History Book List ·

Sowing the American Dream

How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest

From 1840 to 1900, midwestern Americans experienced firsthand the profound economic, cultural, and structural changes that transformed the nation from a premodern, agrarian state to one that was urban, industrial, and economically interdependent.…

The Cuban Counterrevolution

For forty years the Cuban Revolution has been at the forefront of American public opinion, yet few are knowledgeable about the history of its enemies and the responsibility of the U.S. government in organizing and sustaining the Cuban counterrevolution.…

The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799–1999

Historical Essays in Celebration of the Bicentenary of the LMS in Southern Africa

Compiled to mark the bicentenary of the London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, this volume provides an assessment of the work and legacy of the Society, which played a critical role in the politics and societies of the subcontinent and whose leading figure—like David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, and John Philip—were major historical actors in their day.…

Revolution and Religion in Ethiopia

The Growth and Persecution of the Mekane Yesus Church, 1974–85

Studies of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution have hitherto almost completely ignored religion, in spite of the commitment of a great majority of Ethiopian people to one or another religious tradition. Moreover, existing studies focus almost exclusively on the center, on national politics, and on the evolution of national institutions.…

Property Rights & Political Development in Ethiopia & Eritrea

This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society.…

The Bewitchment of Silver

The Social Economy of Mining in Nineteenth-Century Peru

Mining was crucial for the development of nineteenth-century Peru. Silver mining in particular was a key to both the export sector and the creation of an internal market and national development. The Bewitchment of Silver is an inquiry into the impact of that mineral on a national economy in a country at the periphery of nineteenth-century capitalism.…

Television, Nation, and Culture in Indonesia

The culture of television in Indonesia began with its establishment in 1962 as a public broadcasting service. From that time, through the deregulation of television broadcasting in 1990 and the establishment of commercial channels, television can be understood, Philip Kitley argues, as a part of the New Order's national culture project, designed to legitimate an idealized Indonesian national cultural identity.…

West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers

Echoes from the Hills

Tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, preserved for generations, handmade bed quilts are windows into the past. In 1983, three West Virginia county extension agents discussed the need to locate and document their state's historic quilts.…

My Sisters Telegraphic

Women in the Telegraph Office, 1846–1950

The role of the telegraph operator in the mid-nineteenth century was like that of today’s software programmer/analyst, according to independent scholar Tom Jepsen, who notes that in the “cyberspace” of long ago, male operators were often surprised to learn that the “first-class man” on the other end of the wire was a woman.…

The Voice of Toil

Nineteenth-Century British Writings about Work

One of the most recurrent and controversial subjects of nineteenth–century discourse was work. Many thinkers associated work with honest pursuit of doing good, not the curse accompanying exile from Eden but rather “a great gift of God.…

The United States Capitol

Designing and Decorating a National Icon

The United States Capitol is a national cultural icon, and among the most visually recognized seats of government in the world. The past quarter century has witnessed an explosion of scholarly interest in the art and architectural history of the Capitol.…

Nigerian Video Films

Revised and Expanded Edition

Nigerian video films—dramatic features shot on video and sold as cassettes—are being produced at the rate of nearly one a day, making them the major contemporary art form in Nigeria. The history of African film offers no precedent for such a huge, popularly based industry.…

Nkrumah & the Chiefs

The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960

Kwame Nkrumah, who won independence for Ghana in 1957, was the first African statesman to achieve world recognition. Nkrumah and his movement also brought about the end of independent chieftaincy—one of the most fundamental changes in the history of Ghana.…

Workers, War and the Origins of Apartheid

Labour and Politics in South Africa, 1939-48

This book provides a significant revision of South African labor history and makes an important contribution to the debate about apartheid's genesis. Using a range of untapped sources, it shows that there was far more strike action during World War II than has been officially acknowledged.…

Revisiting U.S. Trade Policy

Decisions in Perspective

In trade policy, as in many other areas of public policy, decision makers often confront present and future problems with little understanding of how similar disputes were resolved in the past. Too often, busy public officials had no time to write or record negotiating histories.…

Staking Her Claim

The Life of Belinda Mulrooney, Klondike and Alaska Entrepreneur

If Horatio Alger had imagined a female heroine in the same mold as one of the young male heroes in his rags-to-riches stories, she would have looked like Belinda Mulrooney. Smart, ambitious, competitive, and courageous, Belinda Mulrooney was destined through her legendary pioneering in the wilds of the Yukon basin to found towns and many businesses.…

The Poor Are Not Us

Poverty and Pastoralism in Eastern Africa

Eastern African pastoralists often present themselves as being egalitarian, equating cattle ownership with wealth. By this definition “the poor are not us”, poverty is confined to non-pastoralist, socially excluded persons and groups.…

The History of Islam in Africa

The history of the Islamic faith on the continent of Africa spans fourteen centuries. For the first time in a single volume, The History of Islam in Africa presents a detailed historic mapping of the cultural, political, geographic, and religious past of this significant presence on a continent-wide scale.…

Between Sea and Sahara

An Algerian Journal

Between Sea and Sahara gives us Algeria in the third decade of colonization. Written in the 1850s by the gifted painter and extraordinary writer Eugene Fromentin, the many-faceted work is travelogue, fiction, stylized memoir, and essay on art.…

Ohio’s First Peoples

Although founders of the state like Rufus Putnam pointed to the remaining prehistoric earthworks at Marietta as evidence that the architects were a people of “ingenuity, industry, and elegance,” their words did not prevent a rivalry with the area's Indian inhabitants that was settled only through decades of warfare and treaty-making.…