225 items
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877
In 1877, soon after retiring as president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, embarked with his wife on a two-year tour of the world. At almost every location, he was greeted as a hero. In England, the son of the Duke of...
American Music Goes to War
Entertainment is always a national asset. Invaluable in time of peace, it is indispensable in wartime. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943 Background Music during World War II had an unprecedented impact on America, both on the home front...
Alan Taylor - "American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873"
Alan Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Order American Civil Wars at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the...
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
Jill Lepore, Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, draws on scholarship from her book, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, to trace how the meanings attached to this brutally...
Guided Readings: Imperialism and the Spanish-American War
Reading 1 Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. . . . The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. . . . The frontier promoted the...
Guided Readings: Origins of the Cold War and Soviet-American Confrontation
Reading 1 From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,...
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. Freedom from Fear focuses primarily on political and economic developments, recounting how presidents and citizens responded to the two great...
World War I
War swept across Europe in the summer of 1914, igniting a global struggle that would eventually take nine million lives. World War I pitted the Allies (initially composed of Britain, France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia, and eventually...
American Indians
If history is the story of what people have done, then American history began thousands of years ago, and by far most of it is that of Indian peoples and their ancestors before Europeans arrived. Historians, however, disagree over...
Victoria Phillips - "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy"
Order Martha Graham's Cold War at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
David P. Cline - "Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War"
David P. Cline is a professor of history and director of the Center for Public and Oral History at San Diego State University. Order Twice Forgotten at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every...
Guided Readings: World War I
Reading 1 The United States must be neutral in fact, as well as in name, during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought, as well as action, must put a curb upon our sentiments, as well as upon every...
Morgan: American Financier
Based on extensive research in newly opened archives, Morgan: American Financier , Jean Strouse’s portrait of J. P. Morgan, shows a man who helped transform the United States into an industrial nation, and amassed an extraordinary...
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...
Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919
Emma Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States, becoming a well-known author and lecturer promoting anarchism, workers’ rights,...
The French and Indian War
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
America's Role in the World: World War I to World War II
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
Guided Readings: The Korean War
Reading 1 In Korea the Government forces, which were armed to prevent border raids and to preserve internal security, were attacked by invading forces from North Korea. . . . The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that...
The American Revolution, 1763–1783
The British colonists of mainland North America had great hopes for the future in 1763, when the Peace of Paris formally ended the Seven Years’ War. Since the late seventeenth century, their lives had been disrupted by a series of...
Jonathan W. White - "Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade"
Jonathan W. White is a professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University. Order Shipwrecked at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for...
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...
American History and the World
NYU Professor of the Humanities Thomas Bender argues that the idea of American exceptionalism has hobbled the study of American history. Bender traces the study of history from the "men of letters" historians of the nineteenth...
Early American Slave Culture
In this lecture, historian Philip D. Morgan compares the Lowcountry and Chesapeake slave cultures and reveals much about the way of life of some of the earliest African Americans. Although South Carolina in the eighteenth century was...
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...
The Cold War in the classroom, 1952
As the Cold War pervaded domestic as well as international spheres, Duck and Cover , an educational film produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration and Archer Productions Inc., showed children how to react in case of a...
World War II: Commemorating Pearl Harbor, 1941
Following the Japanese bombardment of the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan and Germany and immediately mobilized the country for war. "Remember Dec. 7th!" is a...
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...
Infographic: The Vietnam War Military Statistics
Download Infographic as PDF Questions for Discussion In what year were the greatest number of US service members stationed in Vietnam? In what year were there the greatest number of US battle deaths in Vietnam? How many...
"Food Will Win the War," 1917
When most people think of wartime food rationing, they often think of World War II. However, civilians were encouraged to do their part for the war effort during World War I as well. This colorful poster by artist Charles E. Chambers...
The Cold War as a Culture War: Visualizing Values and the Role of Pop Culture
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
Recruiting posters for African American soldiers, 1918
These two World War I recruiting posters aim to encourage African Americans to enlist. In the first poster, “Colored Man Is No Slacker,” a black soldier takes his leave against a background of African American patriotism, self...
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...
Bruce Henderson - "Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II"
Bruce Henderson is an American journalist and author of more than thirty nonfiction books, including a #1 New York Times bestseller. Order The Bridge to the Sun at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from...
Why Black men fought in World War I, 1919
During World War I, approximately 370,000 black men in the US military served in segregated regiments and were often relegated to support duties such as digging trenches, transporting supplies, cleaning latrines, and burying the dead....
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