Suggested Reading List for U.S. History 121

Here are some books related to this class that I recommend for additional reading. If you are going to do 2 books reviews for your major project, feel free to use books from this list.

Colonization

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Breen, T.H. Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America. NY, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Bremer, Francis J. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995.

*Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. NY,NY:Hill and Wang, 1983.

Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1972.

Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

*Demos, John. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. NY,NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

*Games, Alison. Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Kulikoff, Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

*Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. NY,NY: Vintage Books, 1999.

Merrell, James H. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. NY,NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999.

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery – American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. NY, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975.

*Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640.  NY,NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. NY,NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Years between 1700 and 1776

*Anderson, Fred.  Crucible of War. The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. NY,NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.

Butler, John. Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Horton, James O. and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty, Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. NY,NY:Oxford University Press, 1997.

Landsman, Ned C. From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Levy, Barry. Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley. NY,NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Morgan, Philip. Slave Counterpoint. Black Culture in the Eiughteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Long House: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Shannon, Timothy J. Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Congress of 1754. Ithca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. NY,NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

The Revolution

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Fenn, Elizabeth A. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. NY,NY: Hill and Want, 2002.

Frey, Sylvia R. Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Holton, Woody. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

* Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. NY, NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

Early Republic

Appleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generations of Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

The Antebellum Years

Harris, William J. Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty and Black Slavery in Augusta’s Hinterlands. Hanover, New Hampshire:University Press of New England, 1985.

Isenberg, Nancy. Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill,NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

*Miller, William Lee. Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress. NY:NY, Vintage Books, 1995.

Stauffer, John. The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. NY,NY:Hill and Wang, 1996.

Jeffrey, Julie Roy. The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism. Chapel Hill,NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

*Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside an Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

*Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. Cambridge, MA:Oxford University Press, 1982.

American Civil War

McPherson, James M. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War. NY,NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861. NY, NY:Harper & Row, 1976.

 

* Books I highly recommend.