In 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall reviewed the history of America and concluded, “The Union has been preserved thus far by miracles. I fear they cannot continue.” Alan Taylor, professor of history at the University of Virginia and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, explores the complex and often tragic history behind Marshall’s thinking in his sweeping, beautifully written, prodigiously researched and myth-busting American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850.

Contrary to popular belief, most of the Founding Fathers didn’t intend to create a democracy. Instead, they designed a national republic to restrain state democracies. Additionally, the founders didn’t agree on principles or goals for their republic, and most believed that preserving slavery was the price to pay for holding the fragile Union together. 

Taylor’s powerful overview explores this fierce struggle between groups and governments as settlers expanded the country westward. Any challenges to the supremacy of white men or their reliance on slavery were met with threats of secession by enslavers and their political allies. Breaking treaties with, dispossessing and killing Native Americans were commonplace, and those who spoke out against prevailing ways often suffered strong rebukes.

When New York journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in 1845, he justified annexing Texas and Oregon as part of a moral empire based on citizen consent, in contrast to European empires built from violent conquest. O’Sullivan overlooked a lot. For example, slavery became more entrenched and profitable as the country expanded. By 1860, the monetary value of enslaved people was greater than that of the nation’s banks, factories and railroads combined. Slavery divided the country, but racism united most white people. Even in the North, free Black Americans couldn’t serve on juries, weren’t hired for better-paying jobs and were denied public education.

Anyone interested in American history will appreciate this richly rewarding book.

Annette Gordon-Reed opens On Juneteenth by reflecting on her conflicted emotions about Juneteenth becoming a national celebration. It is, she notes, a distinctly Texan holiday, since it commemorates the day in June 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to announce the end of legalized slavery in the United States—two months after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. It’s also a deeply personal holiday, one that Black Texans have celebrated with family and friends ever since Granger read out his proclamation. And yet, Gordon-Reed acknowledges, it’s also a profoundly American holiday, just as Texas is perhaps the most profoundly American state.

This ambivalence inspires Gordon-Reed to explore the significance of this holiday within the broader context of Texan history. On Juneteenth is a collection of historical essays, ranging from the Spanish conquest to the present, that investigates what it means to be Texan. Against the background of the archetypal white cowboy and the ten-gallon hat oilman, Gordon-Reed demonstrates how the history of Texas is also the history of African Americans, Native Americans and Mexican Americans. Indeed, slavery was integral to the formation of the Republic of Texas—as well as the state of Texas. Understanding this truth, Gordon-Reed argues, is key to understanding the role racism continues to play in Texas and, by extension, the nation.

As the Carl W. Loeb Professor of history at Harvard, Gordon-Reed is no stranger to illuminating the uncomfortable truths of our past. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, a groundbreaking multigenerational history of the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, an enslaved African American woman.

On Juneteenth is written on a smaller and more personal scale than her previous work, but it is no less powerful. Gordon-Reed’s essays seamlessly merge history and memoir into a complex portrait of her beloved, turbulent Texas, revealing new truths about a state that, more than any other, embodies all the virtues and faults of America. 

Imagine that you and your family have been taken into custody. You’ve lost your home and small business. Fellow Americans have berated and beaten you. Now you’re all living behind a fence in a single room in a squalid barrack in some desolate nowhere. And the government comes to you and says, “We want you to join the Army and risk your life to fight for the United States.”

It's astounding that anyone said yes, much less thousands of people. The Japanese Americans who formed the 442nd Infantry Regiment—the most decorated unit in U.S. history for its size and service length—were American patriots, and many felt they needed to demonstrate their loyalty to their country. They certainly succeeded.

In Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II, Daniel James Brown tackles this important story with the same impressive narrative talent and research that made his 2013 book, The Boys in the Boat, an enduring bestseller. He shares the story of issei (first-generation Japanese Americans) and nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) who fought in World War II by focusing on four young men: three from Hawaii and the West Coast who joined the 442nd, and one, no less courageous, who went to prison for peacefully resisting what he believed were violations of the Constitution.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: American actor Louis Ozawa’s ability to speak both English and Japanese serves him well in narrating the audiobook of Facing the Mountain.

Brown takes us through the shock of the internment camps and the struggle for Hawaiians and mainlanders to overcome tensions and establish a cohesive fighting unit. The centerpieces of Facing the Mountain are the wrenching, on-the-ground descriptions of battles fought by the 442nd in Europe, most notably the uphill rescue of the “Lost Battalion” of Texans in France, in which the nisei suffered more than 800 casualties to rescue some 200 men.

Many readers will feel ashamed of the bigotry these men and their families faced—but every reader will admire the resilience that allowed these soldiers to create communities within the internment camps and to play such a pivotal role in the defeat of the Nazis. Most are gone now, but their stories will live on in this empathetic tribute to their courage.

The history of the abolitionist movement in antebellum America is generally well known. Most Americans have heard about the impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Northerners’ opinions about slavery, and they’ve read about the underground railroad. Recent novels, movies and television series have also heightened public awareness of figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and John Brown.

There was also a struggle to win civil rights for free Black people in the North during this time, but that history has been more obscure—until now. Kate Masur, a professor of history at Northwestern University, brings this critical chapter of our history to light in Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From the Revolution to Reconstruction.

Masur’s scholarly but accessible history demonstrates how thoroughly racism pervaded both the North and the South during the 19th century. New states, including so-called “free states” such as Ohio, Illinois and Oregon, tried to prohibit free African Americans from buying land or settling within their borders. Black sailors who ended up in Southern ports were frequently jailed until they could prove their free status—and often enslaved and sold when they couldn’t pay the costs of their imprisonment. Most states prevented Black people from testifying in court against white Americans, and only a handful allowed Black men to vote.

Most importantly, Until Justice Be Done demonstrates that the fight for equality and justice is as old as the republic itself. With meticulous research, Masur lays out the history of Black Americans’ struggle to be recognized as citizens—a struggle that started before the ink on the Constitution was dry. Their fight set the stage for the formation and victory of the antislavery Republican Party in 1861; the Emancipation Proclamation; the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; and the first Civil Rights Act.

While these activists’ victories weren’t total—many of their achievements were later reversed—their efforts laid essential groundwork for future generations, including our own. Masur’s book is both instructive and inspiring as it charts the path to freedom from the 1800s to today.