Witnessing America: The Library of Congress Book of Firsthand Accounts of Life in America 1600-1900 - Hardcover

Billington, James; Rae, Noel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670864005 ISBN 13: 9780670864003

Publisher: Penguin, 1996

Synopsis

A social and cultural history of the United States, told in the words of ordinary Americans, from the planting of the first settlements in Jamestown and Plymouth to the turn of the 20th century. Extracts form letters, diaries, memoirs, travel books, newspaper accounts, posters, advertisements, broadsides, and official documents combine to form a patchwork quilt of life in the United States. The book focuses on the specific and the personal rather than the abstract and the general - going to church on a cold winter day to hear a hellfire sermon, on what people elected to wear rather than who they elected to office, on going to school, living in a log or sod house, giving birth and dying.

About this title

Product Description

What was it like to live in log cabin, face a stampede, pan for gold, or work in a sweatshop? Or to be a Civil War nurse or a prisoner of frontier Indians? Witnessing America weaves intimate eye-witness accounts into an extraordinary collective cultural memory, a patchwork quilt of American life--from the telling of an Native American creation story to a prairie wedding to the memories of a sod house builder in the 19th century. Handsomely illustrated with unusual and rare pieces of art from the Library of Congress.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670864005
• ISBN 13: 9780670864003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576