Books on U.S. History

Up From Slavery is an autobiography written by Booker T. Washington in 1901. Washington is most famous as the founder and first principal of the Tuskegee Institute, later Tuskegee University, a school for Black students in rural Tuskegee, Alabama. As the school became famous world-wide, Washington also became known as a public speaker, addressing diverse audiences around the world to promote his philosophy of industrial education. Historically, Washington is remembered as the first major Black... Read Up From Slavery Summary

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John Lewis’s 1998 memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, written with Mike D’Orso, is an intimate firsthand account of the US Civil Rights Movement (CRM). Lewis, the child of sharecroppers, grew up in Pike County, Alabama, during the heyday of segregation in the American South. From a young age, Lewis questioned the injustices of segregation, yet never imagined that he would become one of the key leaders of the civil rights... Read Walking with the Wind Summary

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Originally published in 1994, Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals primarily focuses on the 1957-58 school year at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, during which Beals was a member of the Little Rock Nine—the first group of Black students to attend the formerly all-white high school of 2,000 white students. Beals’s book, written for young-adult readers, speaks of her early life and her many adult accomplishments. Encouraged by school administrators and local... Read Warriors Don't Cry Summary

In his 1986 nonfiction work War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian John W. Dower investigates the racism between the United States and the Empire of Japan, as it existed before, during, and after the Second World War. The very nature and understanding of who the enemy was, for both the Anglo-Americans and the Japanese, presented in many forms. On the American side, there was an important... Read War Without Mercy Summary

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What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by American historian Daniel Walker Howe, explores the changes the United States underwent in the early 19th century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History, the book was published in 2007 as part of The Oxford History of the United States. Howe’s work explores the political, military, social, economic, and cultural developments that shaped the nation. Howe does not shy away from the complexities and contradictions of... Read What Hath God Wrought Summary

In “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” otherwise known as “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” Frederick Douglass outlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. Weaving together ethical, religious, and sociopolitical threads of argument, Douglass points out the ironies of American values, particularly regarding the existence of an economic system based on slavery. Originally drafted and given as a speech in... Read What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Summary

American author Raymond Carver is best known for his short stories and his simple, precise writing style. He was a nominee for the National Book Awards as well as a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. In 1988, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Carver is one of the chief figures in the “Dirty Realism” movement of American writing, which became popular in the 1980s and provided vignettes of the dark side... Read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Summary

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White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era is a 2006 nonfiction book by Shelby Steele, a Black conservative author who specializes in the study of race relations in the US. This guide refers to the e-book published in 2009 by HarperCollins. The title points to the book’s central theme: white guilt—the loss of moral authority—and the damaging responses it elicited in Black and White Americans in the... Read White Guilt Summary

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