19Th Century category: 5646 books
Navigating Failure
Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America
Language: English
Release Date: January 14, 2003
The "self-made" man is a familiar figure in nineteenth-century American history. But the relentless expansion of market relations that facilitated such stories of commercial success also ensured that individual bankruptcy would become a prominent feature in the nation's economic landscape. In this...
A History of the Book in America
Volume 3: The Industrial Book, 1840-1880
Language: English
Release Date: September 15, 2009
Volume 3 of A History of the Book in America narrates the emergence of a national book trade in the nineteenth century, as changes in manufacturing, distribution, and publishing conditioned, and were conditioned by, the evolving practices of authors and readers. Chapters trace the ascent of the "industrial...
A Toast to Eclipse
Arpad Haraszthy and the Sparkling Wine of Old San Francisco
Language: English
Release Date: September 10, 2012
The sparkling wines of California rival the best French Champagnes today, but their place at our tables came about through careful craftsmanship that began more than a century ago. The predecessor of today’s California bubbly was Eclipse Champagne, the first commercially successful California sparkling...
The Merchants' Capital
New Orleans and the Political Economy of the Nineteenth-Century South
Language: English
Release Date: April 29, 2013
As cotton production shifted toward the southwestern states during the first half of the nineteenth century, New Orleans became increasingly important to the South's plantation economy. Handling the city's wide-ranging commerce was a globally oriented business community that represented a qualitatively...
Yokohama and the Silk Trade
How Eastern Japan Became the Primary Economic Region of Japan, 1843–1893
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2017
This study provides a broad political and economic examination of the impact of the silk trade on nineteenth-century Japan. It analyzes the economic role of Japan’s eastern interior region and that of the port of Yokohama. It argues that the economic development in this period laid the foundations...
Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel
The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It
Language: English
Release Date: May 29, 2008
A provocative look at the life and times of the man who created the original weapon of mass destruction
Drawing on her investigative and literary talents, Julia Keller offers a riveting account of the invention of the world's first working machine gun. Through her portrait of its misunderstood...
by Melvin Edelstein
Language: English
Release Date: March 9, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: March 9, 2016
Democracy is perhaps the defining characteristic of modern Western society, but even as late as the nineteenth century it was often viewed with suspicion by many who saw it as akin to anarchy and mob rule. It was not until the French and American revolutions of the eighteenth century that electoral...
Feeding Gotham
The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York, 1790–1860
Language: English
Release Date: August 30, 2016
New York City witnessed unparalleled growth in the first half of the nineteenth century, its population rising from thirty thousand people to nearly a million in a matter of decades. Feeding Gotham looks at how America's first metropolis grappled with the challenge of provisioning its inhabitants....
Capitalism Takes Command
The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America
Language: English
Release Date: December 21, 2011
Most scholarship on nineteenth-century America’s transformation into a market society has focused on consumption, romanticized visions of workers, and analysis of firms and factories. Building on but moving past these studies, Capitalism Takes Command presents a history of family farming, general...
The White Image in the Black Mind
African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925
Language: English
Release Date: February 10, 2000
How did African-American slaves view their white masters? As demons, deities or another race entirely? When nineteenth-century white Americans proclaimed their innate superiority, did blacks agree? If not, why not? How did blacks assess the status of the white race? Mia Bay traces African-American...
Bankers and Empire
How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2017
From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. A host of financial entities sought to control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process,...
Bound in Wedlock
Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century
Language: English
Release Date: April 24, 2017
Tera W. Hunter offers the first comprehensive history of African American marriage in the nineteenth century and into the Jim Crow era. She reveals the practical ways couples adopted, adapted, or rejected white Christian ideas of marriage, creatively setting their own standards for conjugal relationships under conditions of uncertainty and cruelty.
Empire of Vines
Wine Culture in America
Language: English
Release Date: October 9, 2013
The lush, sun-drenched vineyards of California evoke a romantic, agrarian image of winemaking, though in reality the industry reflects American agribusiness at its most successful. Nonetheless, as author Erica Hannickel shows, this fantasy is deeply rooted in the history of grape cultivation in America....
An American Language
The History of Spanish in the United States
Language: English
Release Date: April 24, 2018
"This is the most comprehensive book I’ve ever read about the use of Spanish in the U.S. Incredible research. Read it to understand our country. Spanish is, indeed, an American language."—Jorge Ramos
An American Language is a tour de force that revolutionizes our understanding...