American History Since 1877

Resources selected to supplement American History Since 1877 (HSTY 202) taught at Tompkins Cortland Community College.

Introduction

Books in Our Library

• American Decades (2001) - 10 volume online encyclopedia.
• American Decades Primary Sources (2004) - 10 volume online encyclopedia. "Cross-disciplinary source spanning the 20th century. Each volume in the set includes full or excerpted primary sources representing the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from a decade. Includes oral histories, songs, speeches, advertisements, TV, play and movie scripts, letters, laws , legal decisions, newspaper articles, cartoons, recipes etc."
• American National Biography [Ref CT 213 .A68 1999]
• Annals of America [REF E173 .A793 1968] - Primary Source.
• The Columbia Documentary History of American Women since 1941 [HQ1420 .C65 2003]
• Dictionary of American History [Ref E 174 .E53 2003]
• Documents of American History (since 1898), 9th ed. [REF E173 .C66 1973] - Primary source.
• Encyclopedia of American History [Ref E 174 .E63 2003]
• Eyewitness to History [Ref D5 .E94 1987] - Primary Source.
• From the Folks who Brought you the Weekend: a Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States [HD8066 .M86 2001]
• The People’s Chronology: a Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present (2005) by James Trager [Online]
• 1897 Sears Roebuck Catalogue [O-SIZE TS199 .S4315 1897] - Primary Source.
• Sears, Roebuck and Company: Consumers Guide, Fall 1900 [TS199 .S4315 1900] - Primary Source
• Sears, Roebuck and Co. Incorporated, 1909 Catalog [TS199 .S4315 1909] - Primary Source
• This was America: True Accounts of People and Places, Manners and Customs, as Recorded by European Travelers to the Western Shore in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries [E161 .H3] - Primary Source.
• The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History [E169.1 .L5374 1993]
• Witness to History, 1929-1969 [E748.B64 A38]

Don't hesitate to ask a reference librarian for help in locating books and media in the TC3 Library Catalog. Material not owned by our library can be located and borrowed through the SUNY Union Catalog, a single search interface for 62 SUNY library catalogs and WorldCat, a wordwide database of library books and materials.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

Try these suggested subject headings to find books in the TC3 Library Catalog, the SUNY Union Catalog and WorldCat.

• Labor, United States, History
• Popular culture, United States, History
• Social values, United States, History
• Women -- Social conditions -- United States
• United States, Historiography
• United States, History, 1933-1945
• United States, History, Sources
• United States, History, 20th century

Multimedia

• People, places, and events - Documentary Photo Aids [Media E178 .A4] - "Reproductions of photographs and cartoons showing people and events in United States and world history."
• History 7B US History: from Civil War to Present - Spring 2006, Jennifer Burns, instructor. Lectures available as streaming video.

History Journals in Electronic Format

History-related electronic journals are available to TC3 students and staff in our electronic databases and in our list of full-text electronic journals, also listed by subject (History & Archaeology).

Web Resources

• American Memory - Library of Congress digital collection of over five million items.
• American Rhetoric - "Index to and growing database of 5,000+ full-text, audio, and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events."
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers - "This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1860-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
• Collections at the Archives of American Art - Collection is described as "the largest source in the world of primary source documentation on the visual arts in America. Contained in the over five thousand collections, are letters, diaries, sketches and sketchbooks, photographs, exhibition catalogs, scrapbooks, business records, art periodicals, and other types of documents... combined with approximately three thousand interviews done for AAA's oral history program, and nearly one thousand photographs in AAA's Photographs of Artists Collections..."
• Digital History - Primary sources, audio files, video.
• George Grantham Bain Collection - "The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s." From the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
• HathiTrust Digital Library - A rich collection of digitized texts including many primary sources relevent to American History
• Historical Census Browser - "Data presented here describe the population and economy of U.S. states and counties from 1790 to 1960."
• History of the Federal Judiciary: Teaching Judicial History - Extensive information on The Trial of Susan B. Anthony, Chew Heong v. United States: Chinese Exclusion and the Federal Courts, The Debs Case: Labor, Capital, and the Federal Courts of the 1890s, Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement, Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board and the Desegregation of New Orleans Schools, and the Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial.
• In the First Person: an index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives - More than 2,500 collections of oral history from around the world.
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook - Links to primary documents and texts.
• Making of America - Extensive digital library of nineteenth century books and journals. This digitization project was undertaken at both the University of Michigan and Cornell University with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Search both collections; the Michigan collection consists of imprints between 1850 and 1877 and "currently contains approximately 9,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints" and the Cornell collection, which covers the period of 1840-1900, "provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles." You can browse periodical titles at Cornell and Michigan.
• National Portrait Gallery - Database of over 80,000 online portraits.
• New York Times Site Map of Free Articles
• 100 Milestone Documents - The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has compiled 100 documents that "chronicle United States history from 1776-1965."
• New York Times Archive - The years 1851 to 1922 are in the public domain. Search by keyword, author, headline or date. Use the pulldown menu to select the Archive for 1851 to 1980
• Project Gutenberg - Historical texts.
• TeacherServe - National Humanities Center. Consists of two sections: Divining America Religion and the National Culture and Nature Transformed The Environment in American History.
• United States National Archives Administration (NARA) - Links to many primary source documents, organized by topic (e.g., Prohibition, Women).
• Women Working, 1870-1930 - Primary source documents.