Witnessing America: 1the Library of Congress Book of First-Hand Accounts of Public Life

by Douglas Brinkley, Noel Rae James H. Billington Douglas Brinkley, James H. Billington, et al.

Book Overview

First-hand accounts by ordinary Americans describe what it was like to live in a log cabin, face a stampede, pan for gold, be whipped, work in a sweatshop, and confront many other experiences. 50,000... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670864005
• ISBN13: 9780670864003
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 556 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

This is history on a personal level

A wonderful, insightful and very personal view of history. You'll read about America's history from viewpoints that are never printed in the standard books. It's funny, sad, and absolutely enthralling.

From the source's mouth

From the collection of the Library of Congress, editor Noel Rae has compiled an enthralling and absorbing mosaic of history from 1600 to 1900. Rather than distill and interpret from his primary sources, Rae has let the people speak for themselves in diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and book excerpts. The book is divided into eleven chapters and "follows the general progression of life from the cradle to the grave."Beginning with "Arrivals," Rae documents the immigrant experience from Indian legends to slaves and indentured servants. An aristocratic young mother escapes from Revolutionary France, and Minnesota appeals for settlers. "Physicians who expect to live by the practice of their profession will find Minnesota a poor field for a location."Captain John Smith concludes his account of the Jamestown Massacre, "Thus you have heard the particulars...which...some say will be good for the Plantation, because now we have just cause to destroy them [Indians] by all meanes possible.""Upbringing" includes prescriptions for good behavior and proper schooling as well as W.E.B. Du Bois' touching account of teaching rural black children and a young Crow Indian learning to "count coup.""Pairing" offers anecdotes from farmers, city dandies, pioneers, Puritans and slaves as well as the British actress Fanny Kemble's wrenching account of her efforts to preserve a slave family from being sold apart, and Benjamin Franklin's amusing story of a failed courtship. Also featured are punishments for adulterers and divorce practices among the Indians.In "Working" an isolated fur trapper immobilized by a broken ankle awaits rescue with harrowing visits from winter, hostile Indians and hungry wolves. Mark Twain describes an Illinois farmer's wife whose day begins before dawn and who concludes, "I have never had a vacation, but if I should be allowed one I should surely be pleased to spend it in an art gallery.""Housing" offers advice from "The American Frugal Housewife," a captive woman's description of moving camp among the Sioux, a cowboy's hilarious attempts to winter in a dug-out, and the prodigious diarist George Temptleton Strong's account of a New York fire."Eating" explores high living and low, from starving in Jamestown and Jack London's experience of prison food, to Ward McAllister's tips on serving dinner to the cream of New York society. Children's games, parties, Custer hunting buffalo and Reverend Increase Mather's views on dancing paint a picture of "Playing" before the advent of television.The variety of American "Praying" takes in Cotton Mather's justification of the Salem witch trials, practices among slaves, spirit possession among Shakers and at revival meetings, and the various prejudices felt by one religion for another."Erring" encompasses gun duels in the wild west, sodomy among the Pilgrims, an execution for theft during the California gold rush carried out by the jury, and the visceral brutality of the Ku Klux Klan.In "Ailing," a sick Germa

Primary documents teach best, and this is no exception

As a consultant for a National Archives project working with primary documents and American history, I found this book to be very useful and enlightening. Witnessing America is divided into several categories detailing different facets of American life. Taken from a wide variety of sources, times, and authors, readers will be able to better understand how Americans evolved as a people in time with their history unfolding around them. I use several of the excerpts conatined in the book for my Advanced Placement level U.S. History class, and they find the choice of selections easy to use and entertaining. Overall, the breadth and depth of this work are best complimented by noting that a followup effort on the rest of the years of U.S. History would be most welcome. As a source to best hear from our ancestors about their lives and what they confronted, I have not seen much like this compliation in several years of looking. For information on the way people lived, and not the usual history books often used in a class, this one will teach you well.