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History - American — page 2
1,087 public-domain history - american books, summarised. Page 2 of 23.

The Future of the American Negro
Booker T. Washington
Real economic independence and practical skill must precede political equality and intellectual distinction if a historically marginalized people are to secure a permanent home in the nation's civic life.

Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 02 (of 15), American (2)
Charles Morris
Centuries of conflict, ambition, and sudden twists of fortune shape the American continent long before it becomes a unified power.

History of the English People, Volume VIII: Modern England, 1760-1815
John Richard Green
Between the reign of George III and the fall of Napoleon, Britain transformed from an agrarian island into a world-dominating industrial and maritime power.

New York Times Current History
Various
Governments, soldiers, and citizens locked in global conflict attempt to explain, justify, and document the early months of the First World War.

The Conquest of Canada, Vol. 1
George Warburton
A stark structural divide defines the early history of North America: while English settlers built permanent, self-sustaining communities along the coast, the French erected a centralized feudal outpost strictly bound to the interests of the distant crown.

Old Mackinaw
W. P. (William Peter) Strickland
In the nineteenth century, the Straits of Mackinac served as the undisputed geographic heart of North American commerce, history, and spiritual life.

Blue Ridge Country
Jean Thomas
Deep within the isolated hollows of the Southern Highlands, a centuries-old culture shaped by rugged mountains, bloody feuds, and enduring oral traditions yields a surprisingly complex portrait of American life.

The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion, Volume 1
John Charles Dent
A entrenched oligarchy, a series of mounting official abuses, and a populace driven to the edge of revolt form the backdrop of this sharp, meticulous history of colonial misrule.

Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death
T. C. (Thomas Cooper) De Leon
This memoir offers a vivid, ground-level perspective on the Confederate experience, capturing the daily atmosphere and shifting fortunes of a society under siege from its inception to its final collapse.

History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens
George Washington Williams
The American Negro is not merely a subject of historical study, but a foundational thread in the tapestry of the Republic, possessing a heritage of resilience, intellect, and civic contribution that spans centuries.

The Greatest Highway in the World: Historical, Industrial and Descriptive Information of the Towns, Cities and Country Passed Through Between New York and Chicago Via the New York Central Lines. Based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica
New York Central Railroad Company
This guide chronicles the storied landscapes and industrial hubs along the rail route connecting New York and Chicago. It transforms a standard transit schedule into a rich narrative of American history and progress.

The Battle of New Orleans: including the Previous Engagements between the Americans
Z. F. (Zachariah Frederick) Smith
The decisive triumph at the Battle of New Orleans remains a testament to the grit of American frontiersmen against the refined, veteran might of the British Empire. This account chronicles the tactical mastery that secured the American frontier.

The United States Constitution
United States
This foundational charter outlines the essential architecture of a self-governing republic, establishing the distribution of power and the core responsibilities of a nascent federal authority.

Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California
Caroline C. Leighton
The rugged, untamed beauty of the Pacific Northwest serves as the backdrop for this observant chronicle of life on the frontier, where nature’s grandeur dictates the rhythm of daily existence.

Secret armies
John L. (John Louis) Spivak
An investigative journalist pulls back the curtain on a global network of Nazi saboteurs, secret agents, and propagandists working to destabilize democracies from within.

The liberty minstrel
George Washington Clark
A desperate, rhythmic call to conscience, this collection of antislavery songs transforms the political agitation of the 1840s into a visceral, musical plea for human dignity and immediate action.

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
This analysis of state-sanctioned violence and mob rule serves as a foundational text in American investigative journalism. It methodically dismantles the prevailing myths used to justify the extrajudicial murder of Black citizens in the post-Reconstruction South.

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851
Various
This collection offers a multifaceted glimpse into the mid-nineteenth-century American mind, blending historical reflection, scientific inquiry, and serialized fiction within a single periodical volume.

Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61
Abner Doubleday
A firsthand account of the tension and tactical maneuvering that defined the opening shots of the American Civil War from within the walls of a besieged federal outpost.

The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt
Oliver E. Remey
A bullet destined for the heart of a former president strikes a manuscript and a spectacle case instead, sparking an extraordinary collision between political fervor and individual delusion in the heart of Milwaukee.

The New Land: Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country
Elma Ehrlich Levinger
The American story, as it is often told, is a mosaic of arrivals and aspirations. Here, the focus shifts to the specific contributions, struggles, and persistent dreams of the Jewish people as they helped forge the identity of a young nation.

A short history of Pittsburgh
Samuel Harden Church
Deep amidst the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a strategic river junction evolves from a deadly colonial battleground into a titan of American industrial power.

The Indian Question
Francis Amasa Walker
A clear-eyed, policy-driven examination of the United States’ nineteenth-century Indigenous relations proposes that structural reform and humane governance must replace the twin failures of open warfare and empty promises.

Among the Pines
James R. (James Roberts) Gilmore
In the opening months of the American Civil War, a Northern traveler journeys deep into the coastal pine forests of South Carolina, where he encounters a society fractured by slavery, class divisions, and impending ruin.

Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery
N. D'Anvers
Centuries of ocean voyages, overland treks, and brutal encounters reshape a continent as European travelers push relentlessly across North American wilderness.

The story of the first trans-continental railroad
William Francis Bailey
An ambitious nation channels its post-war momentum into the dirt, iron, and mountains of the West, determined to bind two oceans together with rails.

The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
During the darkest winter of the American Civil War, a literary journal captures a nation wrestling with its own survival, balancing fierce political debate against the quiet rhythms of everyday life.

The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784: A Study of Frontier Ethnography
George D. Wolf
An isolated strip of Pennsylvania wilderness becomes an unexpected laboratory for frontier self-governance when squatter families establish their own legal code beyond the reach of colonial authority.

The county regiment
Dudley Landon Vaill
A quiet rural county in Connecticut answers the call of the Civil War, forging its local sons into a formidable regiment whose bloody trial through Virginia transforms simple farmhands and mechanics into hardened, unyielding veterans.

Colonial Records of Virginia
Various
Forged in starvation, harsh discipline, and the struggle for political self-determination, early English settlement takes shape through raw archival testimony.

The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
This dense collection of essays, fiction, and political commentary captures the intellectual pulse of the American North at the fever pitch of the Civil War. It offers an unflinching, contemporary look at the ideological and material currents of 1864.

New Ideals in Rural Schools
George Herbert Betts
The rural school stands at a critical crossroads, struggling to remain relevant in a rapidly changing agricultural landscape. This examination offers a blueprint for transforming these institutions into the vital social and intellectual centers of country life.

The Roswell Report: Case Closed
James McAndrew
The Roswell incident, a cornerstone of American folklore, receives a rigorous administrative accounting in this formal government report. It attempts to resolve decades of mystery by matching witness testimony against the historical record of Air Force operations.

The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon
Newell Dwight Hillis
The struggle for the soul of the twentieth century finds its most harrowing expression in the clash between the ideals of liberty and the systematized brutality of the German war machine.

The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements: Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts
Henry M. (Henry Mason) Brooks
Gleanings from the yellowed pages of early American newspapers reveal the daily heartbeat, peculiar humors, and unvarnished social customs of Boston and Salem. This collection serves as a time capsule, preserving the voice of the past.

The Kirk on Rutgers Farm
Frederick Brückbauer
This chronicle traces the century-long struggle of a historic Manhattan church to survive as its affluent congregants moved uptown, leaving behind a neighborhood of poverty and changing demographics.

Among the Sioux: A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas
R. J. (Robert J.) Creswell
These accounts of pioneering missionaries bring the vast, often brutal frontier of the 19th-century American Northwest into sharp focus through the lens of faith and cultural collision.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878
Various
This collection captures the diverse intellectual currents of late nineteenth-century American life, blending regional history, social commentary, and fiction into a singular, wide-ranging mosaic. It functions as a time capsule, preserving the varied curiosities and literary preoccupations of a sophisticated…

The Shame of the Cities
Lincoln Steffens
The American municipal system is not a tragedy of bad men, but a comedy of errors maintained by the voters themselves. It is a mirror held up to a nation that prefers the comforts of corruption to the labor of self-government.

Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
George Francis Dow
A window into the forgotten mechanics of daily survival in the seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay Colony, this work reconstructs the texture of early settler life through the debris of probate inventories and court records.

The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886: Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886
Various
A mosaic of New England life, this periodical captures the transition of a region tethered to its colonial roots while racing toward the industrial and social complexities of the late nineteenth century.

A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States: From the Earliest Beginning down to the Year 1848
George T. (George Tobias) Flom
The westward movement of early Norwegian pioneers transformed the American landscape, turning isolated wilderness into flourishing rural communities. These accounts chronicle the courageous journey of those who left their ancestral homes to build anew in the nineteenth-century Northwest.

American Prisoners of the Revolution
Danske Dandridge
The suffering of American prisoners during the Revolutionary War remains a harrowing, often overlooked chapter of history, marked by the systematic cruelty of British captors and the desperate, quiet defiance of those they held.

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
This collection offers a rare, panoramic view of American thought at a turning point in history, balancing urgent political advocacy with the quiet, earnest literary interests of the mid-nineteenth century.

Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects
Charles Wentworth Upham
When neighbor turns against neighbor under the weight of imagined spectral terrors, the breakdown of community reveals how thin the veneer of early American civilization truly was.

A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolomé de las Casas
An eye-witness account of Spanish conquest exposes how boundless European avarice reduced flourishing New World civilizations to desolate, ash-strewn wildernesses.

Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
United States. Warren Commission
An exhaustive official investigation reconstructs a national tragedy through forensic ballistics, witness testimonies, and psychological profiles. It transforms chaotic public trauma into a meticulous record of evidence, conspiracy analysis, and administrative self-scrutiny.

History of Atchison County, Kansas
Sheffield Ingalls
A frontier landscape unfolds into an organized, industrious county through six decades of political strife, pioneer endurance, and civic transformation along the banks of the Missouri River.