Books in the Guides to Historic Events in America series

This fascinating guide documents the transformation of government from passive observer to active participant and ally of the American people during the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

This contextual narrative of the 70-year history of the woman suffrage movement in the United States demonstrates how an important mass political and social movement coalesced into a political force despite class, racial, ethnic, religious, and regional barriers.Votes for Women! provides an updated consideration of the questions raised by the mass movement to gain equality and access to power in our democracy. It interprets the campaigns for woman suffrage from the 1830s until 1920, analyzes the impact of the Nineteenth Amendment, and presents primary documents to allow a glimpse into the minds of those who campaigned for and against woman suffrage.The book's examination of the 70-year woman suffrage campaign shows how the movement faced enormous barriers, was perceived as threatening the very core of accepted beliefs, and was a struggle that showcased the efforts of strong protagonists and brilliant organizers who were intellectually innovative and yet were reflective of the great divides of race, ethnicity, religion, economics, and region existing across the nation. Included within the narrative section are biographies of significant personalities in the movement, such as militant Alice Paul and anti-suffragist Ida Tarbell as well as more commonly known leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

This succinct and readable account of the heated debate over the expansion of slavery provides readers with a thorough understanding of how the Civil War was precipitated.

This book is a must-read for anyone studying and researching the rise and fall of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and McCarthyism in American political life.

This illuminating overview explains political parties in the early 19th century, comparing and contrasting that era with the modern-day political climate. In this chronological examination of the Democratic Party's origins, award-winning author Mark R.

Including extensive, balanced information, keen insights, and helpful research tools, this book provides a valuable resource for students or general readers interested in American policy, diplomacy, and conduct during the Cold War.

Providing an exciting narrative of Reconstruction based on current scholarship, historical sources, as well as interpretive essays on special topics, this book offers real insight into a controversial and critical period in American history.

Full of true stories more dramatic than any fiction, The Underground Railroad: A Reference Guide offers a fresh, revealing look at the efforts of hundreds of dedicated persons-white and black, men and women, from all walks of life-to help slave fugitives find freedom in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

An indispensable resource for investigating America's War for Independence, this book provides a comprehensive yet concise narrative that combines the author's original perspectives with the latest scholarship on the subject.Without the War for Independence and its successful outcome for the patriots, the course of American development-our institutions, culture, politics, and economics-would have run in radically different directions. From any perspective, the War for Independence was one of the seminal events of national history. This book offers a clear, easy-to-read, and complete overview of the origins of the imperial crisis, the course of the war, and the ultimate success of the movement for independence. It also emphasizes the human cost of the struggle: the ferocity of the fighting that stemmed from the belief among participants on all sides that defeat was tantamount to cultural, political, and even physical extinction.The narrative encompasses the author's original insights and takes advantage of the newest scholarship on the American Revolution. The book includes primary documents and biographical sketches representative of the various participants in the revolutionary struggle-for example, private soldiers, senior officers, loyalists, women, blacks, and Indians-as well as famous speeches and important American and British official documents. The edited documents offer readers a sense of the actual voices of the revolutionary struggle and a deeper understanding of how primary documents serve historians' narration and interpretation of long-ago events. The result is a new synthesis that brings a deeper understanding of America's defining struggle to an informed public readership as well as college and high school students.

This history of the 1787 Constitutional Convention uses a chronological narrative format to capture the complexity, messiness, and unfolding daily drama behind the writing of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the role of contingency in that process.The Framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a novel republican form of government to replace the failing Confederation, one that would divide power between the federal government and the states, launching a new phase of the American "experiment" in representative democracy. Not until the end of the American Civil War, nearly a century later, would it become clear, as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."The Constitutional Convention of 1787: A Reference Guide provides an invaluable guide covering the background to the convention, the convention itself, the ratification of the Constitution, and the adoption of the Bill of Rights. In addition to the narrative itself, the story of the convention is supplemented with a detailed chronology, a rich selection of primary source documents, 15 biographical sketches of convention delegates, and a comprehensive bibliographical essay. Based largely on primary sources, the book also weighs in on some of the historiographical debates that have taken place among scholars about the convention.

This is a guide for students providing narrative description, analysis, biographies, and key documents on the Civil Rights movement. It provides an introduction to the movement, its development, issues and leaders, with six essays analyzing important aspects.

This comprehensive resource explains six eras of immigration law, how and why immigration law has changed, who the major actors and organizations shaping immigration law are, and in what direction immigration law is likely to proceed in the near future.The United States has the most diverse population of any country in the world and is widely thought of as a nation of immigrants. U.S. immigration has been and continues to be a contentious political, cultural, and social issue. Much of current immigration policy is based on the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, a law advocated by former President John F. Kennedy to establish a preference system of legal immigration. This book provides an authoritative analysis of current U.S. immigration law and the 1965 Act.It explains the precursor laws to the 1965 Act and their failure to resolve many critical problems, and details how and why the law was passed. It describes and profiles all the major actors and organizations that determine the politics of US immigration policy and details the impact-both foreseen and unanticipated-that the 1965 Act has had on the American economy, culture, demographics, and societal diversity. It offers an objective source for accessing an extensive list of the most important documents, governmental data, and scholarly discourse on U.S. immigration.

This guide to the forces that shaped the 1960s cultural revolution in the USA examines the New Left, the antiwar movement and the counterculture. A narrative historical overview puts these topics in perspective and the legacy of the era is discussed. Biographies of key players add insight.