How did a land and people of such immense diversity come together under a banner of freedom and equality to form one of the most remarkable nations in the world? Everyone from young adults to grandparents will be fascinated by the answers uncovered in James West Davidson’s vividly told A Little History of the United States. In 300 fast-moving pages, Davidson guides his readers through 500 years, from the first contact between the two halves of the world to the rise of America as a superpower in an era of atomic perils and diminishing resources. In short, vivid chapters the book brings to life hundreds of individuals whose stories are part of the larger American story. Pilgrim William Bradford stumbles into an Indian deer trap on his first day in America; Harriet Tubman lets loose a pair of chickens to divert attention from escaping slaves; the toddler Andrew Carnegie, later an ambitious industrial magnate, gobbles his oatmeal with a spoon in each hand. Such stories are riveting in themselves, but they also spark larger questions to ponder about freedom, equality, and unity in the context of a nation that is, and always has been, remarkably divided and diverse.
Multiple Award-Winner! Winner of the 2023 Michael Nelson Prize of International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) Recipient of the 2022 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award Winner of the 2023 American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Winner of the 2023 ULCC’s (Union League Club of Chicago) Outstanding Book on the History of Chicago Award Recipient of a 2023 Best of Illinois History Superior Achievement award from the Illinois State Historical Society Winner of the 2023 BAAS Book Prize (British Association for American Studies) Honorable Mention for the 2021-22 RSAP Book Prize (Research Society for American Periodicals) Buildings once symbolized Chicago's place as the business capital of Black America and a thriving hub for Black media. In this groundbreaking work, E. James West examines the city's Black press through its relationship with the built environment. As a house for the struggle, the buildings of publications like Ebony and the Chicago Defender embodied narratives of racial uplift and community resistance. As political hubs, gallery spaces, and public squares, they served as key sites in the ongoing Black quest for self-respect, independence, and civic identity. At the same time, factors ranging from discriminatory business practices to editorial and corporate ideology prescribed their location, use, and appearance, positioning Black press buildings as sites of both Black possibility and racial constraint. Engaging and innovative, A House for the Struggle reconsiders the Black press's place at the crossroads where aspiration collided with life in one of America's most segregated cities.
Between 1880 and 1930, Southern mobs hanged, burned, and otherwise tortured to death at least 3,300 African Americans. And yet the rest of the nation largely ignored the horror of lynching or took it for granted, until a young schoolteacher from Tennessee raised her voice. Her name was Ida B. Wells. In "They Say," historian James West Davidson recounts the first thirty years of this passionate woman's life--as well as the story of the great struggle over the meaning of race in post-emancipation America. Davidson captures the breathtaking, often chaotic changes that swept the South as Wells grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi: the spread of education among the free blacks, the rise of political activism, the bitter struggles for equality in the face of entrenched social custom. As Wells came of age she moved to bustling Memphis, eager to worship at the city's many churches (black and white), to take elocution lessons and perform Shakespeare at evening soirées, to court and spark with the young men taken by her beauty. But Wells' quest for fulfillment was thwarted as whites increasingly used race as a barrier separating African Americans from mainstream America. Davidson traces the crosscurrents of these cultural conflicts through Ida Wells' forceful personality. When a conductor threw her off a train for not retreating to the segregated car, she sued the railroad--and won. When she protested conditions in the segregated Memphis schools, she was fired--and took up full-time journalism. And in 1892, when an explosive lynching rocked Memphis, she embarked full-blown on the career for which she is now remembered, as an outspoken writer and lecturer against lynching. Richly researched and deftly written, "They Say" offers a gripping portrait of the young Ida B. Wells, shedding light not only on how one black American defined her own aspirations and her people's freedom, but also on the changing meaning of race in America.
This concise text adopts a broad chronological narrative approach, integrating political and social history. Retaining more detail in its narrative than many concise texts, this edition features increased coverage of environmental history and western history.
I was in China and I wanted something more Chinese than Chinese: bigger, better, badder, redder. China held the promise of dragons' heads, acrobatics, mahjong and brothels. I was also expecting a display of kitsch, old-school communism: messages daubed on walls, Mao sculptures propped up against cash registers, crumbling socialist monoliths... But when my eyes hit Beijing for the first time, all this fell away.' When Sydney journalist James West lands a job at a state-run radio station in Beijing, he imagines he knows a lot about China. Then he arrives, and finds himself at a rave, dancing on the Great Wall. But is one night of hedonism on China's most well-known landmark an accurate reflection of the 'real Beijing'? Or an anomaly in an otherwise tightly controlled culture, still dealing with the aftershocks of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square? To find answers, he talks to the next generation about their experiences and frustrations, about politics and about the China they will create for themselves. Against a backdrop of the changing seasons in Beijing, a city he grows to love, he enters a brave new world of bloggers, punk-rock dens and underground queer culture. An intimate account of one young Australian's year abroad, Beijing Blur is also the story of modern China - a nation poised at one of the great turns of the global historical tide.
Nation of Nations Concise stands apart from the crowd as a brief American Survey Text that has not sacrificed the strength of its narrative to achieve brevity. The Nation of Nations concise version strikes unique balances for a brief text: providing enough contextual detail for the reader to grasp the story and maintaining a balance between narrative and thematic structure. Clear and lively prose, numerous vivid stories, and concrete historical examples all illustrate points of and themes in history. As a result, the original Nation of Nations author team retains the detail of story in a brief package.
Volume 2 of a 2-volume work that uses 15 dramatic episodes in American history to show students how historians go about the business of interpreting the past. It discusses historical methods within the context of an historical narrative so that students may learn about American history at the same time as seeing how historians use a variety of evidence (diaries, letters, photographs and records) and methods to explain the past.
A textbook for United States history from earliest Indian civilizations to the present, with maps, charts, activities, study questions, and review chapters.
This second instalment of poetry by James West is beautifully written in an electric mixture of words in verse that captures the many trials and tribulations of life's unpredictable journey. Many of the poems pursue some of the subjects we, as human beings, struggle to understand. Filled with some wonderful imagery, evoking many emotions of both the light and dark sides of life extremely well. This is a colourful anthology of poetry that that flows like the title of the book, will no doubt strike a chord of emotion from a diverse range of backgrounds.
Life is made up of a series of choices. Every day from the time we get up to the time we rest, we are making choices. Do I take this job? Do I attend this college? Do I marry this person? Do I buy those drugs? Do I have just one more drink? Do I finally stand up to my boss? Do I attend this church? Every choice you make in life has consequences. Some minor, some major, but each one moves you through life, creating footprints on your own individual roadmap. There is one choice out of all these choices in life that will be the most important choice you ever make. This ONE choice has been made by every single person who has ever lived or ever will live. Unfortunately, many people take this choice in life very lightly. They give it the same mental effort as when they decide on what to eat from the menu at their favorite fast food place. So go ahead, put this book back on the shelf, and head to the fast food joint. Or you can make a smart decision and take about an hour of your time to read this book. It will be time well spent. It will change your life. It will change your destiny. However, like everything you do today, the "choice" is yours. James West is a successful businessman who has traveled extensively throughout the United States and enjoys riding his Harley and hiking, especially in the remote canyons and mountains out West. The creator and author of the website dadssundaysermon.org, he has lived and worked most of his life in Pennsylvania but now spends much of his time with his wife, Janice, in their home in Florida. They are blessed with four children and five grandchildren.
The Effigy is the story of how a young man known as the Killer Cook and a young woman (Lisa Treatorn) living in a small fictitious town in a fictitious county (Madison County) become entangled in a relationship and had a child in 1986. The man, an inexperienced cook, learns how to cook in a restaurant, while the woman works at the telephone company. They are separate most of the day, but in the evenings, they get together and contend over how they are going to afford to raise their child. This fantasy becomes clearly exposed through the images and story of The Effigy.
Cole Chase is a new breed of drifter, and his justice a new kind of law. a man hardened by the rugged nature only the far West could provide. In search of justice, in a land, where the only law, is the law of the gun.
A collection of photographs pays tribute to the American rebel and the customized, hand-built motor-cycles he creates, in a volume that looks at his choppers, his lifestyle, and his shop, West Coast Choppers.
Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture. Rooted in his role as senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett’s work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America and a scholar whose writing reached an unparalleled number of African American readers. This critical biography—the first in-depth study of Bennett’s life—travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist endeavors. Drawing extensively on Bennett’s previously inaccessible archival collections at Emory University and Chicago State, as well as interviews with close relatives, colleagues, and confidantes, Our Kind of Historian celebrates his enormous influence within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle.
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