Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

8,388 items

History Now Essay

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

Phillip Lopate

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Strictly speaking, all American novels (with the exception of those written by Native Americans) are in one way or another immigrant fiction. But we usually think of immigrant fiction more narrowly as the encounter of the foreign-born...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

Essay

Facing the New Millennium

Michael Flamm

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1941, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Time magazine publisher Henry Luce predicted that the twentieth century would become known as the "American Century." By many measures he was correct. During the next sixty years, the United States...

History Now Essay

Thomas Jefferson and Deism

Peter S. Onuf

Of all the American founders, Thomas Jefferson is most closely associated with deism, the Enlightenment faith in a rational, law-governed world created by a "supreme architect" or cosmic "clockmaker." For many modern Americans, deist...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

History Now Essay

Abolition and Religion

Robert Abzug

Religion and Philosophy

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

One verse of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," the unofficial anthem of the Northern cause, summarized the Civil War’s idealized meaning: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

History Now Essay

San Francisco and the Great Earthquake of 1906

Robert W. Cherny

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

At the beginning of the twentieth century, San Francisco still reigned as the major seaport on the Pacific coast. The city traced its origins to 1776, when a Spanish expedition planted a mission and a military post at the end of the...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America

Bert Hansen

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

We live in an age when there seems to be a medical breakthrough in the headlines every few days, when new discoveries are immediately—and sometimes prematurely—put into practice. It is easy for us, therefore, to assume that this same...

Appears in:

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology Winter 2006

History Now Essay

Why Immigration Matters

Thomas Kessner

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

It is difficult today to recapture the iconoclasm signaled by Oscar Handlin’s opening words to his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Uprooted more than fifty years ago: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

Essay

Postwar Politics and the Cold War

Jeremi Suri

The late summer of 1945 marked the height of American power. The country that had suffered from dust bowls, economic depression, and a devastating attack on its Pacific naval fleet in the last decade-and-a-half emerged as the dominant...

History Now Essay

The History of Women’s Baseball

Kerry Candaele

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

From 1943 to 1954, "America’s pastime" was a game played in skirts. At its peak in 1948, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) fielded ten teams in midwestern towns like Rockford, Illinois (Peaches); South Bend,...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

Jeremi Suri

World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial figures to emerge from the Cold War. He participated as a soldier, scholar, and statesman in many of the most significant policy debates of the period. He acted as an intellectual,...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

Site Search

8,388 items

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

Facing the New Millennium

Thomas Jefferson and Deism

Abolition and Religion

San Francisco and the Great Earthquake of 1906

Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America

Why Immigration Matters

Postwar Politics and the Cold War

The History of Women’s Baseball

Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

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