America, United States of
Last update: 04 May 2026 12:00First version: Before 13 March 1995
The furnace where the future is being forged.See also cultural criticism. A more-than-usually-inadequate notebook.
--- Trotsky
I'm particularly interested in the cultural, social and economic changes around 1880--1920, which seems to be when we did become what Trotsky took us to be, and finally gave up on being a rural republic. This, to my mind, was a Good Thing, but I want to understand it better. (I've written a little about this in two book reviews (1, 2). E.g., how did our experience during this period compare with that of other industrializing countries? How different was it from, e.g., Germany, Italy or Japan?
We are stranger than you imagine, and probably more dangerous.
--- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
- Recommended (very miscellaneous and inadequate):
- Sasha Abramsky, American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment
- Richard Alba, The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream
- Danielle S. Allen, Our Declaration
- Jacques Barzun, God's Country and Mine
- James Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society [Review]
- Annette Bernhardt, Martina Morris, Mark S. Handcock, and Marc A. Scott, Divergent Paths: Economic Mobility in the New American Labor Market
- Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- Harold Bloom, The American Religion
- Katarzyna Bryc, Eric Y. Durand, J. Michael Macpherson, David Reich, and Joanna L. Mountain, "The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States", American Journal of Human Genetics 96 (2015): 37--53 [Though there is an important caveat here: people who pay for genetic testing are going to be biased towards those with a reason to be interested in their ancestry, including perhaps suspecting that it's not what it appears...]
- Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox
- W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South
- Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800--1850
- David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World [As the subtitle indicates, not just about the US, but also very much about us]
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
- Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
- Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism
- John A. Hall and Charles Lindholm, Is America Breaking Apart? [Ans.: No.]
- Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy
- Richard Hofstadter
- The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R.
- Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
- The Paranoid Style in American Politics [The title essay is online]
- James McPhee, Annals of the Former World
- James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
- Franco Moretti, Far Country
- Thomas Oatley, A Political Economy of American Hegemony: Buildups, Booms, and Busts
- Eric Rauchway
- Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, American Lynching
- Kate Schemerhorn, America's Idea of a Good Time
- Gilbert Seldes, The Stammering Century
- Ronald C. Tobey, Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home
- Alfredo G. A. Valladao, The Twenty-First Century Will Be American
- Sarah Vowell
- Richard White, Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River
- Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution
- To read:
- Richard M. Abrams, America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941--2001
- Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission
- Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography
- Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500--2000
- Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
- Robin Archer, Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States?
- David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History
- Barbara Arneil, Diverse Communities: The Problem with Social Capital ["the changes in American civil society in the last half century are not so much the result of generational change or television as the unleashing of powerful economic, social and cultural forces that, despite leading to division and distrust within American society, also contributed to greater justice for women and cultural minorities"]
- William Aspray and Barbara M. Hayes (eds.), Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America
- Wayne E. Baker, America's Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception [Actual data in a discussion of values! Unheard-of!]
- Carl L. Bankston III, American Ideas of Equality; A Social History, 1750--2020 [Positive review in American Journal of Sociology]
- Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America
- Louis Bergeron and Maria Teresa Maiullari-Pontois, Industry, Architecture and Engineering: American Ingenuity, 1750--1950
- Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution
- David P. Billington and David P. Billington, Jr., Power, Speed and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century
- Judith R. Blau, The Shape of Culture: A Study of Contemporary Cultural Patterns in the United States
- John P. Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West
- Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
- Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
- Sarah Burns, Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America
- Robert Buzzanco, Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life
- Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture
- Craig Calhoun, The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements
- Steven Cassedy
- Daniel Ciepley, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism
- Andrew Cohen, The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900--1940
- Julie A. Cohn, The Grid: Biography of an American Technology
- Beatiz Colomina et al., Cold War Houthouses: Inventing Culture, from Cockpit to Playboy
- Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, Crafting Equality: America's Anglo-African Word
- Peter Conrad, How the World Was Won: The Americanization of Everywhere
- Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War
- Tyler Cowen, Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding
- Jefferson Cowie, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics
- Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
- Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
- Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation
- Robert Alan Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?
- Jennifer A. Dalton, Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal
- David Brion Davis, Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations
- Lynn Davis, American Monument
- Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes
- Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe
- Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium
- Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
- Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism
- Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life
- Sergio Fabbrini, America and Its Critics: Virtues and Vices of the Democratic Hyperpower
- Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
- Stephen M. Feldman, Free Expression and Democracy in America: A History
- Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems [By "systems" he means "America".]
- John Ferling, Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic
- Claude S. Fischer, Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character
- David Hackett Fischer
- Albion's Seed
- Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States
- Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas
- Joshua Freeman, American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945-2000
- Donna R. Gabaccia, Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History
- Louis Galambos, The Creative Society — and the Price Americans Paid for It
- Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century
- Edward L. Glaeser and Glaudia Goldin, Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History
- Joseph T. Glatthaar and James Kirby Martin, Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution
- Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America
- William H. Goetzmann, Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism
- Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War
- William Graebner, The Engineering of Consent: Democracy and Authority in Twentieth-Century America
- James M. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America
- Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607--1876 ["how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations?"]
- Andrew Hacker, Money: Who Has How Much and Why
- Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars
- Derek Hayes, Historical Atlas of the United States
- Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts
- Godfrey Hodgson, More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century ["Great and growing inequality has been the most salient social fact about the America of the conservative ascendancy. It is hard not to ask whether that was not one of the conservatives' strategic goals."]
- Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition
- David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism
- James J. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake
- David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800--1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States
- Bill Ivey, Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
- Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
- James M. Jasper, Restless Nation: Starting Over in America
- Elliot Jaspin, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
- Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism
- Jacqueline Jones, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor
- Paul W. Kahn, Democracy in Our America: Can We Still Govern Ourselves?
- Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White
- Lisa A. Keister
- Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way
- Wealth in America: Trends in Wealth Inequality
- David Ketterer, New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature
- Maury Klein, The Genesis of Industrial America, 1870-1920
- Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization
- Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
- David F. Labaree, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education
- Pamela Walker Laird, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin
- Frank Lambert, Inventing the "Great Awakening"
- Jill Lepore
- The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
- These Truths: A History of the United States
- Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700
- Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution
- Jeff Madrick, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present
- J. S. Maloy, The Colonial American Origins of Modern Democratic Thought
- J. M. Mancini, Pre-Modernism: Art-World Change and American Culture from the Civil War to the Armory Show
- Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business
- Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism ["cultural history of Americans' engagement with Islam in the colonial and antebellum period"]
- Noel Maurer, The Empire Trap: The Rise and Fall of U.S. Intervention to Protect American Property Overseas, 1893--2013
- McGerr, A Fierce Discontent [the Progressive movement]
- William G. Meyer, The Changing American Mind: How and Why American Public Opinion Changed between 1960 and 1988
- Robert Mickey, Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944--1972
- Edward H. Miller, Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy
- Jeffrey E. Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants
- Inge Morath, The Road to Reno
- M. A. Muqtedar Khan, American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom
- Fred Nadis, Wonder Shows: Performing Science, Magic, and Religion in America
- David F. Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism
- Mark A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
- David E. Nye
- America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings
- Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies
- Electrifying America: The Social Meaning of a New Technology, 1880--1920
- When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America
- Thomas Oatley, A Political Economy of American Hegemony: Buildups, Booms, and Busts
- Kathryn S. Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11
- Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It
- R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800
- Kiran Klaus Patel, The New Deal: A Global History
- Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism
- Dale E. Peterson, Up from Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American "Soul"
- Merrill Peterson, The Jefferson Image In The American Mind
- Noah Pickus, True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism
- Ann Powers, Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America
- Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon
- Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom
- Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
[A good, and positive, Review in The Nation] - The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History
- Origin of the Urban Crisis
- Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North