New York: The Macaulay Company, (1930) dj. Hardcover first edition - An account of the outlaws "who preyed on traffic along the Natchez Trace from Natchez to New Orleans from about 1880 until 1885, among other violent and lawless acts, planned to build an empire using the labor of stolen slaves." According to Eudora Welty's biographer, this book inspired her 'The Wide Net' and 'The Robber Bridegroom.' "Even today, Coates brings the history of the Natchez Trace land prates to life. While 'Outlaw Years' may not be the most accurate history of the Trace, Coates reveals the mood and atmosphere of the 1800s. Many versions of the blood-thirsty Harpe brothers existed and Coates simply chose descriptions which made sense to him. In his defense, Coates rescued many old histories and travelogues from complete obscurity by retelling the stories of the Natchez Trace land pirates." (lemuriablog) This copy is one of the very uncommon true first editions published by Macaulay (not the Literary Guild book club edition) with a dust jacket with rather sensational claims on the back cover. Illustrated with a frontispiece and 15 internal full page plates. Bibliography. 308 pp, map endpapers.

New York: Penguin, 2019. dj. Hardcover first edition - The final book by this Pulitzer prize winning journalist. "An epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect - In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey as an undercover correspondent in the South for the New York Times.. . His vivid dispatches about the lives and beliefs of Southerners--white and black, free and enslaved, rich and poor--were revelatory for readers of his day and have endured as classic texts. . [His] remarkable trek also reshaped the American landscape. As a rebuke to the caste-bound ideology of the South's master class, Olmsted sought to reform his own society by creating democratic spaces for the uplift of all. The result: Central Park" and numerous others across the country. Notes, bibliography, index. 476 pp. ISBN: 978-1101980286.

New York: Doubleday, (2006) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Editor Byron Hollinshead invited twenty historians to write a personal essay answering the question "What is the scene or incident in American history that you would like to have witnessed - and why?" Among the incidents selected were the Salem witch trials, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the raid on Harper's Ferry, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Scopes trial, the march to Selma, and more. Contributors include Mary Beth Norton, Joseph Ellis, Jay Winik, Carol Berkin, Thomas Fleming, Robert Cowley, Carolyn Gilman, Geoffrey Ward, Robert Dallek, and more. Warmly INSCRIBED on the half title page by one of the contributors - Paul C. Nagel - who wrote about the Amistad trial. Illustrated with photographs. 333 pp. ISBN: 0-385516193.

New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing, (2000) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - An attractive and information book produced in association with The Society of American Historians, this contains illustrated essays on the 41 men who have served as President of the United States, from George Washington to Bill Clinton. As the introduction notes, some of these reflect a re-appraisal of the accomplishments (or lack thereof) of some of the Presidents - notably Grant and Coolidge - based on current scholarship: none of the essays are wholly uncritical, none are a whitewash. The contributors include Joseph Ellis, Thomas Fleming, Hans Trefousse, Allen Weinstein, James Chance, Catherine Clinton, Susan Ware, Robert Dallek, Herbert Parmet, Richard Reeves, Tom Wicker, Evan Thomas and others. SIGNED by Douglas Brinkley at his essay on Jimmy Carter, and uncommon thus. Illustrated throughout with photographs in both full color and black and white. Also included is a section on "The Campaigns and Inaugural Addresses" with text by Richard M. Pious. Notes on contributors, index. Slightly oversized. 480 pp. ISBN: 0-789450739.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, (2018). First edition - A book which looks at how the actions which our government takes overseas in the name of defense - actions that would not be permissible within national borders - still come back to erode our civil rights. "Using cases ranging from militarizing police, using drones for surveillance, and exercising elements of torture in American prisons, Coyne and Hall lend an economic lens to their research to show how foreign interventions and domestic policy decisions are becoming increasingly intertwinedi n their eyes at a significant cost to the American public....[T]hey raise questions about how a country can act violently throughout the world while still claiming to respect the liberties and rights of its own citizens." (W. Miller Choice) Extensive notes, references, index. xv, 257 pp. ISBN: 978-1503605275.

Boulder: University Press of Colorado, (2006). First edition - "Continuous expansion of executive power is igniting national debate: Is the administration authorized to detain people without charges or access to counsel, due process, or a fair trial? Is torture acceptable as long as it doesn't happen on U.S. soil? In a new study of the use of plenary power - the doctrine under which U.S. courts have allowed the exercise of U.S. jurisdiction without concomitant constitutional protection - Natsu Taylor Saito puts contemporary policies in historical perspective, illustrating how such extensions of power have been upheld by courts from the 1880s to the present.. .Saito explains how the rights of individuals and groups deemed Other by virtue of race or national origin have been violated under both the Constitution and international law." Extensive notes. 390 pp.

New York: Ballantine, (2003). SIGNED first edition - A book which "brings to teeming life the cultural and political history of that world-changing year of social upheaval. People think of it as the year of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yet it was also the year of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations; the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; Prague Spring; the antiwar movement and the Tet Offensive; Black Power; the generation gap, avant-garde theater, the birth of the womens movement, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. From New York, Miami, Berkeley, and Chicago to Paris, Prague, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Tokyo, and Mexico City, spontaneous uprisings occurred simultaneously around the globe." A year in which everything was disrupted. A year in which the world watched the first live telecast from outer space .. In many ways, 1968 led us to where we are today. SIGNED on the title page and dated in 2003 - that is, before publication. Illustrated with photographs, notes, bibliography. xx. 420 pp.

New York: Doubleday, (2019) dj. Hardcover first edition - A book which begins with "describing the iconic photograph of the Fall of Saigon: desperate Vietnamese scrambling to board a helicopter evacuating the last American personnel from Vietnam. It is an image of U.S. failure and shame. Or is it? By unpacking the surprising story of heroism that the photograph actually tells, Clarke launches into a narrative that is an important corrective to the historical record. For what is less known is that during those final days, scores of Americans - diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, missionaries, contractors, and spies - risked their lives to assist their current and former translators, drivers, colleagues, neighbors, friends, and even perfect strangers in escape. By the time the last U.S. helicopter left Vietnam on April 30, 1975, these righteous Americans had helped to spirit 130,000 South Vietnamese to U.S. bases in Guam and the Philippines." Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. xii, 430 pp. Map endpapers. ISBN: 978-0385539647.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (1979) dj. Hardcover first edition - Although written about a period in US history more than 50 years ago, these comments on the dust jacket flap are still relevant: "A people who had taken for granted a collective commitment to public order was suddenly stunned by the fragility of its institutions and the assaults on the values they represented. This is the story of how Americans for the first time took to the streets, sometimes the tens of thousands, to resolve disputes once left to the established governmental process." This book recreates the era. in all its contradictions, through interviews with fourteen men, Including Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Black activists likes E.D. Nixon, John Lewis, James Farmer, Stokely Carmichael, and more. The fact that all of those interviewed were men highlights one difference between that era and ours. Surprisingly uncommon in the hardcover first edition. Illustrated with black and white photographs. Bibliography, index. 591 pp. ISBN: 0-671243233.

New York: Atria (Simon & Schuster), (2021). First edition - Named one of Ten Best History Books of 2021. by the Smithsonian Magazine, this is a book which honors the resilience of extraordinary heroes and the power of sports in "a country losing its moral way." "In the spring of 1942, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona and sent them to incarceration camps across the West. Nearly 14,000 of them landed on the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming, at the base of Heart Mountain. Behind barbed wire fences, they faced racism, cruelty, and frozen winters. Trying to recreate comforts from home, they established Buddhist temples and sumo wrestling pits. Kabuki performances drew hundreds of spectators--yet there was little hope. That is, until the fall of 1943, when the camp's high school football team, the Eagles, started its first season and finished it undefeated, crushing the competition from nearby, predominantly white high schools. . . As the team's second season kicked off, the young men faced a choice to either join the Army or resist the draft. Teammates were divided, and some were jailed for their decisions." Extensive notes. x, 374 pp.

New York: Macmillan, (1967) dj. Hardcover first edition - An informal and entertaining look at urban planning, highways and infrastructure in the Northeast of the US. This corridor is often considered not just as several cities but as a megalopolis - and Bailey is interested in exploring just what that means. The author drove from Boston to Washington, D.C. visiting friends along the way, and talking to people about what is happening - he visited MIT which was working on a high speed transportation system, cities like Providence, RI and unique areas like the NJ Pine Barrens, took a trip on the Hudson in Lawrence Rockefeller's motor cruiser, visited with Lewis Mumford, and talked to real estate agents and small town administrators. Map frontispiece. Bibliography, index. 276 pp. Map endpapers.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (2011) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A sweeping account of the American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900. Among them were Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, and Charles Sumner, whose experience with black students at the Sorbonne, led to his becoming a powerful voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate. Others included James Fenimore Cooper and his friend Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James as well as Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was able to escape from the notoriety Uncle Toms Cabin had brought her, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, and more. SIGNED on the title page. Illustrqted with both color and black and white photographs and maps. Source notes, bibliography, index. 557 pp. Photographic endpapers. ISBN: 978-1416571766.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (1979) dj. Hardcover first edition - Although written about a period in US history more than 50 years ago, these comments on the dust jacket flap are still relevant: "A people who had taken for granted a collective commitment to public order was suddenly stunned by the fragility of its institutions and the assaults on the values they represented. This is the story of how Americans for the first time took to the streets, sometimes the tens of thousands, to resolve disputes once left to the established governmental process." This book recreates the era. in all its contradictions, through interviews with fourteen men, Including Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Black activists likes E.D. Nixon, John Lewis, James Farmer, Stokely Carmichael, and more. The fact that all of those interviewed were men highlights one difference between that era and ours. Surprisingly uncommon in the hardcover first edition. Illustrated with black and white photographs. Bibliography, index. 591 pp. ISBN: 0-671243233.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (2011) dj. Hardcover first edition - A sweeping account of the American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900. Among them were Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, and Charles Sumner, whose experience with black students at the Sorbonne, led to his becoming a powerful voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate. Others included James Fenimore Cooper and his friend Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James as well as Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was able to escape from the notoriety Uncle Toms Cabin had brought her, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, and more. Illustrated with both color and black and white photographs and maps. Source notes, bibliography, index. 557 pp. Photographic endpapers. ISBN: 978-1416571766.