American History Book List · 
Featured Titles
Congress and the Crisis of the 1850s
Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon
During the long decade from 1848 to 1861 America was like a train speeding down the track, without an engineer or brakes. The new territories acquired from Mexico had vastly increased the size of the nation, but debate over their status—and more importantly the status of slavery within them—paralyzed the nation.…
In the Shadow of Freedom
The Politics of Slavery in the National Capital
Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon
Few images of early America were more striking, and jarring, than that of slaves in the capital city of the world’s most important free republic. Black slaves served and sustained the legislators, bureaucrats, jurists, cabinet officials, military leaders, and even the presidents who lived and worked there.…
The Jury in Lincoln’s America
In the antebellum Midwest, Americans looked to the law, and specifically to the jury, to navigate the uncertain terrain of a rapidly changing society. During this formative era of American law, the jury served as the most visible connector between law and society.…
Red, White, Black & Blue
A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia
Edited by Dolores Johnson
By William M. Drennen Jr. and Kojo (William T.) Jones Jr.
Red, White, Black, and Blue began as a collaborative memoir by William M. “Bill” Drennen, a European American, and Kojo (William T.) Jones, an African American. These Appalachian men grew up in the South Hills section of Charleston, West Virginia.…
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume I
Four Aspects of Civic Duty & Present Day Problems
Edited by David H. Burton and A. E. Campbell
The inaugural volume of The Collected Works of William Howard Taft is composed of two of his earliest books, Four Aspects of Civic Duty and Present Day Problems. Based on a series of lectures delivered at Yale in 1906, Four Aspects of Civic Duty is an attempt by then Secretary of War Taft to bring to the attention of his audience the importance of civic duty from the perspective of the university graduate, the judge on the bench, the colonial administrator, and the national executive branch of government.…
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume II
Political Issues and Outlooks: Speeches Delivered Between August 1908 and February 1909
Edited by David H. Burton
The second volume of The Collected Works of William Howard Taft is dedicated to the speeches and writings that displayed his thinking in the autumn of 1908 and the following winter. At this time he was campaigning for the presidency against the well-known William Jennings Bryan, and in Taft’s writings is evidence of the contrast in style between Taft and Bryan and between Taft and his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt.…
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume III
Presidential Addresses and State Papers
Edited by David H. Burton
The third volume of The Collected Works of William Howard Taft imparts an appreciation of the range of the twenty-seventh president’s interests. Beginning with his inaugural address and concluding with a detailed exposition of governmental expenses and needed economies, President William Howard Taft showed himself willing to tackle the routine as well as the rarified responsibilities of executive rule.…
Ohio University, 1804–2004
The Spirit of a Singular Place
By Betty Hollow
“It's like a glorified scrapbook,” says author Betty Hollow. “You can really see how student life has changed over the years when you look at the whole thing.”
The Paradox of Progress
Economic Change, Individual Enterprise, and Political Culture in Michigan, 1837–1878
Americans have long recognized the central importance of the nineteenth-century Republican party in preserving the Union, ending slavery, and opening the way for industrial capitalism. On the surface, the story seems straightforward—the party's “free labor” ethos, embracing the opportunity that free soil presented for social and economic mobility, and condemning the danger that slavery in the territories posed for that mobility, foreshadowed the GOP's later devotion to unfettered enterprise and industrial capitalism.…
Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003
The state of Ohio has produced an impressive number of remarkable women, women who have moved to the forefront of their professions or have enriched their communities or have made a difference in myriad ways.…
Wyeth People
By Gene Logsdon
Wyeth People is the story of one writer's search for the meaning of artistic creativity, approached from personal contact with the work of one of the world's great artists, Andrew Wyeth. In the 1960s, just beginning his career as a writer, Gene Logsdon read a magazine article about Andrew Wyeth in which the artist commented at length on his own creative impulse.…
Seeking the One Great Remedy
Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform
By Lorien Foote
A radical abolitionist and early feminist, Francis George Shaw (1809-1882) was a prominent figure in American reform and intellectual circles for five decades. He rejected capitalism in favor of a popular utopian socialist movement; during the Civil War and Reconstruction, he applied his radical principles to the Northern war effort and to freedmen's organizations.…
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume VI
The President and His Powers and The United States and Peace
Edited by David H. Burton, W. Carey McWilliams and Frank X. Gerrity
Volume VI of The Collected Works of William Howard Taft follows the career of William Howard Taft upon his leaving the White House. It consists of two short publications from 1914 and 1915. The first, The President and His Powers, is based on a series of lectures delivered at Columbia University and draws on Taft’s experience in the presidency and the executive branch.…
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume V
Popular Government and The Anti-trust Act and the Supreme Court
Edited by David H. Burton, David Potash and Donald F. Anderson
The fifth volume of The Complete Works of William Howard Taft presents two publications Taft wrote as Kent Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale University, the position he assumed in 1913 after he was defeated in his bid for re-election as U.…
From Blackjacks to Briefcases
A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States
From the beginning of the Industrial Age and continuing into the twenty-first century, companies faced with militant workers and organizers have often turned to agencies that specialized in ending strikes and breaking unions.…
Traitors & True Poles
Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880–1939
During Poland’s century-long partition and in the interwar period of Poland's reemergence as a state, Polish writers on both sides of the ocean shared a preoccupation with national identity. Polish-American immigrant writers revealed their persistent, passionate engagement with these issues, as they used their work to define and consolidate an essentially transnational ethnic identity that was both tied to Poland and independent of it.…
Ohio on the Move
Transportation in the Buckeye State
Few American states can match the rich and diverse transportation heritage of Ohio. Every major form of public conveyance eventually served the Buckeye state. From the “Canal Age” to the “Interurban Era,” Ohio emerged as a national leader.…
Ohio Is My Dwelling Place
Schoolgirl Embroideries, 1800-1850
One of the most intriguing cultural artifacts of our nation's past was made by young girls—the embroidery sampler. In Ohio Is My Dwelling Place, American decorative arts expert Sue Studebaker documents the samplers created in Ohio prior to 1850, the girls who made them, their families, and the teachers who taught them to stitch.…
An American Colony
Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture
By Edward Watts
The Old Northwest—the region now known as the Midwest—has been largely overlooked in American cultural history, represented as a place smoothly assimilated into the expanding, manifestly-destined nation.…
An Amulet of Greek Earth
Generations of Immigrant Folk Culture
The boys and men who left their Greek valley and mountain villages in the early 1900s for America came with amulets their mothers had made for them. Some were miniature sacks attached to a necklace; more often they were merely a square of fabric enclosing the values of their lives: a piece of a holy book or a sliver of the True Cross representing their belief in Greek Orthodoxy; a thyme leaf denoting their wild terrain; a blue bead to ward off the Evil Eye; and a pinch of Greek earth.…
Flash Effect
Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America
The ways science and technology are portrayed in advertising, in the news, in our politics, and in the culture at large inform the way we respond to these particular facts of life. The better we are at recognizing the rhetorical intentions of the purveyors of information and promoters of mass culture, the more adept we become at responding intelligently to them.…
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume IV
Presidential Messages to Congress
Edited by David H. Burton
“A time when panics seem far removed is the best time to prepare our financial system to withstand a storm. The most crying need this country has is a proper banking and currency system. The existing one is inadequate, and everyone who has studied the question admits it.…
American Coverlets and Their Weavers
Coverlets from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl
Coverlets woven in vibrant colors of red, blue, white, and green are as popular today as they were in the nineteenth century.American Coverlets and Their Weavers is a lavishly illustrated guide to one of the premier collections of coverlets in the nation.…
