Site Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

57,960 items

Lesson Plan

TITLE IX: Striving for Gender Equity in Athletics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Objectives Students will examine primary documents and secondary sources to analyze gender equity during the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Students will be able to identify the...

Essay

The Great Depression

David M. Kennedy

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

Herbert Hoover got many things wrong about the great economic calamity that destroyed his presidency and his historical reputation, but he got one fundamental thing right. Much legend to the contrary, the Great Depression was not...

Essay

The Progressive Era to the New Era, 1900-1929

Daniel T. Rodgers

Government and Civics

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

We should not accept social life as it has "trickled down to us," the young journalist Walter Lippmann wrote soon after the twentieth century began. "We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, . . . educate...

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

In the decades immediately following the War of 1812, the face of America changed. Population grew and young Americans far outnumbered their parents. For many the West beckoned, and settlers poured into the region west of the original...

Appears in:

22 | Andrew Jackson and His World Winter 2009

Essay

Exploration

Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Benjamin Sacks

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

We often speak of America as "unknown," except to its own inhabitants, in the Middle Ages. But so, in a sense, was Europe, which hardly figured on the maps and in the calculations of the immensely richer, more populous, and...

Lesson Plan

Celebrating Labor Day

Government and Civics

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Essential Question To what extent have the conditions of American workers improved over the past 100 years? Background After the Civil War, the United States witnessed an accelerating movement of people westward, a rapidly increasing...

History Now Essay

How the Town Shaped the Battle: Gettysburg 1863

Allen C. Guelzo

Geography

We think we know who the important players at the Battle of Gettysburg were: Robert E. Lee, or George G. Meade, or the Union Army of the Potomac, or the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But there is one major player from whom,...

Appears in:

37 | Gettysburg: Insights and Perspectives Fall 2013

Spotlight on: Primary Source

George Washington’s First Inaugural Address, 1789

Government and Civics, Literature

After officially enacting the newly ratified US Constitution in September 1788, the Confederation Congress scheduled the first inauguration for March 1789. However, bad weather delayed many congressmen from arriving in the national...

News

CUNY Professor Carol Berkin’s “Women in the American Revolution” Available as a Self-Paced Course

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is now offering three new Self-Paced Courses with distinguished professors Carol Berkin, Lucas Morel, and Michael Neiberg, perfect for summer professional development and general interest. Each course,...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Great West Illustrated, 1869

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

The exploration and settlement of the American West coincided with the development of the medium of photography. Photographic images, reproduced in books and newspapers and available for purchase on their own, helped shape Americans’...