The Great American History Blog

Link to: The Confederate Woman: Soldier and Spy Even before Virginia became part of the Confederacy, Northern Virginians realize...

Link to: The Gilded Age and Revolution There was a mandate for change in the Gilded Age, but no agreement on what that change should b...

Amazon.com link to: Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen by Christopher Capozzola In 1917 th...

THE NORMANDY CAMPAIGN “Incentive is not ordinarily part of an infantryman’s life. For him there are no 25 or 50 missions to be completed ...

This video of a slave auction site in St. Louis, Missouri raises the question, “Should we remember history or move on?" Why do we stud...

CSS Stonewall The Confederacy almost turned the naval balance of power around when it was the first to commission an operational ironcla...

Link to: The Gilded Age and Revolution In the early 20th century, the premise of left wing radical Eugene Debs’ ideology rested upon i...

“Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble cha...

There was more to the American Civil War than just battles and generals. Millions of ordinary people were doing ordinary things. Some of th...

In 1943 Americans realized that paying their taxes was a patriotic duty to be done in support of the common good. “There is a mysterious ...

John Brown The culminating event of the 1850s was John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. To white Virginians, ...

Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War by Penny M. Von Eschen Penny Von Eschen raises the question as to wheth...

The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn. Goodwyn’s 1978 book, published in the post-Vietnam/post-Watergate era, is heavily laden with Ma...

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, New York: Random House, 1955 Richard Hofstadter examines the great American reform movements from ...

My titles on Amazon My titles at Barnes & Noble Download Free Kindle Reading Apps: The best reading experien...

LINK TO: Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s By Sherrie Tucker The history of “all girl” bands of the 1940s highlig...

LINK TO: Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe The career of “Sister” Rosetta Tha...

Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience by Steve Waksman Did rock ‘n roll represent the “pent...

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS, VIRGINIA   Alexandria and Northern Virginia were the first areas to feel the fury of the Civil War...

There is a danger in writing history, that one will portray the past in warm golden hues of nostalgia, or worse yet, that one will super-...