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History - American — page 5
1,206 public-domain history - american books, summarised. Page 5 of 26.

The Mayflower and Her Log; July 15, 1620-May 6, 1621
Azel Ames
Against heavy sea, conspiracy, and crippling winter, a small ship sets out for a new world. This rigorous historical account reveals the true logistics, political intrigue, and human costs behind the voyage that reshaped America.

Montreal, 1535-1914. Vol. 1. Under the French Régime, 1535-1760
William H. (William Henry) Atherton
Amid river mists and forest shadows, a frail outpost on the St. Lawrence grows into a fortified bastion, where religious idealism, imperial greed, and frontier warfare collision-course to remake a continent.

Scotland's Mark on America
George Fraser Black
Driven by religious conviction, economic necessity, and an untamed spirit of independence, Scottish immigrants crossed the Atlantic to systematically shape the civic, industrial, and cultural bedrock of the emerging American republic.

Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America: Two Hundred and Fifty Tunes and Texts, with an Introduction and Notes
Unknown
Centuries of sacred folk melodies, long preserved in rural Southern songbooks and communal singing schools, find their meticulous chronicler in George Pullen Jackson's foundational recovery of early American spiritual music.

The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire
Charles Morris
When disaster strikes, human endurance and natural law collide with overwhelming force. This record captures the devastating 1906 San Francisco catastrophe alongside the planet's most terrifying historical convulsions.

History of the Buccaneers of America
James Burney
An unsparing maritime history exposes how raw greed, colonial cruelty, and lawless opportunism forged the brutal brotherhood of West Indian sea-rovers.

British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII: January and April, 1871
Various
Mid-nineteenth-century intellectual vigor animates this volume, where rigorous British minds dissect global politics, scripture, press ethics, and monetary policy through deeply argued, sweeping reviews.

The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Dean C. (Dean Conant) Worcester
An insider’s record of early American colonial governance reveals the complex, contentious, and raw reality of administering a newly acquired tropical archipelago.

Seaport in Virginia: George Washington's Alexandria
Gay Montague Moore
A love letter to the architecture and inhabitants of a colonial port, this work recreates the vanished world of 18th-century Alexandria through the stones and stories that remain.

The Stephens Family: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens
Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
A sprawling chronicle of frontier migration, early American conflict, and multi-generational ties unfolds across two centuries of births, marriages, and westward movement.

"1683-1920": The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them—Foreign Propaganda in the Public Schools—Rewriting the History of the United States—The Espionage Act and How It Worked—"Illegal and Indefensible Blockade" of the Central Powers—1,000,000 Victims of Starvation—Our Debt to France and to Germany—The War Vote in Congress—Truth About the Belgian Atrocities—Our Treaty with Germany and How Observed—The Alien Property Custodianship—Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes—Racial Strains in American Life—Germantown Settlement of 1683 and a Thousand Other Topics
Frederick Franklin Schrader
This polemic challenges the official wartime narrative of the early 20th century, arguing that American history and public opinion were being systematically distorted to serve British geopolitical interests.

King Philip: Makers of History
John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
Before New England towns grew calm, two worlds tore each other apart in the shadows of an untamed wilderness.

The Story of the Great War, Volume 7: American Food and Ships
Unknown
A global war turns on logisticians and mud, shifting from eastern collapses to the fresh weight of American iron.

The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest
Holland Thompson
A sweeping survey traces how practical ingenuity, mechanical trial, and human persistence transformed primitive wilderness tools into the interconnected machines of modern industrial civilization.

Confederate Military History - Volume 5 (of 12): A Library of Confederate States History
Ellison Capers
This volume serves as a comprehensive, state-focused chronicle of the American Civil War, detailing the military contributions of South Carolina’s soldiers from the initial secession at Fort Sumter through the grueling final campaigns.

Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs
Samuel Adams Drake
Taverns were once the heartbeat of colonial Boston, serving as the essential meeting grounds where politics, commerce, and social life converged before the modern age dissolved the institution of the inn.

Stories of the Badger State
Reuben Gold Thwaites
From the arrival of French fur traders to the formation of a state, this collection illuminates the pivotal, often turbulent events that shaped the frontier of the American Midwest.

Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents relating to
Francis S. (Francis Samuel) Drake
The harbor of Boston becomes a teapot as colonial resistance boils over against taxation without representation. This collection of primary documents preserves the raw, frantic, and decisive moments of a turning point in American history.

Congressional government
Woodrow Wilson
The American political system functions not through the visible leadership of a President, but through a fragmented, hidden network of legislative committees. Understanding this mechanism is essential for grasping the reality of national power.

Washington's Road (Nemacolin's path) the First Chapter of the Old French War
Archer Butler Hulbert
A young George Washington carves a path through the Appalachian wilderness, inadvertently igniting a global conflict that would determine the fate of the American continent.

Mother Earth: Land Grants in Virginia, 1607-1699
Walter Stitt Robinson
The promise of free land acted as the primary engine for English colonization in the seventeenth century, drawing settlers to Virginia with the prospect of economic independence and newfound social status. This study examines how those promises were formalized, manipulated, and ultimately transformed.

Dixie After the War: An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing in the South, During the Twelve Years Succeeding the Fall of Richmond
Myrta Lockett Avary
This account captures the turbulent decade following the Civil War, offering a window into the social and political upheaval that reshaped the American South. It documents a landscape defined by loss, resentment, and a difficult, faltering transition.

The Conquest of a Continent
Madison Grant
This work attempts a comprehensive racial history of the American continent, arguing that the character of the nation is fundamentally the product of its early European settlers.

Federal Bureau of Investigation FOIA Documents - Unidentified Flying Objects
United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation
The files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation offer an unvarnished window into the summer of 1947, when a sudden wave of "flying disc" sightings gripped the American public and forced the government to scramble for a response.

The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A Victorian traveler documents his arduous trek across the American wilderness to the isolated, burgeoning capital of a controversial new faith, providing an unflinching look at a society on the edge of the frontier.

American Military Insignia, 1800-1851
Campbell, J. Duncan, (James Duncan)
Metal plates, stamped eagles, and silvered stars chronicle the transformation of early American military force from loose regional volunteers into a disciplined national institution.

The Victory At Sea
Burton Jesse Hendrick
The survival of the Allied cause in the First World War hinged on a desperate, unseen struggle against German submarines. This account reveals how a coalition of naval forces finally broke the blockade of the Atlantic.

History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times
Gustavus Myers
The vast American fortunes are not the singular products of thrift and industry, but the logical, inevitable results of a social system built to despoil the many for the benefit of a few.

Diary in America, Series One
Frederick Marryat
A seasoned traveler ventures across the Atlantic to decode the complex, contradictory character of a young republic. These observations provide an unvarnished, often sharp-tongued portrait of American life in the late 1830s.

Foot-prints of a letter carrier
James Rees
The history of the mail is a story of human connection, tracing how a simple message between two people evolved into a vast, complex engine of modern government.

The Printer in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Life & Times, & of His Craft
Parke Rouse
In eighteenth-century Williamsburg, the printing office was more than a shop; it was the nerve center of a colony and the primary vessel for the revolutionary ideas that would soon reshape a nation. This account chronicles the craft, the politics, and the daily lives of the men and women who held the press.

The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny
Orestes Augustus Brownson
The American Republic serves as a profound meditation on the nature of government, arguing that the United States is not a mere contractual agreement, but a providential, territorial unity bound by an unwritten constitution.

The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado
Emerson Hough
The American frontier was defined as much by its lawless figures as by its expansionists, creating a singular breed of violence that remains etched in the national consciousness.

A History of the United States
Charles Kendall Adams
Three distinct motives drive this sweep of American history: treating the South's constitutional arguments with evenhanded gravity, evaluating British colonial governance without simple patriotic bias, and placing the Western frontier at the absolute center of national growth.

The History of the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia
S. J. (Silvanus Jackson) Quinn
A local chronicle of Virginia’s development, this work preserves the civic memory of a historic settlement from its early colonial roots through the turbulence of the Civil War. It serves as a repository for the town's lineage and institutional heritage.

A History of the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, Volume II
Stephen M. Ostrander
This detailed chronicle traces the transformation of Brooklyn from a collection of sleepy, post-revolutionary Dutch hamlets into a bustling, modernized nineteenth-century metropolis and significant American cultural hub.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels
Robert Kerr
Crossing uncharted seas to link distant worlds, early navigators charted a new global geography through daring, ambition, and sheer survival.

The City of the Mormons
Henry Caswall
A frontier river trip becomes an eyewitness exposure of religious delusion when an English clergyman crosses the Mississippi to confront a self-proclaimed prophet face-to-face.

Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826. v. 1-2
Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Bernhard
A high-ranking German aristocrat tours a young United States, examining its emerging institutions, raw wilderness, and complex social systems with the cool precision of a military officer and the keen curiosity of an enlightened observer.

Customs and Fashions in Old New England
Alice Morse Earle
Amid raw winter winds, cramped log dwellings, and severe pulpit admonitions, early American settlers fashioned a vibrant, highly particular, and deeply resilient domestic existence out of the wilderness.

The Southern South
Albert Bushnell Hart
An outsider explores the American South, examining its land, its economy, and the bitter divide between its black and white citizens.

France and England in North America, Part II: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century
Francis Parkman
A band of seventeenth-century French Jesuits marches into the deep North American wilderness, armed only with rosaries and conviction, seeking to transform native souls before a brutal intertribal war consumes them all.

Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2
Edmund Flagg
A sweeping journey through the American West captures a continent in transition, where wild landscapes, vanishing frontier posts, and devout missionary encounters meet.

The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Harriet Beecher Stowe
When human minds encounter the unexplained, fear and fascination struggle for mastery. This volume traces how society moves from burning supposed witches in horror to seeking comfort in unseen spiritual forces.

The Story of the Philippines: Natural Riches, Industrial Resources, Statistics of Productions, Commerce and Population
Murat Halstead
A journalist travels across oceans to capture the immediate, turbulent birth of American empire at the end of the nineteenth century.

A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3
De Alva Stanwood Alexander
Behind the grand narratives of national democracy lies a complex engine of personal rivalries, party machinery, and political maneuvering that shapes a state and defines American power across more than a century.

The Boys of '98
James Otis
A swift-moving chronicle of maritime tension and land battles, this volume captures the sudden clash of empires that defined a pivotal year in global power.

Chronicles of border warfare
Alexander Scott Withers
Blood and hardwood smoke drift through the upper Ohio Valley, where two worlds clash for a continent. In these wilderness chronicles, settlement is bought one clearing, one stockade, and one reprisal at a time.