Full AspenCat Catalog

From America's master storyteller and writer of historical fiction comes the epic story of two families -- the Hazards and the Mains. Separated by vastly different ways of life, joined by the unbreakable bonds of true friendship, and torn asunder by a country at the threshold of a bloody conflict that would change their lives forever....

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's provocative reinterpretation of the eight decades surrounding the Civil War (and leading into the twentieth century); the next volume in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner. In this ambitious story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Steven Hahn takes on the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective...

Written by American author and dedicated abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Toms Cabin" is a poignant novel which shows the harsh reality of a slaves life in the 1800s. Uncle Tom, an African-American slave who believes in the power of Christian faith. The book would be a major contributor to the Civil War because its compelling portrayal of slaves as fellow human beings left little room for compromise: if slaves were indeed...

The spellbinding story behind the longest debate in U.S. Senate history: the Compromise of 1850, which brought together Senate luminaries on the eve of the Civil War in a desperate effort to save the Union.

"Roberts marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War by offering a ... look at Washington, D.C., and the experiences, influence, and contributions of its women during this momentous period of American history"--Amazon.com.

In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative...

Cokie Roberts sheds new light on the generation of heroines, reformers, and visionaries who helped shape our nation with this blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women's public roles and private responsibilities. Drawing on personal correspondence, private journals, and other primary sources--many of them previously unpublished--Roberts brings to life the extraordinary accomplishments of women who laid the groundwork...

Following Abraham Lincoln's election as President of the United States in 1861, eleven states withdrew from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, sparking a bitterly contested war between North and South. The casualty figures of 1861-1865 exceed those of American soldiers killed in every other war put together. With maps, portraits, and artifacts from the Smithsonian's unrivaled collections, The Civil War traces the major engagements,...

Investigates changing interpretations of Nationalism following the War of 1812.

Man's Better Angels explores the ideas that influenced antebellum reform efforts in the United States, especially after the social, political, and economic shocks the country suffered after the Panic of 1837. The Panic also galvanized reformers, encouraging some to act and others to act even more aggressively. Overwhelmingly, these reformers were animated by an ethic of individualism and self-reliance through which they believed social harmony was...