Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,943 items

History Now Essay

Sylvester Graham and Antebellum Diet Reform

Cindy Lobel

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." So begins Michael Pollan’s 2009 book, In Defense of Food . Pollan has made a career educating Americans about the dangers of our contemporary, industrialized food supply. His book offers a...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Education Reform in Antebellum America

Barbara Winslow

Economics, Religion and Philosophy

Education reform is often at the heart of all great reform struggles. [1] By the 1820s Americans were experiencing exhilarating as well as unsettling social and economic changes. In the North, the familiar rural and agrarian life was...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Transcendentalism and Social Reform

Philip F. Gura

Those Americans who have heard of American Transcendentalism associate it with the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau. Asked to name things about the group they remember, most mention Emerson’s ringing...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

The War against Spain in the Philippines in 1898

Richard Meixsel

Before learning of Commodore George Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, few Americans knew anything about the Philippine Islands. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning In the Days of McKinley ...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

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...

History Now Essay

The Material Culture of Slave Resistance

Douglas R. Egerton

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

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...

Appears in:

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

History Now Essay

"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Brian Ward

Government and Civics

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

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...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

Essay

September 11, 2001

the National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Government and Civics, World History

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"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...

History Now Essay

The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s America

Brenda Wineapple

Literature

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

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...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

Essay

Mary Elizabeth Lease: Populist Reformer

Kelly A. Woestman

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...

History Now Essay

African Forced Migration to Colonial America

Ira Berlin

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...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources for George Washington and the French and Indian War from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

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...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources on the Civil War and the Battle of Antietam from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

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...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources on Desert Storm from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

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...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources on the American Revolution and Lord Cornwallis from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

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...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

Essay

Suggested Resources on World War I and the Zimmermann Telegram from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

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...

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources on the War of 1812 from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

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...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Transnational Nature of the Progressive Era

Daniel T. Rodgers

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Lincoln and Abolitionism

Douglas L. Wilson

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...

Appears in:

6 | Lincoln Winter 2005

37 | Gettysburg: Insights and Perspectives Fall 2013

History Now Essay

"Fun, Fun Rock ’n’ Roll High School"

Glenn C. Altschuler and Robert O. Summers

Art, Government and Civics

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

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...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

History Now Essay

The Forties and the Music of World War II

Elihu Rose

Art

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

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...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

History Now Essay

9/11 and Springsteen

Craig Werner

Art, Government and Civics, World History

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

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....

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

History Now Essay

Globalizing Protest in the 1980s: Musicians Collaborate to Change the World

Douglas R. Egerton and Leigh Fought

Art, Government and Civics, World History

13+

"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...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

History Now Essay

Women and the Music Industry in the 1970s

Elizabeth L. Wollman

Art

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,...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

History Now Essay

The Sixties and Protest Music

Kerry Candaele

Art, Government and Civics

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

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...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

Site Search

90,943 items

Sylvester Graham and Antebellum Diet Reform

Education Reform in Antebellum America

Transcendentalism and Social Reform

The War against Spain in the Philippines in 1898

The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Material Culture of Slave Resistance

"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

September 11, 2001

The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s America

Mary Elizabeth Lease: Populist Reformer

African Forced Migration to Colonial America

Suggested Resources for George Washington and the French and Indian War from the Archivist

Suggested Resources on the Civil War and the Battle of Antietam from the Archivist

Suggested Resources on Desert Storm from the Archivist

Suggested Resources on the American Revolution and Lord Cornwallis from the Archivist

Suggested Resources on World War I and the Zimmermann Telegram from the Archivist

Suggested Resources on the War of 1812 from the Archivist

The Transnational Nature of the Progressive Era

Lincoln and Abolitionism

"Fun, Fun Rock ’n’ Roll High School"

The Forties and the Music of World War II

9/11 and Springsteen

Globalizing Protest in the 1980s: Musicians Collaborate to Change the World

Women and the Music Industry in the 1970s

The Sixties and Protest Music

Stay up to date, and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter.