In 1867, United States Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia. It was called "Seward's Folly" because Alaska was thought to be a frozen wasteland. Discover the circumstances and geopolitical effects of the Alaska purchase in Seward's Folly and Alaska.

This work of historical fiction is based on the challenges faced by John A. Macdonald just before Confederation in 1867. His colleagues at the London Conference are not unanimously supportive. He is the target of Fenian assassins, and the impending U.S. purchase of Alaska makes the colony of British Columbia vulnerable.

“A heartening reminder that politicians, at their best, can rise above petty rivalries and jealousies to serve a larger cause.” —Don H. Doyle, author of The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War The Civil War marked a significant turning point in American history—not only for the United States itself but for its relations with foreign powers both during and after the conflict. The friendship and foreign policy partnership between President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Henry Seward shaped those US foreign policies. These unlikely allies, who began as rivals during the 1860 presidential nomination, helped ensure that America remained united and prospered in the aftermath of the nation’s consuming war. In Lincoln, Seward, and US Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, Joseph A. Fry examines the foreign policy decisions that resulted from this partnership and the legacy of those decisions. Lincoln and Seward, despite differences in upbringing, personality, and social status, both adamantly believed in the preservation of the union and the need to stymie slavery. They made that conviction the cornerstone of their policies abroad, and through those policies, such as Seward threatening war with any nation that intervened in the Civil War, they prevented European intervention that could have led to Northern defeat. The Union victory allowed America to resume imperial expansion, a dynamic that Seward sustained beyond Lincoln’s death during his tenure as President Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State. Fry’s analysis of the Civil War from an international perspective and the legacy of US policy decisions provides a more complete view of the war and a deeper understanding of this crucial juncture in American history.

Introducing a New U.S. History Text That Takes Religion Seriously Unto a Good Land offers a distinctive narrative history of the American people -- from the first contacts between Europeans and North America's native inhabitants, through the creation of a modern nation, to the 2004 presidential election. Written by a team of highly regarded historians, this textbook shows how grasping the uniqueness of the "American experiment" depends on understanding not only social, cultural, political, and economic factors but also the role that religion has played in shaping U. S. history. While most United States history textbooks in recent decades have expanded their coverage of social and cultural history, they still tend to shortchange the role of religious ideas, practices, and movements in the American past. Unto a Good Land restores the balance by giving religion its appropriate place in the story. This readable and teachable text also features a full complement of maps, historical illustrations, and "In Their Own Words" sidebars with excerpts from primary source documents.

A sweeping history of how Union victory in the American Civil War inspired democratic reforms, revolutions, and emancipation movements in Europe and the Americas The Age of Reconstruction looks beyond post–Civil War America to tell the story of how Union victory and Lincoln’s assassination set off a dramatic international reaction that drove European empires out of the Americas, hastened the end of slavery in Latin America, and ignited a host of democratic reforms in Europe. In this international history of Reconstruction, Don Doyle chronicles the world events inspired by the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1870, France withdrew from Mexico, Russia sold Alaska to the United States, and Britain proclaimed the new state of Canada. British workers demanded more voting rights, Spain toppled Queen Isabella II and ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, Cubans rose against Spanish rule, France overthrew Napoleon III, and the kingdom of Pope Pius IX fell before the Italian Risorgimento. Some European liberals, including Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Mazzini, even called for a “United States of Europe.” Yet for all its achievements and optimism, this “new birth of freedom” was short-lived. By the 1890s, Reconstruction had been undone in the United States and abroad and America had become an exclusionary democracy based on white supremacy—and a very different kind of model to the world. At home and abroad, America’s Reconstruction was, as W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “the greatest and most important step toward world democracy of all men of all races ever taken in the modern world.” The Age of Reconstruction is a bracing history of a remarkable period when democracy, having survived the great test of the Civil War, was ascendant around the Atlantic world.

Few resorts could have boasted the kind of history that the Huletts Hotel had. Built in Huletts Landing, NY, on Lake George, the first hotel burned in 1915, and this arson was the subject of a sensational Upstate New York trial. Capitalizing on the notoriety that this trial created, the Eichler family rebuilt, only to again lose the hotel, this time it in a scandalous tax dispute in 1958. This book is about the burning of the first hotel, ensuing arson trials, rebuilding, the glory days of Huletts (when people like Amelia Earhart and Kennedy family members were frequent visitors), and the untimely closing of the second hotel. A second mystery surrounds 20 photographs of the original hotel taken in 1916, which were recently uncovered taped to the back of a painting of Abraham Lincoln. Kapusinski will use that story to unravel the other mysteries surrounding this lost hotel.

Introduces us to the famous, the infamous, the unknown and the occasionally unfortunate men who have led a country from its early years as a colony fighting for independence, through to it becoming the most powerful nation in the world.

Alphabetically arranged entries cover the history of the expansion of American sovereignty from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.