Further Reading
 Title:
A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People
Shaped the Fight for Independence
Author:
Ray Raphael
With an Introduction by Series Editor Howard Zinn
All information on this book taken from
The New Press web site at:
http://www.thenewpress.com/newbooks/phsar.htm
Description:
The first major effort to tell the history of the American Revolution
from the often overlooked standpoints of its everyday participants,
A People's History of the American Revolution is a highly accessible
narrative of the wartime experience that brings in the stories of
previously marginalized voices: the common people, slave and free,
who made up the majority in eighteenth-century America.
This first volume in The New Press People's History
Series skillfully weaves diaries, personal letters, and other long-overlooked
primary source material into the historical narrative. The result
is a remarkable first-person perspective on the events leading up
to and during the war. With a simple shift of the focus of history's
lens-away from Revolutionary leaders such as George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson and on to the slaves they owned, the Indians they
displaced, and the men and boys who did the fighting — Raphael
brings us a true people's history of the Revolutionary experience.
About the Author:
Ray Raphael is the author of numerous books, including An
Everyday History of Somewhere, Men from the Boys: Rites of
Passage in Male America, and Tree Talk: The People and Politics
of Timber. He lives in northern California.
Review:
•The best single-volume history of the Revolution I have read.
--Howard Zinn
Other Information:
6 1/8" x 9 1/4", 384 pages
American History
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 Title:
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the
Opening of the American West
Author:
Stephen E. Ambrose
All information on this book taken from
the SimonSays.com web site at:
http://www.simonsays.com/book/default_book.cfm?isbn=0684826976
Description:
Undaunted Courage is the story of a heroic and legendary man,
and the saga of a great nation creating itself. In 1803, President
Thomas Jefferson chose Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead the first
government- backed exploration of the vast and unknown western territory
of what would become part of the United States. Lewis was the perfect
choice.
Undaunted Courage is first and foremost a significant, scholarly
work, yet it reads like an adventure novel filled with high drama,
suspense, and personal tragedy. It brings to life the times and circumstances
of Meriwether Lewis and his unprecedented expedition, and renews our
wonder of the vastness of our country and the heroics of our forefathers.
Contents:
-Introduction
-Acknowledgements
1 Youth 1774-1792
2 Planter 1792-1794
3 Soldier 1794-1800
4 Thomas Jefferson's America 1801
5 The President's Secretary 1801-1802
6 The Origins of the Expedition 1750-1802
7 Preparing for the Expedition: January-June 1803
8 Washington to Pittsburgh: June-August 1803
9 Down the Ohio: September-November 1803
10 Up the Mississippi to Winter Camp: November 1803-March 1804
11 Ready to Depart: April-May 21, 1804
12 Up the Missouri: May-July 1804
13 Entering Indian Country: August 1804
14 Encounter with the Sioux: September 1804
15 To the Mandans: Fall 1804
16 Winter at Fort Mandan: December 21, 1804-March 21, 1805
17 Report from Fort Mandan: March 22-April 6, 1805
18 From Fort Mandan to Marias River: April 7-June 2, 1805
19 From Marias River to the Great Falls: June 3-June 20, 1805
20 The Great Portage: June 16-July 14, 805
21 Looking for the Shoshones: July 15-August 12, 1805
22 Over the Continental Divide: August 13-August 31, 1805
23 Lewis as Ethnographer: The Shoshones
24 Over the Bitterroots: September 1-October 6, 1805
25 Down the Columbia: October 8-December 7, 1805
26 Fort Clatsop: December 8, 1805-March 23, 1806
27 Lewis as Ethnographer: The: Clatsops and the Chinooks
28 Jefferson and the West: 1804-1806
29 Return to the Nez Percé: March 23-June 9, 1806
30 The Lolo Trail: June I O-July 2, 1806
31 The Marias Exploration: July 3-July 28, 1806
32 The Last Leg: July 29-September 22, 1806
33 Reporting to the President: September 23-December 31, 1806
34 Washington: January-March 1807
35 Philadelphia: April-July 1807
36 Virginia: August 1806-March 1807
37 St. Louis: March-December 1808
38 St. Louis: January-August 1809
39 Last Voyage: September 3-October 11, 1809
40 Aftermath
-Notes
-Bibliography
-Index
-Maps
-The Lewis and Clark Expedition
-Up the Missouri
-Headwaters of the Missouri
-Crossing the Bitterroot Mountains
-Exploring the Mouth of the Columbia
-Traveler's Rest
Other Information:
1997, 528 pages
ISBN: 0-684-82697-6
HISTORY/United States / General
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 Title:
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
Author:
Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns
All information on this book taken from
the Borzoi Reader Online web site at:
http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0375706526
Description:
The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film, with more
than 150 illustrations, most in full color.
In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson,
a party of explorers called the Corps of Discovery crossed the Mississippi
River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired
Louisiana Territory.
The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders
-- the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy,
gregarious friend William Clark -- was to be the United States' first
exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every
corner of the young nation: soldiers from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania
and Kentucky, French Canadian boatmen, several sons of white fathers
and Indian mothers, a slave named York, and eventually a Shoshone
Indian woman, Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son.
Together they would cross the continent, searching for the fabled
Northwest Passage that had been the great dream of explorers since
the time of Columbus. Along the way they would face incredible hardship,
disappointment, and danger; record in their journals hundreds of animals
and plants previously unknown to science; encounter a dizzying diversity
of Indian cultures; and, most of all, share in one of America's most
enduring adventures. Their story may have passed into national mythology,
but never before has their experience been rendered as vividly, in
words and pictures, as in this marvelous homage by Dayton Duncan.
Plentiful excerpts from the journals kept by the two captains and
four enlisted men convey the raw emotions, turbulent spirits, and
constant surprises of the explorers, who each day confronted the unknown
with fresh eyes. An elegant preface by Ken Burns, as well as contributions
from Stephen E. Ambrose, William Least Heat-Moon, and Erica Funkhouser,
enlarge upon important threads in Duncan's narrative, demonstrating
the continued potency of events that took place almost two centuries
ago. And a wealth of paintings, photographs, journal sketches, maps,
and film images from the PBS documentary lends this historic, nation-redefining
milestone a vibrancy and immediacy to which no American will be immune.
About the Authors:
Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of Lewis & Clark:
The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, is the author of five other
books, including Out West: An American Journey along the Lewis
and Clark Trail, in which he retraced the route of the expedition.
He has been a consultant on many of Ken Burns's documentary films
and was the co-writer and consulting producer of the PBS series "The
West."
Ken Burns, director and producer of Lewis & Clark:
The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, has been making award-winning
documentary films for more than twenty years, including the landmark
PBS series The Civil War and Baseball, The West,
and Thomas Jefferson. The subject of his next biographical
film will be Frank Lloyd Wright, and he is currently producing a series
on the history of jazz.
Other Information:
History, Knopf, August 1999
ISBN 0-375-70652-6
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 Title:
The Incredible War of 1812: A Military History
Author:
J. Mackay Hitsman
Updated by Donald E. Graves
All information on this book taken from
the Robin Brass Studio web site at:
http://www.rbstudiobooks.com/hitsman.html
Description:
J. Mackay Hitsman's account of the War of 1812, first published in
1965, is exciting and authoritative, and is regarded by many experts
as the best one-volume history of that conflict. It is an engrossing
account of the causes of the war and of the campaigns and battles
that raged on land and water, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico.
Hitsman describes the life and role of the soldiers, both the regulars
and the militia, and the difficulties of waging war in trackless territory,
where rivers and lakes were the main means of transport. His examination
of the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders on both sides helps
us to understand the events as they unfold, and he dispels some of
the myths that have pervaded earlier accounts.
This new edition, edited by well known War of 1812 scholar Donald
E. Graves, contains the entire text of the original and much new material:
-
Foreword by Sir Christopher Prevost (descendant
of the wartime British commander-in-chief)
-
Introductory essay by Donald E. Graves
-
More than 50 illustrations of leaders, uniforms,
weapons, warships, medals and battle scenes
-
20 maps of campaigns and battles
-
Appendices listing British and Canadian military
units and their modern successors; the First Nations that fought
on both sides; the warships of the opposing navies; and the medals
and awards of the war
-
A comprehensive bibliography with more than 1,000
entries
About the author:
A native of Kingston, J. Mackay Hitsman (1917-1970) served
as a captain in the Second World War and was later chief archivist
of the Army Historical Section in Ottawa. Besides this book, he also
produced Safeguarding Canada, 1763-1871 and, with J.L. Granatstein,
Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in Canada.
About the editor:
Donald E. Graves is an internationally recognized expert on
the War of 1812 and has written or edited five previous books on that
conflict, including Field of Glory: The Battle of Crysler's Farm,
1813 (Robin Brass Studio, 1999), of which Quill & Quire said:
"This is history at its best: exciting, entertaining, and readable."
His study of the bloody 1814 battle of Lundy's Lane, Where Right
and Glory Lead!, has been called "an excellent example of
the 'sharp end' of military history."
He has served as an historical consultant for the War of 1812 segment
of the CBC Television's "People's History of Canada," and
he is writing a biography of Joseph Willcocks, the worst traitor in
Canadian history and the man who bears the greatest responsibility
for the burning of Washington in 1814.
Other Information:
432 pages
6 x 9 inches
Approx. 60 pictures and 20 maps
ISBN 1-896941-13-3
Publication: 1999
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 Title:
The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814
Author:
Anthony S. Pitch
Description:
In the hot and humid summer of 1814 British troops completed a fifty-mile
march to capture the young American capital, putting to rout along
the way pitiful citizen militiamen (some in winter gear, others barefoot)
while President James Madison galloped out of town to safety. Among
those remaining, a realization spread that Washington had been "abandoned
to a horrid fate." In no time, British arsonists set off an inferno
whose glow was seen miles away and from which burn marks are visible
today on original stones of the White House. This attack was one of
the defining moments in the coming-of-age of the United States, and
Anthony Pitch tells the dramatic story with all the immediacy of an
eyewitness account.
Painstakingly tracking down firsthand sources and tattered letters,
diaries, journals, and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, Pitch
has brought this key episode of American history to life in a gripping
narrative filled with vivid details. He describes how, after the catastrophe
in Washington, a hostage on a British warship named Francis Scott
Key wrote an epic poem that later became the national anthem as he
viewed the Star-Spangled Banner still flying over embattled Fort McHenry
in Baltimore Harbor. Readers of Anthony Pitch's book will experience
again the sense of pride and honor felt by Key and all Americans in
1814 as they underwent this national trauma and finally celebrated
victory in this Second War of Independence.
About the Author:
Anthony Pitch, a naturalized American raised in England and Africa,
has lived in the United States for twenty years. He is the author
of guides, maps, and souvenir books on the nation's capital, where
he conducts walking tours of historic neighborhoods.
Reviews:
•Truly masterful. It's as good as historical re-creation gets!
Extraordinary research and the chaos of combat are exquisitely interwoven
into an 'eyewitness' account of the burning of our federal city.
--Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman, National Geographic Society
•Vivid and exciting. I would consider it must reading.
--Austin Kiplinger, chairman, Kiplinger Washington Editors
•Extremely well-written, with a wealth of original material,
I found it difficult to put down.
--Rex Scouten, former curator, The White House
•Masterful. It reminded me of a Masterpiece Theater series in
the sweeping nature and authoritative tone of its story. I found myself
swept along throughout.
--Dr. Donald Ritchie, associate historian, U.S. Senate
•An extraordinary exception for its thoroughness. As I read
each page I could envision the scenes unfolding as if watching a movie.
--Scott Sheads, author/historian, Fort McHenry
•Like the epic Gone with Wind that centered on the Civil
war some fifty years later, Pitch's book is no less dramatic, and
equally significant, as you are swept along through the trials and
tribulations of the times.
--Maryland Historical Society's quarterly magazine
•Events seen through the eyes of a number of individuals both
grea and small five the story an immediacy and a human dimension that
are not found in some other accounts.
--The Journal of the Early Republic
•Wide-ranging research into many libraries, archives, and historical
societies has produced an impressive bibliography of personal papers,
journals, and diaries from which Pitch has drawn to weave his tale.
. . The student of Washingtoniana will exult in the rich geographical,
architechtural, and, most importantly, biographical descriptions of
the city and its residents that pervade this book.
--Washington History
•Pitch has accomplished much. He has produced a graphic account
of one of the most important campaigns in what contemporary Americans
considered a second war for independence from Great Britain. Pitch's
account of the fall of Washington, the surrender of Alexandria, and
the panic and chaos that permeated both cities is far more complete
than any previous work. The Burning of Washington will clearly replace
Walter Lord's Dawn's Early Light as the standard popular history of
the entire campaign.
--Journal of Military History
•Like the epic Gone with the Wind…no less dramatic, and
equally significant.
--Maryland Historical Society Magazine
•Gracefully written, incredibly detailed. Arguably the best
account of those few awful days for Washington.
--Jounal of American History
•Difficult to put down
--Rex Scouten, former curator, the White House
•Exhaustively researched and of substantial literary merit
--Choice
Other Information:
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 6/11/98
ISBN: 1557506922
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