A Gift To America

A classic work of black study that shines a light on the accomplishments of African people within Western history—from the groundbreaking journalist. Originally published in 1959 and revised and expanded in 1989, this book asserts that Africans had contributed more to the world than was previously acknowledged. Historian Joel Augustus Rogers devoted a significant amount of his professional life to unearthing facts about people of African ancestry. He intended these findings to be a refutation of contemporary racist beliefs about the inferiority of blacks. Rogers asserted that the color of skin did not determine intellectual genius, and he publicized the great black civilizations that had flourished in Africa during antiquity. According to Rogers, many ancient African civilizations had been primal molders of Western civilization and culture.

An historical survey of American Christmas that describes how the modern holiday emerged. It traces the evolution from years prior to 1880, when people presented one another simple, handmade presents, through the late 19th century when industrialization inundated the celebration with inexpensive "tawdry" trinkets, to today. Includes photographs of store and product advertising. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Describes how the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi planned and built his giant gift to America and how it was erected in New York Harbor as a symbol of liberty.

Presents the story of Eliza Scidmore, a world traveler, writer, photographer, and peace advocate who, after years of persistence, planted cherry trees all across Washington, D.C.

In the 1970s, John M. Olin, one of the country’s leading industrialists, decided to devote his fortune to saving American free enterprise. Over the next three decades, the John M. Olin Foundation funded the conservative movement as it emerged from the intellectual ghetto and occupied the halls of power. The foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars fostering what its longtime president William E. Simon called the “counterintelligentsia” to offset liberal dominance of university faculties and the mainstream media and to make conservatism a significant cultural force. Among the counterintellectuals the foundation identified and supported at key stages of their careers were Charles Murray during his early work on welfare reform, Allan Bloom as he wrote The Closing of the American Mind, and Francis Fukuyama as he was developing his “End of History” thesis. Using exclusive access to the John M. Olin Foundation’s leading personalities as well as its extensive archives, John J. Miller tells the story of an intriguing man and his unique philanthropic vision. He gives fascinating insights into the foundation’s role in helping the CIA fund anti-Communist organizations during the Cold War and its extensive help to Irving Kristol and others as they moved from left to right to found the neoconservative movement. He tells of the foundation’s early and critical role in building institutions such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, which served to transform conservative ideas into national policies. A Gift of Freedom shows how John M. Olin’s “venture capital fund for the conservative movement” helped develop one of the leading forces in American politics and culture.

Why untold? Most blues histories, outstanding as they are, take us back to the late 1890s but rarely further. As South Carolina's Cradle of Jazz Project wrote: "From the end of the dances at Congo Square (c. 1820) to the beginning of jazz, there is a black hole ... when the old West African music slowly turned into the new music of America." America's Gift was written expressly to illuminate that 'black hole', to discover exactly what happened to America's slave music in the 19th century, and how it evolved during the centuries before. Why untold? First we examine the origins of Africa's ancient slave trade, the West's involvement with slavery from the 1400s, and how America's first Africans were pirated from Portuguese slavers. We tell how the musical rhythms of old Africa absorbed the melodies of white America, in the 17th and 18th centuries. We explain how various musical strands intertwined over those centuries, to finally create a music only named blues in 1912. Why untold? Such historical information is usually only available in isolation. America's Gift pieces the story together like a jigsaw puzzle, yet avoids the blues minutia and academic intensity often found in histories of 20th century blues. Not avoided are the 19th century's distasteful minstrel and coon song periods. Often cut from blues histories these days, these genres are so essential to blues' evolution. In America's Gift, facts are not overruled by political correctness.Why untold? Discover how and where the term 'blues' evolved and how it reached America. Find out how only white singers recorded blues in America, from 1914 to 1920, and why black singers didn't want to sing blues. America's Gift tells you who-did-what-first in the years leading up to and into the blues era, and the genres they did it in. It is the first book, to our knowledge, to link American sea shanties to the evolution of the blues.Why untold? America's Gift discovers blues recorded in London by African Americans three years BEFORE the generally-accepted date of 1920. It tracks down the earliest known African Americans playing the folk music later called blues, and what they sang. It discloses who published and recorded what blues song first, who recorded the first blues guitar, first guitar solo, first slide guitar, first harmonica, first country blues and first electric guitar blues, even earlier sometimes than previously thought. Why untold? Read about the great blues dispute of 1938 where two blues giants argued over the genre's past. America's Gift gives you the full blues story up to the 1950s. On the way it selects 20 rocking blues tracks that pre-empted rock 'n' roll. These date from 1936 to 1949, years before the oft-cited Rocket 88 in 1952.America's Gift is illustrated, nearly a foot tall and an inch thick, with 367 pages of easy-to-read type and a 21-page index. It has been described as a "lightening read", just in case you're thinking it might be a bit stodgy.