Chronicling America (ISSN 2475-2703) is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
With over 233 articles prepared by leading experts from across the nation, this timely encyclopedia documents and explains the major themes, concepts, industries, concerns, and everyday life of the people and land who make up rural America. Entries range from the industrial sector and government policy to arts and humanities and social and family concerns. Articles explore every aspect of life in rural America.
This book surveys the social history of New France. For more than a century, until the British conquest of 1759-60, France held sway over a major portion of the North American continent. In this vast territory several unique colonial societies emerged, societies which in many respects mirrored ancien regime France, but which also incorporated a major Aboriginal component.
Containing 221 essays, this encyclopedia includes a remarkable range of entries, including "Africa and America," "Jews," "Monuments and Memorials," "Architecture," "New York City," "Literary Reviews and Little Magazines," and "Libraries," to name only a few. The editors explain that these eclectic essays fit into their broad definitions of both intellectual and cultural history. Each essay concludes with a bibliography listing both primary and secondary sources, and most include sidebars and/or illustrations. A chronology lists contemporaneous historical events as well as the cultural and intellectual accomplishments of that year or decade.
Covers all aspects of the African-American experience from 1619 to the present day. Using biographies, historical essays, and thematic pieces-many by the foremost scholars in the field-it addresses a wide array of subjects in over 2,300 articles to fully define in one source the cultural roots and current condition of the African-American community.
Through reference entries and primary documents, this book surveys a wide range of topics related to the history of the Spanish Empire, including past events and individuals as well as the Iberian kingdom's imperial legacy. Includes primary documents accompanied by introductory headnotes that give students material to analyze when writing term papers and provide readers with a firsthand look at the key events and individuals of the Spanish Empire Includes an extended bibliography that highlights the most recent scholarship in the field.
Over the past twenty years, the field of cultural history has moved to the center of American historical studies, and has come to encompass the experiences of ordinary citizens in such arenas as reading and religious practice as well as the accomplishments of prominent artists and writers. The encyclopedia incorporates popular entertainment ranging from minstrel shows to video games, middlebrow ventures like Chautauqua lectures and book clubs, and preoccupations such as "Perfectionism" and "Wellness" that have shaped Americans' behavior at various points in their past and that continue to influence attitudes in the present.
Laurent Dabos, Portrait of Thomas Paine, circa 1792, oil on canvas, 34 x 26cm, National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
Thomas Paine was an English-born American political philosopher whose works include Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776-1783). In Common Sense, Paine attacked monarchy as being “ridiculous” and George III for being the “Royal Brute of Great Britain.” He thought it absurd for England, an island, to continue to rule America, a continent. Paine maintained not only that it was “time to part” but also that it was America’s obligation to prepare a refuge for liberty, “an asylum for mankind.” After independence was declared, Paine, in the first of his numerous Crisis papers, noted that in “times that try men’s souls,” the “summer soldier” or the “sunshine patriot” might “shrink from the service of his country,” but the true patriot will stand firm, conquer tyranny, and obtain the precious prize of freedom.
Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, NYC, circa 1852, oil in canvas, 81.3 x 104.8cm, New-York Historical Society, New York City.
A romanticized depiction of the Sons of Liberty destroying the statue after the Declaration was read by George Washington to citizens and his troops in New York City on July 9, 1776. Working decades after the event, the artist paints an imagined image of the scene. Despite the presence of Native Americans, women and children, eyewitness accounts place only soldiers, sailors and more of the rougher sorts of civilians at the event. Additionally, historical records indicate the statue depicted King George III of England in ancient Roman garb based on the Renaissance sculpture of a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and not the contemporary 18th clothing depicted in this painting.