Recommended Resources
The Early Republic
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Spalding, Matthew, and Patrick J. Garrity. A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996.
Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Green, Constance M. Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology. New York: Longman, 1997.
Horsman, Reginald. Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967.
Appleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
Newmyer, R. Kent. John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Levy, Leonard W. Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960.
Smith, Richard Norton. Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
Onuf, Peter S. Statehood and the Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Peterson, Merrill D. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
Ellis, Joseph J. After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture. New York: Norton and Company, 1979.
McLeese, Don. Alexander Hamilton. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publishing, 2004.
Basker, James G., ed. Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Baym, Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Dupont, Christian Y., and Peter S. Onuf, eds. Declaring Independence: The Origin and Influence of America’s Founding Document. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Library, 2008.
Cannavale, Vincent C. Voices from Colonial America: Florida, 1513–1821. Washington DC: National Geographic Children’s Books, 2006.
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Alden, John R. George Washington: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Wood, Gordon S. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.
McWillliams, John P., Jr. The American Epic: Transforming a Genre, 1770–1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Stiles, T. J. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York: Norton, 2008.
White, G. Edward. The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–1835. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Stuart, Reginald C. United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775–1871. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Simon, James F. What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
Brookhiser, Richard. What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Bly, Antonio. “Crossing the Lake of Fire: Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage, 1720–1842.” Journal of Negro History 83 (1998): 178–86.
White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.