This monumental work, the second of two Library of America volumes, culminated Henry Adams's lifelong fascination with the American past. Writing at the height of his powers, Adams understood the true subject as the consolidation of the American nation and character, and his treatment has never been surpassed.
Covering the eight years spanning the presidency of James Madison, this volume chronicles "Mr. Madison's War"--the most bungled war in American history. The President and Congress delay while the United States is bullied and insulted by both England and France; then they plunge the country into the War of 1812 without providing the troops, monies, or fleets to wage it. The incompetence of the commanders leads to a series of disasters--including the burning of the White House and Capitol while Madison and his cabinet, fleeing from an invading army, watch from the nearby hills of Maryland and Virginia. The war has its heroes, too: William Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe and Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, Commodores Perry and Decatur and the officers and crew of the Constitution. As Adams tells it, though, disgrace, is averted by other means: the ineptitude of the British, the skill of the American artillerymen and privateers, and the diplomatic brilliance of Albert Gallatin and John Quincy Adams, who negotiated the peace treaty at Ghent. The history, full of reversals and paradoxes, ends with the largest irony of all: the United States, the apparent loser of the war, emerges as a great new world power destined to eclipse its European rivals. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.
When the most romantic of cow outfits, the British-owned Matador, shipped out from Texas with 3,000 head of cattle bound for Dakota and the Cheyenne Indian Reservation, an observant young bronc twister named Ike Blasingame rode with them. Dakota Cowboy--which the New York Times calls "warm, human, flavorful"--is the story of Ike's eight years (1904-1912) on the last of the great open ranges. Its pages "take the reader across the treacherous Missouri as the spring-softened ice goes out under the horses' feet, into the still wild cow towns, through the roundups, the prairie fires, and to the gatherings of the Frenchmen, breeds and Indians, and their gay spirited daughters" (Mari Sandoz). Perceptive and circumstantial--"the author paints a big picture without omitting details" (New York Herald Tribune)--Dakota Cowboy is a mine of information about western life.
A history and psychological interpretation of Salem witchcraft in 1692
At the end of the Reconstruction, the spread of science and technology, industrialism, urbanization, immigration, and economic depressions eroded Americans' conventional beliefs in individualism and a divinely ordained social system. In The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe shows how, in subsequent years, during the Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Americans sought the organizing principles around which a new viable social order could be constructed in the modern world. This subtle and sophisticated study combines the virtues of historical narrative, sociological analysis, and social criticism.
Drawing on diaries, letters, household inventories and novels, the author offers a documented analysis of early American middle-class home life from 1750 to 1870.
The "settling" of the American West has been perceived throughout the world as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures. But in fact, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded primarily in economic reality; in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. Here she interprets the stories and the characters in a new way: the trappers, traders, Indians, farmers, oilmen, cowboys, and sheriffs of the Old West "meant business" in more ways than one, and their descendents mean business today.
A series of previously unpublished interviews, spanning the twenty year period from 1968 to 1988, that looks at the connection between Chomsky's linguistic studies and his political analysis. Prepared for Chomsky in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. "This wide-ranging book offers glimpses of his studies on language, anarchist theory and critiques of radical politics."--"NACLA Report on the Americas"
World champion Roy Cooper tells how to compete and win, and offers step-by-step instruction for the beginner in this event.
Describes the last twenty-four hours of President Lincoln's life and how his assassin spent those hours.
