Weekly Reading List
* Recommended (Optional ) Readings have been provided in response to student requests. For every topic in the course, there is a wide array of historical sources. These readings provide a deeper view of weekly topics. They are not required to complete course work, but if you are interested, they will reward your time.
Additionally, a complete Course Reader can be purchased on Amazon.com.
Week 1
Required:
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chapters 1 and 2
Recommended (optional):
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade
Jack Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture
Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States
Week 2
Required:
Oluaduh Equiano, Interesting Narrative
Excerpts: p. 5-6, 22-27, 46-51, 70-88, 171-174, 197-98, 201-208
Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures
Recommended (optional):
T.H. Breen, The Marketplace for Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence
Robert Dalzell, Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made
Seth Rockman,Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
Week 3
Required:
Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States
Excerpts: p. 35-41, 67-73, 124-128, 136-150, 211-128
Howard, "The Bay Street Strike", New York Times
Recommended (optional):
Alice Kessler-Harris,Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States
Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Week 4
Required:
Andrew Jackson, Veto Message
Recommended (optional):
Aaron W. Mars, Railroads in the Old South: : Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society
Roger Ransom, Conflict and Compromise
Week 5
Required:
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements
Recommended (optional):
William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women & Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York
Julia Ott, When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investors' Democracy
Week 6
Required:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "Second Fireside Chat"
Recommended (optional):
Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: A History of America in Red Ink
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
Week 7
Required:
Transcript of the Marshall Plan
Recommended (optional):
Louis Hyman, Borrow: The American Way of Debt
Jefferson Cowie, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: the making of Christian free enterprise