Touching America's History: From the Pequot War through WWII

Awards:   Winner of 2014 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection.
Author:   Meredith Mason Brown
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
ISBN:  

9780253008336


Pages:   288
Publication Date:   22 March 2013
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Touching America's History: From the Pequot War through WWII


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Awards

  • Winner of 2014 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection.

Overview

Things you can see and touch can bring to mind the time when the items were made and used. In Touching America's History, Meredith Mason Brown uses twenty objects to summon up major developments in America's history. The objects range in date from a Pequot stone axe head probably made before the Pequot War in 1637, to the western novel Dwight Eisenhower was reading while waiting for the weather to clear so that the Normandy Invasion could begin, and to a piece of a toilet bowl found in the bombed-out wreckage of Hitler's home in the Bavarian alps in 1945. Among the other historically evocative items are a Kentucky rifle carried by Col. John Floyd, killed by Indians in 1783; a letter from George Washington explaining why he will not be able to attend the Constitutional Convention; shavings from the scaffold on which John Brown was hanged; a pistol belonging to Gen. William Preston, in whose arms Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston bled to death after being shot at the Battle of Shiloh; and the records of a court-martial for the killing by an American officer of a Filipino captive during the Philippine War. Together, the objects call to mind nothing less than the birth, growth, and shaping of what is now America.

Full Product Details

Author:   Meredith Mason Brown
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.60cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9780253008336


ISBN 10:   0253008336
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   22 March 2013
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Short Titles Prologue: History through Things You Can Touch 1. Axe Head, Adze Head: The Pequot War 2. A Compass, a Rifle, and the Opening of the West 3. Yr Most Obt Servt, George Washington: The Constitutional Convention 4. Daguerreotype and Sword: Seminole and Mexican Wars 5. Shavings from a Scaffold: The Hanging of John Brown 6. Diaries from Indian Country, Civil War Back Home 7. Travels of an English Pistol 8. A Killing in the Philippines 9. An Award from General Pershing 10. The Czar of Halfaday Creek, and Hitler's Toilet Bowl Afterword: The Shaping of America Bibliography Index

Reviews

A new and interesting take on moments in America's past. It's a page turner... with good writing and an appreciation that big events are often, maybe always, populated and constructed by people other than the prominent leaders. Walter Nugent, author of Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion


Author Information

Meredith Mason Brown is author of Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America.

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