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The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

Russell Shorto · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Colonial HistoryHistoryNew York CityNonfiction
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1776

David McCullough · 393 pages

In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based

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Civilization: The West and the Rest

Niall Ferguson · 402 pages

What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications"?that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six thing

Colonial HistoryHistoryNonfictionDense Prose
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The Age of Empire, 1875-1914

Eric Hobsbawm · 404 pages

Colonial HistoryHistoryNonfictionDense Prose
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A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn · 702 pages

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, *A People's History of the United States* is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.

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The Boer War

Thomas Pakenham · 659 pages

Comprehensive history of the Boer War, a war precipitated by greed and marked by blundering and brutalities.

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Europe and the People Without History

Eric R. Wolf · 503 pages

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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann · 631 pages

From the author of 1491 -- the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas -- a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher C

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Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766

Fred Anderson · 880 pages

In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean -- and in the process destroyed an American diplomatic system in which Native Americans had long played a central, balancing role

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American Slavery, American Freedom

Edmund S. Morgan · 480 pages

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz · 320 pages

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The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

C.L.R. James · 426 pages

En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d'alors. Tout cet ensemble reposai

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The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery

Martin Dugard · 294 pages

The Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decade after discovering the New World, he has fallen into disgrace, accused by the royal court of being a liar, a secret Jew, and a foreigner who sought to

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Silencing the Past

Michel-Rolph Trouillot · 191 pages

In this provocative analysis of historical narrative, Michel-Rolph Trouillot demonstrates how power operates, often invisibly, at all stages in the making of history to silence certain voices. From the West's failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave revolt in history, to the continued debate over denials of the Holocaust, and the meaning of Columbus's arrival in th

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My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams

Abigail Adams, John Adams · 528 pages

A collection of letters between Abigail and John Adams written from 1762 to 1801 covering topics of revolution, independence, and nation building, along with those that reflect their love for one another.

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Jonathan Edwards

George M. Marsden · 640 pages

"Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century." "In this biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George M. Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in

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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond · 494 pages

An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question.

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Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

Arthur Herman · 736 pages

In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain's most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle

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