Brian Swanson: 5 books

All money falls into one of two categories: income or principal. Do you know the difference? Can you distinguish the gain derived from capital from the capital itself? Do you know how these financial resources are divided between the federal and state governments? Do you know how the Constitution...

The Blue, the Gray, and the Green is one of only a handful of books to apply an environmental history approach to the Civil War. This book explores how nature—disease, climate, flora and fauna, and other factors—affected the war and also how the war shaped Americans’ perceptions, understanding,...

Just as the lives of slaves and Indigenous peoples paid for the early growth of the new American nation, so too were lives sacrificed to advance the expansion of empire in the 20th century. Book Two in this epic three-part series is a damning account of war—and the selling of war in America—revealing...

Films possess virtually unlimited power for crafting broad interpretations of American history. Nineteenth-century America has proven especially conducive to Hollywood imaginations, producing indelible images like the plight of Davy Crockett and the defenders of the Alamo, Pickett’s doomed charge...

Concurrent enrollment programs offer high-achieving high school students the opportunity to take college credit-bearing courses taught by college-approved high school teachers. This low-cost, scalable model brings accelerated coursework to urban, suburban, and rural students. In this book, scholars...