Trade Books for Courses :: Trade Books For Courses: History Books

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The Day Freedom Died

The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction

Charles Lane Holt Paperbacks

"A former Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post, [Lane] is perfectly comfortable with the play of politics and the intricacies of the law. So while he builds an absorbing narrative of events in Colfax—his chapter on the massacre itself is riveting—he's careful to frame them within the political wars then raging in New Orleans and Washington . . . he manages to turn the case, United States v. Cruikshank, into a legal thriller, complete with crusading lawyers, courtroom confrontations and soaring declarations of principle . . . Colfax's whites dedicated the monument to their dead on a drab day in the spring of 1921. By then white supremacy was so firmly entrenched it had become a point of pride, something to celebrate in stone. And the town's whites undoubtedly thought it just as well not to mention the bones buried in unmarked graves around the Colfax courthouse. The time for silence has long since passed. Colfax will probably never build an obelisk to honor the massacre's victims. But with his gripping book, Charles Lane has given them a memorial every bit as imposing."—Kevin Boyle, The New York Times Book Review

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For the Soul of Mankind

The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War

Melvyn P. Leffler Hill and Wang

"With a keen eye for telling detail, a concern for the choices of individual leaders, and careful judgments, Leffler generates a narrative that carries the reader along as it develops important new ideas. This landmark study transcends many of our standard arguments about the Cold War to focus on what it was really about. Driving much of the maneuvering for security and advantage was the struggle over which political system could meet people’s needs and produce a better society."—Robert Jervis, Columbia University

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American Historical Association George Louis Beer Prize

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Awards

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Redemption

The Last Battle of the Civil War

Nicholas Lemann Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"Written on a dramatic human sale, and leavened by some fresh research and analysis, it is an arresting piece of popular history . . . It offers a vigorous, necessary reminder of how racist reaction bred an American terrorism that suppressed black political activity and crushed Reconstruction in the South. And it illuminates the often bloody fights over black voting rights that would recur for a century to come—and remain, even today, a source of partisan strife, albeit without paramilitary gunfire and with the party labels reversed."—Sean Wilentz, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

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To Conquer Hell

The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 The Epic Battle That Ended the First World War

Edward G. Lengel Holt Paperbacks

"We're all familiar with D-Day, as we should be. But who knows anything about America's vital, bloodiest battle in World War I? In a six weeks of autumn 1918, we suffered more than 120,000 casualties—26,000 dead—in the successful fight to oust the Germans from France's Meuse-Argonne region, leading to the Armistice. Fighting raged in swamps, towns and hills and Lengel captures the horror and the heroism in this chapter of American history that deserves to be remembered."—Billy Heller, The New York Post

Hardcover :
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Beaumarchais

A Biography

Maurice Lever; Translated from the French by Susan Emanuel Farrar, Straus and Giroux

"This erudite and wry biography covers the full range of [Beaumarchais's] occupations, including watchmaking, espionage, pamphleteering, and transatlantic trade. Born into a modest family, he clambered into court society largely through charm and smart taste in consorts; even the name Beaumarchais was borrowed from one of his wives. But social success didn’t blunt his populist instincts or the 'insane courage' with which he expressed them. One play derided the nobility for taking 'the trouble to be born and nothing else,' and it was as much sympathy with democratic ideals as desire for profit, Lever argues, that led Beaumarchais to supply guns for the American Revolution."—The New Yorker

Trade Paperback : $16.00 Buy	Half Slave and Half Free, Revised Edition The Roots of Civil War Bruce Levine; Revised Edition; With a New Preface and Afterword Hill and Wang "A solid introduction to antebellum social structure . . . [One would] be hard put to find a more accessible introduction to the social progresses that were coincident with the coming of the Civil War."—Jane H. Pease, The Journal of American History

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Bella Abzug

How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way

Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"Abzug was certainly a major player in our change in attitudes in the second part of the past century [and] Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom give us a fascinating glimpse into [an] inspirational but undeniably peculiar period that is receding, all too quickly, into the past."—Carolyn See, The Washington Post

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Audio

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W.E.B. Du Bois

A Biography

David Levering Lewis A John Macrae/Holt Paperbacks Book

David Levering Lewis has carved one volume out of his superlative two-volume biography of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America, who set the standard for historical scholarship on this era.

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National Book Awards - Finalist
National Book Awards - Finalist
Pulitzer Prize - Winner
Pulitzer Prize - Winner

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Awards

Hardcover :
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The Shadows of Youth

The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation

Andrew B. Lewis Hill and Wang

Through the lives of Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, Bob Zellner, Julian Bond, Marion Barry, John Lewis, and their contemporaries, The Shadows of...

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Hardcover :
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The Retail Revolution

How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business

Nelson Lichtenstein Metropolitan Books

"Nelson Lichtenstein has written the book on Wal-Mart. You can read it as a sober indictment of the rogue company that happens also to be the world’s largest corporation. Or you can read it as a brilliantly reported case study in what’s gone wrong with the American—and the global—economy. Either way, you will read it, as I did, with complete fascination."—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

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First Class Citizenship

The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson

Michael G. Long, editor Holt Paperbacks

"First Class Citizenship is a rich and impressive reminder of how a courageous, pioneering athlete can also become an insistent and independent-minded political activist on behalf of human rights for all."—David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

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China's Great Train

Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet

Abrahm Lustgarten St. Martin's Griffin

"Following the lives of two engineers and a doctor, Lustgarten chronicles an incredible feat of modern engineering: the construction of a railway connecting Tibet to the rest of China . . . Lustgarten translates the palpable excitement of being a builder in a nation where builders rule. He also accomplishes something more valuable: He provides insight into the seat-of-the-pants nature of many of China's massive schemes."—John Pomfret, The Washington Post

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Origins

A Memoir

Amin Maalouf; Translated from the French by Catherine Temerson Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"Along comes Amin Maalouf with his lovely, complex memoir, Origins, to remind us that Arab identity is as fluid, unsettled and ever-changing as the Mediterranean Sea where it kisses the shores of Lebanon, his country of origin, and France, where he has lived for the last 30 years . . . Maalouf doesn’t only want to illuminate family history or amplify stories barely whispered for a hundred years; instead, he strives to reveal the fecund variety of his own family, of Arab life and history, of history itself. In doing so, he offers a lesson in the value of impermanence and shifting sands . . . Maalouf wants nothing more than to unwind the long scarf of memory and history, not to make a claim, but in celebration of human dignity, endeavor and 'wanderers who have lost their way.' He is one of that small handful of writers, like David Grossman and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who are indispensable to us in our current crisis."—Jonathan Wilson, The New York Times Book Review

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Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning

1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City

Jonathan Mahler Picador

"Entertaining and illuminating . . . Mahler marshals his evidence well . . . By using the Yankees as a central metaphor for the city's fortunes, Mahler is able to draw a nuanced portrait of this wild year."—Jon Meacham, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

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The Challenge

How a Maverick Navy Officer and a Young Law Professor Risked Their Careers to Defend the Constitution--and Won

Jonathan Mahler Picador

"[The Challenge] tells the story of a captive who gave his name to a great constitutional decision; and it describes the personal struggles of his lawyers, their courage, and their faults . . . A work of rare drama."—Anthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books

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The Shape of Things to Come

Prophecy and the American Voice

Greil Marcus Picador

"A bold, brash book that reckons with the country’s genius for failure and seeks salvation in art, film, music and myth . . . Marcus finds hope and humor in the strangest places, as he’s done for more than 30 years as a fearless observer of scary America . . . Marcus willingly cedes center stage to his own authorial inventions and lets the prophesizing voices all around him do the talking."—Steven Jenkins, Green Cine.com

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1831

Year of Eclipse

Louis Masur Hill and Wang

"It was the year of Nat Turner's slave rebellion, of the launching of Garrison's Liberator, of Tocqueville's visit to the United States, of Cyrus McCormick's invention of the mechanical reaper, and of many other pivotal events. Annus mirabilis, 1831 became the hinge of fate for the future of America, both good and ill. Louis Masur has captured the flavor of this crucial year in this captivating book."—James M. McPherson

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The Soiling of Old Glory

The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America

Louis P. Masur Bloomsbury Press

"Masur's skill at teasing the symbolic resonance from the photo's structure and composition is impressive, as is his treatment of the flag as national icon. He displays his real skill as a historian, however, in his remarkably clear and fair-minded synopses of tangled racial histories . . . His sketch of precisely how the Boston school crisis develops is a small model of detailed economy and essential context."—Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

Hardcover :
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'What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?'

Jimmy Carter, America's 'Malaise,' and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country

Kevin Mattson Bloomsbury USA

“Boldly and with great style, Kevin Mattson captures the political, social, and cultural events that shaped Jimmy Carter's ‘malaise’ speech of July 15, 1979. He reveals how events abroad and at home—in the White House, at gas stations, on TV, and in learned books—shaped an opportunity to confront the energy problem, which the nation avoided at its own peril.”—Daniel Horowitz, professor of American Studies at Smith College and author of The Anxieties of Affluence

Hardcover :
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Abraham Lincoln

The American Presidents Series: The 16th President, 1861-1865

The American Presidents

George S. McGovern; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Sean Wilentz, General Editors Times Books

"The greatness and imperfections of America's 16th president, captured by a former Democratic nominee for the White House. With considerable skill and insight, McGovern crafts a biography snappy, clear and comprehensive enough to please general readers, students and scholars alike. In eight short chapters, six of which deal with Lincoln's presidency, he nails the essential strengths, flaws, failures and achievements of America's most revered leader."—Kirkus Reviews

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Interviews

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The Metaphysical Club

A Story of Ideas in America

Louis Menand Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize

"The Metaphysical Club is a brilliant reanimation of American pragmatism as it evolved from the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey as it was shaped by the traumas of the Civil War and the immense social and economic changes that followed it. Menand has written the most nuanced account I've ever read of pragmatist thinking and he demonstrates, as no one so effectively has before, how public enterprise shaped its specifically American texture and tone. This is a richly populated, intellectually thrilling book in which America is shown to be discovering its future."—Richard Poirier

L.A. Times Book Prize - Nominee - History
Pulitzer Prize - Winner - History

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Awards

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Ivan's War

Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

Catherine Merridale Picador

"Ivan's War combines, quite effectively, painstaking historical reconstruction and sympathetic projection. Ms. Merridale, proceeding from campaign to campaign, describes from the top down and from the bottom up. She provides a coherent picture of the tactical decisions and industrial adjustments that altered the course of the war, and at the same time focuses on how such changes were reflected in the day-to-day experiences and feelings of the troops on the ground . . . She is unsparing in her account of the terror unleashed on German civilians, but scathing about the world to which the veterans returned."—William Grimes, The New York Times

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America's Rasputin

Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War

David Milne Hill and Wang

“David Milne has given us an absorbing history of the rise to power of Walt Rostow and his disastrous impact on US foreign policy. The first civilian to advise Kennedy to deploy combat troops to South Vietnam and the first to urge bombing the North, Rostow was a true ideologue who believed an American version of democracy could be exported to other countries—if necessary by force . . . A book that vividly illuminates the dangers of ideology in foreign policy, America’s Rasputin could not be more timely.”—John Gray, author of Black Mass

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The Tycoons

How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

Charles R. Morris Holt Paperbacks

"In an engaging synthesis, Morris persuasively describes Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan as vital forces of creative destruction who undermined the localized, genteel, monopoly-ridden economy of the mid-nineteenth century. The tycoons had what today's managers often lack, says Morris: the imagination and drive to overthrow conventional limitations on growth."—Harvard Business Review

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