Free and Independent: The Declaration of Independence
A library is the perfect place to explore the origins of a country founded on words.
What did Congress mean when they declared that “all men are created equal,” that people had an unalienable right to “the pursuit of happiness,” that the British King was a “tyrant,” or that the former colonies were now “Free and Independent States”? How did contemporaries of all kinds in 1776 interpret these words? And how might our own understandings differ, 250 years later?
This exhibition, anchored by a rare early copy of the Declaration of Independence, invites visitors to survey the words of the founding document of the United States, to consider some of the surprising ideas behind those words, and to trace their circulation and impact in the age of the American Revolution.
A hilarious and satirically accurate introduction to the United States immigration system from comedian and writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Felipe Torres Medina "A funny, empathetic, and formally inventive guide to the U.S. immigration system." (Kirkus) / "A funny book about immigration and sexy centaurs." (Stephen Colbert) Born in Colombia, Felipe Torres Medina moved to the US at the age of 21 and has spent over ten years of his life both navigating the chaos and confusion of the immigration system and explaining that craziness to the clueless Americans around him. There are few subjects that Americans have stronger opinions on. And there are few subjects that they know less about. So, like many immigrants before him, Torres Medina sets out to do the job American-born citizens won't: make the US immigration process accessible, relatable, and, hey, a little bit funny. With an outsider's eye, an insider's affection, and a biting, humorous flair, Torres Medina invites readers from all passport lines to explore the multiple paths and potholes of moving to America, and experience just how many choices it takes to choose a new home. In this laugh-out-loud book, you will be taken down a multitude of possible immigration stories that range from the kafkaesquely silly to an uproarious good time. Some of them are real things that happened to Felipe--like discovering in an immigration interview that he shares a name with several criminals--and some of them are totally invented and will make you question your sanity. By the end of this handy guide, you'll learn all you need to know about visas like the H-1B work visa, the infamous 90-day fiancé visa, the so-called Einstein visa, and many more. Remember, the fate of each character's journey is all in your hands. So choose at your own risk.
As the United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026, renowned historian Marc Stein looks back at the politics of another landmark celebration during a time of striking similarities and surprising differences: the US bicentennial in 1976. In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the bicentennial sparked an extraordinary national conversation about the country's past, present, and future. As patriots, planners, profiteers, and protesters argued about how to commemorate the national birthday, they collectively reimagined the promises and perils of democracy during a transformational decade. From award-winning historian Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s is an original, illuminating, and insightful study of that era. While focusing on festivities and fights in Philadelphia, the nation's birthplace, the book also explores the many proposed and abandoned celebrations that percolated up around the country. It tells a broadly democratic story of both the "official" bicentennial and counter-bicentennial activism, offering revolutionary perspectives on national politics, social movements, and popular culture. From the queer courtship of President Richard Nixon and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo to parades and protests with millions of participants, and from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' disease at Philadelphia's most prestigious hotel to the establishment of groundbreaking African American, ethnic, and Jewish museums, the bicentennial reveals a kaleidoscope of American peculiarities, problems, and possibilities. The lasting influence of 1976 on one of the nation's great urban centers and the United States as a whole is undeniable. As the nation--once again enmeshed in political and social upheaval--marks its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday in 2026, there is no better time to look back at its two-hundredth and marvel at what has changed, and what has not.
The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this "groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States" (Ibram X. Kendi)--the perfect companion to An Indigenous People's History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the United States.
An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are--and have always been--instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today. A Black Women's History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women's lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women's history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.
An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are--and have always been--instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today. A Black Women's History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women's lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women's history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.
"Historical accuracy and human understanding require coming down from the high ground and seeing people in all their complexity. Serena Zabin's rich and highly enjoyable book does just that."--Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal
A dramatic, untold "people's history" of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution.
The story of the Boston Massacre--when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death--is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: this pivotal event in colonial America arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.
Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs, and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution.
Serena Zabin's The Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.
This character-rich narrative history explores the forgotten relationships at the heart of the conflict:
A fascinating look at how coffee tied the economic future of the early United States to the wider Atlantic world
Coffee is among the most common goods traded and consumed worldwide, and so omnipresent its popularity is often taken for granted. But even everyday habits have a history. When and why coffee become part of North American daily life is at the center of Coffee Nation. Using a wide range of archival, quantitative, and material evidence, Michelle Craig McDonald follows coffee from the slavery-based plantations of the Caribbean and South America, through the balance sheets of Atlantic world merchants, into the coffeehouses, stores, and homes of colonial North Americans, and ultimately to the growing import/export businesses of the early nineteenth-century United States that rebranded this exotic good as an American staple. The result is a sweeping history that explores how coffee shaped the lives of enslaved laborers and farmers, merchants and retailers, consumers and advertisers. Coffee Nation also challenges traditional interpretations of the American Revolution, as coffee's spectacular profitability in US markets and popularity on the new nation's tables by the mid-nineteenth century was the antithesis of independence. From its beginnings as a colonial commodity in the early eighteenth century, coffee's popularity soared to become a leading global economy by the 1830s. The United States dominated this growth, by importing ever-increasing amounts of the commodity for drinkers at home and developing a lucrative re-export trade to buyers overseas. But while income generated from coffee sales made up an expanding portion of US trade revenue, the market always depended on reliable access to a commodity that the nation could not grow for itself. By any measure, the coffee industry was a financial success story, but one that runs counter to the dominant narrative of national autonomy. Distribution, not production, lay at the heart of North America's coffee business, and its profitability and expansion relied on securing and maintaining ties first with the Caribbean and then Latin America.
This keepsake edition presents Thomas Paine's persuasive and impassioned case for America's independence from Great Britain.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham introduces America's essential founding documents in an elegant, readable, and timeless volume. In the winter of 1860-1861, facing the prospect of secession and civil war, President Abraham Lincoln held fast to the founding promise of the now-imperiled United States of America. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had forged the nation, and Lincoln intended to defend them. But even more importantly, Lincoln saw "something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something is the principle of 'Liberty to all.'" That principle remains as vital today as it has been throughout the first 250 years of our nation's history. Presented here with an introduction by bestselling American historian and biographer Jon Meacham, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America are both timeless and timely, offering a window into the complex poltical world of the nation's founders--and important lessons for our own. As Meacham writes, "If America is to be America, the foundational documents reprinted here must be not theoretical but tactile, not quaint but vivid, not dead but alive."
From the New York Times bestselling author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw and The Only Good Indians come all three volumes of the time-hopping horror thriller about far-future Indigenous outcasts collected into one value-priced omnibus. The year is 2112, and it's the apocalypse exactly as expected: rivers receding, oceans rising, civilization crumbling. Humanity has given up hope, except for a group of Indigenous outcasts who have discovered a time-travel portal and figured out where everything took a turn for the worst: America. Convinced that the only way to save the world is to rewrite its past, they send one of their own--a reluctant linguist named Tad--on a bloody one-way mission to 1492 to kill Christopher Columbus before he reaches the so-called New World. But there are steep costs to disrupting the timeline, and his actions could trigger a devastating new fate for his friends and the future. Then, travel to the Ice Age on a mission exploring America's pre-Columbian past! It's circa 20,000 BC and the breathtaking and bloodthirsty megafauna are the least of the problems when our protagonists are caught in a war between a community of native Paleo-Indians and an occupying Solutrean force. In the final volume, faced with the consequences of their actions--and their own slippery moral rationalizations--620 years in the future, the path is clear. There's no better time and place to take another stab at America than Philadelphia, 1776. Join writer Stephen Graham Jones and artists Davide Gianfelice, Riccardo Burchielli, Patricio Delpeche, and Emily Schnall in this epic that collects all three volumes of Earthdivers (Vol. 1: Kill Columbus, Vol. 2: Ice Age, and Vol. 3: 1776) into one omnibus.
Join or die! New York Times best-selling author Stephen Graham Jones and artist Davide Gianfelice are back in action for the next chapter of their heart-pounding historical sci-fi slasher Earthdivers! A team of time-traveling Indigenous survivors had one goal: save the world from an American apocalypse by sending one of their own on a suicide trip to kill Christopher Columbus and course-correct world history. Mission accomplished? Maybe not. Blood is still soaking into the sands of San Salvador as Tad's friends suffer the consequences of his actions--and their own slippery moral rationalizations--620 years in the future. Faced with a choice to watch the world crumble or double down on their cause, the path is clear for Seminole two-spirit Emily: it's personal now, and there's no better time and place to take another stab at America than Philadelphia, 1776. But where violence just failed them, she has a new plan: pass as a man, infiltrate the Founding Fathers, and use only wit and words to carve out a better future in the Declaration of Independence. No need to cut throats this time...right? The next chapter of the critically acclaimed sci-fi epic is here in Earthdivers Vol. 3. Collects Earthdivers #11-16.