From the medieval farm implements used by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of society as well. Arguing that "the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose," historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology's impact on the lives of women and men, on their work, politics, and social relationships -- and how, in turn, people influence technological development. Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American system of manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture; new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West; and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities. In the second edition of The Machine in America, Pursell brings this classic history up to date with a revised chapter on war technology and new discussions on information technology, globalization, and the environment.

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John Weeks - The Winchester Arms Company (1972).jpg

The story of the Wild West of the United States is a story compounded of a few simple items. Men, horses, cattle, sheep and guns. Guns that come in two forms, pistols or rifles. And these shoulder weapons are always Winchesters.

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John Weeks - The Winchester Arms Company (1972).pdf

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Judith Tick, Paul Beaudoin - Music in the USA, A D ocumentary Companion (2008).jpg

Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion charts a path through American music and musical life using as guides the words of composers, performers, writers and the rest of us ordinary folks who sing, dance, and listen. The anthology of primary sources contains about 160 selections from 1540 to 2000. Sometimes the sources are classics in the literature around American music, for example, the Preface to the Bay Psalm Book, excerpts from Slave Songs of the United States, and Charles Ives extolling Emerson. But many other selections offer uncommon sources, including a satirical story about a Yankee music teacher; various columns from 19th-century German American newspapers; the memoirs of a 19th-century diva; Lottie Joplin remembering her husband Scott; a little-known reflection of Copland about Stravinsky; an interview with Muddy Waters from the Chicago Defender; a letter from Woody Guthrie on the "spunkfire" attitude of a folk song; a press release from the Country Music Association; and the Congressional testimony around "Napster." "Sidebar" entries occasionally bring a topic or an idea into the present, acknowledging the extent to which revivals of many kinds of music play a role in American contemporary culture. This book focuses on the connections between theory and practice to enrich our understanding of the diversity of American musical experiences. Designed especially to accompany college courses which survey American music as a whole, the book is also relevant to courses in American history and American Studies.

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7,5 MB
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Judith Tick, Paul Beaudoin - Music in the USA, A D ocumentary Companion (2008).pdf

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Laurie D. Webster, Maxine A. McBrinn - Archaeology Without Borders, Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico (2008).jpg

USA Books - Laurie D. Webster, Maxine A. McBrinn - Archaeology Wit...ge in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico 2008.jpg

Archaeology without Borders presents new research by leading U.S. and Mexican scholars and explores the impacts on archaeology of the border between the United States and Mexico. It offers a synthesis of early agricultural adaptations in the region, groundbreaking archaeological research on social identity, and data previously not readily available to English-speaking readers.

The twenty-four essays discuss early agriculture, social identity, and cultural landscapes, as well as economic and social interactions within the area now encompassed by northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Contributors examining early agricultural adaptations offer models for understanding the transition to agriculture, explore relationships between the spread of agriculture and Uto-Aztecan migrations, and present data from Arizona, New Mexico, and Chihuahua. Contributors focusing on social identity discuss migration, enculturation, social boundaries, and ethnic identities. They draw on case studies that include diverse artifact classes--rock art, lithics, architecture, murals, ceramics, cordage, sandals, baskets, faunal remains, and oral histories. Mexican scholars present data from Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Michoacan, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon. They address topics including Spanish-indigenous conflicts, archaeological history, cultural landscapes, and interactions among Mesoamerica, northern Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest.

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Laurie D. Webster, Maxine A. McBrinn - Archaeology Without Borders, Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico (2008).pdf

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Peter Charles Hoffer - The Brave New World, A Hist ory of Early America Second Edition (2006).jpg

The Brave New World covers the span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans ever landed on North American shores to creation of the new nation. With its exploration of the places and peoples of early America, this comprehensive, lively narrative brings together the most recent scholarship on the colonial and revolutionary eras, Native Americans, slavery, politics, war, and the daily lives of ordinary people. The revised, enlarged edition includes a new chapter carrying the story through the American Revolution, the War for Independence, and the creation of the Confederation. Additional material on the frontier, the Southwest and the Caribbean, the slave trade, religion, science and technology, and ecology broadens the text, and maps drawn especially for this edition will enable readers to follow the story more closely. The bibliographical essay, one of the most admired features of the first edition, has been expanded and brought up to date. Peter Charles Hoffer combines the Atlantic Rim scholarship with a Continental perspective, illuminating early America from all angles -- from its first settlers to the Spanish Century, from African slavery to the Salem witchcraft cases, from prayer and drinking practices to the development of complex economies, from the colonies' fight for freedom to an infant nation's struggle for political and economic legitimacy. Wide-ranging in scope, inclusive in content, the revised edition of The Brave New World continues to provide professors, students, and historians with an engaging and accessible history of early North America.

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Lisa Levenstein - A Movement Without Marches, Afri can American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia.jpg

USA Books - Lisa Levenstein - A Movement Without Marches, African ...n and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia.jpg

In this bold interpretation of U.S. history, Lisa Levenstein reframes highly charged debates over the origins of chronic African American poverty and the social policies and political struggles that led to the postwar urban crisis.A Movement Without Marches follows poor black women as they traveled from some of Philadelphia's most impoverished neighborhoods into its welfare offices, courtrooms, public housing, schools, and hospitals, laying claim to an unprecedented array of government benefits and services. Levenstein uncovers the constraints that led women to public institutions, emphasizing the importance not only of deindustrialization and racial discrimination but also of women's experiences with sex discrimination, inadequate public education, child rearing, domestic violence, and chronic illness.Women's claims on public institutions brought a range of new resources into poor African American communities. With these resources came new constraints, as public officials frequently responded to women's efforts by limiting benefits and attempting to control their personal lives. Scathing public narratives about women's "dependency" and their children's "illegitimacy" placed African American women and public institutions at the center of the growing opposition to black migration and civil rights in northern U.S. cities. Countering stereotypes that have long plagued public debate, A Movement WithoutMarches offers a new paradigm for understanding postwar U.S. history.

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7,5 MB
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Lisa Levenstein - A Movement Without Marches, Afri can American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia.pdf

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David G. Hackett - The Rude Hand of Innovation, Re ligion and Social Order in Albany, New York 1652-1 836 (1991).jpg

USA Books - David G. Hackett - The Rude Hand of Innovation, Religi...n and Social Order in Albany, New York 1652-1836 1991.jpg

This path-breaking study analyzes the social and religious transformation of Albany, New York, from the town's colonial origins through industrialization in the early nineteenth century. Rather than see the transformation of traditional societies as a process of modernization, Hackett adopts a broader conception of religion as a cultural system and argues that culture influences social order differently in different historical periods. During most of Albany's colonial period, the Dutch townspeople absorbed British people and customs into their Calvinist way of life. Following the Revolution, large scale immigration, urbanization, and the initial spurt of an industrial economy transformed Albany into a bustling commercial center. At the same time new political and religious ideologies that disagreed among themselves yet together advocated economic growth, democracy, education, and individual rights, challenged and finally replaced Calvinism. Drawing on the resources of sociology, social history, and religion, this study illuminates not only the social history of Albany but also presents a new interpretation of the relationship between religion and social order in American history.

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David G. Hackett - The Rude Hand of Innovation, Re ligion and Social Order in Albany, New York 1652-1 836 (1991).pdf

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Gunther Barth - Fleeting Moments, Nature and Cultu re in American History (2009).jpg

The tension between nature and culture, which accompanies the rise of any large society, has become a subject of great concern in our time. In this compelling study, Gunther Barth, acclaimed author of City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, identifies fleeting moments of concord between nature and culture in the course of American history. During the search for the Wilderness Passage, the progress of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the building of park cemeteries and big city parks, Americans realized that nature was not merely a force to be reckoned with, not merely a resource to be exploited, but also an integral component of their lives. Through the engineering of nature and culture in the urban environment, the energetic attempts to conserve large-scale nature in the United States emerged as an offspring of the big city. Heightening our understanding of the historical complexity of the relationship between nature and culture, and suggesting that harmony between the two is a mark of civilization, this original study will be an invaluable guide to anyone concerned with the quality of life in America, past and future.

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Gunther Barth - Fleeting Moments, Nature and Cultu re in American History (2009).pdf

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Amanda Porterfield - Female Piety in Puritan New E ngland, The Emergence of Religious Humanism (1991).jpg

A synthesis of literary critical and historical methods, Porterfield's book combines insightful analysis of Puritan theological writings with detailed examinations of historical records showing the changing patterns of church membership and domestic life. She finds that by conflating marriage as a trope of grace with marriage as a social construct, Puritan ministers invested relationships between husbands and wives with religious meaning. Images of female piety represented the humility that Puritans believed led all Christians to self-control and, ultimately, to love. But while images of female piety were important for men primarily as aids to controlling aggression and ambition, they were primarily attractive to women as aids to exercising indirect influence over men and obtaining public recognition and status.

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Amanda Porterfield - Female Piety in Puritan New E ngland, The Emergence of Religious Humanism (1991).pdf

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William H. McNeill - The Pursuit of Truth, A Histo rian's Memoir (2005).jpg

William H. McNeill's seminal book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963) received the National Book Award in 1964 and was later named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. From his post at the University of Chicago, McNeill became one of the first contemporary North American historians to write world history, seeking a broader interpretation of human affairs than prevailed in his youth. A candid, intellectual memoir from one of the most famous and influential historians of our era, The Pursuit of Truth charts the development of McNeill's thought over seven decades. At the core of his worldview is the belief that historical truth does not derive exclusively from criticizing, paraphrasing, and summarizing written documents, nor is history merely a record of how human intentions and plans succeeded or failed. Instead, McNeill believes that human lives are immersed in vast overarching processes of change. Ecological circumstances frame and limit human action, while in turn humans have been able to alter their environment more and more radically as technological skill and knowledge increased. Over the course of his career as a historian, teacher, and mentor, McNeill expounded the range of history and integrated it into an evolutionary worldview uniting physical, biological, and intellectual processes. Accordingly, The Pursuit of Truth explores the personal and professional life of a man who affected the way a core academic discipline has been taught and understood in America.

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William H. McNeill - The Pursuit of Truth, A Histo rian's Memoir (2005).pdf

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Tony Payan - The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars, Dr ugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security (2006).jpg

As the United States' response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, begins to take its final shape, perhaps the most affected area of the country is the U.S. borderlands with Mexico. The optimistic talk of the 1990s regarding trade, investment, and economic integration in North America has given way to a rhetoric focused on security, particularly securing and controlling all points of entry to and exit from the United States. Cities and towns across the Southwestern border have experienced firsthand the consequences of the new, security-oriented national ethos and practices embodied in the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The comprehensive security strategy now in place permeates the three border wars examined in this insightful work--the war on drugs, the war over the enforcement of immigration laws, and the war on terror. As Payan demonstrates, the effects of these three wars have been significant. They include a loss of local autonomy and a disconnect between the priorities of Washington, D.C., and the local populations. Perhaps more important, they have created a rigid international line that represents a barrier to economic, social, and cultural integration--and a source of fear and suspicion between neighbors. Payan traces the history of these policies on the border to discern and understand the evolutionary patterns and common threads that join all three policies together today. He argues that historically the border has experienced a gradual tightening and increasing militarization, culminating in today's restrictive environment. This book illuminates the ways in which border residents are coping with the stricter border security environment, and how they navigate their daily lives in the face of an increasing number of federal bureaucrats and programs designed to close the border. It examines the significant conflict between the government's efforts to close the border and the border communities' efforts to open it.

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Tony Payan - The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars, Dr ugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security (2006).pdf

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Jamie Pietras - Hurricane Katrina (2008).jpg

When the first signs of sunlight emerged from the trickling rain the morning of Monday, August 29, 2005, many residents of the city of New Orleans hoped the worst was behind them. Hours earlier, the tropical hurricane known as "Katrina" made landfall at an area just 70 miles to the southeast of the city, tearing the roofs off of buildings and tossing boats like confetti. Tens of thousands of survivors in need of food, water, and medical attention sat stranded along the city's sweltering highways and in the Superdome and Convention Center. Worse, others remained trapped in their damaged homes.In an attempt to coordinate relief efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency implemented strict disaster-response rules that made it difficult for organizations to offer assistance and waited a precious five days before sending much-needed supplies to the Convention Center. "Hurricane Katrina" explains how the disaster stands among the worst in United States history, killing more than 1,600 people, and destroying 200,000 homes along the Gulf Coast. More than a million fled the Gulf region, where economic losses and property damages from flooding were expected to reach a record $125 billion.

About the Author
Jamie Pietras is a writer and journalist who lives in New York City. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing with a concentration in nonfiction from Columbia University.

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Jamie Pietras - Hurricane Katrina (2008).pdf

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Juan Flores - From Bomba to Hip-Hop, Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (2000).jpg

From Bomba to Hip-Hop shows a probing scholar with his hand firmly but gently on the pulse of cultural formations that would have eluded most of the rest of us. Who else but Juan Flores explores the complexities of Latino life with both sociological depth and a keen ear for popular musical cadences and literary innovation.

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Kathleen Deagan, Jose Maria Cruxent - Columbus's O utpost among the Taínos, Spain and America at La I sabela, 1493-1498 (2002).jpg

USA Books - Kathleen Deagan, Jose Maria Cruxent - Columbuss Outpos...anos, Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498 2002.jpg

In 1493 Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos. Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent tell the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on their ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, they contrast Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town. Deagan and Cruxent argue that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, they shed light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.

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Kathleen Deagan, Jose Maria Cruxent - Columbus's O utpost among the Taínos, Spain and America at La I sabela, 1493-1498 (2002).pdf

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Christopher Carr, D. Troy Case - Gathering Hopewel l, Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction (2005).jpg

Among the most socially and personally vocal archaeological remains on the North American continent are the massive and often complexly designed earthen architecture of Hopewellian peoples of two thousand years ago, their elaborately embellished works of art made of glistening metals and stones from faraway places, and their highly formalized mortuaries. In this book, twenty-one researchers in interwoven efforts immerse themselves and the reader in this vibrant archaeological record in order to richly reconstruct the societies, rituals, and ritual interactions of Hopewellian peoples. By finding the faces, actions, and motivations of Hopewellian peoples as individuals who constructed knowable social roles, the authors explore, in a personalized and locally contextualized manner, the details of Hopewellian life: leadership, its sacred and secular power bases, recruitment, and formalization over time; systems of social ranking and prestige; animal-totemic clan organization, kinship structures, and sodalities; gender roles, prestige, work load, and health; community organization in its tri-scalar residential, symbolic, and demographic forms; intercommunity alliances and changes in their strategies and expanses over time; and interregional travels for power questing, pilgrimage, healing, tutelage, and acquiring ritual knowledge. These and other aspects of Hopewellian life are revealed through the assembly of comprehensive data bases of unprecedented scale, most of which are fully reported in CD form for the benefit of other researchers. This book is useful to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in the workings and development of social complexity at local and interregional scales, recent theoretical developments in the anthropology of the topics listed above, the prehistory of eastern North America, its history of intellectual development, and Native American ritual, symbolism, and belief.

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Christopher Carr, D. Troy Case - Gathering Hopewel l, Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction (2005).pdf

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Morris Davis - The Methodist Unification, Christia nity and the Politics of Race in the Jim Crow Era (2008).jpg

In the early part of the twentieth century, Methodists were seen by many Americans as the most powerful Christian group in the country. Ulysses S. Grant is rumored to have said that during his presidency there were three major political parties in the U.S., if you counted the Methodists. The Methodist Unification focuses on the efforts among the Southern and Northern Methodist churches to create a unified national Methodist church, and how their plan for unification came to institutionalize racism and segregation in unprecedented ways. How did these Methodists conceive of what they had just formed as “united” when members in the church body were racially divided? Moving the history of racial segregation among Christians beyond a simplistic narrative of racism, Morris L. Davis shows that Methodists in the early twentieth century — including high-profile African American clergy — were very much against racial equality, believing that mixing the races would lead to interracial marriages and threaten the social order of American society. The Methodist Unification illuminates the religious culture of Methodism, Methodists' self-identification as the primary carriers of "American Christian Civilization," and their influence on the crystallization of whiteness during the Jim Crow Era as a legal category and cultural symbol.

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