RESOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING

BEFORE JAMESTOWN

  • Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and Politics of Difference. (2010)

  • T. Patrick Culbert, Maya Civilization. (1993)

  • Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History. (2011)

  • Eric Foner, Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History. (2011)

  • Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony. (1984)

  • Philippa Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset. (2007)

  • Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, eds., The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. (2019)

  • Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600. (1971)

  • Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization: Volume B: 1300-1815. (2012)

  • Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (2001)

NATIVE AMERICANS, COLONISTS

& NATURE

  • Colin G. Calloway, The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. (1994)

  • William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. (2003)

  • Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. (2003)

  • Carolyn Merchant, The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History. (2002)

  • Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. (2001)

  • Theodore Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History. (2002)

  • Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (2001)

THE RISE & FALL OF PURITANISM

  • John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony. (1970)

  • Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700. (1991)

  • Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, eds., The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. (2019)

  • Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts: 1630-1650. (1959)

  • Edmund Sears Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea. (1965)

  • Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. (2002)

  • Darrett Bruce Rutman, American Puritanism: Faith and Practice. (1970)

  • Herbert W. Schneider, The Puritan Mind. (1958)

  • Stephen J. Stein, ed., The Cambridge History of Religions in America. (2012)

  • Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (2001)

ATLANTIC TRADE

  • Michael Beaud, A History of Capitalism, 1500-2000. (2001)

  • Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. (2010)

  • Colin G. Calloway, The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. (1994)

  • Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. (2003)

  • Sean M. Kelley, The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina. (2016)

  • Philippa Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset. (2007)

  • Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, eds., The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. (2019)

  • James A. Rawley and Stephen D. Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History. (2005)

  • Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. (2001)

  • Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (2001)

  • Thomas Wiedemann and Jane Gardner, eds., Representing the Body of the Slave. (2002)

SEVEN YEARS WAR

  • Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. (2001)

  • Fred Anderson, The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War. (2005)

  • Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History. (2011)

  • Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. (2001)

  • Timothy J. Shannon, The Seven Year’s War in North America: A Brief History. (2011)

  • Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization: Volume B: 1300-1815. (2012)

  • Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History. (2003)

INTERNAL REVOLUTION

  • Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People. (2004)

  • Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. (1990)

  • Mark Fiege, The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. (2012)

  • Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity. (1989)

  • Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic: 1763-89. (1967)

  • Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. (2002)

  • Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

  • Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution. (1993) 

CREATING THE GOVERNMENT

  • Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generations of Americans. (2000)

  • Kermit L. Hall, ed. Major Problems in American Constitutional History: Documents and Essays. (1992)

  • Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788. (1974)

  • Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789. (2013)

  • Bernard A. Weisberger, America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the First Contested Election. (2001)

  • Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History. (2003)

TWIN REVOLUTIONS

  • Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People. (2004)

  • Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generations of Americans. (2000)

  • Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. (2003)

  • Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. (1990)

  • Henry Box Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself. (1851; Google Books)

  • Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. (1990)

  • Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History. (2011)

  • Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. (2010)

  • Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century. (1981)

  • Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910. (2016)

  • Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity. (1989)

  • Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. (2007)

  • Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (June 1988): 9-39.

  • Louis Sandy Maisel, American Political Parties and Elections: A Very Short Introduction. (2016)

  • Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents. (1995)

  • Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815, 1846. (1991)

  • Alan Taylor, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850. (2021)

  • Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer 1966): 151-74.

  • Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. (2009)

  • Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York. (2016)

  • Baics, Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food

    in New York, 1790-1860 (2016)

  • Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York to 1889. (1999)

  • Charles Dickens, American Notes. (1898; Google Books)

  • Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. (2007)

  • John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. (1990)

  • Susan Elizabeth Lyman, The Story of New York: An Informal History of the City from Settlement to the Present Day. (1975)

  • Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City. (2014)

  • Richard Briggs Stott, Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City. (1990)

  • Wilson, Bee. Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats. (2008)

EARLY URBANIZATION

AMERICAN SLAVERY

  • Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generations of Americans. (2000)

  • Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. (2003)

  • Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. (1998)

  • David Blight, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. (2007)

  • David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation. (2014)

  • Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. (1789; Project Gutenberg)

  • Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. (1976)

  • Eddie S. Glaude, Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-century Black America. (2000)

  • Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910. (2016)

  • Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. (2007)

  • Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. (2005)

  • Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. (1977)

  • Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom. (2003)

  • Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815, 1846. (1991)

  • Irwin Silber, ed., Soldier Songs and Home-front Ballads of the Civil War. (1964)

  • Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (2001)

  • Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. (2009)

WESTWARD EXPANSION,

SLAVERY, AND SECESSION

  • David Blight, HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877. Yale University: Open Yale Courses. http://oyc.yale.edu/. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

  • Ernesto Chávez, The U.S. War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents. (2008)

  • William J. Cooper, The South and the Politics of Slavery: 1828-1856. (1978)

  • Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. (1995)

  • Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History. (2011)

  • Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910. (2016)

  • Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. (2007)

  • Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. (2005)

  • James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. (1988)

  • David M. Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861. (2011)

  • Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. (1950)

  • Alan Taylor, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850. (2021)

  • Jane Turner Censer, “Finding the Southern Family in the Civil War,” Journal of Social History 46, no. 1 (Fall 2012): 219-230.

  • Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. (2008)

  • Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. (1988)

  • James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. (1988)

  • Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr., The Families’ Civil War: Black Solders and the Fight for Racial Justice. (2022)

  • John Patrick Riley, “‘I love Country but I love my Family and Self Much Better’: The Emotional World of Civil War Family Men.” Civil War History 67, no 4 (Dec., 2021): 255-284.

  • Amy Murrell Taylor, The Divided Family in Civil War America. (2005)

  • Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer, 1966): 151-174.

FAMILIES IN THE CIVIL WAR