Best of
American-History

1974

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York


Robert A. Caro - 1974
    Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-72


William Manchester - 1974
    It encompasses politics, military history, economics, the arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications, graffiti - everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print.Masterfully compressing four crowded decades of our history, The Glory and the Dream relives the epic, significant, or just memorable events that befell the generation of Americans whose lives pivoted between the America before and the America after the Second World War. From the Great Depression through the second inauguration of Richard M. Nixon, Manchester breathes life into this great period of America's growth.

All the President's Men


Carl Bernstein - 1974
    This is “the work that brought down a presidency— perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history” (Time, All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books).This is the book that changed America. Published just two months before President Nixon’s resignation, All the President’s Men revealed the full scope of the Watergate scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious “Deep Throat.” Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon’s shocking downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters.All the President’s Men is a riveting detective story, capturing the exhilarating rush of the biggest presidential scandal in U.S. history as it unfolded in real time. It is, as former New York Times managing editor Gene Roberts has called it, “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.”

Comanches: The Destruction of a People


T.R. Fehrenbach - 1974
    T. R. Fehrenbach traces the Comanches' rise to power, from their prehistoric origins to their domination of the high plains for more than a century until their demise in the face of Anglo-American expansion.Master horseback riders who lived in teepees and hunted bison, the Comanches were stunning orators, disciplined warriors, and the finest makers of arrows. They lived by a strict legal code and worshipped within a cosmology of magic. As he portrays the Comanche lifestyle, Fehrenbach re-creates their doomed battle against European encroachment. While they destroyed the Spanish dream of colonizing North America and blocked the French advance into the Southwest, the Comanches ultimately fell before the Texas Rangers and the U. S. Army in the great raids and battles of the mid-nineteenth century.This is a classic American story, vividly and poignantly told.

Washington: The Indispensable Man


James Thomas Flexner - 1974
    Now in a new trade paperback edition, this masterful work explores the Father of Our Country - sometimes an unpopular hero, a man of great contradictions, but always a towering historical figure, who remains, as Flexner writes in these pages, "a fallible human being made of flesh and blood and spirit - not a statue of marble and wood... a great and good man." The author unflinchingly paints a portrait of Washington: slave owner, brave leader, man of passion, reluctant politician, and fierce general. His complex character and career are neither glorified nor vilified here; rather, Flexner sets up a brilliant counterpoint between Washington's public and private lives and gives us a challenging look at the man who has become as much a national symbol as the American flag.

The Black Book


Middleton A. Harris - 1974
    I still think there is no other work that tells and visualizes a story of such misery with seriousness, humor, grace and triumph.”—Toni MorrisonSeventeenth-century sketches of Africans as they appeared to marauding European traders. Nineteenth-century slave auction notices. Twentieth-century sheet music for work songs and freedom chants. Photographs of war heroes, regal in uniform. Antebellum reward posters for capturing runaway slaves. An 1856 article titled “A Visit to the Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child.”In 1974, Middleton A. Harris and Toni Morrison led a team of gifted, passionate collectors in compiling these images and nearly five hundred others into one sensational narrative of the black experience in America—The Black Book. Now in a newly restored hardcover edition, The Black Book remains a breathtaking testament to the legendary wisdom, strength, and perseverance of black men and women intent on freedom. Prominent collectors Morris Levitt, Roger Furman, and Ernest Smith joined Harris and Morrison (then a Random House editor, ultimately a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning Nobel Laureate) to spend months studying, laughing at, and crying over these materials—transcripts from fugitive slaves’ trials and proclamations by Frederick Douglass and celebrated abolitionists, as well as chilling images of cross burnings and lynchings, patents registered by black inventors throughout the early twentieth century, and vibrant posters from “Black Hollywood” films of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, it was an article she found while researching this project that provided the inspiration for Morrison’s masterpiece, Beloved.A labor of love and a vital link to the richness and diversity of African American history and culture, The Black Book honors the past, reminding us where our nation has been, and gives flight to our hopes for what is yet to come. Beautifully and faithfully presented and featuring a foreword and original poem by Toni Morrison, The Black Book remains a timeless landmark work.

Plain Speaking: an Oral Biography of Harry S Truman


Merle Miller - 1974
    Mr. Truman took the tradition of plain speaking back to Missouri with him."Fortunately for history, Merle Miller followed. In the early 1960s, as preparation for a ill-fated series of television series, Miller talked in complete frankness with the former president for hundreds of hours over several months. He also interviewed many people who had been close to Truman from his childhood in Independence, Missouri through his years in Washington. While the television programs never materialized, the book Miller composed from his unprecedented conversations offers an intimate and riveting portrait of one of America's most remarkable presidents, illuminating Truman's early political career and surprising path to the White House, as well as the critical events and momentous decisions that shaped his years in power. The subject's candid comments on the characters of Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and others add a feisty edge to the reflections and opinions that enliven this rich, revealing book. All in all, this is a rare, human, and often very funny evocation of the life and times of an American president.

The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance


Thomas B. Buell - 1974
    Raymond A. Spruance. Spruance, victor of the battles of Midway and the Philippine Sea and commander of the Fifth Fleet in the invasions of the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas, and Okinawa, is one of the towering figures in American naval history. Yet his reserved, cerebral personality did not make good copy for correspondents, and until the publication of The Quiet Warrior he remained an elusive figure. Thomas Buell has succeeded in evoking the nature of the man as well as recording the achievements of the admiral in this brilliant biography, which won the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement the year of its publication.

The Kent Family Chronicles: Volumes One Through Three


John Jakes - 1974
    This multigenerational saga follows the Kent family and their pursuit of a foothold and future in the expanding United States. From the family’s initial journey traveling to America’s shore to their voyage to the Western frontier, their fate is intertwined with the course of American history in these first three volumes of the series.  The Bastard: Denied his birthright as the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kentland, Philippe Charboneau seeks a new life in London, where he meets Benjamin Franklin and reads the works of patriot firebrand Sam Adams. Inspired by such brave new ideas, he travels to the American colonies at the brink of the Revolution. There he will choose his own name—Philip Kent—and finally decide his own fate.  The Rebels: Philip Kent fights as a Continental soldier at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In a bold move, he has taken up arms for the future of his new family. Spirited and unwavering in his dedication to his adopted homeland, Philip fights in the most violent battles in America’s early history. But far from the front lines, another battle rages that will sweep his wife, Anne, on her own perilous journey that may destroy all Philip has fought for.  The Seekers: Returning from fighting valiantly on the frontier, Abraham Kent—son of Philip and Anne—returns to Boston, only to realize that he cannot abide the confines of civilization. Determined not to live in his father’s shadow, he takes his young bride and settles on the American frontier. But the life of a pioneer comes at a high price, and the cost of Abraham’s restless ambitions may be more than he can bear.

God, Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties


Ezra Taft Benson - 1974
    I bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, the very Son of God. He was born the Babe of Bethlehem. He lived and ministered among men. He was crucified on Calvary. He is risen-really resurrected. He has appeared to men as a glorified Eternal King, in Palestine and also in America. I bear this witness to all, but direct my remarks especially to our youth of the free world, for whom I have great hope and a fervent prayer. My text, from  Luke  in the New Testament, stands out boldly in its impressive beauty. It covers a period of eighteen years following the return of Jesus from Jerusalem to Nazareth. Except for this one rich sentence of greatest import, the scriptures for this eighteen-year period are silent: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."  (Luke 2:52.) Here, then, in one sentence-fourteen words-is the impressive, meaningful, and comprehensive account of eighteen years of preparation of the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Here, in broad outline, in one succinct sentence-four points-are given the major fields of man's activity and striving: mental, physical, spiritual, and social. Young men and women, remember, it is people, not things, that are all-important. Character is the one thing we make in this world and take with us into the next. God's purpose is to build people of character, not physical monuments to their material accumulations.

Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red Light District


Al Rose - 1974
    Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red Light District seeks to offer the reader a reasonably true-to-life impression of Storyville, the most famous of the large districts and the only such district in the United States that was legally established. Storyville was an area, carefully defined by law, outside of which prostitutes or women “notoriously abandoned to lewdness” were not permitted to live or work. Prostitutes working within the District were considered to be engaged in legal enterprises so long as they confined themselves to prostitution and other related activities such as dispensing food and drink to their customers. From the early days of the French colony of Louisiana, a great number of prostitutes, women from correctional centers, and those with so-called “loose morals” were transported to the New World, resulting in a large proportion of the earliest female residents in New Orleans engaging in prostitution. During the course of Storyville’s legal existence from January 1, 1898 to November 12, 1917—it is evident that in establishing this district the New Orleans city council acted out of a sense of frustration after decades of attempting to deal rationally with a serious social problem. As the author says in the preface, “You may see this as a disorderly book about disorderly houses—and so it may be. But I doubt you will find it dull.”

American Negro Slave Revolts


Herbert Aptheker - 1974
    That opinion, so decisive a part of the chauvinism afflicting the nation, is shown to be false in this book and in the material accumulated since its initial appearance has further substantiated this thesis; namely, that the African-American people, in slavery, forged a record of discontent and of resistance comparable to that marking the history of any other oppressed people.

The Glory and the Dream Volume Two


William Manchester - 1974
    In the Glory and the Dream William Manchester springs open a great time capsule of a book- a huge, abundant popular history of the United States from 1932 to 1972.

Organized Labor And The Black Worker, 1619 1981


Philip S. Foner - 1974
    and 28mins.©1974 Philip S. Foner, Foreword 2017 Robin D.G. Kelley (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson


Bernard Bailyn - 1974
    Bailyn writes, depicts the fortunes of a conservative in a time of radical upheaval and deals with problems of public disorder and ideological commitment. It is at the same time a dramatic account of the origins of the American Revolution from the viewpoint, not of the winners who became the Founding Fathers, but of the losers, the Loyalists. By portraying the ordeal of the last civilian royal governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Bailyn explains what the human reality was against which the victors struggled and in doing so makes the story of the Revolution fuller and more comprehensible.

Saint of the Wilderness


Jess Carr - 1974
    

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made


Eugene D. Genovese - 1974
    It covers an incredible range of topics and offers fresh insights on nearly every page... the author's great gift is his ability to penetrate the minds of both slaves and masters, revealing not only how they viewed themselves and each other, but also how they contradictory perceptions interacted.

The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in World War I


Arthur E. Barbeau - 1974
    The irony was made more bitter as black troops struggled with the racist policies of the American military itself. The overwhelming majority were assigned to labor companies; those selected for combat were under-trained, poorly equipped, ad commanded by white officers who insisted on black inferiority. Still, African Americans performed admirably under fire: the 369th Infantry regiment was in continuous combat loner than any other American unit, and was the first Allied regiment to cross the Rhine in the offensive against Germany.The Unknown Soldiers, the only full-scale examination of the subject, chronicles the rigid segregation; the limited opportunities for advancement; the inadequate training, food, medical attention, housing, and clothing; the verbal harassment and physical abuse, including lynchings; the ingratitude, unemployment, and unprecedented racial violence that greeted their return. The Unknown Soldiers is an unforgettable, searing study of those wartime experiences that forced African Americans to realize that equality and justice could never be earned in Jim Crow America, but only wrested from its strangling grip.

Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol


William C. Davis - 1974
    Breckinridge was the vice president of the United States. Later he came closest to defeating Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. In a short time he became secretary of war in the Confederate cabinet. This -- the first -- comprehensive biography of this remarkable man and his generation covers one of the turbulent eras of the American past. Breckinridge was a Kentucky lawyer and veteran of the Mexican War when he was elected to the state legislature in 1849. Soon thereafter he was elected to Congress and in 1856 became James Buchanan's running mate. After his defeat by Lincoln in the 1860 election, he took his seat in the Senate and supported the Union on the question of succession. Because he opposed most of Lincoln's other policies, he was considered dangerous. When Lincoln ordered him arrested, even though no charges had been filed against him, Breckinridge escaped to the South and joined the Confederate army as a brigadier general. Later he was appointed secretary of war by Jefferson Davis. Prominent in every field he entered, Breckinridge was a leading statesman and soldier. As a moderate and earnest supporter of compromise, he became the symbol of peaceful reconciliation between the states after the Civil War.

FDR's Last Year


Jim Bishop - 1974
    A monumental book that cuts through the headlines and dry reportage to create an intimate portrait of a great leader...Here is the President eager to see the fulfillment of his dreams for a troubled world...a man often sunk in apathy, weariness, and pain, yet able to resume his characteristic sprightliness in public and with cherished friends...a man sometimes vacillating in his decisions but driving himself to the end, until at last this exhausted giant was laid to rest in his beloved rose garden.

Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion


Peter H. Wood - 1974
    Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association.

Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History


Vivian Perlis - 1974
    Charles Ives (1874-1954) was publicly an insurance executive but privately a composer whose eccentric works and paradoxical life would intrigue, perplex, and inspire generations to come after him. Moving from Ives's childhood and years at Yale to his business and musical careers, the memories and reflections assembled in this Kinkeldey Award-winning volume provide a multifaceted and humanizing view of an American musical icon.

Black Power: Three Books from Exile: The Color Curtain / Black Power / White Man, Listen!


Richard Wright - 1974
    It speaks eloquently of empowerment and possibility, and resonates loudly to this day.Also included in this omnibus edition are White Man, Listen!, a stirring collection of Wright's essays on race, politics, and other essential social concerns ("Deserves to be read with utmost seriousness"-New York Times), and The Color Curtain, an indispensable work urging the removal of the color barrier. It remains one of the key commentaries on the question of race in the modern era. ("Truth-telling will perhaps always be unpopular and suspect, but in The Color Curtain, as in all his later nonfiction, Wright did not hesitate to tell the truth as he saw it."--Amritjit  Singh, Ohio University)

History of the Ojibway People


William W. Warren - 1974
    His vivid descriptions include Ojibway customs, family life, totemic system, hunting methods, and relations with other tribal groups and with the whites. First published in 1885.

Mount Vernon: A Handbook


Catherine Fallin - 1974
    Produced by The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, this book is designed to "perpetuate the sacred memory of "The Father of his Country" and, with loving hands, to guard and protect the hallowed spot where rest his mortal remains. To forever hold, manage and preserve the estate, properties and relics at Mount Vernon, belonging to the Association, and, under proper regulations, to open the same to the inspection of all who love the cause of liberty and revere the name of Washington." --mountvernon.org

Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science, Understanding the Nature and Power of Consciousness


Edgar D. MitchellMontague Ullman - 1974
    Originally published in 1974, this landmark anthology of nearly thirty chapters on every area of psychic research is finally available again. Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and moonwalker, as well as a distinguished researcher of the study of human consciousness, brought together eminent scientists to write about issues once considered too controversial to discuss. This book includes fascinating chapters on the history of parapsychology, telepathy, hauntings, psychic phenomena, and consciousness, along with an extensive glossary and index. This timeless anthology continues to be appealing as a reference work for those curious about the history of parapsychology, fans of the world of psi, and readers interested in the meaning of the universe. Contributors include: Willis W. Harman, Jean Houston, Stanley Krippner, Robert Masters, William G. Roll, Russell Targ, Charles T. Tart, Montague Ullman, and many more.

Recollections in Black and White


Eric Sloane - 1974
    Along the way, he did ink-on-white-paper sketches of passing scenes and landscapes. Many of them appear in this delightful collection of drawings, along with the artist's nostalgic, autobiographical commentary on the roads traveled and the sights seen.Here are delightful impressions of streams winding through snow-covered landscapes; old stone barns and farmhouses, covered bridges, farming tools and implements, spring houses, and trees—from sturdy sycamores to graceful aspens."The next thing to living one's life over is to make durable recollections of it," Sloane once remarked. Today, the pastoral landscapes, rustic homes, and traditional arts he encountered in his travels live on in these bittersweet glimpses of American life from a bygone era.

The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate


Barry Sussman - 1974
    It is a dramatic case study of tenacious reporting and suspenseful twists and turns in the political crime of the century. John Dean, Nixon s White House counsel, said ten years after the break-in, When people ask me which book they should read to understand Watergate, I recommend this one Serious Watergate students report this is the best overview of the subject. I heartily agree. Anyone who wants to understand Watergate, and not make a career of it, should read The Great Coverup." (Reviews and excerpts are here: http: //www.watergate.info/sussman/.)A key Nixon goal was to limit the Watergate investigation to the break-in alone, making it appear to be little more than politics as usual. But by September, 1973, as Sussman, who was the Washington Post s special Watergate editor, spells out, Watergate was clearly the ultimate in political crimes Under Nixon the CIA had been dragged into domestic affairs; the investigation and findings of the FBI had been subverted; the Justice Department had engaged in malicious prosecutions of some people and failed to act in instances where it should have; the Internal Revenue Service had been used to punish the President s alleged enemies while ignoring transgressions by his friends and by the President himself; the purity of the court system had been violated; congressmen had been seduced to prevent an inquiry into campaign activities before the election; extortion on a massive scale had been practiced in the soliciting of illegal contributions from the nation s great corporations; the President had secretly engaged in acts of war against a foreign country and agents of the President were known to have engaged in continued illegal activities for base political ends.Soon afterward Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating him, the first act in the Saturday Night Massacre, and a few days after that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in an ominous cold war message, announced that American armed forces had been put on alert because of Soviet troop and military equipment movement. It was to some the most serious incident since the Cuban missile crisis, but to others a ruse, a crude attempt to get support for a President in a time of crisis.The Great Coverup was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times when first published. Wrote David Halberstam of Sussman: "From the start, the Post was thus unusually lucky. It had the perfect working editor at exactly the right level." In their book, Woodward and Bernstein noted that Sussman was given prime responsibility for directing the Post's Watergate coverage, and added: Sussman had the ability to seize facts and lock them in his memory, where they remained poised for instant recall. More than any other editor at the Post, or Bernstein and Woodward, Sussman became a walking compendium of Watergate knowledge, a reference source to be summoned when even the library failed. On deadline he would pump these facts into a story in a constant infusion, working up a body of significant facts to support what otherwise seemed like the weakest of revelations. In Sussman s mind, everything fitted. Watergate was a puzzle and he was a collector of the pieces.If there was a politics as usual aspect to Watergate, Sussman writes, it was in the help Nixon got from members of both political parties. Therein lies one of the book s many lessons: Watergate would have been brought to a close much sooner except for the help powerful men on Capitol Hill extended to their President. "

Forty-Two Years in the White House


Irwin Hood Hoover - 1974
    

The Institute Of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars And American Politics


John N. Thomas - 1974
    

Champions of Freedom - The Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series


George Charles Roche III - 1974
    

Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority


Merton Lynn Dillon - 1974
    Surveys the activities and ideologies of antislavery groups and leading abolitionists in all regions of the United States, from the American Revolution to the Civil War, and assesses their impact.

Great Times: An Informal Social History of the United States, 1914-29


J.C. Furnas - 1974
    An informal discursive study of the good old, bad old days of 'Over There', Flaming Youth & the Model A. The years of which he writes were indeed Great Times & in this wide-ranging volume he captures both their flavor & their essence.

The Twenties


Alan Jenkins - 1974
    

John Hancock (Heroes of the Revolution)


Susan & John Lee - 1974
    (Heroes of the Revolution) series

Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900


Thomas R. Cox - 1974
    Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900