18 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States who led the nation through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
David Hackett Fischer's 2022 magnum opus — examining how enslaved Africans, through the specific cultural heritages they brought from distinct African regions, shaped the development of American culture, language, music, food, and values.
American historian at UC Davis who has won two Pulitzer Prizes — William Cooper's Town and The Internal Enemy — and whose American Colonies provides the most comprehensive single-volume history of colonial American history, including the Spanish, French, and British colonies.
David Hackett Fischer's 1989 magnum opus arguing that four distinct British regional cultures (Puritans from East Anglia to Massachusetts, Cavaliers from south/west England to Virginia, Quakers from North Midlands to Delaware, Borderland Scots-Irish to the Backcountry) brought their specific folkways to America — and that these four cultures still fundamentally structure American regional differences.
Alan Taylor's 2001 comprehensive history of colonial North America — covering the Spanish, French, Dutch, and British colonies as well as Native American societies — the most geographically complete account of pre-Revolutionary American history.
American historian at Harvard who won two Pulitzer Prizes — The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Voyagers to the West — and who fundamentally transformed understanding of the American Revolution by demonstrating the centrality of the republican tradition (Country ideology) in Revolutionary thought.
American historian at Brandeis who wrote Albion's Seed, The Great Wave, Paul Revere's Ride, and Washington's Crossing — known for The Great Wave's argument that price revolutions (long waves of inflation) have driven historical crises, and Albion's Seed's identification of four British folkways as the deep source of American regional cultures.
Bryan Burrough's 2015 history of American domestic terrorism in the 1970s — covering the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the FALN, and other radical groups who carried out hundreds of bombings.
Sandel's Democracy's Discontent (1996) is a historical and philosophical account of American civic republicanism and its eclipse by liberal neutrality.
American historian who wrote The Stream of American History and Whiskey Rebels — providing narrative popular histories of American political and social development from a traditional perspective.
Ezra Edelman's 7.5-hour documentary essay on O.J. Simpson — treating the trial as a lens through which to examine race, celebrity, law enforcement, and American culture in the 20th century.
Robert E. Lee was the commanding general of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia whose decision to fight for his state rather than the Union is a paradigm case of local loyalty overriding universal principle.
Bernard Bailyn's 2012 account of the brutal first decades of English settlement in North America — depicting the violence, starvation, disease, and mutual brutality of the 17th century encounter between English settlers and Native Americans.
Ron Chernow's 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Morgan banking dynasty — from Junius Morgan's London bank through J.P. Morgan's Gilded Age dominance through the modern JPMorgan Chase — covering 150 years of American and global finance.
A comprehensive history of the Americas — covering North, Central, and South American history — referenced in the History 102 context of discussions about American colonial and post-colonial history.
36th U.S. President — architect of the Great Society (Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid) and the escalator of the Vietnam War — documented in Robert Caro's multi-volume biography as one of the most complex exercises of political power in American history.
Roy Morris Jr.'s account of Mark Twain's formative journey west after the Civil War — exploring how the experience shaped his literary voice and American identity.
D. Michael Quinn's landmark scholarly work demonstrating that Joseph Smith and early Mormon leaders operated within a pervasive folk magic world view involving treasure-seeking, divining rods, seer stones, ritual magic, and occult practices. Draws on extensive primary source research.