Some Interesting General Works

"The tragedy of man.  Circumstances change, and he does not."

                                                                                                                           Machiavelli

Bailyn, Bernard.  The Peopling of British North America.  (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1986)

Bailyn, Bernard.  Voyagers to the West.  (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1988)

Bobrick, Benson.  Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution.  (Simon and Schuster, 1997)

Bolton, Charles Knowles.  Scotch Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America.  (Boston, MA: Bacon and Brown, 1910)

Clay, James W. and Paul D. Escott, Douglas M. Orr Junior, and Alfred W. Stuart.  Land of the South.  (Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, 1989)

Collins, Gail: America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines.  (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003)  Wonderful.

Demos, John.  A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony.  (Oxford University Press, 1970)

Dickson, R. J.  Ulster Emigration to Colonial America 1718-1775.  (Ulster Historical Foundation, 1966)

Edgar, Walter.  Partisans & Redcoats: The Southern Conflict that Turned the Tide of the American Revolution.  (New Yoek, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003)

Fischer, David Hackett.  Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America.  (Oxford University Press, 1989)  This is must reading for any family researcher with British ancestors.  Great read.

Fogel, Robert William and Stanley L. Engerman.  Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery.  (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1974)    

Foote, Shelby.  The Civil War: A Narrative, Vols. 1-3.  (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1986)  The ultimate source for the Civil War.  For a single volume treatment, see MacPherson below. 

Fraser, George Macdonald.  The Steel Bonnets: the Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers.  (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993)

Gwynne, S.C.  Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in History.  (New York, NY: Scribner, 2010.  Terrific read.  Essential for anyone with Comanche ancestry or whose ancestors resided on the Texas frontier.

Hawke, David Freeman.  Everyday Life in Early America.  (New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988)

Hibbert, Christopher.  Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolution through British Eyes.  (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1990)   A nice counter balance.

Hofstadter, Richard.  America at 1750: A Social Portrait.  (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1973)

Johnson, Paul: The Birth of the Modern: World society 1815-1830.  (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991)

Langguth, A. J.  Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution.  (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1988)

Larkin, Jack.  The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840.  (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1988)

Leyburn, James G.  The Scotch-Irish: A Social History.  (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1962)

McPherson, James.  Battle Cry of Freedom.  (Oxford University Press, 1988)   For me, the classic one-volume work on the Civil War.

McWhiney, Grady.  Cracker Culture Celtic Ways in the Old South.  (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of  Alabama Press, 1988)   Controversial, but always interesting.

Meinig, D. W.  The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Vol. 1:  Atlantic America 1492-1800.  (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986)

Mellon, James, ed.  Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember.  (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1988)

Morgan, Ted.  The Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent.  (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Olson, Steve.  Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and our Common Origins.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003) 

Raban, Jonathan.  Bad Land: An American Romance.  (New York, NY: Random House, 1997)   Terrific book, even if you don't have relatives who lived in the Northern Plains in the early part of the 20th century.

Rothman, Ellen K.  Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America.  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)   Concerned mostly with courtship patterns in New England.

Rouse, Parke Junior.  The Great Wagon Road.  (Richmond, VA: The Dietz Press, 1992)  Indispensible if your ancestors migrated South.

Rutman, Darrett B.  The Morning of America 1603-1789.  (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971)  The Puritans.

Smith, Page.  The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Antebellum Years.  (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1990)

Smith, Page.  The Shaping of America: A People’s History of the Young Republic.  (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1989)

Stampp, Kenneth M.  The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South.  (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1956)

Stilgoe, John R.  Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845.  (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982)

Strasser, Susan.  Never Done: A History of American Housework.  (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1982)

Webb, Jim.  Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.  New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2004.   More a celebration of the Scots-Irish than an objective history, Webb occasionally makes sweeping generalizations.  Having said that, however, many of the book's sections are informative  and insightful and his prose is sweeping, eloquent, a joy to read.  

Woodmason, Charles.  The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant.  (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1953) 

Wright, Esmond.  Fabric of Freedom 1763-1800.  (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1978)  Really a great one volume work on the Revolutionary War.

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