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Ranging from the earliest Native American settlers to the presidency of Barack Obama, this Very Short Introduction offers an illuminating account of politics, diplomacy, and war as well as the full spectrum of social, cultural, and scientific developments that shaped our country.

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power. 

Republican President William McKinley transformed America during his two terms as president. Although he does not register large in either public memory or in historians' rankings, in this revealing account, Robert W. Merry offers "a fresh twist on the old tale . . . a valuable education on where America has been and, possibly, where it is going" (The National Review).

In 1969, the body of a young woman was discovered in the woods of Renton, rocking the communities along Puget Sound. Three more brutal murders followed, drawing the attention of multiple police agencies as they tried to piece together the meager clues left behind. The seemingly unrelated cases challenged detectives, who struggled to realize they were all connected to one man: Gary Gene Grant. Before the term "serial killer" was even coined, Grant stalked his prey, destroying lives and families while walking unseen among the masses. Decades later, his crimes have all but been forgotten.

When she was kidnapped from Long Meadow Farm in Stony Brook, New York, in 1937, Alice McDonell Parsons was the heir to a vast fortune among Long Island's wealthy elite. The crime shocked the nation and was front-page news for several months.

After the extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever. Established in 1893, Chicago's Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection.

How should we remember George Washington's entanglement in slavery? Americans have argued over that question for nearly 250 years. More than any other Founding Father, Washington's ties to slavery have vexed us. He enslaved more people than any of his fellow founders, yet he was the only one of...

As the pastor of one of the oldest Black churches in Washington, DC, William H. Lamar IV has a deep connection to his own ancestors and the ancestral legacy of his church. He offers a perspective on the role that our ancestors play in shaping our lives and communities, for without acknowledging their importance, we cannot move forward morally, ethically, spiritually, or politically. Lamar examines ancestors, political leaders, and voices of Scripture, and draws from African and African American ancestors to show how they shape our identities and moral compasses.

This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life. 

The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment. 

Nineteen-year-old Burmah Adams, a hairdresser and former Santa Ana High School student, spent her honeymoon on a crime spree. She and her husband of less than one week, White, an ex-con, robbed at least 20 people in and around downtown L.A. at gunpoint over an eight-week period. But the worst of their crimes was the shooting of a popular elementary school teacher, Cora Withington, and a former publisher, Crombie Allen, who was teaching her how to drive his new car.   

The story they have chosen to tell is wrong. It is time to tell a better story. Thus begins Keith Richotte's playful, unconventional look at Native American and Supreme Court history. When the Supreme Court first embraced plenary power in the 1880s, it did not bother to seek any legal justification for the decision—it was simply rooted in racist ideas about tribal nations. By the 21st century, however, the Supreme Court was telling a different story, with opinions crediting the U.S. Constitution as the explicit source of federal plenary power.

Long before the U.S. government began conducting secret radiation and germ-warfare experiments, and long before the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, medical professionals had introduced—and hotly debated the ethics of—the use of human subjects in medical experiments. In Subjected to Science, Susan Lederer provides the first full-length history of biomedical research with human subjects in the earlier period, from 1890 to 1940.

Perhaps no other single day in United States history was as threatening to the survival of the nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington, DC. This unique moment might have significantly altered the nation's path forward, but the event and the reasons why it happened are little remembered by most Americans.

For thirty years, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse chronicled the activities of the U.S. Supreme Court and its justices as a correspondent for the New York Times. In this Very Short Introduction, she draws on her deep knowledge of the court's history and of its written and unwritten rules to show listeners how the Supreme Court really works.

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic Bell Hooks examines in Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which Hooks moves from place to place, only to end where she began—her old Kentucky home.

In The Black Boom, Jason L. Riley—acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute—digs into the data and concludes that the economic lives of black people improved significantly under policies put into place during the Trump administration.

On a dark, rainy night in October 1900, George E. Bailey, caretaker of Breakheart Hill farm, disappeared. He no longer made his daily milk runs or stopped at the tavern for his favorite cherry rum. Some suspected foul play right away, as Bailey's "wife" had recently gone to Maine, leaving Bailey alone with his farmhand, John C. Best, who was known to be a drunk and a potentially violent man. Nine days later, when Bailey's dismembered body was fished out of a local pond, all eyes quickly focused on Best. Douglas L. Heath and Alison C. Simcox uncover the facts of this shocking tale.

In the sweltering summer of 1929, the people of Columbus, Ohio, were enthralled by the story of Dr. James Howard Snook—an Ohio State University veterinary professor and Olympic gold medal-winning pistol shooter who was put on trial for the murder of his twenty-four-year-old lover, a medical student. This riveting account reveals how Snook was captured and interrogated, including his gory confession of Theora Hix's death. This is the first full account of this astonishing story, from scandalous beginning to tragic end.

Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of "fugitive pedagogy"—a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools.