Books on U.S. History

John Lewis’s 1998 memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, written with Mike D’Orso, is an intimate firsthand account of the US Civil Rights Movement (CRM). Lewis, the child of sharecroppers, grew up in Pike County, Alabama, during the heyday of segregation in the American South. From a young age, Lewis questioned the injustices of segregation, yet never imagined that he would become one of the key leaders of the civil rights... Read Walking with the Wind Summary

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Originally published in 1994, Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals primarily focuses on the 1957-58 school year at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, during which Beals was a member of the Little Rock Nine—the first group of Black students to attend the formerly all-white high school of 2,000 white students. Beals’s book, written for young-adult readers, speaks of her early life and her many adult accomplishments. Encouraged by school administrators and local... Read Warriors Don't Cry Summary

In his 1986 nonfiction work War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian John W. Dower investigates the racism between the United States and the Empire of Japan, as it existed before, during, and after the Second World War. The very nature and understanding of who the enemy was, for both the Anglo-Americans and the Japanese, presented in many forms. On the American side, there was an important... Read War Without Mercy Summary

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What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by American historian Daniel Walker Howe, explores the changes the United States underwent in the early 19th century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History, the book was published in 2007 as part of The Oxford History of the United States. Howe’s work explores the political, military, social, economic, and cultural developments that shaped the nation. Howe does not shy away from the complexities and contradictions of... Read What Hath God Wrought Summary

In “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” otherwise known as “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” Frederick Douglass outlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. Weaving together ethical, religious, and sociopolitical threads of argument, Douglass points out the ironies of American values, particularly regarding the existence of an economic system based on slavery. Originally drafted and given as a speech in... Read What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Summary

American author Raymond Carver is best known for his short stories and his simple, precise writing style. He was a nominee for the National Book Awards as well as a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. In 1988, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Carver is one of the chief figures in the “Dirty Realism” movement of American writing, which became popular in the 1980s and provided vignettes of the dark side... Read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Summary

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White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era is a 2006 nonfiction book by Shelby Steele, a Black conservative author who specializes in the study of race relations in the US. This guide refers to the e-book published in 2009 by HarperCollins. The title points to the book’s central theme: white guilt—the loss of moral authority—and the damaging responses it elicited in Black and White Americans in the... Read White Guilt Summary

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White Noise is a 1985 novel by American author Don DeLillo. A significant entry in the canon of postmodern literature, White Noise tells the story of a small-town college professor whose suburban routine is shattered when a train crash results in a massive chemical spill. As the characters struggle to accept their own mortality, the book explores a range of contemporary issues including consumerism, mass media, and conspiracy theories. In 2005 Time Magazine included White... Read White Noise Summary

Carol Anderson's 2016 nonfiction book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, looks at the way African-American progress has been halted and repressed, again and again, by a powerful cocktail of economic self-interest, fear, and hatred on the part of America's white elites, a philosophy she calls "white rage." The book’s five chapters examine five crucial turning points in the African-American struggle for freedom and equality: Reconstruction and the abolition of slavery, the... Read White Rage Summary

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IntroductionIn White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg documents the historical and contemporary disdain of the upper and middle classes in America for the white poor and the resultant staying power of a class hierarchy. Isenberg, an award-winning historian, uses her expertise to contribute this non-fictional work to the academic literature on social class. Originally published in 2016, the book became a New York Times bestseller and was a finalist... Read White Trash Summary

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