250 Years of American History

About this book

Two and a half centuries. Thirteen colonies to fifty states. From Lexington to the smartphone, from the Declaration to the Dust Bowl, from Appomattox to 9/11 - the full story, told in one book.In July 2026, the United States marks two hundred and fifty years since the Declaration of Independence. A quarter of a millennium of revolution, war, expansion, struggle, invention, immigration, and reinvention. A story that began with thirteen colonies on the edge of an empire - and produced the most powerful country in human history.This book tells that story in full, year by year, era by era, and across the lives of the people who actually built it.From the tea protests of Boston to the trenches of France. From Lincoln's funeral train to the moon landing. From the Wright brothers' first flight to the iPhone in your pocket. From Pearl Harbor to the pandemic. Every era. Every turn. Every cost. Every triumph.This is not a sanitized civics class and not a one-sided polemic. It's the full sweep of 250 years - the founders and the enslaved, the generals and the union organizers, the immigrants and the indigenous nations, the inventors and the protestors, the presidents and the people who never made the textbook.Inside, you'll travel through: The World Before 1776 and the Birth of a New Nation: Indigenous nations, colonial life, the slave trade, the Great Awakening, and the quarrel with London that turned thirteen colonies into a republic The Revolution and the Long Fight for a Constitution: From Lexington to Yorktown to Philadelphia - and the men, women, soldiers, and enslaved Americans who carried the country through its founding decade The Young Republic and Jackson's America: The Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, mass democracy, Indian Removal, the cotton frontier, and the immigrants and reformers who reshaped daily life Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction: King Cotton, the abolition movement, Lincoln, Appomattox, the freedmen's first decade of freedom - and the violent collapse of Reconstruction The Gilded Age, Progressives, and an Empire on the Rise: Railroads, robber barons, the closing of the frontier, the rise of American empire, and the reformers who tried to tame it Two World Wars and the Crash Between Them: The trenches of the Great War, the Jazz Age, the Crash of 1929, FDR's New Deal, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and the country that emerged a superpower Cold War, Civil Rights, and the Sixties Unravel: Korea, McCarthy, Brown v. Board, Selma, Vietnam, Watergate, and the decade that broke the postwar consensus Reagan, the End of the Cold War, and the Long American Peace: Stagflation, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dot-com boom - and the country at the end of the 20th century 9/11, the Long Wars, and the Smartphone Decade: Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 crash, the rise of social media, and the years that rewired American life Pandemic and the Eve of 250: Covid, supply shocks, polarization, and the country as it approaches its semiquincentennial Whether you're marking the semiquincentennial, looking for an honest one-volume history to give your children or grandchildren, or simply ready to understand the country you live in, this book is the full story - clear, honest, and unhurried.