With this book, students, teachers, and general readers get a most important look at primary documents—essentially history's "first draft"—revealing rare insights into how American life in past eras really was, and also about how professional historians begin their work. Daily Life through American History in Primary Documents presents a large sweep of American history through the voices of the American people themselves. This multivolume work explores the daily lives of American people from colonial times to the present through primary documents that include diaries, letters, memoirs, speeches, sermons, pamphlets, and all manner of public and private writings from "the people." The emphasis is on the variety of people's experiences as they ordered and lived their daily lives. The cast includes Americans of every class and condition, men and women, parents and children, free and "unfree," native-born and immigrant. Hundreds of images further illustrate American life as it developed over more than four centuries and as Americans moved across a continent. Organized both chronologically and topically, this collection invites many uses by students, teachers, librarians, and anyone wanting to discover what counted in American lives at any one time and over time. Its focus on primary documents encourages readers of the volume to explore specific and critical events by taking a firsthand look at the actual documents from which those events draw historical meaning. The documents show Americans at work, at home, at play, in the public square, in places of worship, and on the move. As such, they perfectly complement the acclaimed Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in America and will enrich any American history, social science, and sociology classroom.

Donald Cole analyzes the political skills that brought Van Buren the nickname Little Magician," describing how he built the Albany Regency (which became a model for political party machines) and how he created the Democratic party of Andrew Jackson. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This bibliography of more than three thousand entries, often extensively annotated, lists books and pamphlets that illuminate evolving British views on the United States during a period of great change on both sides of the Atlantic. Subjects addressed in various decades include slavery and abolitionism, women's rights, the Civil War, organized labor, economic, cultural, and social behavior, political and religious movements, and the "American" character in general.