In the years after the Civil War, the banks, railroads, and industrial corporations of Gilded?Age America, abetted by a corrupt political system, concentrated vast wealth in the hands of the few and made poverty the fate of many. In response, a group...

The popular image of a midcentury adwoman is of a feisty girl beating men at their own game, a female Horatio Alger protagonist battling her way through the sexist workplace. But before the fictional rise of Peggy Olson or the real-life stories of Pa...

The Victorians, perhaps more than any Britons before them, were diggers and sifters of the past. Though they were not the first to be fascinated by history, the intensity and range of Victorian preoccupations with the past was unprecedented and of la...

British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including co...

On the morning of July 1, 1800, a surveyor and mapmaker named Cayetano Diaz opened the window of his study in Guatemala City to find a horrific sight: a pair of severed breasts. Offering a meticulously researched and evocative account of the quest to...

The Victorian era saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation's prosperity. Many families continued to live in grinding poverty with women and children usually faring worst. In this incisive account...

In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase "City on a Hill", from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthro...

<p>The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and coura...

What did it mean to be 'civilized' in Early Modern England? Keith Thomas's seminal studies "Religion and the Decline of Magic", "Man and the Natural World", and "The Ends of Life", explored the beliefs, values and social practices of the years bet...

Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today's lotteries can be found in an African American gambl...