Charles Swett (1828-1910) was a prosperous Vicksburg merchant and small plantation owner who was reluctantly drawn into secession but then rallied behind the Confederate cause, serving with distinction in the Confederate Army. After the war some of Swett's peers from Mississippi and other southern states invited him to explore the possibility of settling in British Honduras or the Republic of Honduras.Confederates in the Tropics uses Swett's 1868 travelogue to explore the ...

Charles Swett (1828–1910) was a prosperous Vicksburg merchant and small plantation owner who was reluctantly drawn into secession but then rallied behind the Confederate cause, serving with distinction in the Confederate Army. After the war some of Swett’s peers from Mississippi and other southern states invited him to explore the possibility of settling in British Honduras or the Republic of Honduras.Confederates in the Tropics uses Swett’s 1868 travelogue to explore the ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2014Discover the story of a real-life Captain Ahab of the slave trade, in a landmark book by one of today’s most original and highly acclaimed historiansOne morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, seal hunter and abolitionist Captain Amasa Delano climbed aboard the Tryal, a distressed Spanish slaver. He spent all day on the ship, sharing food and water, yet...

A National Book Award Nominee and a Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.Over the centuries, Florida has been many things: an unconquered realm protected by geography, a wilderness that ruined Spanish conquistadors, “God’s waiting room,” and a place to start over. Depopulated after the extermination of its original native population, today it’s home to nineteen million. The site of vicious racial violence, including massacres, slavery, and the r...

In the traditional narrative of American colonial history, early European settlements, as well as native peoples and African slaves, were treated in passing as unfortunate aberrations in a fundamentally upbeat story of Englishmen becoming freer and more prosperous by colonizing an abundant continent of "free land." Over the last generation, historians have broadened our understanding of colonial America by adopting both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-continental perspective, examining the in...

In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and, most notably, brought Texas into the Union, bluffed Great Britain out of the lion’s share of Oregon...

The history of slavery is central to understanding the history of the United States. Slavery and the Making of America offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves. Readers will discover a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Recon...

Until very recently, the idea of ancient Jewish sciences would have been considered unacceptable. Since the 1990s, Early Modern and Medieval Science in Jewish sources has been actively studied, but the consensus was that no real scientific themes could be found in earlier Judaism. This work points them out in detail and posits a new field of research: the scientific activity evident in the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Jewish pseudepigrapha. The publication of new texts and new analyses of ol...

**A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian’s "breathtakingly original" (Junot Diaz) reinterpretation of the eight decades surrounding the Civil War. "Capatious [and] buzzing with ideas." --The Boston GlobeVolume 3 in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner**In this ambitious story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Steven Hahn takes on the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and ...

Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913 presents a straightforward, balanced, and comprehensive history of American international relations from the American Revolution to 1913. Howard Jones demonstrates the complexities of the decision-making process that led to the rise and decline of the United States (relative to the ascent of other nations) in world power status. Howard Jones focuses on the personalities, security interests, and expansionist tendenc...

"Jason M. Colby has researched and analyzed his topic―the business of empire―well. He exposes the intertwining of imperialism, expansion, racism, and corporate power. The Business of Empire is an insightful story about the interaction of U.S. overseas business and the U.S. and Central American governments. It will prove useful to scholars of U.S. imperialism, international business history, and U.S.–Central American relations for generations."

It is not too much to assert that most of our countrymen acquire at school all the knowledge they possess of the past history of their country. In view of this fact it is most desirable that a history of the United States for elementary schools should present not only the essential features of our country's progress which all should learn, but also many things of secondary consequence which it is well for every young American to know.