Marquette University
Department of History
Suggested Reading List for
MA Exams in Early United States History
Important Historiographic Collection:
Foner, Eric. The New American History
COLONIAL:
Recommended Synthesis: Taylor, Alan, American Colonies: The Settling of North America.
Bailyn, Bernard, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (2005)
Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
Brown, Kathleen. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power
in Colonial Virginia
Calloway, Colin. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land
Greene, Jack. Pursuits of Happiness
Greven, Philip. Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover,
Massachusetts
Gutierrez, Ramon. When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away
Isaac, Rhys, The Transformation of Virginia
Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
(1998)
Morgan, Edmund, American Slavery American Freedom
Norton, Mary Beth. Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American
Society
Richter, Daniel. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
White, Richard, The Middle Ground
REVOLUTION/EARLY REPUBLIC:
Recommended Synthesis American Revolution: Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause: The
American Revolution, 1763-1789
Recommended Synthesis Early Republic: Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the
Early Republic, 1789-1815
Berkin, Carol, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (2003)
Bailyn, Bernard. Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Holton, Woody, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (2007)
Kerber, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
McCoy, Drew. The Elusive Republic
Nash, Gary. The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American
Revolution
Rothman, Adam, Slave Country (2007)
Sellers, Charles. The Market Revolution
Taylor, George Rogers. The Transportation Revolution
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 17851812
Waldstreicher, David, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American
Nationalism, 1776-1820 (1997)
Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class,
1788-1850
Wood, Gordon. Creation of the American Republic
Young, Alfred, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party
Zagarri, Rosemarie, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic
(2008)
ANTEBELLUM:
Recommended Synthesis Antebellum: Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The
Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford)
Boyer, Paul. Urban Masses, Moral Order
Feller, Daniel. The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815 to 1840
Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll
Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness
Litwack, Leon. North of Slavery
Walters, Ronald. American Reformers, 1815-1860