Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

1,584 items

Essay

History Times: The Colonial Era

Gilder Lehrman Institute

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

2, 3, 4, 5

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean Imagine saying goodbye to family, friends, and familiar places to take a dangerous voyage across thousands of miles of ocean in a small wooden ship. Your destination: a strange and often hostile land. Yet,...

Essay

History Times: The Industrial Revolution

Gilder Lehrman Institute

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

A Changing Nation The second half of the nineteenth century can be described as a time of innovation, invention, and rapid growth—a period known as the "Industrial Revolution." Many inventions from this period never caught on or have...

Essay

History Times: A Nation of Immigrants

Gilder Lehrman Institute

Economics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Coming to the Land of Opportunity Throughout American history, millions of people around the world have left their homelands for a chance to start a new life in this country—and they continue to come here to this day. People who come...

Essay

The Social and Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

Gary B. Nash

Government and Civics

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

"We can see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. We are now really another people, and cannot again go back to ignorance and prejudice. The mind once enlightened cannot...

Essay

The Open Door Policy and the Boxer War: The US and China

Warren I. Cohen

By 1899, the United States had become a world power. It was not only the world’s greatest industrial nation, but in the war with Spain it had demonstrated a willingness to use its power militarily. It had acquired possessions near and...

Essay

Anti-Communism in the 1950s

Wendy Wall

In 1950, fewer than 50,000 Americans out of a total US population of 150 million were members of the Communist Party. Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, American fears of internal communist subversion reached a nearly hysterical...

Essay

The United States and the Caribbean, 1877–1920

Jason Colby

Between 1877 and 1920, the United States’ relationship with the Caribbean region underwent a profound change, which was closely tied to the transformation of the United States to an industrial and imperial power. Although the Civil...

Essay

Prohibition and Its Effects

Lisa Andersen

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

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in January 1919 and enacted in January 1920, outlawed the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." This amendment was the culmination of decades of effort...

Essay

To Understand a Scandal: Watergate beyond Nixon

David Sarias

Government and Civics

In the early hours of June 17, 1972, police officers arrested five men suspected of breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate office building. This building would lend its...

Essay

The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Ira Berlin

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...

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1,584 items

History Times: The Colonial Era

History Times: The Industrial Revolution

History Times: A Nation of Immigrants

The Social and Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

The Open Door Policy and the Boxer War: The US and China

Anti-Communism in the 1950s

The United States and the Caribbean, 1877–1920

Prohibition and Its Effects

To Understand a Scandal: Watergate beyond Nixon

The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

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