Books on U.S. History

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Of Plymouth Plantation is a firsthand account of both the events leading up to the voyage of the Mayflower and the first twenty-five years of settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was written as a journal by William Bradford, a passenger on the Mayflower who also served multiple terms as Plymouth's governor. He appears in Of Plymouth Plantation both as a narrator and as a character in the story's events, which are told in retrospect. In... Read Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 Summary

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One Person, No Vote by writer and professor Carol Anderson is a current affairs book and finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction. It was originally published in 2018; in 2019, Anderson added an Afterword to the paperback edition and released a young adult version. One Person, No Vote documents how Republican-led state governments exploit a weakened Voting Rights Act to tilt elections in their favor.Following Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016... Read One Person, No Vote Summary

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... Read On the Pulse of Morning Summary

On the Road, published in 1957, is a novel by prominent Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac that recalls his cross-country travels across the US in the late 1940s. It explores concepts of society, freedom, and—most of all—friendship.Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s pseudonym) is the story’s protagonist and narrator, while other key characters stand in for fellow Beat luminaries in his circle, including poet Allen Ginsberg (best known for the revolutionary 1956 poem Howl) and writer William S... Read On the Road Summary

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Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality is a close reading of the Declaration of Independence published in 2014. Its author, Danielle Allen, is a classicist and political philosopher. Earlier in her career she received a prestigious “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. As of 2024, she was a professor at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study. In this work, Allen combines personal narrative, academic training, historical context, and rigorous... Read Our Declaration Summary

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Out of Darkness is a young adult historical novel written by Ashley Hope Pérez and published in 2015 by Holiday House of New York. Pérez holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Indiana University, where her research focused on Latin American literature. A professor of World Literatures at Ohio State University, she is also the author of What Can’t Wait (2011), The Knife and The Butterfly (2012), and Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions about... Read Out of Darkness Summary

Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust is a historical middle-grade novel in verse first published in 1997. Through 110 first-person free verse poems, the narrative tells the story of two years in the life of Billie Jo Kelby, young daughter of a struggling farming family in the Oklahoma Panhandle in the mid-1930s. After a tragic accident results in the death of Billie Jo’s mother and baby brother, she and her father must find a way... Read Out of the Dust Summary

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is one of several bestselling nonfiction works by science writer and humorist Mary Roach. Published in 2010, the work focuses on the human side of space travel and offers behind-the-scenes accounts of peculiar and taboo topics such as sex, vomit, and toilets in space. Roach writes from a candid, outsider’s point of view and demystifies some of the grandeur of space travel by reporting... Read Packing for Mars Summary

Pale Horse, Pale Rider is a novella written by Katherine Anne Porter. It was published in 1939, along with two other short novellas, Old Mortality and Noon Wine, under the collective title Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The story portrays two young lovers who are tragically affected by the 1918 influenza epidemic, or Spanish Flu.Other works by this author include The Jilting of Granny Weatherall and Flowering Judas.This guide uses an eBook version of the 2008... Read Pale Horse, Pale Rider Summary