All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, written by Marshall Berman, offers an exploration into the tumultuous and transformative nature of modernity. Published in 1982, the book explores the social, economic, and philosophical dynamics that characterize the modern world. Berman, a scholar of political theory and urban studies, dissects the complex relationship between modernization (the material process) and modernism (the cultural responses to it). He examines a wide array of sources... Read All That Is Solid Melts Into Air Summary

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren is a fictional political novel originally published in 1946 by Harcourt Brace & Company. Robert Penn Warren was an acclaimed novelist and poet from the American South. Along with fellow Southerners Cleanth Brooks and John Crowe Ransom, he was a leading proponent of the literary critical approach known as New Criticism. His best-known novel, All the King’s Men follows the political rise and fall of Governor Willie... Read All the King's Men Summary

All the President’s Men (1974) is the story of the most famous American political scandal of the 20th century. Written by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (also known for War), the book follows in exacting detail their investigation into the Watergate Hotel break-in and subsequent coverup of that crime. The case began with a story on an unusual burglary attempt at the Democratic National Headquarters in the summer of 1972. It eventually... Read All the President's Men Summary

All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon (2017) is a documentary novel by author and poet Tim Z. Hernandez. Hernandez is the grandchild of Mexican migrant workers, and he has written a number of texts dealing with themes of Mexican immigration to the US, life in California’s Central Valley, and related topics. In All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos... Read All They Will Call You Summary

A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign, published in 2007, was written by Edward J. Larson, also known for Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (1997). The book documents the US presidential election of 1800, a highly-contested political drama, preceded by what is considered the first political campaign in American history. The front-runners in the contest were widely considered to be... Read A Magnificent Catastrophe Summary

A Man of the People is a 1966 novel by Chinua Achebe. Achebe, a Nigerian novelist and well-known figure of African literature, also wrote Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964). A Man of the People chronicles political unrest in an African nation that only recently gained its independence from Britain. The novel opens with the narrator, Odili Samalu, awaiting the arrival of Minister Nanga, also known as Chief Nanga, at Anata Grammar... Read A Man of the People Summary

“America” (1956) by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) is a free verse Beat poem that captures the discontent and revolutionary, rebellious spirit of the Beat Generation and the burgeoning youth counter-culture movement that would come in the 1960s. In the poem, Ginsberg’s sprawling, manic, stream-of-consciousness mind wanders between contemporary politics, luminous ramblings, and psychoanalytic contemplations of his childhood to paint a picture of displacement and isolation in Eisenhower’s 1950s America. The poem perfectly captures Ginsberg’s poetic philosophy... Read America Summary

American Creation is a 2007 nonfiction book by Joseph Ellis that covers the successes and failures of the founders of the United States from 1775 to 1803.Ellis starts with the year and three months that set in motion the colonies’ declaration of independence and subsequent revolution. In this eventful year, the British played the worst possible hand they could, removing the possibility of reconciliation. The colonists included fiery and impetuous rebels such as Patrick Henry... Read American Creation Summary

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of President Andrew Jackson written in 2008 by historian Jon Meacham. The book focuses on Jackson’s transformative and often controversial time in the White House, exploring themes of democracy, the Expansion of Executive Power, leadership, and the interaction of the personal and public, including the Impact of Personal Character on Public Duty and the Intersection of Private Lives and Public Roles. Meacham... Read American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Summary

Colin Woodard’s 2011 American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America is a work of historical nonfiction and political science that takes a look at American regionalism and the territories that Woodard identifies as shaping North America. Woodard asserts that North America comprises 11 distinct nations, each containing its own unique history, ideals, and identity, and that the conflicts between these regions have molded America’s past and continue to shape... Read American Nations Summary

American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment is a nonfiction book published in 2018 by the American journalist Shane Bauer. The book was the culmination of Bauer’s investigative reporting into the business of incarceration, which was published in a shorter form in Mother Jones magazine. American Prison falls into a specific category of journalistic nonfiction that includes Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, an investigation... Read American Prison Summary

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the physicist who directed the US atomic bomb program during World War II. From 1943 to 1945, Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the bomb’s research and development at secret facilities and laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The bomb’s use on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, however, left... Read American Prometheus Summary

American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 (2016), authored by Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian known for his expertise in early American history, offers a comprehensive reexamination of the tumultuous period that led to the birth of the United States. This historical non-fiction work examines the complexities of the American Revolution, challenging traditional narratives by highlighting the diverse experiences of all participants, including Indigenous Americans, enslaved Africans, loyalists, and patriots. Taylor’s understanding of the... Read American Revolutions Summary

American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997) is a nonfiction history by Pauline Maier (1938-2013), a historian specializing in the American Revolution. A revisionist historian, Maier uses narrative techniques to bring to life the era in which the Declaration of Independence was created, seeking to demystify this foundational American document and to raise questions about how history is constructed. American Scripture was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997. This study... Read American Scripture Summary

Edmund S. Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia was originally published in 1975 by W. W. Norton & Company Inc. This summary references the Norton paperback edition reissued in 2003. Morgan seeks to discover how America’s Founding Fathers came to advocate for freedom and equality when many of them owned slaves. Morgan chose to study Virginia’s Founding Fathers because they were among the most vocal in their opposition to the monarchy, because... Read American Slavery, American Freedom Summary

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West (2017) is a work of narrative nonfiction by journalist Nate Blakeslee. Blakeslee is a longtime contributor to Texas Monthly, covering criminal justice, politics, and the environment. His experience covering the latter two subjects are brought to bear in this story of the reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone Park. The book focuses on the wolf O-Six, documenting her struggle for survival against both rival animals... Read American Wolf Summary

America on Fire (2021) by Elizabeth Hinton is a nonfiction book which provides a broad overview of the history of Black rebellion in the United States, starting in the “crucible period” of the late 1960s following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and continuing into the present with the George Floyd protests of the summer of 2020. Hinton highlights several violent encounters between Black Americans and law enforcement, many of which are not commonly... Read America on Fire Summary

Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book by journalist and poet Eliza Griswold. This study guide follows the book’s first edition, which was published in 2018. Griswold is a journalist known for investigative reporting into political issues, having previously published articles in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation. In Amity and Prosperity, Griswold investigates natural gas companies drilling in Pennsylvania’s western Washington County. The... Read Amity and Prosperity Summary

A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick is a satirical essay published anonymously in 1729 by Irish author Jonathan Swift. Using irony and hyperbole, the essay mocks heartless attitudes toward the poor among English and Irish elites by proposing that impoverished families sell their infant children to be killed and eaten by the rich. One... Read A Modest Proposal Summary

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (2018) explores both the history and the historical memory of the American Civil Rights Era. Author Jeanne Theoharis, also known for her first book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2013), demonstrates the myriad ways that commentators have distorted historical events in more modern contexts.Americans’ reckoning with civil rights is a story filled with myth, simplistic characterizations, and the dangerous... Read A More Beautiful and Terrible History Summary