Browse By Course

• African American History
• America in the 19th Century
• America in the 20th Century
• Civil War & Reconstruction
• Colonial Period
• Contemporary America
• Gender History
• U.S. Foreign Relations
• U.S. History Survey

America in the 20th Century

1. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950

   Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore

   “Remarkable . . . an eye-opening book [on] the freedom struggle that changed the South, the nation, and the world.” —Washington PostMore

2. Everybody Says Freedom: A History of the Civil Rights Movement in Songs and Pictures

   Pete Seeger, Bob Reiser, Jesse Jackson

   “Filled with beautiful music, glorious lyrics, and the soul of one of the most important historical and social revolutions of our history.” —Judy CollinsMore

3. The Age of Jim Crow

   Jane Dailey

   America’s racial history has been marked by both hard-won progress and sudden reversals of fortune.More

4. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign

   Michael K. Honey

   The definitive history of the epic struggle for economic justice that became Martin Luther King Jr.'s last crusade.More

5. The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War

   Frederick Downs, Jr.

   “The best damned book from the point of view of the infantrymen who fought there.”—Army TimesMore

6. The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics

   Richard Davenport-Hines

   A startling account of the history of drug abuse, this book forces us to reconsider many of our views on a controversial issue.More

7. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World

   J. R. McNeill

   "Refreshingly unpolemical and at times even witty, McNeill's book brims with carefully sifted statistics and brilliant details."—Washington Post Book WorldMore

8. One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945

   David Reynolds

   "A magisterial account of our time by a distinguished historian."—Walter LaFeber, prize-winning author of The ClashMore

9. Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918

   Byron Farwell

   When the United States finally declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, the British and French armies were at a point of total exhaustion.More

10. Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe

    Stephen E. Ambrose

    In the final months of World War II, with the Allied forces streaming into Germany on two fronts, a major decision had to be made: where to draw a stop line to prevent an accidental clash between the Russian and the Anglo-American armies.More

11. Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up

    Lawrence E. Walsh

    In its chilling and unsparing revelations, Firewall is the definitive account of the most dangerous breach of presidential authority since Watergate.More

12. Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy

    Stephen Macedo

    Our political and personal lives continue to be lived in the broad wake of the 1960s.More

13. Intervention!: The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917

    John S. D. Eisenhower

    Powerful and compelling. . . . Eisenhower is not only an accomplished military historian, he's also a storyteller in the tradition of Bruce Caton and Shelby Foote."—Steve Neal, Chicago Sun-TimesMore

14. Lost Star: The Search for Amelia Earhart

    Randall Brink

    "In this book, I deal only with the truth about Amelia Earhart's last flight, a truth withheld by our government because of a tenuous peace with Japan in the Pacific and concerns for the national security at home. . . . Those who knew the truth, and held it close, knew that Earhart and Noonan had survived. They believed it was their duty to hide the truth, and so they did."—from the IntroductionMore

15. Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920-1941

    Michael E. Parrish

    "Impressively detailed. . . . An authoritative and epic overview."—Publishers WeeklyMore