San Antonio College Library

How the three inaugural First Ladies defined the role for future generations, and carved a space for women in America. America's first First Ladies--Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison--had the challenging task of playing a pivotal role in defining the nature of the American presidency to a fledgling nation and to the world. In First Ladies of the Republic, Jeanne Abrams breaks new ground by examining their lives as a group. From...

Explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its leaders and activists, including Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sojourner Truth, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits...

Worst. President. Ever flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening, entertaining, and at times hilarious account of poor James Buchanan's presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse. "Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening--and highly entertaining!--account of poor James Buchanan's presidency to prove once and for...

"The first major biography of P.T. Barnum in a generation, a vivid account of the forefather of American entertainment. P.T. Barnum was the greatest showman the world has ever seen: the cocreator of the Barnum & Bailey Circus and the man who made worldwide sensations of Jumbo the Elephant, General Tom Thumb, and the "Swedish Nightingale," Jenny Lind. He was the champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and "humbug." He was, as Barnum argues, one of the most...

"Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar tells the story of America's constitutional conversation during its first eighty years--from the Constitution's birth in 1760 through the 1830s, when the last of America's early leaders died. Amar traces the threads of Constitutional discourse, uniting history and law in a narrative that seeks both to reveal this history anew and to make clear who was right and who was wrong on the biggest legal issues confronting...

"It was heaven on earth--and, some whispered, the devil's garden. Thousands came by trains and carriages to see this new Eden, carved from hundreds of acres of wild woodland. They marveled at orchards bursting with fruit, thick herds of Ayrshire cattle and Cotswold sheep, and whizzing mills. They gaped at the people who lived in this place -- especially the women, with their queer cropped hair and shamelessly short skirts. The men and women of this...

"From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent. In this beautifully written history of America's formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European...

Introduces young readers to the history of the California gold rush, describing the journey to California, the process of panning for gold, and the fortunes that this gold brought many different people.

In 1804, John Colter set out with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first U.S. expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the twenty-eight month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind, spending four more years trekking alone through dangerous and unfamiliar territory. Along the way, he charted some of the West's...

"Kenneth Cohen explores how sports, drinking, gambling, and theater produced a sense of democracy while also reinforcing racial, gender, and class divisions in early America. Pairing previously unexplored financial records with a wide range of published reports, unpublished correspondence, and material and visual evidence, Cohen demonstrates how investors, participants, and professional managers and performers from all sorts of backgrounds saw these...