181 items
The Origins of the Cold War
The Cold War was more than the product of post-World War II tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union argues John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. Rather, it was the product of...
Chat with the Curator: Amelia Earhart and Neta Snook
Curator of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, Sandra Trenholm, describes documents in the Neta Snook Collection, including letters and photographs of Amelia Earhart. Biographer Susan Butler (East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart)...
"Harlem's Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills"
Born to parents who were both former slaves, Florence Mills knew at an early age that she loved to sing and that her sweet, bird-like voice, resonated with those who heard her. Performing catapulted her all the way to the stages of...
"A Fist for Joe Louis and Me"
Gordy and his family live in Detroit, Michigan, the heart of the United States automobile industry. Every night after coming home from work at one of the plants, Gordy’s father teaches him how to box. Their hero is the famous...
"The Voice That Won the Vote: How One Woman's Words Made History"
In August of 1920, women’s suffrage in America came down to the vote in Tennessee. If the Tennessee legislature approved the Nineteenth Amendment it would be ratified, giving American women the right to vote. The historic moment came...
"Martin & Anne: The Kindred Spirits of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank"
Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. were born the same year a world apart. Both faced ugly prejudices and violence, which both answered with words of love and faith in humanity. This is the story of their parallel journeys to find...
"Eliza: The Story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton"
This is a beautiful and informative biography featuring extensive back matter–including information about America’s revolution, the historical relevance of letter writing, and a timeline–and exquisite, thoroughly researched art that...
"i see the rhythm"
Beginning with the roots of Black music in Africa and continuing on to contemporary hip hop, i see the rhythm takes us on a musical journey through time. We are invited to feel the rhythm of work songs on a southern plantation, to...
"Before She Was Harriet"
This lush, lyrical biography in verse begins with a glimpse of Harriet Tubman as an old woman, and travels back in time through the many roles she played through her life: spy, liberator, suffragist, and more. Illustrated by James...
"Brick by Brick"
The home of the United States president was built by many hands, including those of enslaved persons, who undertook this amazing achievement long before there were machines to do those same jobs. Stirring and emotional, Floyd Cooper...
"The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos"
This is the story of librarian Pura Belpré, told through the eyes of two young children who are introduced to the library and its treasures just before Christmas. Lulu Delacre's lovely illustrations evoke New York City at the time of...
Inside the Vault: World War II Propaganda
On the October 7, 2021 session of Inside the Vault, Professor Michael Neiberg from the United States Army War College and Stacie Christensen, 2020 Idaho History Teacher of the Year, join us as we discuss World War II propaganda...
War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, recounts his search for letters from America’s wars and reads excerpts from several.
Visions of State in the New Deal Era: International Perspectives
Historian Alan Brinkley looks at the New Deal era with an international perspective, exploring the evolution of global experiments in government occurring around the world, particularly fascism, communism, and liberal democracy.
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The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945
Across the long arc of American history, three moments in particular have disproportionately determined the course of the Republic’s development. Each respectively distilled the experience and defined the historical legacy of a...
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II in the American West
The Great Depression and World War II, far and away the worst economic calamity and the costliest foreign war in American history, profoundly affected every part of the United States. Changes in the West were especially obvious. From...
The Human Toll of the Great Depression
After more than half a century, images of the Great Depression remain firmly etched in the American psyche—breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-can shanties and tar paper shacks known as "Hoovervilles," penniless men and women selling...
The New Deal
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s protean presidency from 1933 to 1945 (the longest term of leadership in this nation’s history) has provoked many debates about the man and his policies. For some he is the brilliant tactician who wrestled...
The Great Depression
Herbert Hoover got many things wrong about the great economic calamity that destroyed his presidency and his historical reputation, but he got one fundamental thing right. Much legend to the contrary, the Great Depression was not...
World War II
World War II was the central event of the twentieth century. It involved all six major continents, all three of the great oceans on the planet, scores of countries, and billions of people. It caused 57 million deaths and unimaginable...
Anti-Communism in the 1950s
In 1950, fewer than 50,000 Americans out of a total US population of 150 million were members of the Communist Party. Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, American fears of internal communist subversion reached a nearly hysterical...
Historical Context: Immigration Policy in World War II
The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt suspended naturalization proceedings for Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants, required them to register, restricted their mobility, and prohibited them from owning...
Daniel Greene and Edward Phillips - "Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader"
Daniel Greene, formerly the president and librarian at the Newberry Library, is an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. Edward J. Phillips joined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994 and directed...
Guided Readings: Reflections on the Great Depression and the New Deal
Reading 1 I want to tell you about an experience we had in Philadelphia when our private funds were exhausted and before public funds become available. . . . One woman said she borrowed 50 cents from a friend and bought stale bread...
Guided Readings: World War II
Reading 1 It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to...
Guided Readings: The Atomic Bomb
Reading 1 Nuclear bombs cannot possible remain a "secret weapon" at the exclusive disposal of this country for more than a few years. The scientific facts on which their construction is based are well known to scientists of other...
Generations of Chinese in America, 1880s–1940s/1940s–1990s
Click here to download Unit 1. Click here to download Unit 2.
America's Role in the World: World War I to World War II
Between World War I and World War II the United States emerged on the world stage as a superpower. This ascendancy had military, economic, humanitarian, and cultural dimensions. Some Americans expressed discomfort with this unwelcome...
Sarah Parry Myers - "Earning Their Wings: The WASPs of World War II and the Fight for Veteran Recognition"
Sarah Parry Myers is an assistant professor of history at Messiah University. Order Earning Their Wings at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for...
The origins of FDR’s New Deal, 1932
When the nation fell into the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving as New York’s governor and was responsible for shaping the state’s response to the crisis. The origins of...
Eleanor Roosevelt’s four basic rights, 1944
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a lifelong advocate of equal rights, used her position as First Lady to advocate against discrimination in the United States. However, Mrs. Roosevelt’s ideas were not embraced by everyone in the pre-civil...
Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Immigration and Migration: Pairing Text and Visual Materials
Click to download this five-lesson unit.
Herbert Hoover on the Great Depression and New Deal, 1931–1933
The stock market crashed on Thursday, October 24, 1929, less than eight months into Herbert Hoover’s presidency. Most experts, including Hoover, thought the crash was part of a passing recession. By July 1931, when the President wrote...
Japan declares war, 1941
On December 7, 1941, two hours after the Japanese attack on American military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japan declared war on the United States and Great Britain, marking America’s entry into World War II. The Japanese...
FDR on racial discrimination, 1942
On June 25, 1941, almost six months before the United States’ entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 8802, prohibiting racial discrimination by government defense contractors. The...
Victory Order of the Day, 1945
In March 1945 American and British forces moved eastward into Germany in large numbers, stopping at the Elbe River in mid-April in accordance with pre-negotiated agreements with the Soviet Union. The Red Army, meanwhile, had moved...
Civilian Conservation Corps poster, 1938
The Civilian Conservation Corps directly addressed two of the most pressing problems during the Depression: male youth unemployment and environmental degradation. The CCC, based on a military model of everyday life, put thousands of...
Photograph of a "Hooverville," 1936
"Hoovervilles" were temporary communities that America’s homeless created to provide shelter for themselves and their families during the Great Depression. They were so named as an insult to President Herbert Hoover, who seemed to be...
Photograph of an abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl, 1938
When a severe drought in the early 1930s left the crops of the Great Plains stunted, the relentless winds of the plains picked up the soil and brewed up horrific, roiling storms that gave this time its name: the Dust Bowl. Thousands...
Herbert Hoover's Inaugural Address, 1929
In November 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president over the Democratic nominee Al Smith. Hoover had served in the Harding and Coolidge administrations and won the nomination after Coolidge declined to run for a third...
Historical Context: American Slavery and Abolition through Hollywood
Throughout the twentieth century, many influential Hollywood films, such as Birth of a Nation , Gone with the Wind , Glory , and Amistad , have helped shape the way Americans have thought about slavery and its legacy. Birth of a...
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