History : Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan addressed a crowd of 20,000 people in West Berlin in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. The words he delivered that afternoon would become among the most famous in presidential history. "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate," Reagan said. more...

Price: $27.00

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, their deep-rooted idealism, their political and cultural relevance in today’s world, and their myriad oddities. In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell travels once again through America’s past, this time to seventeenth-century New England. From the British Library to the Mohegan Sun casino, from the nation’s first synagogue to a Mayflower waterslide, Vowell studies the Puritan effect and finds their beliefs about church and state more interesting than their buckles-and-corn reputation would suggest. She asks:. Was Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop a communitarian, Christlike Christian, or conformity’s tyrannical enforcer? Yes! Was Rhode Island’s architect Roger Williams America’s founding freak or the father of the First Amendment? Same difference. How come Henry Vane the Younger, who argued against beheading the English king, was himself beheaded for helping behead said king? Good question. What does it take to get that jezebel Anne Hutchinson to shut up? A hatchet. What was the Puritans’ pet name for the Pope? The Great Whore of Babylon. What is the lesson of the Pequot War? Why, don’t fire one of your military’s embarrassingly few Arabic translators just because he’s gay, of course. As in all Vowell’s bestselling books, this exploration of America’s past is both poignant and entertaining. The Wordy Shipmates is rich with historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America’s celebrated voices. more...

Price: $16.00

Ranging from the 15th century to the present, Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History explores the many ways Africa and African peoples have shaped the cultural life of the Americasóand how, in turn, American life reverberates in Africa.||This groundbreaking three-volume encyclopedia offers hundreds of alphabetically organized entries on African history, nations, and peoples plus African-influenced aspects of life in the Americas. It also features authoritative introductory essays on history, culture and religion, demography, international relations, economics and trade, and arts and literature. In doing so, it traces the complex and continuous movement of peoples of African descent to the West, the mechanics and lingering effects of colonialism and the slave trade, and the crucial issues of cultural retention and adaptation that are essential to our understanding of the effects of globalization. more...

Price: $378.00

How are recent minority immigrant groups faring in the political adjustment to the United States? Is racism still a serious obstacle to their political inclusion? This book details and explores the political experiences of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City to answer these questions. more...

Price: $22.00

This unique volume seeks to offer an original collection of essays on the theme of America’s ‘special relationships’. The essays vary in their focus; some are primarily historical, some are more contemporary. All consider the quality of ‘specialness’ in the context of America’s relationship with particular countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Russia, Iran and Israel. more...

Price: $41.95