Best of
American-History

1964

Why We Can't Wait


Martin Luther King Jr. - 1964
    Martin Luther King’s classic exploration of the events and forces behind the Civil Rights Movement—including his Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States. The campaign launched by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement on the segregated streets of Birmingham demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action.In this remarkable book—winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—Dr. King recounts the story of Birmingham in vivid detail, tracing the history of the struggle for civil rights back to its beginnings three centuries ago and looking to the future, assessing the work to be done beyond Birmingham to bring about full equality for African Americans. Above all, Dr. King offers an eloquent and penetrating analysis of the events and pressures that propelled the Civil Rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins and prayer marches to the forefront of American consciousness.Since its publication in the 1960s, Why We Can’t Wait has become an indisputable classic. Now, more than ever, it is an enduring testament to the wise and courageous vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.Includes photographs and an afterword by Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America


Lerone Bennett Jr. - 1964
    Here is the most recent scholarship on the geographic, social, ethnic, economic, and cultural journey of "the other Americans, " together with vital portraits of black pioneers and seminal figures in the struggle for freedom, as well as additional material on historical developments in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays


Richard Hofstadter - 1964
    In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?”, The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States."Recent months have witnessed an attack of unprecedented passion and ferocity against the national government. The Republican Party has apparently embarked on a crusade to destroy national standards, national projects, and national regulations and to transfer domestic governing authority from the national government to the states. A near majority of the Supreme Court even seems to want to replace the Constitution by the Articles of Confederation…"Unbridled rhetoric is having consequences far beyond anything that antigovernment politicians intend. The flow of angry words seems to have activated and in a sense legitimized what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the 'paranoid strain' in American politics." - Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, June 7, 1995

One Small Candle: The Pilgrims' First Year in America


Thomas Fleming - 1964
    We accompany them on their harrowing voyage across the Atlantic, through the rigors of the first New England winter and the threat of Indian attack as they desperately search for the home they eventually find at Plymouth. Once there, they must continue the struggle against brutal weather and disease.With masterly skill, New York Times bestselling historian and novelist Thomas Fleming gives us life-size portraits of the Pilgrim leaders. The Pilgrims' unique achievements – the Mayflower Compact, their tolerance of other faiths, the strict separation of church and state – are discussed in the context of the first year's anxieties and crises. Fleming writes admiringly of the younger men who emerged in the first year as the real leaders of the colony – William Bradford and Miles Standish. And he provides new insights into the deep humanity and tolerance of the Pilgrims' spiritual shepherd, Elder William Brewster.On the first Thanksgiving, already in the Pilgrim mind is a dawning consciousness that they are the forerunners of a great nation. It is implicit in William Bradford's words, "As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here has shone until many. . . ."

Four Days: The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy


United Press International - 1964
    Told through words and photographs. Compiled by the United Press International and the American Heritage Magazine.

Three Lives for Mississippi


William Bradford Huie - 1964
    Afterword by Juan Williams In the Civil Rights movement, 1964 was the year of Freedom Summer. On June 21, Mississippi, one of the last bastions of segregation in America and a bloody battleground in the fight for black equality, reached a low point in its history. On that steamy night three young activists were abducted and murdered in Neshoba County near the small town of Philadelphia. William Bradford Huie was sent to this seething community to cover the breaking story. This book is his documentary account written in the heat of the dangerous and dramatic moment. Huie reveals not only the harrowing events in this heinous case but also the reaction of ordinary citizens who allowed murder to serve as their defense of prejudice. This Banner Books edition includes Huie's report on the trial three years later. Nineteen local men were charged. Seven were found guilty-of conspiracy, not murder. William Bradford Huie (1910-1986), an Alabama journalist and novelist, was the author of many books, including The Americanization of Emily, The Execution of Private Slovik, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, Mud on the Stars (all made into films), and Wolf Whistle.

The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians


Ralph K. Andrist - 1964
    Long considered a classic, this edition features an introduction by Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."A vivid, swiftly paced account of the dispossession of the Plains Indians during the half century after 1840—The New York Times Book Review,

Prophets, Principles, and National Survival


Jerreld L. Newquist - 1964
    It contains answers by the prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to many of the questions and problems facing the nation today.The book is well footnoted throughout by knowledgeable and distinguished civic and national leaders who corroborate the words of the prophets.Some of the timely subjects discussed in the book are: Morality — Spirituality — Religion; Church and State; Free Enterprise and Capitalism; The American Republic; Communism — An International Criminal Conspiracy: The Welfare State — Creeping Socialism; American Foreign Policy; War and Peace; Capital Punishment; Birth Control; and many others.Prophets, Principles and National Survival will stimulate and enlighten the reader as few books can. It represents the first time that the statements of the Church leaders have been compiled on subjects that are vital to the spiritual and temporal welfare of all loyal Americans. "We have lost the conflict so far waged. But there is time to win the final victory, if we sense our danger, and fight." J. REUBEN CLARK, JR. . . .from an address entitled "America Faces Freedom-Slavery Issue"

The Torch is Passed: The Associated Press Story of the Death of a President


Keith Fuller - 1964
    Kennedy. Over 80 black and white photos included.

John Doyle Lee


Juanita Brooks - 1964
    It is unparalleled in providing a thorough and accurate account of John D. Lee's involvement in the tragic 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Seven Days: The Emergence of Robert E. Lee and the Dawn of a Legend


Clifford Dowdey - 1964
    General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had routed General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Depriving McClellan of a military decision meant the war would continue for two more years. The Seven Days depicts a critical turning point in the Civil War that would ingrain Robert E. Lee in history as one of the finest generals of all time. Masterfully written, The Seven Days is Dowdey at his finest—detailed and riveting.

Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders


Ezra J. Warner - 1964
    Brief sketches reveal the personalities, background and careers of the nearly six hundred men who attained the rank of general in the Union Army.

The John F. Kennedys: A Family Album


Mark Shaw - 1964
    Mark Shaw met the Kennedys on assignment for Life Magazine and became the family's favorite photographer. Unparalleled access to the White House and the Kennedy compund at Hyannis Port, and a close relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy, allowed him to create this intimate portrait of a beloved first family and to capture the glamour and elusive magic of the Camelot years.

The Burden And The Glory


John F. Kennedy - 1964
    s/t: The Hopes & Purposes of President Kennedy's Second & Third Year in Office as Revealed in His Public Statements & Addresses

Mississippi: The Closed Society


James W. Silver - 1964
    Eye opening data on the events that sparked the Civil Rights Movement.

Pursuit of Justice


Robert F. Kennedy - 1964
    

A Theological Interpretation of American History


Charles Gregg Singer - 1964
    

Fear on Trial


John Henry Faulk - 1964
    The dramatic account of Faulk's six years on the blacklist and his lawsuit against AWARE.

Cow People


J. Frank Dobie - 1964
    These are the Texans of the don’t-fence-me-in era, their faces pinched by years of squinting into the desert glare, tanned by the sun, and coarsened by the dust of the Chisholm Trail.

Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City


Stefan Lorant - 1964
    This book is based on years of research and includes contributions by such noted American historians as Henry Steele Commager and Oscar Handlin. More than 1100 pictures recreate the city's dramatic 200+year history. Featured are photographs by W. Eugene Smith, Margaret Bourke-White, Norman W. Schumm, Lorant himself and others. A chronology of events from 1717 offers historical snapshots in the day to day life of the archetypical American city.

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West


Dale L. Morgan - 1964
    Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America


Leo Marx - 1964
    His research helped to define--and continues to give depth to--the area of American studies concerned with the links between scientific and technological advances, and the way society and culture both determine these links. The Machine in the Garden fully examines the difference between the pastoral and progressive ideals which characterized early 19th-century American culture, and which ultimately evolved into the basis for much of the environmental and nuclear debates of contemporary society.This new edition is appearing in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Marx's classic text. It features a new afterword by the author on the process of writing this pioneering book, a work that all but founded the discipline now called American Studies.

Lost Trails of the Cimarron


Harry E. Chrisman - 1964
    Buffalo hunters entered the area in violation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, followed by cowboys and settlers who formed a vast economy based on grass and beef, the beginnings of prominent cattle ranches such as Westmoreland-Hitch Outfit. Chrisman details the history of the outlaws and ruffians of "No Man’s Land" and trail drives to Dodge City and beyond. Numerous illustrations accompany the anecdotes and stories of various frontier personalities.

Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics


Charles P. Roland - 1964
    Gallagher Selected as one of the best one hundred books ever written on the Civil War by Civil War Times Illustrated and by Civil War: The Magazine of the Civil War Society A new, revised edition of the only full-scale biography of the Confederacy's top-ranking field general during the opening campaigns of the Civil War.

Voices on the River: The Story of the Mississippi Waterways


Walter Havighurst - 1964
    This volume follows frontier commerce up the Mississippi River and its two major tributaries, the Ohio and the Missouri. It tells of steamboat speed records, races and disasters, and of the growing nation in the vast Midwest.

Religious Conflict in America: Studies of the Problem Beyond Bigotry


Earl Raab - 1964
    

The Indian and the White Man


Wilcomb E. Washburn - 1964
    

The Yankee Peddlers of Early America


J.R. Dolan - 1964
    Today, "peddler" has an unpleasant connotation, but the Yankee peddlers of early America were more than street hawkers. Enterprising, shrewd, and endearing, they were the ancestors of the nineteenth-century tycoon and the twentieth-century businessman. With over 100 illustrations and black-and-white photographs.

The United States in World War I


Don Lawson - 1964
    

The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists & the Negro in the Civil War & Reconstruction


James M. McPherson - 1964
    This work remains an incisive demonstration of the successful role played by rights activists during and after the Civil War, when they evolved from despised fanatics into influential spokespersons for the radical wing of the Republican party.The vivid narrative stresses the intensely individual efforts that characterized the movement, drawing on letters and anti-slavery periodicals to let the voices of the abolitionists express for themselves their triumphs and anxieties. Asserting that it was not the abolitionists who failed in their efforts to instill the principles of equality on the state level but rather the American people who refused to follow their leadership, McPherson raises broad questions about the obstacles that have long hindered American reform movements in general.This new paperback edition contains a preface in which the author explains some of the changing perspectives that would lead him to write several aspects of this story differently today. The original hardcover was a winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award in Race Relations.

The War for America, 1775-1783


Piers Mackesy - 1964
    Far less familiar is the fact that, for the British, the American colonies were only one front in a world war. England was also pitted against France and Spain. Not always in command of the seas and threatened with invasion, England tried grimly for eight years to subdue its rebellious colonies; to hold Canada, the West Indies, India, and Gibraltar; and to divide its European enemies. In this vivid history Piers Mackesy views the American Revolution from the standpoint of the British government and the British military leaders as they attempted to execute an overseas war of great complexity. Their tactical response to the American Revolution is now comprehensible, seen as part of a grand imperial strategy.

Barry Goldwater: Extremist of the Right


Fred J. Cook - 1964
    

Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution.


Clinton Rossiter - 1964
    

Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence


William B. Willcox - 1964
    This biography includes an analysis of the strategy leading to their defeat. In Portrait of a General this man and his role - heretofore neglected by historians - are fully examined for the first time. Drawing on Sir Henry's voluminous private papers as well as many other firsthand sources, William Wilcox has reconstructed his life and character and analyzed his part in the British war effort.

Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem


James C. Olson - 1964
    Centered on Red Cloud’s career, this is an admirably impartial, circumstantial, and rigorously documented study of the relations between the Sioux and the United States government during the years after the Civil War.

Embattled Confederates: An Illustrated History of Southerners at War


Bell Irvin Wiley - 1964
    

Coming of the Pilgrims


E. Brooks Smith - 1964