19Th Century category: 5646 books
Dr. Mutter's Marvels
A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
Language: English
Release Date: September 4, 2014
A mesmerizing biography of the brilliant and eccentric medical innovator who revolutionized American surgery and founded the country’s most famous museum of medical oddities
Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools—or even...
Passing Strange
A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Language: English
Release Date: February 5, 2009
Read Martha A. Sandweiss's posts on the Penguin Blog
The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he loved
Clarence King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity, a brilliant scientist and explorer once described by Secretary of State John Hay as "the...
All the Great Prizes
The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
Language: English
Release Date: May 14, 2013
The first full-scale biography of John Hay since 1934: From secretary to Abraham Lincoln to secretary of state for Theodore Roosevelt, Hay was an essential American figure for more than half a century.
John Taliaferro’s brilliant biography captures the extraordinary life of Hay, one of the...
by Alison Weir
Language: English
Release Date: October 5, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: October 5, 2011
Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the British monarchy. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal House...
Fraud
An American History from Barnum to Madoff
Language: English
Release Date: January 9, 2017
The United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive...
The Monied Metropolis
New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896
Language: English
Release Date: March 19, 2001
This book, first published in 2001, is a comprehensive history of the most powerful group in the nineteenth-century United States: New York City's economic elite. This small and diverse group of Americans accumulated unprecedented economic, social, and political power, and decisively put their mark...
Oscar Wilde
A Certain Genius
Language: English
Release Date: September 21, 2011
In this elegant and affectionate biography of one of the most controversial personalities of the nineteenth century, Barbara Belford breaks new ground in the evocation of Oscar Wilde's personal life and in our understanding of the choices he made for his art. Published for the centenary of Wilde's...
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...
Introducing Bert Williams
Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America's First Black Star
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2008
According to critics of his time, Bert Williams was the Greatest Comedian on the American Stage.” A black Bahamian immigrant, Williams made his start as a barker advertising the rough-and-tumble medicine shows” that dotted the Wild West at the end of the nineteenth century. Not long after...
Trouble in Mind
Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
Language: English
Release Date: November 17, 2010
"The stain of Jim Crow runs deep in 20th-century America. . . . Its effects remain the nation's most pressing business. Trouble in Mind is an absolutely essential account of its dreadful history and calamitous legacy." --The Washington Post
"The most complete and moving account we have had...
Eighty Days
Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World
Language: English
Release Date: February 26, 2013
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the...
by Peter L. Bernstein
Language: English
Release Date: August 16, 2010
Language: English
Release Date: August 16, 2010
"One corner of the great American panorama enlarged to highlight starry-eyed visionaries, political machinations, indefatigable ingenuity, and cockeyed optimism." —Kirkus Reviews
The building of the Erie Canal, like the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal, is...
by Esther Crain
Language: English
Release Date: September 27, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: September 27, 2016
The drama, expansion, mansions and wealth of New York City's transformative Gilded Age era, from 1870 to 1910, captured in a magnificently illustrated hardcover.
In forty short years, New York City suddenly became a city of skyscrapers, subways, streetlights, and Central Park, as well as sprawling...
by James MacGregor Burns
Language: English
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: April 10, 2012
The second volume of Burns’s acclaimed history of America, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Great Depression
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address pointed to a new way to preserve an old hope—that democracy might prove a vibrant and lasting form of government...