20Th Century category: 9982 books
Hell's Cartel
IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine
Language: English
Release Date: January 5, 2010
The remarkable rise and shameful fall of one of the twentieth century's greatest conglomerates
At its peak in the 1930s, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben was one of the most powerful corporations in the world. To this day, companies formerly part of the Farben cartel—the aspirin-maker...
Boss Lady
How Three Women Entrepreneurs Built Successful Big Businesses in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Language: English
Release Date: May 8, 2017
Too often, depictions of women's rise in corporate America leave out the first generation of breakthrough women entrepreneurs. Here, Edith Sparks restores the careers of three pioneering businesswomen--Tillie Lewis (founder of Flotill Products), Olive Ann Beech (cofounder of Beech Aircraft), and Margaret...
Roots of Steel
Boom and Bust in an American Mill Town
Language: English
Release Date: March 23, 2010
When Deborah Rudacille was a child growing up in the working-class town of Dundalk, Maryland, a worker at the local Sparrows Point steel mill made more than enough to comfortably support a family. But in the decades since, the decline of American manufacturing has put tens of thousands out of work...
America's Bank
The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
Language: English
Release Date: October 20, 2015
A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so...
The Brass Check
A Study of American Journalism
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2015
A muckraking exposé of corruption in American journalism from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Jungle
Upton Sinclair dedicated his life to documenting the destructive force of unbridled capitalism. In this influential study, he takes on the effect of money and power on mass media,...
One Nation, Uninsured
Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance
Language: English
Release Date: October 9, 2006
Every industrial nation in the world guarantees its citizens access to essential health care services--every country, that is, except the United States. In fact, one in eight Americans--a shocking 43 million people--do not have any health care insurance at all. One Nation, Uninsured offers a vividly...
by Alistair Cooke
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2015
“[Cooke is] one of the most gifted and urbane essayists of the century, a supreme master.” —The Spectator
As the voice of the BBC’s Letter from America for close to six decades, Alistair Cooke addressed several millions of listeners on five continents. They tuned in every Friday evening...
Solar Dance
Van Gogh, Forgery, and the Eclipse of Certainty
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2012
Art dealer Otto Wacker’s 1932 sensational trial in Berlin for selling fake Van Goghs leads Eksteins to a unique narrative of a collapsing Weimar Germany, the rise of another misfit, Adolf Hitler, and the replacement of nineteenth-century certitude with twentieth-century doubt.
The Bakersfield Sound
How a Generation of Displaced Okies Revolutionized American Music
Language: English
Release Date: March 6, 2018
In California’s Central Valley, two thousand miles away from country music’s hit machine, the hard edge of the Bakersfield Sound transformed American music in the latter half of the twentieth century. It turned displaced Oklahomans like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard into household names, and it...
Raising America
Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children
Language: English
Release Date: January 26, 2011
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, millions of anxious parents have turned to child-rearing manuals for reassurance. Instead, however, they have often found yet more cause for worry. In this rich social history, Ann Hulbert analyzes one hundred years of shifting trends in advice and discovers...
Midnight in Chernobyl
The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Language: English
Release Date: February 12, 2019
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster—and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters.
Early...
The Big House
A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
Language: English
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
This...
Away Down South : A History of Southern Identity
A History of Southern Identity
Language: English
Release Date: October 1, 2005
From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity served in an engaging blend of history literature and popular culture. In this insightful book written with dry wit...
Riot and Remembrance
The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy
Language: English
Release Date: May 13, 2014
A best-selling author investigates the causes of the twentieth century's deadliest race riot and how its legacy has scarred and shaped a community over the past eight decades.
On a warm night in May 1921, thousands of whites, many deputized by the local police, swarmed through the Greenwood...