social aspects

Contains profiles and photographs of children who went to the Yukon and Alaska during the gold rush age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Reyna Grande chronicles her life as an undocumented immigrant, from her border crossing at age nine, discussing her difficult relationship with her father, and other complications with her family during childhood.

First-person accounts bring the history of Florida's participation in the Civil War to life.

At the age of 8, Reyna Grande made the dangerous and illegal trek across the border from Mexico to the United States, and discovered that the American Dream is much more complicated that it seemed.

Examines the Revolutionary Era through the eyes of slaves, Native Americans, women, and British loyalists who lived along the Florida Gulf Coast.

" ... Ranging from the stories of individuals to those of armies on the move to debates in the halls of Congress, 'Troubled Refuge' probes the particular and deeply significant reality of the contraband camps: what they were really like and how former slaves and Union soldiers warily united there, forging a dramatically new but highly imperfect alliance between the government and African Americans"--Amazon.com.

Briefly examines the life of Sally Wister, who was just a girl in 1777 when the Revolutionary War forced her and her family out of Philadelphia.

Briefly explores the life of Carrie Berry, a Confederate girl who was ten years old in 1864, when the Union bombarded Atlanta with cannon fire.

Historical, cultural, social, and political analysis of the American Revolution.

"More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had 'uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.' In fact, five generations have passed, and Americans are still trying to measure the influence of the immense fratricidal conflict that nearly tore the nation apart. In The War that Forged a Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply embedded in our national psyche and identity. The drama and tragedy of the war, from its scope and size--an estimated death toll of 750,000, far more than the rest of the country's wars combined--to the nearly mythical individuals involved--Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson--help explain why the Civil War remains a topic of interest. But the legacy of the war extends far beyond historical interest or scholarly attention. Here, McPherson draws upon his work over the past fifty years to illuminate the war's continuing resonance across many dimensions of American life. Touching upon themes that include the war's causes and consequences; the naval war; slavery and its abolition; and Lincoln as commander in chief, McPherson ultimately proves the impossibility of understanding the issues of our own time unless we first understand their roots in the era of the Civil War. From racial inequality and conflict between the North and South to questions of state sovereignty or the role of government in social change--these issues, McPherson shows, are as salient and controversial today as they were in the 1860s. Thoughtful, provocative, and authoritative, The War that Forged a Nation looks anew at the reasons America's civil war has remained a subject of intense interest for the past century and a half, and affirms the enduring relevance of the conflict for America today"--.