Smithsonian Books imprint: 162 books
History from Things
Essays on Material Culture
Language: English
Release Date: June 4, 2013
* History from Things* explores the many ways objects—defined broadly to range from Chippendale tables and Italian Renaissance pottery to seventeenth-century parks and a New England cemetery—can reconstruct and help reinterpret the past. Eighteen essays describe how to “read” artifacts,...
by G. Kurt Piehler
Language: English
Release Date: October 28, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: October 28, 2014
Wars do not fully end when the shooting stops. As G. Kurt Piehler reveals in this book, after every conflict from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf War, Americans have argued about how and for what deeds and heroes wars should be remembered.
Drawing on sources ranging from government documents...
Inventing New England
Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century
Language: English
Release Date: January 14, 2014
Quaint, charming, nostalgic New England: rustic fishing villages, romantic seaside cottages, breathtaking mountain vistas, peaceful rural settings. In Inventing New England, Dona Brown traces the creation of these calendar-page images and describes how tourism as a business emerged and came to shape...
When Humans Nearly Vanished
The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
Language: English
Release Date: October 16, 2018
The fascinating true story of the explosion of the Mount Toba supervolcano--the Earth's largest eruption in the past 28 million years--and its lasting impact on Earth and human evolution
Some 73,000 years ago, the huge dome of Mount Toba, in today's Sumatra, Indonesia, began to rumble. A deep...
Nation to Nation
Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations
Language: English
Release Date: September 30, 2014
Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indians explores the promises, diplomacy, and betrayals involved in treaties and treaty making between the United States government and Native Nations. One side sought to own the riches of North America and the other struggled to hold...
Sweet Home Café Cookbook
A Celebration of African American Cooking
Language: English
Release Date: October 23, 2018
A celebration of African American cooking with 109 recipes from the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Sweet Home Café
Since the 2016 opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, its Sweet Home Café has become a destination in its own right....
by Ellen M. Litwicki
Language: English
Release Date: August 6, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: August 6, 2013
From the revered Memorial Day to the forgotten Lasties Day, America's Public Holidays is a timely and thoughtful analysis of how the civic culture of America has been fashioned. By analyzing how holidays became a forum for expressing patriotism, how public tradition has been invented, and how the...
Second Nature
Environmental Enrichment for Captive Animals
Language: English
Release Date: January 11, 2012
Growing recognition of the complexity of animals' physical, social, and psychological lives in the wild has led both zookeepers and the zoo-going public to call for higher environmental standards for animals in captivity.
Bringing together the work of animal behaviorists, zoo biologists, and...
by Craig B. Smith, Mark Lehner
Language: English
Release Date: February 20, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: February 20, 2018
Going beyond even the expertise of archaeologists and historians, world-class engineer Craig B. Smith explores the planning and engineering behind the incredible Great Pyramid of Giza. How would the ancient Egyptians have developed their building plans, devised work schedules, managed laborers, solved...
The Mind of War
John Boyd and American Security
Language: English
Release Date: January 11, 2012
The ideas of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd have transformed American military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilot and a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force's premier fighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped...
Counting the Days
POWs, Internees, and Stragglers of World War II in the Pacific
Language: English
Release Date: May 8, 2012
Counting the Days is the story of six prisoners of war imprisoned by both sides during the conflict the Japanese called the "Pacific War." As in all wars, the prisoners were civilians as well as military personnel. Two of the prisoners were captured on the second day of the war and spent...
War Games
Inside the World of Twentieth-Century War Reenactors
Language: English
Release Date: May 27, 2014
D-Day with beach umbrellas in the distance? Troops ordering ice cream? American and German forces celebrating Christmas together in the barracks? This could only be the curious world of 20th-century war reenactors. A relatively recent and rapidly expanding phenomenon, reenactments in the United States...
by Lon O. Nordeen
Language: English
Release Date: December 2, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: December 2, 2014
Lon O. Nordeen has completely updated his 1985 chronicle of military aviation’s evolving role in warfare, now covering the major conflicts of the past four decades. He presents the historical and political background of each conflict and includes in-depth discussions of the aircraft, weapons, tactics,...
Uncommon Ground
Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800
Language: English
Release Date: January 11, 2012
Winner of the Southern Anthropological Society's prestigious James Mooney Award, Uncommon Ground takes a unique archaeological approach to examining early African American life. Ferguson shows how black pioneers worked within the bars of bondage to shape their distinct identity and lay a rich foundation...