American History Short Story Summary

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  american history short story summary: A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "American History" Cengage Learning Gale, 2017-07-25 A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's American History, excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
  american history short story summary: The Latin Deli Judith Ortiz Cofer, 2012-03-15 Reviewing her novel, The Line of the Sun, the New York Times Book Review hailed Judith Ortiz Cofer as a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell. Those gifts are on abundant display in The Latin Deli, an evocative collection of poetry, personal essays, and short fiction in which the dominant subject—the lives of Puerto Ricans in a New Jersey barrio—is drawn from the author's own childhood. Following the directive of Emily Dickinson to tell all the Truth but tell it slant, Cofer approaches her material from a variety of angles. An acute yearning for a distant homeland is the poignant theme of the title poem, which opens the collection. Cofer's lines introduce us to a woman of no-age presiding over a small store whose wares—Bustelo coffee, jamon y queso, green plantains hanging in stalks like votive offerings—must satisfy, however imperfectly, the needs and hungers of those who have left the islands for the urban Northeast. Similarly affecting is the short story Nada, in which a mother's grief over a son killed in Vietnam gradually consumes her. Refusing the medals and flag proferred by the government (Tell the Mr. President of the United States what I say: No, gracias.), as well as the consolations of her neighbors in El Building, the woman begins to give away all her possessions The narrator, upon hearing the woman say nada, reflects, I tell you, that word is like a drain that sucks everything down. As rooted as they are in a particular immigrant experience, Cofer's writings are also rich in universal themes, especially those involving the pains, confusions, and wonders of growing up. While set in the barrio, the essays American History, Not for Sale, and The Paterson Public Library deal with concerns that could be those of any sensitive young woman coming of age in America: romantic attachments, relations with parents and peers, the search for knowledge. And in poems such as The Life of an Echo and The Purpose of Nuns, Cofer offers eloquent ruminations on the mystery of desire and the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. Cofer's ambitions as a writer are perhaps stated most explicitly in the essay The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria. Recalling one of her early poems, she notes how its message is still her mission: to transcend the limitations of language, to connect through the human-to-human channel of art.
  american history short story summary: History: A Very Short Introduction John Arnold, 2000-02-24 Starting with an examination of how historians work, this Very Short Introduction aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.
  american history short story summary: The Plot Against America Philip Roth, 2004-10-05 Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series. In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother. A terrific political novel . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review
  american history short story summary: American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer, 2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford's A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, readable narrative of the vast span of American history, from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty-first century when the United States loomed as a global power and comprised a complex multi-cultural society of more than 300 million people. The narrative is organized around major interpretive themes, with facts and dates introduced as needed to illustrate these themes. The emphasis throughout is on clarity and accessibility to the interested non-specialist.
  american history short story summary: A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn, 2003-02-04 Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools -- with its emphasis on great men in high places -- to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles -- the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality -- were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history. Revised, updated, and featuring a new after, word by the author, this special twentieth anniversary edition continues Zinn's important contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.
  american history short story summary: White Trash Nancy Isenberg, 2016-06-21 The New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016 Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016 Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016 “Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times “This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash. “When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.
  american history short story summary: Craft Glenn Adamson, 2021-01-19 New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation's origins to the present day. At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology-while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's “maker movement.” From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt. Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted.
  american history short story summary: Chinese Cinderella Adeline Yen Mah, 2009-05-06 More than 800,000 copies in print! From the author of critically acclaimed and bestselling memoir Falling Leaves, this is a poignant and moving true account of her childhood, growing up as an unloved daughter in 1940s China. A Chinese proverb says, Falling leaves return to their roots. In her own courageous voice, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her, and life does not get any easier when her father remarries. Adeline and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled with gifts and attention. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the love and understanding of her family. Like the classic Cinderella story, this powerful memoir is a moving story of resilience and hope. Includes an Author's Note, a 6-page photo insert, a historical note, and the Chinese text of the original Chinese Cinderella. A PW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR AN ALA-YALSA BEST BOOK FOR YOUNG ADULTS “One of the most inspiring books I have ever read.” –The Guardian
  american history short story summary: The American Dream Jim Cullen, 2004 Cullen particularly focuses on the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence (the charter of the American Dream); Abraham Lincoln, with his rise from log cabin to White House and his dream for a unified nation; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial equality. Our contemporary version of the American Dream seems rather debased in Cullen's eyes-built on the cult of Hollywood and its outlandish dreams of overnight fame and fortune.
  american history short story summary: The Half Has Never Been Told Edward E Baptist, 2016-10-25 A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Told through the intimate testimonies of survivors of slavery, plantation records, newspapers, as well as the words of politicians and entrepreneurs, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.
  american history short story summary: Eyewitness to America David Colbert, 1998-07-28 Thomas Jefferson complains about haggling over the Declaration of Independence ... Jack London guides us through the rubble of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake ... Langston Hughes visits the Scottsboro Boys on death row ... Andy Warhol paints the scene at Studio 54 ... John Seabrook receives e-mail from Bill Gates. Three hundred eyewitnesses -- some famous, some anonymous -- give their personal accounts of the great moments that make up our past, from Columbus to cyberspace, and infuse them with a freshness and urgency no historian can duplicate. David Colbert has brought together a multitude of voices to create a singularly rich American narrative. Here are the vivid impressions of men and women who were witnesses to and participants in these and other dramatic moments: the first colony in Virginia, the Salem witch trials, the Boston Tea Party, the Oklahoma land rush, the Scopes Trial, the bombing of Nagasaki, the lunch-counter sit-ins at the outset of the civil rights movement, New York City's Stonewall Riot, the fall of Saigon, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. With unparalleled and thrilling immediacy, these excerpts from diaries, private letters, memoirs, and newspapers paint a fascinating picture of the evolving drama of American life.
  american history short story summary: A Short History of the United States Robert V. Remini, 2008-09-24 From a National Book Award winner: “A Short History of the United States may be brief, but it is wise, eloquent, and authoritative.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times–bestselling author of And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle “Readers of all political stripes will appreciate” this concise history of the United States (Publishers Weekly), an accessible and lively volume containing the essential facts about the discovery, settlement, growth, and development of the American nation and its institutions, including the arrival and migration of Native Americans, the founding of a republic under the Constitution, the emergence of the United States as a world power, the outbreak of terrorism here and abroad, the Obama presidency, and everything in between. “Masterful . . . a perfect history for our times.” —Robert Dallek, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nixon and Kissinger “Everything a casual (or bewildered) reader needs to know . . . An objective narrative of this nation’s history.” —Publishers Weekly
  american history short story summary: Revolutionary Mothers Carol Berkin, 2007-12-18 A groundbreaking history of the American Revolution that “vividly recounts Colonial women’s struggles for independence—for their nation and, sometimes, for themselves.... [Her] lively book reclaims a vital part of our political legacy (Los Angeles Times Book Review). The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this book, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. The women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers and fathers died. Yet Berkin also reveals that it was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.
  american history short story summary: HALLOWEEN Lesley Bannatyne, 1998-08-31 Lesley Bannatyne's fascinating book . . . will be widely appealing to anyone who ever wondered where witches, trick-or-treating, and jack-o-lanterns really came from. It is by far the best book on the history of Halloween available today.--Alison Guss, senior producer,The Haunted History of Halloween, The History ChannelAn excellent resource for research into the history of holidays...in the United States...Highly Recommended.--The Book ReportDeserves attention as a recommended library acquisition with years of 'life' to its information.--The Midwest Book ReviewOverflows with rich and provocative details of ritual, feasts, superstition, and devilment. --North Carolina Historical ReviewHalloween has evolved from the Celtic celebrations of 2,000 years ago to become today the fastest-growing holiday in the country. This, the only book to completely cover All Hallow's Eve, from its beginnings to the present, examines the ancient origins as well as its traditions and celebrations, from costuming to bobbing for apples. Jack-o-lanterns, black cats, and witches are explained. Ghosts, ghouls, and goblins lurk behind every page.The book traces the contributions of America's immigrants to the holiday, documenting the beliefs each ethnic group has added to the mix. Related recipes, poems, songs, and photos perfectly complement the meticulously documented text. The result is the most educational and entertaining examination of Halloween, its myths, and its truths.
  american history short story summary: Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015-07-14 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
  american history short story summary: The Irony of American History Reinhold Niebuhr, 2010-01-22 “[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction
  american history short story summary: The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger, 2024-06-28 The Catcher in the Rye," written by J.D. Salinger and published in 1951, is a classic American novel that explores the themes of adolescence, alienation, and identity through the eyes of its protagonist, Holden Caulfield. The novel is set in the 1950s and follows Holden, a 16-year-old who has just been expelled from his prep school, Pencey Prep. Disillusioned with the world around him, Holden decides to leave Pencey early and spend a few days alone in New York City before returning home. Over the course of these days, Holden interacts with various people, including old friends, a former teacher, and strangers, all the while grappling with his feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction. Holden is deeply troubled by the "phoniness" of the adult world and is haunted by the death of his younger brother, Allie, which has left a lasting impact on him. He fantasizes about being "the catcher in the rye," a guardian who saves children from losing their innocence by catching them before they fall off a cliff into adulthooda. The novel ends with Holden in a mental institution, where he is being treated for a nervous breakdown. He expresses some hope for the future, indicating a possible path to recovery..
  american history short story summary: The American Spirit David McCullough, 2017-04-18 This timely collection of speeches by David McCullough, the most honored historian in the United States--winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among many other honors--reminds us of fundamental American principles. Over the course of his distinguished career, David McCullough has spoken before Congress, the White House, colleges and universities, historical societies, and other esteemed institutions. Now, as many Americans engage in self-reflection following a bitter election campaign that has left the country divided, McCullough has collected some of his most important speeches in a brief volume that articulates important principles and characteristics that are particularly American...--Jacket.
  american history short story summary: Behold, America Sarah Churchwell, 2018-10-09 A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases -- the American dream and America First -- that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.
  american history short story summary: The Comet W. E. B. Du Bois, 2021-06-08 The Comet (1920) is a science fiction story by W. E. B. Du Bois. Written while the author was using his role at The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, to publish emerging black artists of the Harlem Renaissance, The Comet is a pioneering work of speculative fiction which imagines a catastrophic event not only decimating New York City, but bringing an abrupt end to white supremacy. “How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high-noon—Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs.” Sent to the vault to retrieve some old records, bank messenger Jim Davis emerges to find a city descended into chaos. A comet has passed overhead, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere. All of lower Manhattan seems frozen in time. It takes him a few moments to see the bodies, piled into doorways and strewn about the eerily quiet streets. When he comes to his senses, he finds a wealthy woman asking for help. Soon, it becomes clear that they could very well be the last living people in the planet, that the fate of civilization depends on their ability to come together, not as black and white, but as two human beings. But how far will this acknowledgment take them? With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Comet is a classic work of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
  american history short story summary: Lies My Teacher Told Me James W. Loewen, 2008 Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a more accurate approach to teaching American history.
  american history short story summary: The Significance of the Frontier in American History Frederick Jackson Turner, 2014-02-13 2014 Reprint of 1894 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1894 that American democracy was formed by the American Frontier. He stressed the process-the moving frontier line-and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed consequences of a ostensibly limitless frontier and that American democracy and egalitarianism were the principle results. In Turner's thesis the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won very wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.
  american history short story summary: Teaching What Really Happened James W. Loewen, 2018-09-07 “Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled Truth that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery. Book Features: An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education. Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography. Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened. Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools.
  american history short story summary: Chop Suey Andrew Coe, 2009-07-16 In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China, and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States--by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time. It's a tale that moves from curiosity to disgust and then desire. From China, Coe's story travels to the American West, where Chinese immigrants drawn by the 1848 Gold Rush struggled against racism and culinary prejudice but still established restaurants and farms and imported an array of Asian ingredients. He traces the Chinese migration to the East Coast, highlighting that crucial moment when New York Bohemians discovered Chinese cuisine--and for better or worse, chop suey. Along the way, Coe shows how the peasant food of an obscure part of China came to dominate Chinese-American restaurants; unravels the truth of chop suey's origins; reveals why American Jews fell in love with egg rolls and chow mein; shows how President Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened our palates to a new range of cuisine; and explains why we still can't get dishes like those served in Beijing or Shanghai. The book also explores how American tastes have been shaped by our relationship with the outside world, and how we've relentlessly changed foreign foods to adapt to them our own deep-down conservative culinary preferences. Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is a fascinating tour of America's centuries-long appetite for Chinese food. Always illuminating, often exploding long-held culinary myths, this book opens a new window into defining what is American cuisine.
  american history short story summary: An Island Like You Judith Ortiz Cofer, 2015-07-28 Judith Ortiz Cofer's Pura Belpre award-winning collection of short stories about life in the barrio! Rita is exiled to Puerto Rico for a summer with her grandparents after her parents catch her with a boy. Luis sits atop a six-foot mountain of hubcaps in his father's junkyard, working off a sentence for breaking and entering. Sandra tries to reconcile her looks to the conventional Latino notion of beauty. And Arturo, different from his macho classmates, fantasizes about escaping his community. They are the teenagers of the barrio -- and this is their world.
  american history short story summary: Hellfire Nation James A. Morone, 2004-01-01 Annotation. Although the US is proud of being a secular state, religion lies at the heart of American politics. This volume looks at how the country came to have the soul of a church & the consequences - the moral crusades against slavery, alcohol, witchcraft & discrimination that time & again have prevailed upon the nation.
  american history short story summary: A Different Mirror for Young People Ronald Takaki, 2012-10-30 A longtime professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, Ronald Takaki was recognized as one of the foremost scholars of American ethnic history and diversity. When the first edition of A Different Mirror was published in 1993, Publishers Weekly called it a brilliant revisionist history of America that is likely to become a classic of multicultural studies and named it one of the ten best books of the year. Now Rebecca Stefoff, who adapted Howard Zinn's best-selling A People's History of the United States for younger readers, turns the updated 2008 edition of Takaki's multicultural masterwork into A Different Mirror for Young People. Drawing on Takaki's vast array of primary sources, and staying true to his own words whenever possible, A Different Mirror for Young People brings ethnic history alive through the words of people, including teenagers, who recorded their experiences in letters, diaries, and poems. Like Zinn's A People's History, Takaki's A Different Mirror offers a rich and rewarding people's view perspective on the American story.
  american history short story summary: Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1901 In the nineteenth century Uncle Tom's Cabin sold more copies than any other book in the world except the Bible.
  american history short story summary: We Were There, Too! Phillip Hoose, 2001-08-08 THE STORY OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE PLAYED IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
  american history short story summary: The Story of America Jill Lepore, 2012 Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories -- from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address -- to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print.
  american history short story summary: American Scripture Pauline Maier, 2012-02-15 Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly American Scripture, and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified. Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's []Common Sense[], which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision. In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people as revealed in the other declarations of 1776: the local resolutions -- most of which have gone unnoticed over the past two centuries -- that explained, advocated, and justified Independence and undergirded Congress's work. Detective-like, she discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson. Maier also reveals what happened to the Declaration after the signing and celebration: how it was largely forgotten and then revived to buttress political arguments of the nineteenth century; and, most important, how Abraham Lincoln ensured its persistence as a living force in American society. Finally, she shows how by the very act of venerating the Declaration as we do -- by holding it as sacrosanct, akin to holy writ -- we may actually be betraying its purpose and its power.
  american history short story summary: Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 2014-01-20 “A rich and moving chronicle for our very present.” —Julio Ortega, New York Times Book Review The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America’s Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain’s first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain’s expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies, and charting the Pacific coast. During the nineteenth century Anglo-America expands west under the banner of “Manifest Destiny” and consolidates control through war with Mexico. In the Hispanic resurgence that follows, it is the peoples of Latin America who overspread the continent, from the Hispanic heartland in the West to major cities such as Chicago, Miami, New York, and Boston. The United States clearly has a Hispanic present and future. And here is its Hispanic past, presented with characteristic insight and wit by one of our greatest historians.
  american history short story summary: Shadows at Dawn Karl Jacoby, 2009-11-24 A masterful reconstruction of one of the worst Indian massacres in American history In April 1871, a group of Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O?odham Indians surrounded an Apache village at dawn and murdered nearly 150 men, women, and children in their sleep. In the past century the attack, which came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre, has largely faded from memory. Now, drawing on oral histories, contemporary newspaper reports, and the participants? own accounts, prize-winning author Karl Jacoby brings this perplexing incident and tumultuous era to life to paint a sweeping panorama of the American Southwest?a world far more complex, diverse, and morally ambiguous than the traditional portrayals of the Old West.
  american history short story summary: Fraud Edward J. Balleisen, 2018-12-18 A comprehensive history of fraud in America, from the early nineteenth century to the subprime mortgage crisis In America, fraud has always been a key feature of business, and the national worship of entrepreneurial freedom complicates the task of distinguishing salesmanship from deceit. In this sweeping narrative, Edward Balleisen traces the history of fraud in America—and the evolving efforts to combat it—from the age of P. T. Barnum through the eras of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff. This unprecedented account describes the slow, piecemeal construction of modern institutions to protect consumers and investors—from the Gilded Age through the New Deal and the Great Society. It concludes with the more recent era of deregulation, which has brought with it a spate of costly frauds, including corporate accounting scandals and the mortgage-marketing debacle. By tracing how Americans have struggled to foster a vibrant economy without encouraging a corrosive level of cheating, Fraud reminds us that American capitalism rests on an uneasy foundation of social trust.
  american history short story summary: The History of Love: A Novel Nicole Krauss, 2006-05-17 ONE OF THE MOST LOVED NOVELS OF THE DECADE. A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness. Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book…Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of extraordinary depth and beauty (Newsday).
  american history short story summary: Stamped from the Beginning Ibram X. Kendi, 2016-04-12 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.
  american history short story summary: An American Childhood Annie Dillard, 2009-10-13 An American Childhood more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experienced another childhood. — Chicago Tribune A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s. Dedicated to her parents—from whom she learned a love of language and the importance of following your deepest passions—Dillard's brilliant memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you.
  american history short story summary: American Cultural History: A Very Short Introduction Eric Avila, 2018-07-17 The iconic images of Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe, or the fireside chats of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.: these are the words, images, and sounds that populate American cultural history. From the Boston Tea Party to the Dodgers, from the blues to Andy Warhol, dime novels to Disneyland, the history of American culture tells us how previous generations of Americans have imagined themselves, their nation, and their relationship to the world and its peoples. This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
  american history short story summary: American Slavery, American Freedom Edmund S. Morgan, 2003-10-17 Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable.—New York Times Book Review In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. American Slavery, American Freedom is a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the keys to this central paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom, in the people and the politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the Revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.
WORLD EVENTS hit home? - Pottstown School District
The short story you are about to read takes place on November 22, 1963, when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy stunned and distressed an entire nation. What’s the …

American History Short Story Summary (Download Only)
History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of American history …

American History Short Story (book) - offsite.creighton.edu
This ebook explores pivotal moments in American history through a series of interconnected short stories, focusing on the human element often overlooked in traditional historical accounts. It …

U.S.A. HISTORy - elibrary.bsu.edu.az
In 1783, the 13 colonies became the United States. George Washington became the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789. In 1850, the United States was a large …

American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer - Cloudinary
American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer I once read in a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” column that Paterson, New Jersey, is the place where the Straight and Narrow (streets) intersect. The …

A Short History of the United States - cdn.bookey.app
In "A Short History of the United States," acclaimed historian Robert V. Remini captures the essence of the American journey from its colonial roots to its modern-day triumphs and …

American History Short Story Summary (Download Only)
American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of …

Curriculum links - HISTORY
American story. With roots in the physical world, the series captures the ways everyday people confronted and interacted with animals, unforeseen weather, and the power of rivers and the sea.

HISTORY USA - American Institute in Taiwan
George Washington addressing the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 1787. history of the United States has been an experiment in democracy for more than 200 years.

The Great American Short Story - Scholars at Harvard
This tutorial, organized chronologically according to author, traces the development and examines the significance of the short story in nineteenth-century American literature.

THE PERFECT EXPERIMENT: Two Hundred Years of American …
THE PERFECT EXPERIMENT: Two Hundred Years of American Short Fiction This course moves chronologically through short fiction written in the U.S. from Washington Irving and writers of …

The American Short Story - Cambridge University Press
This wide-ranging introduction to the short story tradition in the United States of America traces the genre from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century with Irving, Hawthorne and Poe …

American History Short Story Summary Copy - archive.ncarb.org
Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of American history …

The Mystery of Existence: The American Short Story in …
Modern short story theory began when Edgar Allan Poe established the modern short story. In “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), Poe outlined his manifesto for brevity. He did not wish …

American History Short Story Summary (PDF) - db.raceface.com
concise readable narrative of the vast span of American history from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty first century when the United States loomed as a global power …

American History Short Story Summary Copy - tembo.inrete.it
American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of …

A History of the American Short Story - wvt-online.com
survey of the history of the American short story while at the same time critically re- flecting the many intricacies and problems involved in the writing of literary history and canon formation.

The Great American Short Story - Scholars at Harvard
development and examines the significance of the short story in nineteenth-century American literature. We will begin with Washington Irving, in whose work “there was born the American …

American History Short Story Summary (2024) - tembo.inrete.it
American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of …

“American History” by Judith Ortiz Cofer - English II & Film …
“American History” by Judith Ortiz Cofer (1) I once read in a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” column that Paterson, New Jersey, is the place where the Straight and Narrow (streets) intersect. The …

WORLD EVENTS hit home? - Pottstown School District
The short story you are about to read takes place on November 22, 1963, when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy stunned and distressed an entire nation. What’s the …

American History Short Story Summary (Download Only)
History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of American history …

American History Short Story (book) - offsite.creighton.edu
This ebook explores pivotal moments in American history through a series of interconnected short stories, focusing on the human element often overlooked in traditional historical accounts. It …

U.S.A. HISTORy - elibrary.bsu.edu.az
In 1783, the 13 colonies became the United States. George Washington became the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789. In 1850, the United States was a large …

American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer - Cloudinary
American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer I once read in a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” column that Paterson, New Jersey, is the place where the Straight and Narrow (streets) intersect. The …

A Short History of the United States - cdn.bookey.app
In "A Short History of the United States," acclaimed historian Robert V. Remini captures the essence of the American journey from its colonial roots to its modern-day triumphs and …

American History Short Story Summary (Download Only)
American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of …

Curriculum links - HISTORY
American story. With roots in the physical world, the series captures the ways everyday people confronted and interacted with animals, unforeseen weather, and the power of rivers and the sea.

HISTORY USA - American Institute in Taiwan
George Washington addressing the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 1787. history of the United States has been an experiment in democracy for more than 200 years.

The Great American Short Story - Scholars at Harvard
This tutorial, organized chronologically according to author, traces the development and examines the significance of the short story in nineteenth-century American literature.

THE PERFECT EXPERIMENT: Two Hundred Years of …
THE PERFECT EXPERIMENT: Two Hundred Years of American Short Fiction This course moves chronologically through short fiction written in the U.S. from Washington Irving and writers of …

The American Short Story - Cambridge University Press
This wide-ranging introduction to the short story tradition in the United States of America traces the genre from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century with Irving, Hawthorne and Poe …

American History Short Story Summary Copy
Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of American history …

The Mystery of Existence: The American Short Story in …
Modern short story theory began when Edgar Allan Poe established the modern short story. In “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), Poe outlined his manifesto for brevity. He did not …

American History Short Story Summary (PDF)
concise readable narrative of the vast span of American history from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty first century when the United States loomed as a global power …

American History Short Story Summary Copy
American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of …

A History of the American Short Story - wvt-online.com
survey of the history of the American short story while at the same time critically re- flecting the many intricacies and problems involved in the writing of literary history and canon formation.

The Great American Short Story - Scholars at Harvard
development and examines the significance of the short story in nineteenth-century American literature. We will begin with Washington Irving, in whose work “there was born the American …

American History Short Story Summary (2024)
American History: A Very Short Introduction Paul S. Boyer,2012-08-16 This volume in Oxford s A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise readable narrative of the vast span of …