Bloody History of America

During the 1960s, America became embroiled in an increasingly unpopular war fighting communism in Vietnam. Antiwar sentiment led to mass youth protests, which occasionally turned deadly. With the Soviet Union breaking up in the late 1980s, the United States was the sole superpower. But it quickly became the target of Islamist terrorism, as 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the War on Terror came to define the first two decades of the new millennium. At home, violence convulsed Waco, Oklahoma City, and Los Angeles, while gun massacres became a numbingly familiar occurrence. The troubled recent history of the United States is told with great attention to historic detail and with the help of an abundance of primary source materials.

The United States was born in the violence of revolution, and it experienced equally violent growing pains that resulted in the Civil War. That conflict would be particularly bloody, with more American lives lost than in both World Wars combined. Following the end of the war, the violence of the Reconstruction era, the Jim Crow South, and ongoing Indian wars continued to convulse the former Confederacy. As a battered nation emerged into the twentieth century, World War I and the rise of organized crime awaited. This exceptionally bloody and difficult period of American history is told in vivid detail with the help of an abundance of primary source materials.

This volume, rich with primary sources, traces the story of the United States from the first contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the American Revolution and through the gold rush. This is a history often characterized by conflict and violence. It is the story of the religious hysteria and violence of the Salem witch trials, the gradual expansion of the country across the continent, the ill treatment of Native Americans, and slavery. It is about how the values of the Founding Fathers laid down in the Bill of Rights have made for a more peaceful and fair country, but one that has not always lived up to its promises and ideals.

Although America proclaimed its neutrality when World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, in just a few years it would not only be forced into the bloodiest conflict in world history but would also determine the war's outcome. The unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust were revealed when U.S. and Allied troops liberated concentration camps. Then, in 1945, the United States gave birth to the nuclear age when it dropped atomic bombs on Japan. In the "peace" that followed, the cold war and the arms race escalated, the Korean War broke out, and, at home, the civil rights movement took hold, resulting in anti-black violence and hate crimes, race riots, and political assassinations. This bloody and transformative period of American history is told in vivid detail with the help of an abundance of primary source materials.