Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic

by Joseph J. Ellis

From the prizewinning author of the best-selling Founding Brothers and American Sphinx , a masterly and highly ironic examination of the founding years of our country. The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, when a dedicated and determined group of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. It was a time of triumphs; yet, as Joseph J.... (more)

The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800

The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800

by Stanley Elkins

When Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office for the presidency in 1801, America had just passed through twelve critical years, years dominated by some of the towering figures of our history and by the challenge of having to do everything for the first time. Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson himself each had a share in shaping that remarkable era--an era that is brilliantly captured in The Age... (more)

The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776-1791

The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776-1791

by Robert Allen Rutland

Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois

Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois

by Glenn F. Williams

The American Revolution (1775-1783) saw the emerging nation's largest ever co-ordinated military action against Native Americans. Although now considered as a shameful episode in America's treatment of its native peoples, this massacre of the Iroquois militant forces was a pivotal turning point in the war - it forced many loyalists to flee into Canada, and sealed Britain's fateful decision to seek victory in the... (more)

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

by Ira Berlin

Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the American Revolution. Laboring as field hands on tobacco and rice plantations, as skilled artisans in port cities, or as soldiers along the frontier, generation after generation of black slaves struggled to create a world of their own in circumstances not of their own making. In a... (more)

James Madison on Religious Liberty

by James Madison

This long-overdue volume is the only one of its kind containing all of Madison's religious writings, as well as new contributions by leading scholars. Madison's writings assume even more importance to thoughtful Americans as the Supreme Court continues to decide issues of school prayer, and as the Moral Majority tries to desecularise American public and private life. Imagine an America without the Bill of Rights,... (more)

The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier, 1776-1890 (Galaxy Books)

The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier, 1776-1890 (Galaxy Books)

by Richard A. Bartlett

From borax mule trains to the canoe stop that was Chicago in the 1830s, this book vividly recreated the tale of the westward movement of pioneers into the heartland of North America. With nearly a century separating historian Richard Bartlett from the end of the movement, Bartlett's broad perspective stresses the continuity and inevitability of this greatest element of America's Golden Age. The book focuses on... (more)

An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity

An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity

by Paul Finkelman

Finkelman, Paul. An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism and Comity. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981. xii, 378 pp. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 00-021509. ISBN 1-58477-092-9. Cloth. $85. Finkelman describes the judicial turmoil that ensued when slaves were taken into free states, and the resultant issues of the conflict of laws, comity and cooperation between the... (more)

Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and the ConstitutionRichard B. Morris

Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and the Constitution

by Richard Brandon Morris

What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America

What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America

by Linda Baumgarten

Paintings of upper-class men and women tell an important part of the history of costumes, but surviving garments themselves reveal even more. Every crease, stitch, and stain in a piece of clothing supplies information about its wearer and its era. This stunning book features eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century garments from the premiere collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Illustrated with more... (more)

The River Flows on: Black Resistance, Culture, And Identity Formation in Early America (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World Series)

The River Flows on: Black Resistance, Culture, And Identity Formation in Early America (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World Series)

by Walter C. Rucker

The River Flows On is an impressively broad study of slave resistance in America, spanning the colonial and antebellum eras in both the North and South and covering all forms of recalcitrance, from major revolts and rebellions to everyday acts of disobedience. Walter C. Rucker analyzes American slave resistance with a keen understanding of its African influences while he also traces the emergence of an African... (more)

From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists After the American Revolution

From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists After the American Revolution

by Mary Louise Clifford

During the American Revolution over 3,000 persons of African descent were promised freedom by the British if they would desert their American rebel masters and serve the loyalist cause. Those who responded to this promise found refuge in New York. In 1783, after Britain lost the war, they were evacuated to Nova Scotia, where for a decade they were treated as cheap labor by the white loyalists. In 1792 they were... (more)

The African Slave Trade

by Basil Davidson

Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Studies in Legal History)

Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Studies in Legal History)

by Marylynn Salmon

In this first comprehensive study of women's property rights in early America, Marylynn Salmon discusses the effect of formal rules of law on women's lives. By focusing on such areas such as conveyancing, contracts, divorce, separate estates, and widows' provisions, Salmon presents a full picture of women's legal rights from 1750 to 1830. Salmon shows that the law assumes women would remain dependent and... (more)

Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Early American Studies)

Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Early American Studies)

by Susan Juster

The age of revolution, in which kings were dethroned, radical ideals of human equality embraced, and new constitutions written, was also the age of prophecy. Neither an archaic remnant nor a novel practice, prophecy in the eighteenth century was rooted both in the primitive worldview of the Old Testament and in the vibrant intellectual environment of the philosophers and their political allies, the republicans. In... (more)

Speak Out in Thunder Tones: Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners, 1787-1865

Speak Out in Thunder Tones: Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners, 1787-1865

by Dorothy Sterling

This impressive collection, drawn from a wealth of original research into previously untapped sources—including letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, poems, songs, newspaper articles, advertisements, a ship's log, and official documents—allows African Americans to speak afresh across more than two centuries. Besides the expected voices of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, this book makes vivid the experiences... (more)

American Society, 1776-1815 (New American Nation, 1775-1820, Vol 11)Peter S. Onuf

American Society, 1776-1815 (New American Nation, 1775-1820, Vol 11)

by Peter S. Onuf

Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority 1750-1800 (Cambridge Paperback Library)

Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority 1750-1800 (Cambridge Paperback Library)

by Jay Fliegelman

The author traces a constellation of intimately related ideas - about the nature of parental authority and filial rights, of moral obligation of Scripture, of the growth of the mind and the nature of historical progress - from their most important English and continental expressions in a variety of literary and theological texts, to their transmission, reception and application in Revolutionary America and in the... (more)

Indian Stream Republic: Settling a New England Frontier, 1785-1842 (Library of New England)

Indian Stream Republic: Settling a New England Frontier, 1785-1842 (Library of New England)

by Daniel Doan

A tale of struggle, survival, and independence in a disputed northern New England frontier.

The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley: 1769-1794

The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley: 1769-1794

by William Hintzen

Written by a noted historian, this piece chronicles the bloody 25 years that was the winning of the Eastern Frontier, centered at Fort Henry (known today as Wheeling, West Virgina). This books brings back to you the days of... Daniel Boone... Simon Kenton... Lewis Wetzel... the Girty brothers... Sam McColloch... Betty Zane, etc. "In a time and place where uncommon heroism and courage were commonplace..." no... (more)

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Tags: history-federalist period