Discovering America S Past

More than 450 accounts of the myriad customs, beliefs, legends, languages, adventures, and traditions that helped form America, illustrated with over 700 photographs, paintings, and engravings.

This book presents some of the most significant social history to date in one single volume. Readers will find that Exploring America's Past is not only up to date, but also more inclusive and multicultural than other similar collections. The essays in this book concentrate on issues in America, ranging from freedom, to sexuality, to industry, to war, to minorities, to our youth culture, dance, and music. This comprehensive collection of essays will be ideal for U.S. history survey courses. Contents: Introduction and Acknowledgements; The Meaning of Freedom, Eric Foner; Chinese-Americans Build a Railroad, Jack Chen; Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study, Lawrence Goodwyn; The Sociology and Historiography of Immigration, Ewa Morawska; Studying American Political Development in the Progressive Era, Martin Sklar; Charity Girls and City Pleasure: Historical Notes on Working-Class Sexuality, 1880-1920, Kathy Peiss; Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s, Lizabeth Cohen; Origins of a Sit-Down Era: Worker Militancy and Innovation in the Rubber Industry, 1934-1938, Daniel Nelson; The Politics of Sacrifice on the Homefront in World War II, Mark Leff; The Riddle of the Zoot, Robin D.G. Kelley; The Land of a Thousand Dances: Youth, Minorities, and the Rise of Rock and Roll, George Lipsitz; The Unraveling of America, Allen Matusow; Ronald Reagan and the Movie, Michael Rogin.

Discusses the possibility that America was discovered by someone other than Columbus.

"The Maestros do a real service here in presenting the more familiar explorers in the context of all the migrations that have populated the Western Hemisphere....An outstanding introduction."--Kirkus Reviews. "The dazzlingly clean and accurate prose and the exhilarating beauty of the pictures combine for an extraordinary achievement in both history and art."--School Library Journal.

Demonstrates how Venetian newsmongers played a crucial yet heretofore unrecognized role in the invention of America.

First published in 1974, England and the Discovery of America places the early explorations of the English in North America in the broad context of 15th and 16th century history. Marshalling evidence that cannot be pushed aside and sifting a mass of fascinating detail (including problems of cartography and the Vinland Map controversy), Professor Quinn presents circumstantial indications pointing to 1481 as the date or the discovery of America by Bristol voyagers – fishermen seeking new sources of cod, and merchant sailors with maps carrying promise of unexploited Atlantic islands. Whereas England did little to follow up her early lead, Quinn demonstrates that English initiatives from the 1580s onward, though slow, were of great importance. He brings to life the men involved in a variety of rash and heroic experiments in colonization and casts new light on their fates. He makes it clear that it was this very profusion of trial and error and trail again, as well as the conviction that settlement in temperate latitudes in North America could be effective if tenaciously enough sought, that enabled the English to strike and maintain routes in their new American world. This book will be of interest to students of English history, American history, colonial history and naval history.