As late as 1900, most whites regarded the tropics as "the white man's grave," a realm of steamy fertility, moral dissolution, and disease. So how did the tropical beach resort—white sand, blue waters, and towering palms—become the iconic vacation landscape? Tropical Whites explores the dramatic shift in attitudes toward and popularization of the tropical tourist "Southland" in the Americas: Florida, Southern California, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Drawing on a wide range of sources...

As late as 1900, most whites regarded the tropics as "the white man's grave," a realm of steamy fertility, moral dissolution, and disease. So how did the tropical beach resort—white sand, blue waters, and towering palms—become the iconic vacation landscape? Tropical Whites explores the dramatic shift in attitudes toward and popularization of the tropical tourist "Southland" in the Americas: Florida, Southern California, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Drawing on a wide range of sources...

The Progressive Era, the period in the United States between 1898 and 1917, was a time of great social, political, and industrial change. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, an event that signaled the emergence of the United States as a great power, the country soon was involved in its first overseas guerrilla war, in the Philippines. Vast changes in communications and transportation, immigration and migration patterns, social mores, gender roles, family structure, class structure,...

The Progressive Era, the period in the United States between 1898 and 1917, was a time of great social, political, and industrial change. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, an event that signaled the emergence of the United States as a great power, the country soon was involved in its first overseas guerrilla war, in the Philippines. Vast changes in communications and transportation, immigration and migration patterns, social mores, gender roles, family structure, class structure,...

In a miracle of concision, Paul S. Boyer provides a wide-ranging and authoritative history of America, capturing in a compact space the full story of our nation. Ranging from the earliest Native American settlers to the presidency of Barack Obama, this Very Short Introduction offers an illuminating account of politics, diplomacy, and war as well as the full spectrum of social, cultural, and scientific developments that shaped our country. Here is a masterful picture of America's achievemen...

One of the classic studies of the Great Depression, featuring a new introduction by the author with insights into the economic crises of 1929 and today.In the twenty-five years since its publication, critics and scholars have praised historian Robert McElvaine’s sweeping and authoritative history of the Great Depression as one of the best and most readable studies of the era. Combining clear-eyed insight into the machinations of politicians and economists who strug...

The second volume of Burns's acclaimed history of America, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Great DepressionAbraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address pointed to a new way to preserve an old hope—that democracy might prove a vibrant and lasting form of government for people of different races, religions, and aspirations. The scars of the Civil War would not soon heal, but with that one short speech, the president held out the possibility that such a ...

The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multivolume history of the American nation. In the newest volume in the series, The Republic for Which It Stands, acclaimed historian Richard White offers a fresh and integrated interpretation of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age as the seedbed of modern America. At the end of the Civil War the leaders and citizens of the victorious North envisioned the country's future as a free-labor republic, with a homogeno...

**“A gripping and forceful narrative.”—Nancy F. Cott, author of Public VowsAn “enthralling” (Michael Kazin, Washington Post) account of America’s shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society.**In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technological innovation made possible dramatic increases in industrial and agricultural productivity; by 1919, per capita gross national product had soared. But this new wealth and n...

With America's current and ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor and the constant threat of the disappearance of the middle class, the Progressive Era stands out as a time when the middle class had enough influence on the country to start its own revolution. Before the Progressive Era most Americans lived on farms, working from before sunrise to after sundown every day except Sunday with tools that had changed very little for centuries. Just three decades later, America was utter...

"Simply brilliant. . . . The first survey of African American history to rival John Hope Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's From Slavery to Freedom." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Ordinary people don't experience history as it is taught by historians. The same people who lived through the Civil War and the eradication of slavery also dealt with the hardships of Reconstruction, so why do we almost always treat them separately? In Children of Fire, r...

The fascinating story of Franklin Roosevelt, the Greatest Generation, and the freedoms they won, is a “stirring, heady dose of American history by a…progressive thinker” (Kirkus Reviews).On January 6, 1941, the Greatest Generation gave voice to its founding principles, the Four Freedoms: Freedom from want and from fear. Freedom of speech and religion. In the name of the Four Freedoms they fought the Great Depression. In the name of the Four Freedoms they d...