American History: Reconstruction to Present
Available in the Library
These books, plus many more, can all be found in the Reference section of our library. Search the Library Online Catalog to find additional resources.
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry
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RC 150.4 .B37 2005
Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America by Sara M. Evans
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HQ 1410 .E83 1989
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent
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HV 5089 .O47 2010
Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties by Lucy Moore
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E 784 .M65 2010
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
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E 806 .S52 2008
The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
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D 769 .W345 2007
American Women And World War II by Doris Weatherford
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D 810 .W7 W43 2008
Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign by Michael K. Honey
Call Number: HD 5325 .S2572 M465 2007
The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis
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D 843 .G22 2005
Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community by Jon Hunner
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F 804 .L6 H86 2004
In Their Own Words: Conversations With the Astronauts and Men Who Led America's Journey Into Space and To the Moon by Scott Sacknoff
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TL 789.85 .A1 T44 2003
World War II Podcast
Episode 214-Betrayal, the Burma Road and The Battle of Nomonhan
Jan 29, 2018Chiang Kai-Shek starts over, again, in Chongqing, as the Japanese military seek to deny him the east coast. First Canton will fall, then other port cities. Meanwhile, British controlled Burma and the Nationalists work together to construct the Burma Road, so supplies can come over land. And finally, a border dispute between Japanese troops in Manchukuo and Mongolians, with their Russia allies, starts a series of events that will lead Japan to attack in SE Asia, which leads to Pearl Harbor.
Episode 213-The 2nd Sino-Japanese War: The Fall of Wuhan
Jan 24, 2018Chiang Kai-Shek is staking everything on his defense of Wuhan. As such, the various Japanese forces attempt to encircle the city. Chiang throws everything he has at the enemy, even scoring one major victory at Tai’erzhuang. However, this is not enough and forces from the North China Army have to be stymied by digging around a dyke that helps hold back the Yellow River. Some half a million Chinese people are killed, but the threat to the north is stopped, for awhile.
Episode 212-The Massacre of Nanjing
Jan 15, 2018As Chiang Kai-Shek moves his capital and military Head Quarters west and Hideki Tojo becomes directly involved in the war to the north, the Japanese troops move out from Shanghai to Nanjing. There, their pent up frustration over the Nationalists refusing to concede will boil over into the Massacre or Rape of Nanjing. AND try Audible for 30 days at audible.com/worldwar
Civil Rights and Protests
- A companion site to the NPR radio documentary on segregated life in the South. Presents audio excerpts and photographs, arranged in six thematically-organized sections. Covers legal, social, and cultural aspects of segregation, black community life, and black resistance to the Jim Crow way of life.
- This Library of Congress online exhibit draws from the thousands of personal stories, oral histories, and photographs collected by the Voices of Civil Rights project.
- The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 – 1974
This site contains many primary sources from the 1960s, including diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Over 200,000 documents, including letters, drafts of speeches, and handwritten notes, from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s papers are available online for free public access.Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia
This online database from Temple University details the history of the modern civil rights movement in Philadelphia. Through a photographs, newspapers, manuscripts, film footage, and oral histories, this archival collection seeks to highlight the key people, places, and events that made Philadelphia an important part of the national struggle for racial equality and social change.- This website from the National Endowment for the Humanities includes four full length documentaries about the Civil Rights Movement in America from the 1830s through the 1960s.
Industrialization, Progressives, and Social Movements
Suffragist Oral History Project
This site presents full text oral history transcripts from leaders and participants in the women’s suffrage movement, including Alice Paul and Jeannette Rankin.- This site focuses on women’s role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University’s library and museum collections.
- This site tells the story of the Triangle Factory Fire in 1911, using photographs, interviews, models, and much more.
National Child Labor Committee Collection
This site contains over 5,000 photographs from the National Child Labor Committee, who was charged with documenting the working and living conditions of children in the US between 1908-1924.- This companion site to the PBS documentary has videos, timelines, biographies, and background information about the Temperance Movement and Prohibition.
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement
This site examines the the American eugenics movement in the early 20th century.The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920
This site documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America’s natural heritage, through books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and motion picture footage.
Imperialism and Isolationism
From Territory to Statehood: Alaska and Hawaii
The Library of Congress’s digital collection of historic newspapers has many contemporary articles on the annexation of Alaska and Hawaii, as well as much more.The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War
This site provides resources and documents about the Spanish-American War, the period before the war, and some of the people who participated in the fighting or commented about it. Information about Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the United States is provided in chronologies, bibliographies, and a variety of pictorial and textual material from bilingual sources, supplemented by an overview essay about the war and the period.- This site has the full text of The Rough Riders, Theodore Roosevelt’s personal writings on his adventures in the Spanish American War. It was an immediate best-seller upon its release in 1899.
American Experience: Woodrow Wilson
This is the companion site to the American Experience program on Woodrow Wilson. It includes, timelines, transcripts of the documentary, and essays about major topics in his presidency.- This National Geographic documentary examines the sinking of the luxury passenger ship Lusitania. The sinking of the Lusitania was significant in shaping public opinion about the World War I and heightened calls in the US for joining the war.
- This is the companion website for the PBS special The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. It includes an overview of the war, timeline, maps, and more.
The Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers’ Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919
This site contains the full text of the complete run of The Stars and Stripes, the newspaper the US Army published for its forces in France. This weekly featured news from home, sports news, poetry, and cartoons.
Immigration
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
This web-based collection of historical materials from Harvard’s collections documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.Immigration History Research Center
This site contains a vast archive of newspapers, oral histories, and personal papers, along with the organizational records of immigrants and refugees and the agencies created to serve them.How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
This is the full-text of Jacob Riis’s book of sensationalist prose and photography of the living conditions in the Lower East Side of turn-of-the-century New York City.Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
This site is dedicated to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity as it tells the story of Japanese Americans during World War II.Interactive Map Showing Immigration Data Since 1880
This interactive map allows you to select a foreign-born group to see how they settled across the United States.
The Great Depression and World War II
- This PBS documentary on the Stock Market Crash is available online, along with the full transcript.
Voices from the Dust Bowl: Migrant Workers, 1940-1941
This online presentation documents the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941. This collection consists of audio recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, publications, and ephemera.- This site is a multimedia resource on World War II, created by award winning historian and filmmaker Laurence Rees.
- This website from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is a virtual reference room and digital repository that provides free and open access to the digitized collections of the Roosevelt Library, including documents, photographs, letters, presidential proclamations, and more.
World War II Podcast
Episode 214-Betrayal, the Burma Road and The Battle of Nomonhan
Jan 29, 2018Chiang Kai-Shek starts over, again, in Chongqing, as the Japanese military seek to deny him the east coast. First Canton will fall, then other port cities. Meanwhile, British controlled Burma and the Nationalists work together to construct the Burma Road, so supplies can come over land. And finally, a border dispute between Japanese troops in Manchukuo and Mongolians, with their Russia allies, starts a series of events that will lead Japan to attack in SE Asia, which leads to Pearl Harbor.
Episode 213-The 2nd Sino-Japanese War: The Fall of Wuhan
Jan 24, 2018Chiang Kai-Shek is staking everything on his defense of Wuhan. As such, the various Japanese forces attempt to encircle the city. Chiang throws everything he has at the enemy, even scoring one major victory at Tai’erzhuang. However, this is not enough and forces from the North China Army have to be stymied by digging around a dyke that helps hold back the Yellow River. Some half a million Chinese people are killed, but the threat to the north is stopped, for awhile.
Episode 212-The Massacre of Nanjing
Jan 15, 2018As Chiang Kai-Shek moves his capital and military Head Quarters west and Hideki Tojo becomes directly involved in the war to the north, the Japanese troops move out from Shanghai to Nanjing. There, their pent up frustration over the Nationalists refusing to concede will boil over into the Massacre or Rape of Nanjing. AND try Audible for 30 days at audible.com/worldwar
The Cold War and Communism
Cold War – A Documentary by CNN
This 24 part series is a great overview of the Cold War, and interviewees include Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, and Fidel Castro.Wilson Center Digital Archives
The Digital Archive contains once-secret documents from governments all across the globe, uncovering new sources and providing fresh insights into the history of international relations and diplomacy. It collects the research of three Wilson Center projects which focus on the interrelated histories of the Cold War, Korea, and Nuclear Proliferation.For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan
This online Library of Congress exhibit provides primary sources, a time line and map, and various assessments, pro- and con-, of the Marshall Plan, on its fiftieth anniversary.The Korean War And Its Origins, 1945-1953
This site hosts a collection of primary resources for teaching or researching the Korean War. It contains a chronology, accounts, letters, presidential calendars, telegrams, memorandums, and other digitized documents that trace developments in the war on a daily and weekly basis.- This site from the JFK Presidential Library goes through the crisis one day at a time with historical documents such as the intelligence photos the President acted upon; the correspondence between the White House and the Kremlin, and Kennedy’s speech to the American public.
Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President Kennedy
From the National Archives, here is the full-text of the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President Kennedy.The Vietnam Center and Archive
The Virtual Vietnam Archive currently contains over 3.2 million pages of scanned materials, including documents, photographs, slides, negatives, oral histories, artifacts, moving images, sound recordings, maps, and collection finding aids.Communications Transcripts: Mercury Through Apollo
This site from NASA provides 80 transcripts of recorded air-to-ground transmissions and from tapes recording the words of the astronauts while onboard the Mercury through Apollo missions.The Presidency and the Cold War
This website from the National Portrait Gallery highlights how the ten U.S. Presidents who served from World War II to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union shaped or reacted to events during this era.