Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (104 page)

Carroll, Andrew, ed.
Letters from a Nation.
New York: Kodansha, 1997. Collection of personal letters, by both the celebrated and the obscure, spanning 350 years of American history. A wonderful personal view of history.

Colbert, David, ed.
Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of American History in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen.
New York: Pantheon, 1997. Documentary narratives and eyewitness accounts that create a fascinating and human montage of actual events, both famous and less familiar. Like the letters above, it brings a vividly personal side to the historical record.

Cook, Chris, with Whitney Walker.
The Facts on File World Political Almanac: From 1945 to Present
(4th ed.). New York: Checkmark, 2001. Valuable reference to contemporary events in international politics, including treaties, elections, and political terms.

Cowan, Tom, and Jack Maguire.
Timelines of African-American History: 500 Years of Black Achievement.
New York: Roundtable/Perigee, 1994. Useful reference presenting year-by-year landmarks in black history in America.

Cunliffe, Marcus.
The Presidency.
New York: American Heritage, 1968. A thematic approach rather than a simple chronology, this is the work of a historian who analyzes the men who shaped the office.

Eskin, Blake, and the editors of
George
magazine.
The Book of Political Lists.
New York: Villard, 1998. An irreverent and entertaining reference guide, dealing with everything from presidents with royal blood to openly gay politicians.

Davis, Kenneth C.
America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation.
New York: Smithsonian/HarperCollins, 2008. Explores six little-known stories, from the European arrival through the Revolution.

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A Nation Rising: Untold Tales of Flawed Founders, Fallen Heroes, and Forgotten Fighters from America’s Hidden History.
New York: Harper-
Collins, 2010. The first fifty years of the nineteenth century through six dramatic tales that most textbooks leave out.

Evans, Sara M.
Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America.
New York: Free Press, 1989. A good overview of women’s roles in the making of the country.

Fitzgerald, Frances.
America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. A revealing study of the textbooks that shaped American impressions of our history.

Friedman, Lawrence M.
Crime and Punishment in American History.
New York: Basic Books, 1993. A panoramic overview of crime and punishment from colonial days to modern times.

Greenberg, Ellen.
The House and Senate Explained: The People’s Guide to Congress.
New York: Norton, 1996. A simple reference guide to the procedures and practices of Congress.

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The Supreme Court Explained.
New York: Norton, 1997. A simple guide to the mysteries of how the nation’s highest court gets, hears, and decides cases.

Grun, Bernard.
The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. A chronology of world history, tracing developments in politics, culture, science, and other fields. Useful for seeing American history in the larger context of world events.

Heffner, Richard D.
A Documentary History of the United States.
New York: New American Library, 1985. American history through major speeches, writings, court decisions, and other written documents.

Hirsch, E. D., Jr.
Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. What we don’t know and why.

Hirsch, E. D., Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil.
The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. What we need to know, in bite-size portions.

Hofstadter, Richard, and Clarence L. Ver Steeg.
Great Issues in American History: From Settlement to Revolution, 1584–1776.
New York: Vintage, 1958. This and the succeeding volumes in the series are a presentation of history through major writings, speeches, and court decisions, with interpretive essays.

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Great Issues in American History: From the Revolution to the Civil War, 1765–1865.
New York: Vintage, 1958.

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Great Issues in American History: From Reconstruction to the Present Day, 1864–1981.
New York: Vintage, 1982.

Hoxie, Frederick E., ed.
Encyclopedia of North American Indians.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Excellent reference with entries covering all aspects of Indian life in North America, from prehistoric to modern times.

Hoyt, Edwin P.
America’s Wars and Military Excursions.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987. An encyclopedic but entertaining overview of America’s battles, large and small, naughty and nice.

Hymowitz, Carol, and Michele Weissman.
A History of Women in America.
New York: Bantam, 1978. A useful overview of women’s achievements and their role in American history and society.

Irons, Peter.
A People’s History of the Supreme Court.
New York: Viking Penguin, 1999. History of the Court from a contrarian perspective.

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr.
500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians.
New York: Knopf, 1994. A lavishly illustrated companion book to a television documentary recounting American history from the Native American point of view.

Kennedy, Randall.
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.
New York: Pantheon, 2002. A fascinating small book that traces the origins and use of this controversial word.

Kohn, George Childs, ed.
The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal.
New York: Facts on File, 2001. From Abscam to the Zenger case, and everything in between, including the Lewinsky scandal and the O. J. Simpson case.

Lavender, David.
The American Heritage History of the West.
New York: American Heritage, 1965. Glossy pictorial history with much useful information, though somewhat dated now.

Lipsky, Seth.
The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide.
New York: Basic Books, 2009. Handy guide to the meaning behind the words of America’s rule of law.

McEvedy, Colin.
The Penguin Atlas of North American History to 1870.
New York: Penguin, 1988. Using a progressively changing map of North America, the author traces the course of American history from prehistory to the Civil War.

McPherson, James M., general ed.
“To the Best of My Ability”: The American Presidents.
New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.

Miller, Nathan.
Star-Spangled Men: America’s Ten Worst Presidents.
New York: Scribner, 1998. Can you guess who the ten worst are? An entertaining, no-holds-barred, and very subjective list that includes Carter, Taft, Coolidge, Grant, and Nixon. Kennedy and Jefferson don’t make the list, but get special treatment as “overrated.”

Morison, Samuel Eliot.
The Oxford History of the American People.
London: Oxford University Press, 1965. This is history pretty much the way you may have learned it in school, a highly traditional approach that tends to skim over the unsavory moments in American history and celebrates the nobility of American progress.

Ravitch, Diane, and Chester Finn.
What Do Our Seventeen-Year-Olds Know?
New York: Harper and Row, 1987. This is the controversial study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, that created a furor when its findings were released showing an astonishing lack of fundamental knowledge of American history and literature among high school juniors.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., general ed.
The Almanac of American History
(rev. and updated ed.). New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993. From 986 to 1982, a day-by-day compendium of events, with introductory essays and brief entries on major people and events in American history. A valuable general reference book.

Shenkman, Richard.
Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power, and Got Things Done.
New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Interesting behind-the-scenes look at power in the White House.

Spitzer, Robert J., ed.
The Politics of Gun Control
(2nd ed.). New York: Seven Bridges, 1998. A collection of scholarly and journalistic articles relating to the history and meaning of the Second Amendment.

Wade, Wyn Craig.
The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Traces the development of the Klan from post–Civil War days to modern times.

Waldman, Carl.
Atlas of the North American Indian
(rev. ed.). New York: Facts on File, 2000.

Weiner, Tim.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.
New York: Random House, 2008. National Book Award winner, a grim history of the gross failures of the agency, including those in the run-up to 9/11 and the Iraq War.

Whitney, David C.
The American Presidents.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985. A very basic reference to the American presidents through Reagan, with biographical sketches and a brief overview of events during each administration.

Williams, T. Harry.
The History of American Wars: From 1745 to 1918.
New York: Knopf, 1985. Unfinished at the time of the author’s death, this book presents a solid historical interpretation of events in America’s wars.

World Almanac.
The Little Red, White, and Blue Book.
New York: Pharos, 1987. A brief chronology of American history from Columbus on.

Zinn, Howard.
A People’s History of the United States.
New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Looking at American history from the view of the “losers” (Indians, women, blacks, the poor, etc.), this is revisionist history at its best, and serves as a useful and necessary corrective to such traditional views as those of Morison and other standard American historians.

CHAPTER 1. BRAVE NEW WORLD

Bailyn, Bernard.
The Peopling of British North America.
New York: Knopf, 1986.

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Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution.
New York: Knopf, 1986.

Boorstin, Daniel J.
The Americans: The Colonial Experience.
New York: Random House, 1958.