The Reader's Companion to American History offers a fresh, absorbing portrait of the United States from the origins of its native peoples to the nation's complex identity in the 1990s. Covering political, economic, cultural, and social history, and combining hundreds of short descriptive entries with longer evaluative articles, the encyclopedia is informative, engaging, and a pleasure to read. The Reader's Companion is sponsored by the Society of American Historians, an organization dedicated to promoting literary excellence in the writing of biography and history. Under the editorship of the eminent historians John A. Garraty and Eric Foner, a large and distinguished group of scholars, biographers, and journalists -- nearly four hundred contemporary authorities -- illuminate the critical events, issues, and individuals that have shaped our past. More than a reference book to be consulted simply for the dates or details of an event, the Companion offers a history of ideas. It distinguishes itself from conventional encylcopedias by featuring several hundred thematic articles. A chronological account of immigration, for example, is complemented by a conceptual article on ethnicity. Similarly, the Bull Moose party and the Know-Nothings, examined in individual entries, are also placed within a larger context in an article on third parties in American politics. And readers consulting entries on specific religious groups, leaders, and movements will be led to an article offering an overview of religion in America. Linking discrete facts, dates, and events through its interpretive essays, the Reader's Companion presents the overarching themes and ideas that have animated our historical landscape. Over the past twenty years, the study of history has undergone a metamorphosis. Political history, once the primary avenue for exploring the past, has given way to the "new social history." Focus has shifted from key events and leaders to everyday life in America, including the history of the family, women and the work force, race relations, and community life. The Reader's Companion to American History reflects this broader vision of our past. Interweaving traditional political and economic topics with the spectrum of America's social and cultural legacies -- everything from marriage to medicine, crime to baseball, fashion to literature -- the Companion is certain to engage the curiosity, interests, and passions of every reader.

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John A. Garraty, Eric Foner - The Reader's Compani on to American History (1991).rar

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Renee M. Laegreid - Riding Pretty, Rodeo Royalty i n the American West (2006).jpg

When the town of Pendleton, Oregon, held its first large-scale rodeo, it introduced a new kind of rodeo queen not a traveling cowgirl performer but a young, middle-class woman from its own town. Riding Pretty examines the history, evolution, and significance of the community-sponsored rodeo queen, from the introduction of this new phenomenon at the 1910 Pendleton Round-Up to the advent of Miss Rodeo America in 1956, and places the main theme connection of queens to community within the context of the evolution of rodeo as a spectator sport and the changing concepts of gender relations in the American West.
The model for community-sponsored rodeo queens that originated in Pendleton gradually spread to other rodeos throughout the West, giving young women the opportunity to participate both in rodeo and in their communities. From 1910 to 1956, the community-sponsored rodeo queen role expanded, both in terms of her responsibilities and in terms of the community she represented, local, regional, and national. While each community adapted the rodeo queen phenomenon to suit the characteristics of its own celebration, the main characteristics of the role remained: the rodeo queen as a symbol of the local rodeo and as a metaphor for western women.

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Renee M. Laegreid - Riding Pretty, Rodeo Royalty i n the American West (2006).pdf

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Jane Alpert - Growing Up Underground (1990).jpg

I first read this book 8 years ago and not a week goes by when I don't think about it. Sick of the war in Vietnam, Jane Alpert and her boyfriend fall in with a group in the East Village that manufactures bombs which are detonated in the NYC offices of major corporations (luckily, no one was hurt). Albert goes on the lam when the feds close in and spend the next few years; traveling around the country under aliases before finally giving up and serving time in prison. This book is a great no-nonsense look at how the anti-war movement went bad in the late '60s and how certain radicals became so enamoured with themselves that they lost total perspective. Happily, Alpert has no illusions about herself and "the movement," which led some idiots in the radical left to attack her for being so honest and forthright.

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Jane Alpert - Growing Up Underground (1990).pdf

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Edwin H. Ford, Edwin Emery - Highlights in the His tory of the American Press, A Book of Readings (19 54).jpg

The articles collected in this volume present a vivid panorama of American journalistic history from its antecedents in the English ballad singers to the press giants of modern times. Since there is probably no single force that has played a greater role in the history of America than its newspapers, the history of journalism tells, in large measure, the story of this country’s political, social, and economic development. Therefore, this book of readings offers much to the students of the American scene, past and present, whether they are general readers or specialists in journalism, history, American studies, or any of the social sciences. The 27 articles included here have been chosen particularly for their readability and authenticity. They are by many different writers and are from a wide variety of periodicals published over the past 100 years. They are arranged according to six historical periods, covering the rise of the English press, the Colonial press, the nationalistic press of Revolutionary times, the popular press of the Jacksonian democracy, the transition press following the Civil War, and the modern era of mass circulation. An introductory essay for each group of articles places the individual studies in historical perspective and examines briefly the journalistic events not covered in detail by the articles themselves. The article authors include such notable names in American letters as Gamaliel Bradford, Will Irwin, William Allen White, John Dos Passos, and Henry F. Pringle. The coherent presentation of this diverse material should help anyone interested in the American newspaper get a better view of its broad scope, its lively color, and its profound influence on the course of history.

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Edwin H. Ford, Edwin Emery - Highlights in the His tory of the American Press, A Book of Readings (19 54).pdf

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Barry Keith Grant - Film genre, From iconography t o ideology (2007).jpg

This is a concise evaluation of film genre, discussing genre theory and sample analyses of the western, science fiction, the musical, horror, comedy, and the thriller. It introduces the topic in an accessible way and includes sections on the principles of studying and understanding "the idea of genre"; genre and popular culture; the narrative and stylistic conventions of specific genres; the relations of genres to culture and history, race, gender, sexuality, class and national identity; and the complex relations between genre and authorship. Case studies include: 42nd Street, Pennies from Heaven, Red River, All That Heaven Allows, Night of the Living Dead, Die Hard, Little Big Man, Blue Steel, and Posse.

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Barry Keith Grant - Film genre, From iconography t o ideology (2007).pdf

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Bill O'Reilly - A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity (20 10).jpg

The year was 1957, the month September, and I had just turned eight years old. Dwight Eisenhower was President, but in my life it was the diminutive, intense Sister Mary Lurana who ruled, at least in the third-grade class where I was held captive. For reasons you will soon understand, my parents had remanded me to the penal institution of St. Brigid’s School in Westbury, New York, a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one.

Already, I had barely survived my first two years at St. Brigid’s because I was, well, a little nitwit. Not satisfied with memorizing the Baltimore Catechism’s fine prose, which featured passages like “God made me to show his goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven,” I was constantly annoying my classmates and, of course, the no-nonsense Sister Lurana. With sixty overactive students in her class, she was understandably short on patience. For survival, she had also become quick on the draw.

Then it happened. One day I blurted out some dumb remark, and Sister Lurana was on me like a panther. Her black habit blocked out all distractions as she leaned down, looked me in the eye, and uttered words I have never forgotten: “William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity.”

And she was dead-on.

One day in 1957, in the third-grade classroom of St. Brigid’s parochial school, an exasperated Sister Mary Lurana bent over a restless young William O’Reilly and said, “William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity.” Little did she know that she was, early in his career as a troublemaker, defining the essence of Bill O’Reilly and providing him with the title of his brash and entertaining issues-based memoir.

And this time it’s personal. In his most intimate book yet, O’Reilly goes back in time to examine the people, places, and experiences that launched him on his journey from working-class kid to immensely influential television personality and bestselling author. Readers will learn how his traditional outlook was formed in the crucible of his family, his neighborhood, his church, and his schools, and how his views on America’s proper role in the world emerged from covering four wars on five continents over three-plus decades as a news correspondent. What will delight his numerous fans and surprise many others is the humor and self-deprecation with which he handles one of his core subjects: himself, and just how O’Reilly became O’Reilly.

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Driving Visions - Exploring the Road Movie (2002).jpg

In 1934, audiences swooned when reporter Clark Gable and heiress Claudette Colbert bickered and then fell in love on a cross-country bus trip in It Happened One Night, an early American road trip movie. America's vast open spaces, colorful and varied locations, multicultural population, and love for cars, mobility, and speed make the road movie a peculiarly (though not exclusively) American fixture. This book is an academic study of American road movies as a "rebellion against conservative social norms" with "an embrace of the journey as a means of cultural critique." The emphasis here is on "outlaw" road movies. Laderman (film, Coll. of San Mateo) discusses literary sources and visions (On the Road), gay road movies (My Own Private Idaho), Native American films (Smoke Signals), and African American (Get on the Bus) and feminist road journeys. He dismisses most comedies, saying they fail to "incorporate any visionary rebellion." Indeed, the author's tone is humorless throughout. His complaint about "heavy-handed" irony in Raising Arizona, for instance, seems to be based on the fact that the irrepressible Coen brothers failed to follow his vision of what a road movie should be. There are some provocative ideas here, but Laderman's rigid approach causes the book to run out of gas. An optional purchase for large American film collections.

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Driving Visions - Exploring the Road Movie (2002).pdf

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Mary Ann Doane - The Desire to Desire, The Woman's Film of the 1940s (1987).jpg

What is female spectatorship? When Hollywood films are geared for an audience of women, what ideals do they tend to promote? How should feminist theory contend with the image of women that the cinema passes on? In The Desire to Desire Mary Ann Doane responds to these questions, focusing specifically on "woman's pictures" of the 1940s. She argues that while most of the films she discusses are conceived through lenses that are masculine in nature, feminists attempting to critique these films should not dismiss them as sexist or attempt to develop a way of seeing that is simply the opposite of the one handed down. Instead, Doane offers a critique of vision itself, contrasting the way the camera views the women in these films, the way the films' female characters look out onto their worlds, and the way the Hollywood movie industry manufactures images that it expects female audiences to consume.

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Mary Ann Doane - The Desire to Desire, The Woman's Film of the 1940s (1987).pdf

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Michael Gray - The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (2005).jpg

Bob Dylan’s reach is too wide, too deep and too long for any book about him to cover it all. He’s a senior citizen. His career spans 45 years of American history! Naturally, though, it is Bob Dylan’s art that is the heart of the book: it is his art that has got inside our heads, has changed the world around us and justifies his being paid so much attention.

If in 100 years’ time Dylan’s art goes unheard and discounted, well, in 200 years’ time it may bounce back. If not, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia might help some scholar of the future to sift through the rusted nuts and bolts of our mistaken enthusiasm. We can’t know...

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Nicholas Daniloff - Of Spies and Spokesmen, My Lif e As a Cold War Correspondent (2008).jpg

In this riveting memoir, Daniloff describes the reality of journalism behind the Iron Curtain: how Western reporters banded together to thwart Soviet propagandists, how their official sources were almost always controlled by the KGB--and how those sources would sometimes try to turn newsmen into collaborators. When Daniloff was arrested and thrown into prison as a spy, the incident threatened to undo the Reykjavik summit until a solution was worked out. Daniloff also tells how the news media played a crucial role in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, recalls the emotional impact of the JFK assassination on Soviet leadership, and describes the behind-the-scenes struggles that catapulted Mikhail Gorbachev to power.

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Nicholas Daniloff - Of Spies and Spokesmen, My Lif e As a Cold War Correspondent (2008).pdf

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Thomas J. Sugrue - Not Even Past, Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (2010).jpg

Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner's famous remark "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama's America and how President Obama intends to deal with it.

Obama's journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions--particularly between blacks and whites--remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama's evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama's place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency.

Does Obama's presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America.

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Zain Abdullah - Black Mecca, The African Muslims o f Harlem (2010).jpg

The changes to U.S. immigration law that were instituted in 1965 have led to an influx of West African immigrants to New York, creating an enclave Harlem residents now call ''Little Africa.'' These immigrants are immediately recognizable as African in their wide-sleeved robes and tasseled hats, but most native-born members of the community are unaware of the crucial role Islam plays in immigrants' lives. Zain Abdullah takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. Some longtime residents embrace these immigrants and see their arrival as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage, while others see the immigrants as scornful invaders. In turn, African immigrants often take a particularly harsh view of their new neighbors, buying into the worst stereotypes about American-born blacks being lazy and incorrigible. And while there has long been a large Muslim presence in Harlem, and residents often see Islam as a force for social good, African-born Muslims see their Islamic identity disregarded by most of their neighbors. Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community's efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.

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Zain Abdullah - Black Mecca, The African Muslims o f Harlem (2010).pdf

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Geoff Hamilton, Brian Jones - Encyclopedia of Cont emporary Writers and Their Work (2010).jpg

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Geoff Hamilton, Brian Jones - Encyclopedia of Cont emporary Writers and Their Work (2010).pdf

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Jay Parini - American Writers Classics, Vol. 1 (20 01).jpg

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Jay Parini - American Writers Classics, Vol. 2 (20 03).jpg

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Jay Parini - American Writers Retrospective Supple ment II, A Collection of Literary Biographies, Jam es Baldwin to Nathanael West, 2nd edition (2002).jpg

USA Books1 - Jay Parini - American Writers Retrospective Supplement...es, James Baldwin to Nathanael West, 2nd edition 2002.jpg

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Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz - American Writers , Supplement III (2009).jpg

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Anthony Bianconi - Wal-Mart, The Bully of Bentonvi lle, How the High Cost of Everyday Low Prices is H urting America (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Anthony Bianconi - Wal-Mart, The Bully of Bentonville...h Cost of Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America 2007.jpg

The largest company in the world by far, Wal-Mart takes in revenues in excess of $280 billion, employs 1.4 million American workers, and controls a large share of the business done by almost every U.S. consumer-product company. More than 138 million shoppers visit one of its 5,300 stores each week. But Wal-Mart’s “everyday low prices” come at a tremendous cost to workers, suppliers, competitors, and consumers.

The Bully of Bentonville exposes the zealous, secretive, small-town mentality that rules Wal-Mart and chronicles its far-reaching consequences. In a gripping, richly textured narrative, Anthony Bianco shows how Wal-Mart has driven down retail wages throughout the country, how their substandard pay and meager health-care policy and anti-union mentality have led to a large scales exploitation of workers, why their aggressive expansion inevitably puts locally owned stores out of business, and how their pricing policies have forced suppliers to outsource work and move thousands of jobs overseas.
Based on interviews with Wal-Mart employees, managers, executives, competitors, suppliers, customers, and community leaders, The Bully of Bentonville brings the truths about Wal-Mart into sharp focus.

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John Coleman - We Fight For Oil, A History of US P etroleum Wars (2008).jpg

A history of U.S. oil wars is a work-in-progress which began when President Wilson landed U.S. troops at Tampico. Future historians may very well have to fill in the blanks. The history of U.S. involvement in Persia (now Iran) and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) centered round the quest for oil and control of it as a vitally-needed natural resource. With this in mind, the reader may well come to the conclusion that news from U.S. (and British) sources has to be taken with a large grain of salt.

Oil diplomacy is governed by commercial and eventually, military considerations. Thus every U.S. President since Woodrow Wilson has formulated U.S. foreign policy to take care of oil interests. President McKinley said “isolation is no longer possible,” and President Wilson echoed that sentiment when he said: “We are participants whether we would or not in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are ours also. We are partners with the rest.” Therefore this book affects or should affect every American, because modern international power is economic, just as all wars are economic in origin.

Remember this the next time your sons and daughters are called to fight for the country. If Iraq did not contain huge oil resources, would the U.S. be bogged down in that country today? Fear of domestic shortages of oil seems to be the driving force at play. American strife over foreign resources has become the major factor in international affairs. These are issues examined in this book which should be read by every American interested in the future of their country.

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