"Fight "til she sinks, boys. Don't give up the ship! Burn her."James Lawrence's command, spoken as his final fighting words in the historic 1813 battle between the USS Chesapeake and the HMS Shannon, would endure as the motto of the U.S. Navy. He lost the battle, however, and a large portion of the Chesapeake was recycled by the ship breakers of Portsmouth, England, until her timbers gave form and size to a new water mill in the village of Wickham. Almost two hundred years later, the old m...

In the 1880s, New York railroad magnate Alexander Cassatt looked at a map of America�s East Coast and decided that he could overcome a challenge of geography if he thought of a new railroad in a non-traditional way. North and South were now trading with each other postwar, and the two mostprominent coastal cities of those regions, New York and Norfolk, were less than 500 miles apart�except for one very large problem: at the end of a straight route down the Eastern Shore of Virginia lay the...

By the time of the American Revolution, the College of William and Mary was already into its eighth decade as the academic source of what the new nation would become and how it would relate to the larger world. Its land had been surveyed by George Washington, and its first honorary degree had been given to Ben Franklin. It would go on to educate two signers of the Declaration of Independence, three American presidents, and three justices of the Supreme Court. Chartered by British royalty i...

The Chesapeake Bay has been a multifaceted engine of American history and commerce since its first settlers touched the shore in the early 1600s. Since English settlers first touched the shore of the new country in 1607, the Chesapeake Bay has been a multifaceted engine of American history and commerce. The body of inland tidal water between the largest bay cities, Norfolk and Baltimore, was large enough to be the setting of adventure and close enough to allow smaller towns and cities to g...

In the Netherlands, a small group of biracial citizens has entered its eighth decade of lives that have been often puzzling and difficult, but which offer a unique insight into the history of race relations in America. Though their African American fathers had brought liberation from Nazi tyranny at the end of World War II, they were in a segregated American military derived from a racially divided American society.Decades later, some of their children could finally know of a fathe...

The role of Americans in the two world wars is well known, but with a glaring exception--one that reveals a little-known aspect of the common history of the United States and Canada. By the time of the American entrance into World War I in April 1917 and World War II in December 1941, tens of thousands of Americans had already fought and died in those conflicts in the uniforms of other nations.Most had quietly traveled over the northern border to join the ground, air and naval forc...

**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch“Magisterial.”—The New York Times**In this extraordinary volume, Jean Edward Smith presents a portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower that is as full, rich, and revealing as anything ever written about America’s thirty-fourth president. Here is Eisenhower the young dreamer, charting a course from Abilene, Kansas, to West Point and beyond. Drawing on a wealth ...

The African-American contribution to winning World War II has never been celebrated as profoundly as in Fighting for America. In this inspirational and uniquely personal tribute, the essential part played by black servicemen and -women in that cataclysmic conflict is brought home.Here are letters, photographs, oral histories, and rare documents, collected by historian Christopher Moore, the son of two black WWII veterans. Weaving his family history with th...

"An utterly compelling account of the African Americans who played a crucial and dangerous role in the invasion of Europe. . . . Long overdue." —Tom BrokawIn the early hours of June six, 1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African-American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France to man a curtain of armed balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft. One member of the 320th would be nominated for the Medal of Honor, an award he would never receive. The ...

"Before the Greatest Generation, there was the Forgotten Generation of World War I . . . wonderfully engaging" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review)."Richard Rubin has done something that will never be possible for anyone to do again. His interviews with the last American World War I veterans—who have all since died—bring to vivid life a cataclysm that changed our world forever but that remains curiously forgotten here." —Adam Hochschild, author of To End ...

"A must-read book that explores a vital pre-war effort [with] deep research and gripping writing." — Washington TimesIn The rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941, Paul Dickson tells the dramatic story of how the American Army was mobilized from scattered outposts two years before Pearl Harbor into the disciplined and mobile fighting force that helped win World War II.In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II...

**• Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction• A New York Times Notable Book• A Best Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Washington Independent Review of Books, and more!The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont“Matthew F. Delmont’s book is filled with compelling na...