Ocean State Libraries

A collection of treaties, declarations, court case rulings, Congressional Acts, speeches, and other works that are pertinent to United States history from the Privileges and prerogatives granted to Columbus on April 30, 1492 to documents published in 1973.

"A memoir that braids the evolution of one of America's most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its facade--told by the inheritor of their stories. In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege--but...

"A Diary From Dixie" is Mary Boykin Chesnut's celebrated firsthand account of life in the Confederate South during the Civil War years of 1861-1865. Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate Senator and Brigadier General described the life of an upper-class planter society confronting the encroaching realities of the end of slavery and her peers' way of life. Full of important personages and eminently readable, the Diary was quoted extensively in Ken Burns'...

"Presents a collection of letters offering first-hand insights into the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, and the Balkans. Features dramatic accounts of combat written immediately after ferocious battles; poignant expressions of love by homesick husbands and sweethearts; humorous anecdotes and gripes about insufferable conditions; thoughtful reflections on the nature of war; and a...

From celebrated writer Jill Lepore, a literary and political history of American origin stories In The Story of America, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories-from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address-to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print. Over the centuries, Americans have read and written their way...