Traces the sources of power and large-scale organization of prehistoric peoples among Archaic societies.By focusing on the first instances of mound building, pottery making, fancy polished stone and bone, as well as specialized chipped stone, artifacts, and their widespread exchange, this book explores the sources of power and organization among Archaic societies. It investigates the origins of these technologies and their effects on long-term (evolutionary) and sh...

An artful portrait of a complex, formative figure in American history and his turbulent era, from a New York Times –bestselling author."A balanced, readable portrait. A refreshing perspective." — New York Times Book ReviewIn this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpr...

A "highly entertaining" culinary and social history of five immigrant families living in a turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York City tenement house ( New York Times )."A unique and aromatic narrative of New York's immigrant culture: with bread in the oven, steam rising from pots, and the family gathering round." —Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World

New York is a city of few boundaries, a city of well-known streets and blocks that ramble on and on, into our literature, dreams, and nightmares. We know the city by the byways that split it, streets like Broadway and Madison and Flatbush and Delancey. From those streets, peering down the blocks and up at the top floors, the city seems immense and endless.And though the land itself may end at the water, the city does not. Long before Broadway was a muddy cart track, the water was th...

Long before popular television shows such as Dirty Jobs and The Deadliest Catch, everyday men and women---the unsung heroes of the job world---toiled in important but mostly anonymous jobs. One of those jobs was deckhand on the ore boats.With numerous photographs and engaging stories, Deckhand offers an insider's view of both the mundane and the intriguing duties performed by deckhands on these gritty cargo vessels. Boisterous port saloons, monster ice ja...

Hook younger readers on early American history with this engaging collection of interlinked stories from literary master Nathaniel Hawthorne. Using a recurring motif of a beautifully crafted antique chair, Hawthorne weaves together tales of the founding days of New England and the United States.

The Founding Fathers who drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 distrusted political parties, popular democracy, centralized government, and a strong executive office. Yet the country's national politics have historically included all those features. In American Political History: A Very Short Introduction, Donald Critchlow takes on this contradiction between original theory and actual practice. This brief, accessible book explores the nature of the two-party system, key turning po...

“I want to be intelligent, even if I do live in Boston.”—an anonymous Bostonian, 1929In this spectacular romp through the Puritan City, Neil Miller relates the scintillating story of how a powerful band of Brahmin moral crusaders helped make Boston the most straitlaced city in America, forever linked with the infamous catchphrase “Banned in Boston.”Bankrolled by society’s upper crust, the New England Watch and Ward Society acted as a quasi-vigilante police force and ...

The New History in an Old Museum is an exploration of "historical truth" as presented at Colonial Williamsburg. More than a detailed history of a museum and tourist attraction, it examines the packaging of American history, and consumerism and the manufacturing of cultural beliefs. Through extensive fieldwork—including numerous site visits, interviews with employees and visitors, and archival research—Richard Handler and Eric Gable illustrate how corporate sensibility blends with ...

Four true stories of unexplained deaths and disappearances from Kentucky's past.Historians are like detectives—and some historical events are like cold cases that haven't been solved yet. This concise, clearly written book presents the stories of four mysteries of Kentucky history:• The disappearance of James Harrod, who told his wife he was going hunting in 1792 and never returned• The unknown fate of "Honest Dick" Tate, the nineteenth-century Kentu...

In these vignettes of life along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, the New York Times’s Constance Rosenblum examines the place of art in this community— its installation, its reception by local residents, and the debates that often surround it. From the growing popularity of European-style Art Deco in the 1930s and '40s, to the opinion of some Bronx residents that these modern additions were “ugly as hell,” and from public art criticized for controversial content to buildings revered...

In February 1909, a former United States Deputy Marshal was murdered near Ada, Oklahoma, by a cold-blooded assassin. His murder was one of many that had occurred in a county in which citizens were living among at least twenty assassins for hire.  Less than two months after the marshal’s death, four men who had been arrested for his murder were lynched by a mob of citizens.  In the middle of the night on April 19, 1909, the mob broke into the jailhouse in Ada, overpowere...