding America in the age of Trump.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci
Download or read book Great American Short Stories written by Paul Negri and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features 19 gems in the American short-story tradition, including "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, "Bartleby" by Herman Melville, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, plus stories by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, Twain, others.
Download or read book The Real George Washington written by Jay A. Parry and published by National Center for Constitutional. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the country's first President through a biography and a compilation of quotes that cover such topics as John Adams, the American Revolution, liberty, taxation, and foreign relations.
Download or read book The New American Story written by Bill Bradley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Politics is stuck,” writes Bill Bradley, in this insightful, informative, and provocative book about America at a crossroads, but “idealism isn’t dead. It can be reawakened.” What will it take to make America a better, stronger, truer country? asks the bestselling author, former Knicks star, and onetime presidential candidate. Bill Bradley believes that America is at a teachable moment when we are compelled to reevaluate our political system, our leadership, our agenda as a nation, and ourselves as citizens. With clarity and urgency, Bradley shows why the story we are being told now about who we are as a people is not true. He then offers a new story about our nation, based on America’s rich heritage and his belief in the character of the American people. Bradley explores what changes need to be made in our parties, in our politics, and in citizen activism to ensure America’s future. He asserts that the American people are ready for the truth and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation. Writing from his own experience in politics and drawing on his knowledge of history, Bradley shows how the Republican Party has built a solid pyramid structure since the 1970s, at the base of which are money, ideas, and media, whereas the Democratic Party’s structure is an inverted pyramid, with too much emphasis put on the need for a charismatic leader to hold the pyramid up. Each party, for different reasons, fails to deal with the real issues that now confront America. This informed and inspiring call to action is addressed not only to the parties and elected leaders, but to citizens as well. Bradley proposes things every American can do to shape our nation’s future. He points out that if eighty percent of the electorate voted, instead of fifty percent, it would be the most important change in American politics since women got the vote. Now more than ever, he says, we need to embrace an “ethic of connectedness,” a combination of collective action and individual responsibility, to solve our nation’s most pressing problems, and he argues that the fate of all countries is bound together as never before. Writing today with the freedom of a private citizen, Bradley provides this transformative and eye-opening book about the danger and the promise of America’s choice at this crucial moment in the nation’s history.
Download or read book The American Story written by David M. Rubenstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-founder of The Carlyle Group and patriotic philanthropist 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 McCullough on John Adams — Jon Meacham on Thomas Jefferson — Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton — Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin — Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln — A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh — Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King — Robert Caro on Lyndon B. Johnson — Bob Woodward on Richard Nixon —And many others, including a special conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts Through his popular program The David Rubenstein Show, David Rubenstein has established himself as one of our most thoughtful interviewers. Now, in The American Story, David captures the brilliance of our most esteemed historians, as well as the souls of their subjects. The book features introductions by Rubenstein as well a foreword by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead our national library. Richly illustrated with archival images from the Library of Congress, the book is destined to become a classic for serious readers of American history. Through these captivating exchanges, these bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors offer fresh insight on pivotal moments from the Founding Era to the late 20th century.
Download or read book The Oxford Book of American Short Stories written by Joyce Carol Oates and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.
Download or read book Our American Story The Search for a Shared National Narrative written by Joshua A. Claybourn and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few decades, the complicated divides of geography, class, religion, and race created deep fractures in the United States, each side fighting to advance its own mythology and political interests. We lack a central story, a common ground we can celebrate and enrich with deeper meaning. Unable to agree on first principles, we cannot agree on what it means to be American. As we dismantle or disregard symbols and themes that previously united us, can we replace them with stories and rites that unite our tribes and maintain meaning in our American identity? Against this backdrop, Our American Story features leading thinkers from across the political spectrum—Jim Banks, Pulitzer Prize–winner David W. Blight, Spencer P. Boyer, Eleanor Clift, John C. Danforth, Cody Delistraty, Richard A. Epstein, Nikolas Gvosdev, Cherie Harder, Jason Kuznicki, Gerard N. Magliocca, Markos Moulitsas, Ilya Somin, Cass R. Sunstein, Alan Taylor, James V. Wertsch, Gordon S. Wood, and Ali Wyne. Each draws on expertise within their respective fields of history, law, politics, and public policy to contribute a unique perspective about the American story. This collection explores whether a unifying story can be achieved and, if so, what that story could be. Purchase the audio edition.
Download or read book Strangers in Their Own Land written by Arlie Russell Hochschild and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump "A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book." —Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, "Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild's 'strangers in their own land' and a new elite." Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called "humble and important" by David Brooks and "masterly" by Atul Gawande, Hochschild's book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition features a new afterword by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and also includes a readers' group guide at the back of the book.
Download or read book Little America written by Epic and published by MCD. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the pages of Epic magazine come the true stories that Inspired the Apple Original Series. Includes nearly a hundred color photographs and a Foreword by Kumail Nanjiani. Nearly everyone in America came from somewhere else. This is a fundamental part of the American idea—an identity and place open to everyone. People arrive from all points distant, speaking a thousand languages, carrying every culture, each with their own reason for uprooting themselves to try something new. Everyone has their own unique story. Little America is a collection of those stories, told by the people who lived them. Together, they form a wholly original, at times unexpected portrait of America’s immigrants—and thereby a portrait of America itself.
Download or read book American Histories written by John Edgar Wideman and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A powerful assemblage of short stories exploring late-in-life angst through personal myth, cultural memory, and riffs on an empire scorched by its own hubris” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from award-winning author John Edgar Wideman—his first collection in more than a decade. “Race and its reverberations are at the core of this slim, powerful volume, a blend of fiction, memoir, and reimagined history, in which the boundaries between those forms are murky and ever shifting” (The Boston Globe). In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country. In “JB & FD,” Wideman reimagines conversations between John Brown, the antislavery crusader, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and orator—conversations that produce a fantastical, rich correspondence that spans years and ideologies. “Maps and Ledgers” eavesdrops on a brother and sister today as they ponder their father’s killing of another man. “Williamsburg Bridge” sits inside a man sitting on a bridge who contemplates his life before he decides to jump. “My Dead” is a story about how the already-departed demand more time, more space in the lives of those who survive them. American Histories is “an important addition to Wideman’s body of writing and a remarkable demonstration of his ability to address social issues through a range of fictional forms and styles” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). An extended meditation on family, history, and loss, American Histories weaves together historical fact, philosophical wisdom, and deeply personal vignettes. This is Wideman at his best—emotionally precise and intellectually stimulating—an extraordinary collection by a master.
Download or read book American Stories written by Calvin Trillin and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 1991 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these, "the sort of stories you might tell in front of a fire", Calvin Trillin brings together twelve funny, troubling, moving and always revealing narratives--extended pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker over the past seven years.
Download or read book Journeys written by Andrew Tisch and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every family has a story of how they arrived in America, whether it was a few months, years, decades, or centuries ago. Journeys: An American Story celebrates the vastness and variety of immigration tales in America, featuring seventy-two essays about the different ways we got here. This is a collection of family lore, some that has been passed down through generations, and some that is being created right now. Journeys captures the quintessential idea of the American dream. The individuals in this book are only a part of the brilliant mosaic of people who came to this country and made it what it is today. Read about the governor’s grandfathers who dug ditches and cleaned sewers, laying the groundwork for a budding nation; how a future cabinet secretary crossed the ocean at age eleven on a cargo ship; about a young boy who fled violence in Budapest to become one of the most celebrated American football players; the girl who escaped persecution to become the first Vietnamese American woman ever elected to the US congress; or the limo driver whose family took a seventy-year detour before finally arriving at their original destination, along with many other fascinating tales of extraordinary and everyday Americans. In association with the New-York Historical Society, Andrew Tisch and Mary Skafidas have reached out to a variety of notable figures to contribute an enlightening and unique account of their family’s immigration story. All profits will be donated to the New-York Historical Society and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation. Featuring Essays by: Alan Alda Arlene Alda Tony Bennett Cory Booker Michael Bloomberg Barbara Boxer Elaine Chao Andrew Cuomo Ray Halbritter Jon Huntsman Wes Moore Stephanie Murphy Deborah Norville Dr. Mehmet Oz Nancy Pelosi Gina Raimondo Tim Scott Jane Swift Marlo Thomas And many more!
