Books on U.S. History

Atticus Lish’s novel Preparation for the Next Life tells the stories of Skinner, an Iraq war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and Zou Lei, an undocumented immigrant from Central Asia, and how their unlikely love changes them both forever. Preparation for the Next Life explores the challenges that undocumented immigrants and war veterans face in the United States as well as the complexities of cross-cultural relationships. The novel has been highly praised by critics... Read Preparation For The Next Life Summary

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Profiles in Courage articulates and argues for the significance of the idea of "political courage" in American political history. Through four parts, the author, President John F. Kennedy argues that the preeminent value of a senator is "political courage," which he defines from drawing from the lives of eight former American senators.The first of these Senators is John Quincy Adams, the son of President John Adams. Considering an embargo against Britain over its aggression on... Read Profiles in Courage Summary

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Written by Diane Glancy in 1996, Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears follows a group of Cherokee people as they are forced to relocate to “Indian Territory” in Oklahoma in 1838 and 1839. The novel is told from varying perspectives of members of the Cherokee Nation as well as soldiers, reverends, and disembodied voices. These shifting perspectives create a fragmented yet nuanced narrative as Glancy weaves together multiple viewpoints and utilizes... Read Pushing the Bear Summary

Race and Reunion by David W. Blight was published in 2001. It is about the history of American Civil War memory, specifically focusing on the 50-year period (1865-1915) after the war’s conclusion. It centers the competing themes of racial equality and sectional reunion. The book won numerous awards, including the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Merle Curti Award, the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the James A. Rawley Prize. Another work by this... Read Race and Reunion Summary

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Published in 1999 by historian and professor Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie is a work of biographical nonfiction about the life of civil rights leader Robert F. Williams. A controversial figure within the movement, Williams is best remembered for his advocation of armed self-defense in the struggle for Black liberation. In Radio Free Dixie, Tyson charts Williams’s rise to prominence against the sociopolitical and cultural influences that guided the evolution of the civil rights... Read Radio Free Dixie Summary

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Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power by linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky evaluates the rise of income inequality in the US over the last 40 years. It argues that the main consequence of neoliberalism, which has increased since the 1970s, is a dramatic concentration of wealth and power to the elite—at the expense of the lower and middle classes. Chomsky observes how rapid financialization since the... Read Requiem for the American Dream Summary

Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life (2012) is the fifth work by American writer, critic, and anthropologist David Treuer, and his first work of non-fiction. Treuer would follow this work, seven years later, with the publication of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present (2019), an in-depth study of Indigenous history and reservation life. Many of the historical events and themes that Treuer covers in this book are... Read Rez Life Summary

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Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist (2018) is a biography of disavowed white nationalist Derek Black, authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow.Derek is a former white nationalist wunderkind. Derek is the son of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Stormfront online hate group creator, Don Black, and the godson of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, white supremacist politician, and notorious public figure, David Duke. Derek’s parents remove... Read Rising Out of Hatred Summary