Random House New Releases - History - United States - State & Local - Between May 18, 2012 and June 17, 2013.

The Eastern Frontier by Charles Clark

2013-05-01T00:30:00-05:00

The Eastern Frontier
Written by Charles Clark

eBook | Knopf | History - United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775); History - United States - State & Local; Education - Reference | $24.99 | May 1, 2013 | 978-0-307-83086-9 (0-307-83086-1)

NEW YORK INTELLECT by Thomas Bender

2013-04-24T00:30:00-05:00

NEW YORK INTELLECT
Written by Thomas Bender

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano

2013-04-23T00:30:00-05:00

America the Philosophical
Written by Carlin Romano

This bold, insightful book argues that America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace for truth and debate.

With verve and keen intelligence, Carlin Romano—Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning book critic, and professor of philosophy—takes on the widely held belief that the United States is an anti-intellectual country. Instead he provides a richly reported overview of American thought, arguing that ordinary Americans see through phony philosophical justifications faster than anyone else, and that the best of our thinkers ditch artificial academic debates for fresh intellectual enterprises. Along the way, Romano seeks to topple philosophy’s most fiercely admired hero, Socrates, asserting that it is Isocrates, the nearly forgotten Greek philosopher who rejected certainty, whom Americans should honor as their intellectual ancestor. America the Philosophical is a rebellious tour de force that both celebrates our country’s unparalleled intellectual energy and promises to bury some of our most hidebound cultural clichés.

We Have the War Upon Us by William J. Cooper

2012-09-11T00:30:00-05:00

We Have the War Upon Us The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861
Written by William J. Cooper

In this carefully researched book William J. Cooper gives us a fresh perspective on the period between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, during which all efforts to avoid or impede secession and prevent war failed. Here is the story of the men whose decisions and actions during the crisis of the Union resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War.

Sectional compromise had been critical in the history of the country, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through to 1860, and was a hallmark of the nation. On several volatile occasions political leaders had crafted solutions to the vexing problems dividing North and South. During the postelection crisis many Americans assumed that once again a political compromise would settle yet another dispute. Instead, in those crucial months leading up to the clash at Fort Sumter, that tradition of compromise broke down and a rapid succession of events led to the great cataclysm in American history, the Civil War.

All Americans did not view this crisis from the same perspective. Strutting southern fire-eaters designed to break up the Union. Some Republicans, crowing over their electoral triumph, evinced little concern about the threatened dismemberment of the country. Still others—northerners and southerners, antislave and proslave alike—strove to find an equitable settlement that would maintain the Union whole. Cooper captures the sense of contingency, showing Americans in these months as not knowing where decisions would lead, how events would unfold. The people who populate these pages could not foresee what war, if it came, would mean, much less predict its outcome.

We Have the War Upon Us helps us understand what the major actors said and did: the Republican party, the Democratic party, southern secessionists, southern Unionists; why the pro-compromise forces lost; and why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. It reveals how the major actors perceived what was happening and the reasons they gave for their actions: Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, William Henry Seward, John J. Crittenden, Charles Francis Adams, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and a host of others. William J. Cooper has written a full account of the North and the South, Republicans and Democrats, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives that deepens our insight into what is still one of the most controversial periods in American history.

We Have the War Upon Us by William J. Cooper

2012-09-11T00:30:00-05:00

We Have the War Upon Us The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861
Written by William J. Cooper

How Barack Obama Won by Sheldon Gawiser

2012-08-28T00:30:00-05:00

How Barack Obama Won A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election
Written by Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser

This detailed overview and analysis of the results of Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential win gives us the inside state-by-state guide to how Obama achieved his victory, and allows us to see where the country stood four years ago.

Although much has changed in the nearly four years since, How Barack Obama Won remains the essential guide to Obama’s electoral strengths and offers important perspective on his 2012 bid.

The votes in each state for Obama and McCain are broken down by percentage according to gender, age, race, party, religious affiliation, education, household income, size of city, and according to views about the most important issues (the economy, terrorism, Iraq, energy, healthcare), the future of the economy (worried, not worried) and the war in Iraq (approve, disapprove).

Mail-Order Homes by Rebecca Hunter

2012-07-24T00:30:00-05:00

Mail-Order Homes Sears Homes and Other Kit Houses
Written by Rebecca Hunter

At the turn of the last century, the American middle class was expanding rapidly as homesteaders moved west and as trains took travellers across the country, where they established themselves in the depot towns that erupted along train lines. With that growth came the demand for new homes, and from that demand grew a new industry: mail-order homes. Sold by such makers as Sears, Roebuck & Co., Aladdin, and Montgomery Wards, these kit homes were shipped by train, arriving in two boxcars, which then were off-loaded by the purchasers, usually with a team of horse and wagon. In the boxcars was absolutely everything needed to assemble a house, whether it be a vacation cottage, modest bungalow, or two-and-a-half storey home. Literally tens of thousands of these affordable homes were sold in the early 1900s, with most built between 1910-40. In Mail-Order Homes, historical architectural researcher Rebecca Hunter brings to life the history of these charming homes, many of which still stand in communities across the country. From the manufacturers of mail-order homes to the customers who bought and built them, and from the styles and designs to the boom and bust of the industry, Hunter explains the history of these forgotten homes. Filled with illustrations from mail-order home catalogs and contemporary photos, this book tells the story of a bygone era of residential architecture.

How the States Got Their Shapes Too by Mark Stein

2012-05-29T00:30:00-05:00

How the States Got Their Shapes Too The People Behind the Borderlines
Written by Mark Stein

Trade Paperback, 352 pages | Smithsonian Books | History - United States; History - United States - State & Local; History - Historical Geography | $16.95 | May 29, 2012 | 978-1-58834-350-5 (1-58834-350-2)

Was Roger Williams too pure for the Puritans, and what does that have to do with Rhode Island? Why did Augustine Herman take ten years to complete the map that established Delaware? How did Rocky Mountain rogues help create the state of Colorado? All this and more is explained in Mark Stein's new book.

How the States Got Their Shapes Too follows How the States Got Their Shapes looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while How The States Got Their Shapes told us why, this book tells us who. This personal element in the boundary stories reveals how we today are like those who came before us, and how we differ, and most significantly: how their collective stories reveal not only an historical arc but, as importantly, the often overlooked human dimension in that arc that leads to the nation we are today.
The people featured in How the States Got Their Shapes Too lived from the colonial era right up to the present. They include African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, women, and of course, white men. Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster. Some are not, such as Bernard Berry, Clarina Nichols, and Robert Steele. And some are names many of us know but don't really know exactly what they did, such as Ethan Allen (who never made furniture, though he burned a good deal of it).
In addition, How the States Got Their Shapes Too tells of individuals involved in the Almost States of America, places we sought to include but ultimately did not: Canada, the rest of Mexico (we did get half), Cuba, and, still an issue, Puerto Rico.
Each chapter is largely driven by voices from the time, in the form of excerpts from congressional debates, newspapers, magazines, personal letters, and diaries.
Told in Mark Stein's humorous voice, How the States Got Their Shapes Too is a historical journey unlike any other you've taken. The strangers you meet here had more on their minds than simple state lines, and this book makes for a great new way of seeing and understanding the United States.

From the Hardcover edition.

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano

2012-05-22T00:30:00-05:00

America the Philosophical
Written by Carlin Romano

eBook, 688 pages | Vintage | Philosophy - History, Criticism, Surveys; History - United States - State & Local; History - Social History | $13.99 | May 22, 2012 | 978-0-307-95821-1 (0-307-95821-3)

   A bold, insightful book that rejects the myth of America the Unphilosophical, arguing that America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace of truth and argument that far surpasses ancient Greece or any other place one can name.
   With verve and keen intelligence, Carlin Romano—Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning book critic, and professor of philosophy—takes on the widely held belief that ours is an anti–intellectual society. Instead, while providing a richly reported overview of American thought, Romano argues that ordinary Americans see through phony philosophical justifications faster than anyone else, and that the best of our thinkers abandon artificial academic debates for fresh intellectual enterprises, such as cyberphilosophy. Along the way, Romano seeks to topple philosophy’s most fiercely admired hero, Socrates, asserting that it is Isocrates, the nearly forgotten Greek philosopher who rejected certainty, whom Americans should honor as their intellectual ancestor.
   America the Philosophical introduces readers to a nation whose existence most still doubt: a dynamic, deeply stimulating network of people and places drawn together by shared excitement about ideas. From the annual conference of the American Philosophical Association, where scholars tack wiseguy notes addressed to Spinoza on a public bulletin board, to the eruption of philosophy blogs where participants discuss everything from pedagogy to the philosophy of science to the nature of agency and free will, Romano reveals a world where public debate and intellectual engagement never stop. And readers meet the men and women whose ideas have helped shape American life over the previous few centuries, from well-known historical figures like William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson, to modern cultural critics who deserve to be seen as thinkers (Kenneth Burke, Edward Said), to the iconoclastic African American, women, Native American, and gay mavericks (Cornel West, Susan Sontag, Anne Waters, Richard Mohr) who have broadened the boundaries of American philosophy.
   Smart and provocative, America the Philosophical is a rebellious tour de force that both celebrates our country’s unparalleled intellectual energy and promises to bury some of our most hidebound cultural clichés.

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano

2012-05-22T00:30:00-05:00

America the Philosophical
Written by Carlin Romano

Hardcover, 688 pages | Knopf | Philosophy - History, Criticism, Surveys; History - United States - State & Local; History - Social History | $35.00 | May 22, 2012 | 978-0-679-43470-2 (0-679-43470-4)

Random House New Releases - History - United States - State & Local - Between May 18, 2012 and June 17, 2013.

The Eastern Frontier by Charles Clark

The Eastern Frontier Written by Charles Clark

NEW YORK INTELLECT by Thomas Bender

NEW YORK INTELLECT Written by Thomas Bender

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano

America the Philosophical Written by Carlin Romano

We Have the War Upon Us by William J. Cooper

We Have the War Upon Us The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861Written by William J. Cooper

We Have the War Upon Us by William J. Cooper

We Have the War Upon Us The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861Written by William J. Cooper

How Barack Obama Won by Sheldon Gawiser

How Barack Obama Won A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential ElectionWritten by Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser

Mail-Order Homes by Rebecca Hunter

Mail-Order Homes Sears Homes and Other Kit HousesWritten by Rebecca Hunter

How the States Got Their Shapes Too by Mark Stein

How the States Got Their Shapes Too The People Behind the BorderlinesWritten by Mark Stein

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano

America the Philosophical Written by Carlin Romano

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano

America the Philosophical Written by Carlin Romano

The Eastern Frontier
Written by Charles Clark

NEW YORK INTELLECT
Written by Thomas Bender

America the Philosophical
Written by Carlin Romano

We Have the War Upon Us The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861
Written by William J. Cooper

We Have the War Upon Us The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861
Written by William J. Cooper

How Barack Obama Won A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election
Written by Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser

Mail-Order Homes Sears Homes and Other Kit Houses
Written by Rebecca Hunter

How the States Got Their Shapes Too The People Behind the Borderlines
Written by Mark Stein

America the Philosophical
Written by Carlin Romano

America the Philosophical
Written by Carlin Romano