Eng 112 Writing and Research in the Disciplines

The Vietnam War constitutes a defining moment in modern history. Starting from a time soon after the Japanese surrender in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, and lasting to the North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam in 1975 to re-create a unified Vietnamese state, the war pitted the Communists of Vietnam, against a number of opponents

The "Linebacker" strategic bombing offensive finally drove the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table and an accord was reached for the departure of the U.S. forces. The USA was mightily relieved to be free of this commitment, but its failure in the Vietnam War was a body blow to U.S. cohesion and belief in itself

"[The author] reveals ... how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded ... Turse lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable. [This book] takes us from archives filled with Washington's long-suppressed war crime investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led soldiers to commit what one participant called 'a My Lai a month

The anti-Communist government of South Vietnam sought American aid, and this grew steadily from technical support, weapons, and equipment, to the initial limited involvement of US forces to protect American interests. This opened the floodgates, and by the mid-1960s ever-larger numbers of US troops poured into South Vietnam as US air power struck at North Vietnam.

Brutally honest and rich in detail, this posthumously published diary of a twenty-seven-year-old Vietcong woman doctor, saved from destruction by an American soldier, gives us fresh insight into the lives of those fighting on the other side of the Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War the US had superior firepower and mobility. However, the Communist forces were prepared to accept great losses, while the US population was becoming increasingly disaffected by the rising casualty rate of their own forces, and the growing credibility gap between what they were being told by their government and what the media was reporting from South Vietnam.

The rise and fall of the European era of world supremacy constitutes one of the most epic histories of all time. Here were the extraordinary changes of the Renaissance and its aftermath, which marked the beginning of Europe's imposition of itself over other civilizations, but it was Columbus's "discovery" of America that provided the key to its meteoric rise. Spain and Portugal would form the first global empires, closely followed by Holland, Britain, France and Russia

In this book the author transports readers to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued the Roman philosophical text On the Nature of Things from certain oblivion

Without the support of American women, victory in the Revolutionary War would not have been possible. They followed the Continental Army, handling a range of jobs that were usually performed by men. On the orders of General Washington, some were hired as nurses for $2 per month and one full ration per day--disease was rampant and nurse mortality was high. A few served with artillery units or masqueraded as men to fight in the ranks. The author focuses on the many key roles women filled in the struggle for independence, from farming to making saltpeter to spying

In Hamilton: An American Biography, Tony Williams provides readers with a concise biography that traces the events and values that enabled Hamilton to rise from his youth as a dispossessed orphan to Revolutionary War hero and Founding Father, a life uniquely shaped by America and who, in turn, contributed to the creation of the American regime of liberty and self-government

Told through the eyes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Great Britain's King George III, Killing England chronicles the path to independence in gripping detail, taking the reader from the battlefields of America to the royal courts of Europe

Arguably no relationship in this country's history carries as much freight as that of John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Gordon Wood has more than done justice to these entwined lives and their meaning; he has written a magnificent new addition to America's collective story.

In The Swamp Fox , the first major biography of Marion in more than forty years, John Oller compiles striking evidence and brings together much recent learning to provide a fresh look both at Marion, the man, and how he helped save the American Revolution

New York Times bestselling account of James Garfield's rise from poverty to the American presidency, and the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy

Here is the riveting story of the Russian Revolution as it unfolded. When Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, inherited the throne in 1894, he was unprepared to do so. With their four daughters (including Anastasia) and only son, a hemophiliac, Nicholas and his reclusive wife, Alexandra, buried their heads in the sand, living a life of opulence as World War I raged outside their door and political unrest grew

Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America from a manual for witch hunters written by King James himself in 1597, to court documents from the Salem witch trials of 1692, to newspaper coverage of a woman stoned to death on the streets of Philadelphia while the Continental Congress met, The Penguin Book of Witches is a treasury of historical accounts of accused witches that sheds light on the reality behind the legends.

English and German settlers brought their beliefs in magic with them from the Old World--sometimes with dangerous consequences. In 1802, an Allegheny County judge helped an accused witch escape an angry mob. Susan Mummey was not so fortunate. In 1934, she was shot and killed in her home by a young Schuylkill County man who was convinced that she had cursed him. In other regions of the state, views on folk magic were more complex. While hex doctors were feared in the Pennsylvania German tradition, powwowers were and are revered for their abilities to heal, lift curses and find lost objects. Folklorist Thomas White traces the history and lore of witchcraft and the occult that quietly live on in Pennsylvania even today.

The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe

In Wilmington's Lie , Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March , a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell

John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a visionary and a man of faith. Using intimate interviews with Lewis and his family and deep research into the history of the civil rights movement, Meacham writes of how the activist and leader was inspired by the Bible, his mother's unbreakable spirit, his sharecropper father's tireless ambition, and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr

Groundbreaking, controversial, and courageous, here is the story of Rosa Parks and Recy Taylor--a story that reinterprets the history of America's civil rights movement in terms of the sexual violence committed against black women by white men

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms.

The early life of Frederick Douglass -- Lesson: A brief history of slavery in America -- Coming to understand slavery -- Unfit to be a slave -- The escape -- Life as a runaway slave -- Lesson: Photography and Frederick Douglass -- England and freedom -- A voice grows louder -- Lesson: A brief explanation of the Civil War -- The war against slavery -- Later years.

In this founding work in the literature of black protest, Du Bois eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy would only serve to perpetuate black oppression.

In Up from Slavery , Washington recounts the story of his life--from slave to educator. The early sections deal with his upbringing as a slave and his efforts to get an education. Washington details his transition from student to teacher, and outlines his own development as an educator and founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In the final chapters of Up From Slavery , Washington describes his career as a public speaker and civil rights activist.

"A "choral history" of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain.