Some Good Books on Amrerican Histiry

* Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

* Carol F. Karlsen's The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

* Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

* David McCullough's 1776

* David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing

* Gail Collins's America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines

* Lynn Sherr's Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words

* Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

* David von Drehle's Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

* Bruce Watson's Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream

More to come as I read them.

Interesting list there, thanks!

You're welcome!

A list reorganization and few more titles:

* Gail Collins's America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines

* Joseph J. Ellis's Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New!)

* David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing

* Carol F. Karlsen's The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

* Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

* David McCullough's 1776

* Stewart O'Nan's The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy (New!)

* Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

* Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

* Lynn Sherr's Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words

* Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England (New!)

* David von Drehle's Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

* Bruce Watson's Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream

"American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to…" by Nick Taylor

1939 The Lost World of the Fair
by David Gelernter

Nothing Like It In The World by Stephen E. Ambrose

To America : Personal Reflections of an Historian by Stephen E. Ambrose

John Adams by David McCullough

Personal Memoirs: Ulysses S. Grant
by Ulysses S. Grant

Lincoln by Gore Vidal

Battle cry of Freedom
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Great Riverby Paul Horgan
Only Yesterday
The Best & the Brightest

To my list I'll add the following;

1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs -The Election that Changed the Country by James Chace
Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts
First Salute by Barbara W. Tuchman

I just bought that Tuchman book a few weeks ago, actually.

How did you like Founding Mothers? I found I couldn't get through it. There were too many digressions, in my opinion, and many of them lasted too long. And there was a little more sarcasm than works well in print; Cokie Roberts is sharp enough on the air, but print is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

I found Founding Mothers overall very interesting. A little slow in parts where Cokie Roberts seems to be adding verbage to fill chapters. Again my overall impression was positive that is why I included it on this list. There isn't much on that era on womens history and this book fills some of that of history in.

Enjoy First Salute, Tuchman does a good job on placing the "salute' in the context of world history of that day.

True, there isn't much on the role of women in that period. I guess that's why I was so disappointed. That and hearing her on NPR every Monday morning (so maybe it's the radio/print thing?).

McCullough is without a doubt an excellent writer. But his skills as a historian don't match Christopher Ward, who wrote _War of the Revolution_ in 1952. It is a military history of the war upon which the American Revolution depended. I got a greater sense of the precarious position of the the American Revolution in 1776 from Ward than I did from McCullough.

Ah, but I don't really go for 'military history'. Which, obviously, doesn't mean I won't read books about wars -- just that I won't pick it up because it's about a war.

I would add just a couple of excellent books that haven't been mentioned yet:
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose and
Blood and Thunder: an epic of the American West by Hampton Sides.