Recommended Resources

Reform Movements

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.

Manis, Andrew Michael. A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.

Raphael, Ray. A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence. New York: New Press, 2001.

Penney, Sherry H., James D. Livingston. A Very Dangerous Woman: Martha Wright and Women’s Rights. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.

Basker, James G., ed. Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002.

O’Neill, William L. American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960. New York: Free Press, 1986.

Cherny, Robert W. American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868–1900. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1997.

Young, Andrew. An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Fritz, Jean. And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973.

Swift, David E. Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy before the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Fowler, Robert Booth. Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986.

McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Chafe, William H. Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Bender, Thomas. Community and Social Change in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978.

Flamm, Michael W. and David Steigerwald. Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.

Goldberg, David J. Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

Dubois, Ellen C. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.

Brown, Ruth Murray. For a “Christian America”: A History of the Religious Right. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002.

Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Stuhler, Barbara. For the Public Record: A Documentary History of the League of Women Voters. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Lunardini, Christine A. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928. New York: New York University Press, 1986.

Phelan, Craig. Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Roediger, David R., and Franklin Rosemont. Haymarket Scrapbook. Chicago: Charles H Kerr, 1986.

Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Goode, Bill. Infighting in the UAW: The 1946 Election and the Ascendancy of Walter Reuther. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Reynolds, David S. John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Smith, Warren Thomas. John Wesley and Slavery. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986.

Cady, Edwin Harrison. John Woolman. New York: Washington Square Press, 1965.

Flamm, Michael W. Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Levy, Leonard W. Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960.

Kerr, Andrea Moore. Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Holt, Rackham. Mary McLeod Bethune: A Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.

Mintz, Steven. Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre–Civil War Reformers. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Lewis, Mary C. “Origins: How the Holiday Was Born.” American Visions 1, no. 1 (1986): 44–49.

Blight, David W. Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Evans, Sara M. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

Critchlow, Donald T. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Rosenberg, Norman L. Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Greene, Julie. Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881–1917. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Coben, Stanley. Rebellion against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Isenberg, Nancy. Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Washington, Margaret. Sojourner Truth’s America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

Berkowitz, Edward D. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Glazer, Tom, comp. Songs of Peace, Freedom, and Protest. New York: D. McKay, 1970.

Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.

Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995.

Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Morris, Richard B. The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Garrow, David J. “The Helms Attack on King.” Southern Exposure 12, no. 2 (1984): 12–15.

Gurko, Miriam. The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman’s Rights Movement. New York: Macmillan, 1974.

Boydston, Jean, Mary Kelley, and Anne Margolis. The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Sellers, Charles. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

Papke, David Ray. The Pullman Case: The Clash of Labor and Capital in Industrial America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Schneirov, Richard, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore, ed. The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Lindsey, Almont. The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942.

Wellman, Judith. The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: Free Press, 2001.

Denisoff, R. Serge, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. The Sounds of Social Change: Studies in Popular Culture. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972.

Trask, David F. The War with Spain in 1898. New York: Macmillan, 1981.

Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Dutton, 1993.

Butler, Amy E. Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921–1929. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

Brinkley, Alan. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

Sharer, Wendy B. Vote and Voice: Women’s Organizations and Political Literacy, 1915–1930. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.

Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. New Haven: Yale University, 1990.

Fritz, Jean. You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? New York: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1995.