Below you will find many of the authors to whom I am most grateful for the inspiration they have given me over the years as I have prepared to teach this era of history. Some contributed facts that have gone into the stories contained in this book, while others proved instrumental in shaping my ideas about the American spirit, its past and future. Those texts that are readily available via a search online are marked with an asterisk.

Abrams, Dan and Fisher, David, John Adams Under Fire, The Founding Father’s Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Trial, Toronto: Hanover Square Press, 2020.

Ambrose, Stephen. Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1963-1869. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

Asahina, Robert. Just Americans: How Japanese Americans Won A War At Home And Abroad. New York: Gotham, 2006.

Barry, John M. Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul : Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. New York: Viking, 2012.

Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.

Boorstin, Daniel. The National Experience. New York: Random House, 1965.

Borden, Mary. The Forbidden Zone. London: Hesperus Press Limited, 2008.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September, 1787. New York: Little, Brown, 2010.

Brookhiser, Richard. Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. New York: Free Press, 1996.

Burlingame, Michael. Abraham Lincoln, A Life.* Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Carter, Hodding. The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1959.

Chang, Gordon H. and Fishkin, Shelley, eds. The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad.Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Dix, Dorothea. On Behalf of the Insane Poor.* Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2002.

Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

Douglass, Frederick, and William L. Andrews. The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader.* New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Drehle, Dave von. Triangle: The Fire That Shaped America. New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2003.

Lee, Erika. The Making of Asian America: A History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015.

Fisher, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Foner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of America’s Fugitive Slaves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011

Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Selections From His Other Writings.* Modern Library of New York, 2001.

Franklin, John Hope. Reconstruction: After the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Gaustad, Edwin. Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America. Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1999.

Gitter, Elisabeth. The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman. Auckland, NZ: Royal New Zealand Society Of The Blind, 2009.

Goodwin, Doris Stearns. A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Thorndike, 2013.

Guelzo, Allen C. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.

Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.

Halberstam, David. The Children. New York: Random House, 1998.

Handlin, Oscar. The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951.

Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington, The making of a Black leader: 1856-1901. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Hymowitz, Carol and Weissman, Michaele. A History of Women in America. New York: Bantom Books, 1978.

Walter Isaacson. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Thorndike Press, 2003.

Jennings, Chris. Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. New York: Random House, 2017.

Johnson, Paul. The History of the American People. New York: Harper Perennial, 1997.

Johnson, Paul. George Washington: The Founding Father. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.

Lewis, John. Walking With The Wind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Lundstrom, John B. One Drop in a Sea of Blue: The Liberators of the Ninth Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2012.

Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1974.

Markel, Howard. The Kelloggs: Battling Brothers of Battle Creek. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007.

Mars, Florence. Witness in Philadelphia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.

McCullough, David. 1776. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

McKinstry, Carolyn Maull. While the World Watched. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013.

McPherson, James. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007

Morgan, Edmund Sears. The Genius of George Washington. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense, and Other Political Writings.* New York, MacMillan, 1987.

Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Putnam, Robert. Better Together: Restoring the American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Sandburg, Carl. The Prairie Years. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1926.

Schneider, Paul. Old Man River. New York: Picador/Henry Holt and Company, 2014.

Shay, Michael E. The Yankee Division In The First World War. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008.

Smith, Page. The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years. New York, Penguin Books, 1990.

Smith, Page. The Shaping of America, A People’s History of the Young Republic, volume three. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.

Sowell, Thomas. The Thomas Sowell Reader. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

Srodes, James. Franklin: The Essential Founding Father. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2003.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady and Others. History of Women's Suffrage.* New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881.

Stauffer, John. Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederic Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. New York: Twelve, 2009.

Tateishi, John. And Just For All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps. New York: Random House, 1984.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America.* Translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Trudeau, Nathan Andrew. Lincoln’s Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24-April 8, 1865. Savas Beatie, 2016.

Twain, Mark. Mississippi Writings: the Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'nhead Wilson. * New York: Library of America, 1982.

Unger, Harlow G. Lafayette. Wiley, 2003.

Ward, Geoffrey C., et al.. The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

Warden, Herbert W. III, ed. American Courage: remarkable true stories exhibiting the bravery that has made our country great. New York: Harper, 2006.

Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery.* Garden City: Doubleday, 1936.

Wood, William. New Englands Prospect. 1634. Available online: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47082

Woodson, Robert L. The Triumphs of Joseph: How Today's Community Healers Are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods, New York: Free Press, 1998.

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Zunz, Olivier, ed. Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Travels.Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.