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In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together, creating—among other things—a new economy. At the center of that economy was the plantation, an enterprise dedicated to the production of exotic...
The Material Culture of Slave Resistance
Artifacts tell stories. Sometimes the tales are unclear or even contradictory, and sometimes artifacts—not unlike a dishonest diarist—can even lead the unwary historian astray. But the material culture of enslaved Americans, from...
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"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s
Few sights or sounds conjure up the passion and purposefulness of the Southern Civil Rights Movement as powerfully as the freedom songs that provided a stirring musical accompaniment to the campaign for racial justice and equality in...
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September 11, 2001
"9/11" has emerged as shorthand for the four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States that took place on September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists from the Islamist extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four...
The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s America
Nathaniel Hawthorne is the strange American author who has never been out of fashion; since his death in 1864, his stories and novels have resisted the tides of taste, canon reformation, and critical vicissitude. Herman Melville had...
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Mary Elizabeth Lease: Populist Reformer
Blaming Wall Street for the nation’s economic woes is not a new idea in American history. Over a century ago, Mary Elizabeth Lease, the best-known orator of the Populist era, asserted, "Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a...
African Forced Migration to Colonial America
African American life in the United States has been framed by migrations, forced and free. A forced migration from Africa—the transatlantic slave trade—carried black people to the Americas. A second forced migration—the internal slave...
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Suggested Resources for George Washington and the French and Indian War from the Archivist
For additional information on the broader Seven Years’ War, of which the French and Indian campaigns were only a part, use this recent one-volume study: Baugh, Daniel A. The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763: Britain and France in a...
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Suggested Resources on the Civil War and the Battle of Antietam from the Archivist
Prof. McPherson is the author of Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), the authoritative study of the battle and its aftermath. You and your students may also want to look at some of...
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Suggested Resources on Desert Storm from the Archivist
There’s an odd pattern to published works about this conflict, whether you call it Desert Shield/Desert Storm or the First Persian Gulf War. A flurry of books appeared within two years of the end of hostilities—indeed, a couple...
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Suggested Resources on the American Revolution and Lord Cornwallis from the Archivist
Prof. Martin has written extensively on the American Revolution. Of his many books, the one most relevant to the essay you’ve just read is his collaboration with Mark E. Lender, A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic...
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Suggested Resources on World War I and the Zimmermann Telegram from the Archivist
Professor Neiberg has written extensively on World War I. Of his many books, Fighting the Great War: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2006) will be most helpful in teaching the topics discussed in this essay. Although this...
Suggested Resources on the War of 1812 from the Archivist
Prof. Taylor’s most recent book, the prizewinning The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Knopf, 2010), focuses on the conflict along the US-Canadian border involving...
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The Transnational Nature of the Progressive Era
In teaching the era of progressive reforms, it is hard to resist the temptation to focus on the two progressive presidents. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, figures of enormous power and striking failings, are the sorts of...
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Lincoln and Abolitionism
Abraham Lincoln immortalized himself in American history by the role that he played in abolishing the institution of slavery, but he arrived at this distinction only after a long career of opposition to abolitionism. This at first...
"Fun, Fun Rock ’n’ Roll High School"
With his tongue halfway in his cheek, Ambrose Bierce defined history as "an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." Well, we’ve come a long...
The Forties and the Music of World War II
The 1940s were the apotheosis of American popular music. Swing, blues and country were all popular styles but, above all, it was the heyday of the seventeen-piece big band. Names like Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Duke...
9/11 and Springsteen
The transformation of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, into a seemingly foreordained historical narrative began almost as soon as the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. I was teaching an 8 a.m....
Globalizing Protest in the 1980s: Musicians Collaborate to Change the World
"There something’s happening here," Stephen Stills sang in "For What It’s Worth," a 1966 song about a confrontation between students and police in Los Angeles. And for a time, there was. Radio stations filled the air with protest...
Women and the Music Industry in the 1970s
The 1970s gets a bad rap. Rarely revered as a glorious—or even particularly memorable—time in contemporary American history, the seventies is more often seen as the sad stepchild to the 1960s, which is celebrated as a decade of peace,...
The Sixties and Protest Music
Music has always kept company with American wars. During the Revolutionary War, "Yankee Doodle" and many other songs set to reels and dances were sung to keep spirits alive during dark hours. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," Lincoln...
Pop Music and the Spatialization of Race in the 1990s
In September 1990, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air debuted on NBC. The show starred Will Smith, also known as the Fresh Prince, of the rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, portraying a character, "Will Smith," who relocates from a...
Entrepreneurs and Bankers: The Evolution of Corporate Empires
James J. Hill enjoyed being called "the Empire Builder," taking it as a compliment for his work as president of the Great Northern Railway. Hill’s railway company, which ran through the northern Great Plains and Pacific Northwest,...
The Making of the President: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860
Perhaps the most surprising thing to modern Americans about the 1860 presidential campaign—the historic election that sent Abraham Lincoln to the White House—is how little actual campaigning the presidential candidates that year did....
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