American Military History Resources

Information is arranged in chronological order within each topic.  The tables below each section include links to relevant Wikipedia articles for that topic.  This page will be updated often, feel free to suggest any additions or corrections.

| General Military History References | Indigenous Peoples | Chinese Exploration | Spanish Exploration and Conquest | The French and New France | British North America | Revolution and Independence  | Building a New Nation | War of 1812 | Early 19th Century | Cotton | Slavery, Abolition and Jim Crow | Civil War | The Frontier | Spanish-American War | World War I World War II | The Cold War | Korean War | Vietnam War | Conflict in the Middle East | Conscription and the All-Volunteer Army | Racial and Religious Discrimination | Women in the Military | Disease and Medicine | Horses | Technology and Logistics | Military Law | War Reporting | Maps | USMA |

General Military History References
1991 "Military Careers of the Presidents," by Philip Cockrell, from Almanac of American Presidents: from 1789 to the present, edited by Thomas L. Connelly and Michael D. Senecal

2000 The Oxford Companion to American Military History, by John Whiteclay Chambers

2003 Atlas of American military history, by James C. Bradford

2008 From Colony to Superpower:  U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776, by George C. Herring

2008  The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell, by Harry S. Laver, Jeffrey J. Matthews

2009 American Military History, Volume I, The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation

2010 American Military History, Volume II, The United States Army in the Global Era

2012 For the common defense : a military history of the United States from 1607 to 2012, by Allan Read Millett

2013 The American military : a narrative history, by Brad D. Lookingbill.

2016 American military history : a survey from colonial times to the present, by William Thomas Allison | available on line | also here |

2016 The U.S. Navy : a concise history, by Craig L. Symonds | available on line |

The best books about women in the United States military 

West Point Military History Atlases

U.S. Army Center of Military History  

Naval History and Heritage Command

Histories Branch, Marine Corps History Division, Marine Corps University 

U.S. Air Force History

American Military History:  A Resource for Teachers and Students

Indigenous Peoples
1677 "Observations of Wentworth Greenhalgh, in a journey from Albany to ye Indians, westward; begun May 20th, 1677, and ended July 14 following," from Papers Relating to the Iroquois and Other Indian Tribes, 1666-1763, by Parson Weed (1849)

1747 The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada: Which are Dependent on the Province of New York, and are a Barrier Between the English and the French in that Part of the World, Volume 1, by Cadwallader Colden (1904 Edition) | Volume 2 |

1771 Map of the Country of the Six Nations

1775 The history of the American Indians; particularly those nations adjoining to the Missisippi [sic], East and West Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia: containing an account of their origin, language, manners, ... With a new map of the country referred to in the history. By James Adair | also here |

1805 "Religion for the White Man and the Red," Speech by Red Jacket

1824 Deh-he-wa-mis: Or, A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison: Otherwise Called the White Woman, who was Taken Captive by the Indians in MDCCLV; and who Continued with Them Seventy Eight Years. Containing an Account of the Murder of Her Father and His Family; Her Marriages and Sufferings; Indian Barbarities, Customs and Traditions, by James Everett Seaver (1842) | 20th Edition (1918) | 22nd edition (1925) | Note the later editions have more details, corrections, and references.

1825 David Cusick's Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations

1850 Aboriginal monuments of the state of New-York. Comprising the results of original surveys and explorations, by Ephraim George Squier | also here | and here |

1851 League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee Or Iroquois, Volume 1, by Lewis Henry Morgan | League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee Or Iroquois, Volume 1, by Lewis Henry Morgan, new edition with additional material by Herbert Marshall Lloyd | Volume 2 | (1901)

1854 Indian Narratives: Containing a Correct and Interesting History of the Indian Wars: From the Landing of Our Pilgrim Fathers, 1620 to Gen Wayne's Victory, 1794. To which is Added a Correct Account of the Capture and Sufferings of Mrs. Johnson, Zadcock Steele, and Others; and Also a Thrilling Account of the Burning of Royalton, by Henry Trumbull, Susannah Willard and Zadock Steele states,
Page 76: Three years before the arrival of the Plymouth colony a very mortal sickness supposed to have been the plague or perhaps the yellow fever raged with great violence among the Indians in the eastern parts of New England. Whole towns were depopulated. The living were not able to bury the dead and their bones were found lying above ground many years after. The Massachusetts Indians are said to have been reduced from thirty thousand to three hundred fighting men.

1868 The American Beaver and his works, by Lewis Henry Morgan

1884 Aboriginal occupation of the lower Genesee country, by George H. Harris, reprinted from Semi-centennial History of the City of Rochester: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, by William Farley Peck

1900 Aboriginal occupation of New York, by William Martin Beauchamp, February 1900. | also here with maps | Map of the early and recent sites of the aborigines of New York | Map of Territorial Divisions of the New York Aborigines about A.D. 1600 | Sorted by counties, several pages on Monroe County.

1905 A History of the New York Iroquois: Now Commonly Called the Six Nations, by William Martin Beauchamp

1906 "An Indian Civilization and its Destruction," by S.P. Moulthrop, Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association 6:71-79 (1906)

1916 "The Origin of the Iroquois as Suggested by Their Archeology," by Arthur C. Parker, American Anthropologist New Series 18(4):479-509 (Oct. - Dec., 1916) | also here |

1922 The Archeology of the Genesee Country, by Frederick Houghton

1930 "The Iroquois Indians and Their Lands Since 1783," by Esther V. Hill, The Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 11(4):335-353 (October, 1930)

1944 "The Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768," by Ray A. Billington, New York History 25(2):182-194 (1944)

1944 The pre-Iroquoian occupations of New York State, by William Augustus Ritchie | also here |

1945 The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian, by Esther Wagner Stearn and Allen E. Stearn.  

1951 "Smallpox and the Indians of the American Colonies," by John Duffy, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 25(4):324-341.

1966 "Estimating aboriginal American population. An Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate," by Henry F. Dobyns, Current Anthropology 7(4):395-416 (September, 1966)

1976 "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America," by Alfred W. Crosby, The William and Mary Quarterly 33(2):289-299 (April, 1976)

1978 The wars of the Iroquois: a study in intertribal trade relations, by George T. Hunt

1980 "Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact Not Fiction," by Thomas S. Abler, Ethnohistory 27(4):309-316 Special Iroquois Issue (Autumn, 1980)

1982 Map of Indian Trails about Rochester

1982 The European and the Indian: essays in the ethnohistory of colonial North America, by James Axtell

1983 "The Structure of the Iroquois League: Lewis H. Morgan's Research and Observations," by Elisabeth Tooker, Ethnohistory 30(3):141-154 (Summer, 1983)

1994 The World Turned Upside Down:  Indian Voices from Early America, edited by Colin G. Calloway | also here |
Pages 115-145:  Chapter 4.  In a World of Warfare:  Indians and the Wars for Empire
Pages 146-169:  Chapter 5.  American Indians and the American Revolution, 1775-1783

1997 "How Many People were here before Columbus," by Lewis Lord.

1998 European and Native American Warfare: 1675-1815, by Armstrong Starkey | also here

1998 New worlds for all: Indians, Europeans, and the remaking of early America, by Colin G. Calloway

1999 Jefferson and the Indians: the tragic fate of the first Americans, by Anthony F.C. Wallace

1999 Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State, by Laurence M. Hauptman

1999 The name of war : King Philip's War and the origins of American identity, by Jill Lepore

2000 "A 'Civil' War? Rethinking Iroquois Participation in the American Revolution," by Karim M. Tiro, Explorations in Early American Culture 4:148-165 (2000)

2001 Rotting face : smallpox and the American Indian, by R.G. Robertson.

2001 Pox Americana : the great smallpox epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn

2003 The Columbia guide to American Indians of the Great Plains, by Loretta Fowler

2005 1491: new revelations of the Americas before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann

2009 First peoples in a new world: colonizing ice age America, by David J. Meltzer

2009 "The 1763 Gift of Smallpox," from The Tainted Gift: The Disease Method of Frontier Expansion, by Barbara Alice Mann.

2011 "The Paradox of Plows and Productivity: An Agronomic Comparison of Cereal Grain Production under Iroquois Hoe Culture and European Plow Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Jane Mt. Pleasant, Agricultural History 85(4):360-492 (Fall 2011)

2011 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann

2014 "The Great Dying: New England's Coastal Plague, 1616–1619," by Mark Laskey, Cult Nation (July 15, 2014)

2015 Cherokee medicine, colonial germs : an indigenous nation's fight against smallpox, 1518-1824, by Paul Kelton

2018 The Indian world of George Washington : the first President, the first Americans, and the birth of the nation, by Colin G. Calloway

Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology | Links to Publications | More |

The Economic History of the Fur Trade: 1670 to 1870, by Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents 1610 to 1791

Lewis Henry Morgan at 200:  A Critical Appreciation

Chinese Exploration
2003 1421: the year China discovered America, by Gavin Menzies

2007 Zheng He : China and the oceans in the early Ming dynasty, 1405-1433, by Edward L. Dreyer

2019 The Seven Voyages of Zheng He, by Mark Cartwright

Zheng He – the Chinese Muslim Admiral

Spanish Exploration and Conquest
1568 The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, Volume 1 by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1803 translation) | Volume 2 |

The French and New France
1696 Papers relating to Count de Frontenac's expedition against the Onondagoes, by Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan

1866 Memoir upon the late war in North America, between the French and English, 1755-60 : followed by observations upon the theatre of actual war, and by new details concerning the manners and customs of the Indians ; with topographical maps, Volume I, by Pierre Pouchot; translated by Franklin Benjamin Hough | Volume II |

1874 The First Visit of de La Salle to the Senecas, Made in 1669, by Orsamus Holmes Marshall

1884 French Exploration and Settlement in North America, and those of the Portuguese. Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700.  Includes several good maps.

1885 Expedition of the Sieur de Champlain Against the Onondagas in 1615, by Orsamus Holmes Marshall

1898 History of Brulé's Discoveries and Explorations, 1610-1626: Being a Narrative of the Discovery, by Stephen Brulé of Lakes Huron, Ontario and Superior; and of His Exploration (the First Made by Civilized Man) of Pennsylvania and Western New York, Also of the Province of Ontario, Canada. With a Biographical Notice of the Discoverer and Explorer, who was Killed and Eaten by Savages, by Consul Willshire Butterfield

1900 The Old New York Frontier: Its Wars with Indians and Tories, Its Missionary Schools, Pioneers, and Land Titles, 1614-1800, by Francis Whiting Halsey

1905 The American Nation: France in America, 1497-1763, by Reuben Gold Thwaites

1910 France and England in North America, Volume I, by Francis Parkman

1917 An Old Frontier of France: The Niagara Region and Adjacent Lakes Under French Control, Volume 1, by Frank Hayward Severance | Volume 2 |

1919 Western New York under the French: an address delivered before the Morgan Chapter in Memorial Art Gallery, University Campus, Rochester, N.Y., December 19, 1919 / by Frank H. Severance.

1939 "Seneca 'Time of Troubles'," by Blake McKelvey, Rochester History 13(3):1-24 (July 1951)

1949 Samuel de Champlain's Incursion Against the Onondaga Nation, by Mansfield Joseph French

2003 French and Indian War by Laurie Collier Hillstrom

Fort des Sables

Samuel de Champlain	Étienne Brûlé	Joseph de La Roche Daillon	René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville, Marquis de Denonville	New France	Louis de Buade de Frontenac	Pays d'en Haut
Destruction of Ganondagan (1687)	King William's War (1688-1697)	Lachine Massacre (1689)	Great Peace of Montreal (1701)
Queen Anne's War (1703-1713)	King George's War (1744-1748)	French and Indian War (1754-1763)	Battle of La Belle-Famille (1759)
Fort Niagara	Battle of Fort Niagara (1759)	Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759)	Antoine Lefèbvre de La Barre
French colonization of the Americas	Treaty of Paris (1763)

British North America
1620 The Charter of New England, November 3/13, 1620
There hath, by God’s visitation, reigned a wonderful plague [that has resulted in] the utter destruction, devastation, and depopulation of that whole territory, so as there is not left … any that do claim or challenge any kind of interest therein. We, in our judgment, are persuaded and satisfied, that the appointed time is come in which Almighty God, in his great goodness and bounty towards us, and our people, hath thought fit and determined, that those large and goodly territories, deserted as it were by their natural inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our subjects.

1754 The Journal of Major George Washington: Sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie to the Commandant of the French Forces in Ohio, by George Washington

1766 Cantonment of His Majesty's forces in N. America according to the disposition now made & to be compleated as soon as practicable taken from the general distribution dated at New York 29th. March 1766.

1865 The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart, Volume 1, by William Leete Stone | Volume 2 |

1869 History of the Virginia Company of London: With Letters to and from the First Colony Never Before Printed, by Edward Duffield Neill

1952 Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647: the complete text, by William Bradford, edited by Samuel Eliot Morison

1985 The invasion within: the contest of cultures in Colonial North America, by James Axtell

1986 Under the cope of heaven: religion, society, and politics in colonial America, by Patricia U. Bonomi

2005 The first way of war: American war making on the frontier, 1607-1814, by John Grenier

2008 The Jamestown project, by Karen Ordahl Kupperman

2009 "The 1763 Gift of Smallpox," from The Tainted Gift: The Disease Method of Frontier Expansion, by Barbara Alice Mann.  

2011 Making war and minting Christians: masculinity, religion, and colonialism in early New England, by R. Todd Romero

2015 Braddock's Defeat: the Battle of the Monongahela and the road to revolution, by David L. Preston

2019 "America’s First Banned Book Really Ticked Off the Plymouth Puritans," by Matthew Taub, Atlas Obscrua

Atlas of American Colonial Wars

Revolution and Independence
1776 Common Sense, by Thomas Paine

1778 "Manifesto and Proclamation," by the Earl of Carlisle, The Pennsylvania Packet, October 15, 1778, Page 2. | also here |

1792 "Description of the country between Albany & Niagara in 1792," from The Documentary history of the state of New-York

1804 A description of the Genesee country, in the state of New-York : in which the situation, dimensions, civil divisions, soil, minerals, produce, lakes and rivers, curiosities, climate, navigation, trade and manufactures, population, and other interesting matters relative to that country, are impartially described. To which is added, an appendix, containing a description of the military lands, by Robert Munro.[Charles Williamson] | also here |

1821 Travels in New-England and New-York, by Timothy Dwight

1822 A Brief Topographical and Statistical Manual of the State of New-York, by Sterling Goodenow

1824 Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania from 1763 to 1783: Inclusive, Together with a Review of the State of Society and Manners of the First Settlers of the Western Country, by Joseph Doddridge and  Narcissa Doddridge.  Republished with new material in 1912 by John S. Ritenour and William Thomas Lindsey

1842 Notices of Sullivan's Campaign, Or, The Revolutionary Warfare in Western New-York: Embodied in the Addresses and Documents Connected with the Funeral Honors Rendered to Those who Fell with the Gallant Boyd in the Genesee Valley, Including the Remarks of Gov. Seward at Mount Hope, by Henry O'Reilly

1848 A History of the Purchase and Settlement of Western New York: And of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the Presbyterian Church in that Section, by James Harvey Hotchkin

1849 Pioneer history of the Holland purchase of western New York: embracing some account of the ancient remains ... and a history of pioneer settlement under the auspices of the Holland Company, Including reminiscences of the War of 1812; the origin, progress and completion of the Erie Canal, etc., by O. Turner. | also here |

1851 History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase and Morris Reserve, by Orasmus Turner. | also here |

1868 The Military Services and Public Life of Major-General John Sullivan: Of the American Revolutionary Army, by Thomas Coffin Amory

1874 Report of the Regents of the University, on the Boundaries of the State of New York, Volume 1

1877 Second Report of the Regents of the University on the Boundaries of the State of New York

1879 History of Sullivan's campaign against the Iroquois being a full account of that epoch of the revolution, by A. Tiffany Norton   

1884 Report of the Regents of the University on the Boundaries of the State of New York, Volume II: Being a Continuation of Senate Document No. 108 of 1873 and Senate Document No. 61 of 1877

1887 Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779, by Frederick Cook and John Sullivan

1889 The Genesee tract. Cessions between New York and Massachusetts. The Phelps and Gorham purchase. Robert Morris. Captain Charles Williamson and the Pulteney estate, by George S. Conover

1891 The Title of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, by Howard Lawrence Osgood

1894 Robert Morris and the Holland Purchase, John Kennedy

1897 A history of the treaty of Big Tree: and an account of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the making of the treaty, held at Geneseo, N.Y., September the fifteenth, eighteen hundred ninety-seven, by Livngston County Historical Society.

1898 Sullivan's campaign in western New York 1779, by Simon L. Adler.

1902 The Old New York Frontier: Its Wars with Indians and Tories; Its Missionary Schools, Pioneers and Land Titles, 1614-1800, by Francis Whiting Halsey

1903 Robert Morris: Patriot and Financier, by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer

1906 "The Primary Causes of the Border Wars," by Francis W. Halsey, Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association 6:23-28 (1906)

1906 "Sullivan's Campaign," by William Wait, Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association 6:80-86 (1906)

1922 "The Pulteney Purchase," by Paul D. Evans, The Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 3(2):83-104 (April, 1922)

1923 The American revolution: a constitutional interpretation, by Charles Howard McIlwain

1929 "New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign in 1779," Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 10(3):185-224 (July, 1929) | Part 2: 10(4):265-317 (October, 1929)

1929 The Sullivan-Clinton campaign in 1779. Chronology and selected documents. Prepared by the Division of archives and history in connection with the sesquicentennial of the American revolution.

1930 Letters and papers of Major-General John Sullivan, Continental Army, edited by Otis G. Hammond.

1931 "Attempts to Form New States in New York and Pennsylvania 1786-1796," by Julian P. Boyd, The Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 12(3):257-270 (July, 1931)

1932 The treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1784, being the first attempt to collect from the sources the facts leading up to and covering the peace negotiated by the Congress of the United States and the Six Nations Indians after Britain acknowledged the freedom oe her colonies, by Henry S. Manley.

1937 "A Yankee on the New York Frontier 1833-1851," by George F. Partridge, The New England Quarterly 10(4):752-77 (December, 1937)

1942 "Agrarian Revolt in Colonial New York, 1766," by Irving Mark, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 1(2):111-142 (January 1942)

1942 "Oliver Phelps," by Samuel H. Wandell, New York History 23(3):275-282 (July, 1942)

1956 "Tenantry on the New York Manors," by Arthur E. Sutherland, Cornell Law Review 41(4):620-639 (Summer 1956)

1959 The age of the democratic revolution: a political history of Europe and America, 1760-1800, Volume 1, by R. R. Palmer | Volume 2 |

1960 "Mortgage Credit in the Phelps-Gorham Purchase," by Robert W. Silsby, New York History 41(1):3-34 (January, 1960)

1964 Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Volume 1 | Volume 10 |

1965 Toward Lexington: the role of the British Army in the coming of the American Revolution, by John W. Shy

1967 Canada & the American Revolution, 1774-1783, by Gustave Lanctôt

1968 The founding of a nation: a history of the American Revolution, 1763-1776, by Merrill Jensen

1970 "The Sullivan Expedition: Success or Failure," by Donald R. McAdams, New-York Historical Society Quarterly 54(1):53-81 (January, 1970)

1970 Joseph Ellicott and the Holland Land Company: The Opening of Western New York, by Willliam Chazanof. | The Great Survey | Many Applicants, Few Buyers | Reluctant Politician | Big Family | Roads and the Unhappy Taxpayer | The War of 1812 | The Bank of Niagara | The Grand Canal | "Give in Your Demission Yourself |

1973 The American Revolution considered as a social movement, by J. Franklin Jameson

1975 "The Pioneer Settler upon the Holland Purchase, and His Progress," by Orsamus Turner, Western Historical Quarterly 6(4):425-435 (October, 1975)

1976 A cultural history of the American Revolution: painting, music, literature, and the theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789, by Kenneth Silverman

1977 "Robert Morris: Genesee Land Speculator," by Barbara A. Chernow, New York History 58(2):194-220 (April, 1977)

1979 "The Sullivan Campaign, A Bibliography," by James D. Folts, Jr., University of Rochester Library Bulletin 32 (Winter 1979)

1982 Prodigals and pilgrims: the American revolution against patriarchal authority, 1750-1800, by Jay Fliegelman

1983 The war of American independence: military attitudes, policies, and practice, 1763-1789, by Don Higginbotham

1986 The urban crucible: the northern seaports and the origins of the American Revolution, by Gary B. Nash

1986 Constitutional history of the American Revolution, Volume 1, by John Phillip Reid | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 |

1989 A people in revolution: the American Revolution and political society in New York, 1760-1790, by Edward Countryman

1995 Understanding the American Revolution: issues and actors, Jack P. Greene

1995 Paul Revere's ride, by David Hackett Fischer

1995 A woman's dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American revolution, by Rosemarie Zagarri

1997 A Well-executed Failure: The Sullivan Campaign Against the Iroquois, July-September 1779, by Joseph R. Fischer | also here | full text of 1994 doctoral dissertation |

1998 "The Iroquois Indians and the Rise of the Empire State: Ditches, Defense, and Dispossession," by Laurence M. Hauptman, New York History 79(4):325-358 (October, 1998)

1999 The siege of Fort Cumberland, 1776: an episode in the American Revolution, by Ernest Clarke

1999 Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State, by Laurence M. Hauptman

1999 The cousins' wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America, by Kevin P. Phillips

2000 Becoming America: the revolution before 1776, by Jon Butler

2005 George Washington's War on Native America, by Barbara Alice Mann

2005 The first way of war: American war making on the frontier, 1607-1814, by John Grenier

2005 "Charles Williamson:  The Pulteney Estates in the Genesee Lands," by John H. Martin, from Saints, Sinners and Reformers: The Burned-Over District Re-Visited

2005 The unknown American Revolution: the unruly birth of democracy and the struggle to create America, by Gary B. Nash | also here |

2007 The Glorious Cause: the American Revolution, 1763-1789, by Robert Middlekauff.| another copy |

2011 Massacre and Retribution:  The 1779-80 Sullivan Expedition, by Ron Soodalter

2018 "The Raid on Bermuda That Saved the American Revolution," by Matt Jancer, Smithsonian.com (October 1, 2018)
How colonial allies in the Caribbean pulled off a heist to equip George Washington’s Continental Army with gunpowder

2019 The British are coming : the war for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, by Rick Atkinson

2020 Revolts Before the Revolution — Part I: Prendergast’s Rent War of 1766  

2025 How a Relentless, 484-Mile March From Virginia to Massachusetts Fueled the Legend of the Dashing Frontier Rifleman

When the Serfs Rebelled, by Ed Burmila
In 1839, a small pocket of feudalism still existed in New York State. Then tenant farmers got organized.

Naval Documents of the American Revolution 12 volumes, The Naval History and Heritage Command

Atlas of the American Revolution

Building a New Nation
1988 The Whiskey Rebellion: frontier epilogue to the American Revolution, by Thomas P. Slaughter

2005 The first way of war: American war making on the frontier, 1607-1814, by John Grenier

2025 How Two Explorers, A Mother and a Baby Made America, The Economist, December 20, 2025

The War of 1812
1813 Map of the Seat of War in North America

1838 The Naval Monument: Containing Official and Other Accounts of All the Battles Fought Between the Navies of the United States and Great Britain During the Late War; and an Account of the War with Algiers, with Twenty-five Engravings. To which is Annexed a Naval Register of the United States

1882 A history of the war of 1812-'15 between the United States and Great Britain, by Rossiter Johnson.

1910 "The Genesee Valley in the Navy," by Rear Admiral Franklin Hanford, U.S.N., Annual Meeting of the Livingston County Historical Society 34:21-24 (1910)

1911 Notes on the Visits of American and British Naval Vessels to the Genesee River, 1809-1814, by Rear Admiral Franklin Hanford, USN

1942 "War on Lake Ontario: 1812-1815," by Ruth Ruth and Dorothy S. Truesdale, Rochester History 4(4):1-24 (October, 1942)

1969 British raids on Charlotte and Stone's dragoons, 1812-1814, by Philip G. Maples.

1991 "The Genesee River During The War of 1812," by William Roemer, Rochester History 53(4):1-30 (Fall, 1991)

2009 1812: war with America, by Jon Latimer

2013 The War of 1812 : writings from America's second war of independence  

Atlas of the War of 1812

Early 19th Century
1830 Indian Removal Act

1856 Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan: Performed in the Years 1852, 1853, and 1854, Under the Command of Commodore M.C. Perry, United States Navy ..

1976 Bending their way onward : Creek Indian removal in documents, by Christopher D. Haveman

1985 The politics of Indian removal: Creek government and society in crisis, by Michael D. Green

1999 Dispossessing the wilderness Indian removal and the making of the national parks, by Mark David Spence

2007 Philipp Franz von Siebold and the opening of Japan a re-evaluation, by Herbert E. Plutschow

2007 The vaccinators : smallpox, medical knowledge, and the "opening" of Japan, by Ann Bowman Jannetta

2011 The Trail of Tears an annotated bibliography of Southeastern Indian removal, by Herman A. Peterson

War with Mexico
1857 Scenes and adventures in the army: or, Romance of military life, by Phillip St. George Cooke

1857 Report of the Secretary of War Communicating the Report of Captain George B. McClellan, (First Regiment United States Cavalry,) One of the Officers Sent to the Seat of War in Europe, in 1855 and 1856

1861 Report on the art of war in Europe in 1854, 1855, and 1856, By United States. Military Commission to Europe, Richard Delafield

1987 James K. Polk, Jacksonian, 1795-1843, Volume 1, by Charles Grier Sellers | Volume 2 |

1990 So far from God:  The U.S. War with Mexico 1846-1848 by John S. D. Eisenhower | another copy |

2006 “'To Take up Arms against Brethren of the Same Faith': Lower Midwestern Catholic Volunteers in the Mexican-American War," by Tyler V. Johnson, Armed Forces and Society 32(4):532-548 (July 2006)

2007 US Army on the Mexican border: a historical perspective, by Matt M. Matthews.

2012 Remembering the forgotten war: the enduring legacies of the U.S.-Mexican War, by Michael Van Wagenen

U.S. Army Campaigns of the Mexican War Series

Atlas of the Mexican War

Cotton
1835 History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain : with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe : a description of the great mechanical inventions, which have caused its unexampled extension in Britain, and a view of the present state of the manufacture and the condition of the classes engaged in its several departments, by Sir Edward Baines

1836 Memoir of Samuel Slater: the father of American manufactures : connected with a history of the rise and progress of the cotton manufacture in England and America, with remarks on the moral influence of manufactories in the United States, by George Savage White and Levi Woodbury

1845 Considerations on the Cultivation, Production and Consumption of Cotton: Connected with the Questions of Currency, Credit, Commerce and Banking : Addressed to the Cotton Manufacturers of Massachusetts, by Henry Lee

1853 Cotton: A Paper on the Growth, Trade, and Manufacture of Cotton, by J. G. Dudley

1855 Cotton is king, or, The culture of cotton: and its relation to agriculture, manufactures and commerce; to the free colored people; and to those who hold that slavery is in itself sinful, by David Christy

1858 Cotton is king, or, The culture of cotton: and its relation to agriculture, manufactures and commerce; to the free colored people; and to those who hold that slavery is in itself sinful, by David Christy

1860 Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments: comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject

1860 First Report to the Cotton Planters' Convention of Georgia, on the Agricultural Resources of Georgia, by Joseph Jones

1862 The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observation on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States : Based Upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations, Volume 1, by Frederick Law Olmsted | Volume 2 |

1863 Cotton, not slavery, the immediate cause of the Rebellion : speech of Hon. Amasa Walker, of Massachusetts, on the Indemnity bill, delivered in the House of Representatives, Feb. 18, 1863. by Amasa Walker | also in the Congressional Globe, February 18, 1863, Pages 1083-1084.

1863 Introduction and Early Progress of the Cotton Manufacture in the United States, by Samuel Batchelder

1868 Cotton Culture, by Joseph B. Lyman

1923 Cotton and the Cotton Market, by W. Hustace Hubbard

1925 The Development of the Organisation of Anglo-American Trade, 1800-1850, by Norman Sydney Buck | also here |

1960 Historical statistics of the United States, colonial times to 1957

1981 Transatlantic industrial revolution: the diffusion of textile technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s, by David J. Jeremy

2005 Inventing the cotton gin: machine and myth in antebellum America, by Angela Lakwete

2009 Cotton and race in the making of America: the human costs of economic power, by Eugene R. Dattel

2009 The fragile fabric of Union : cotton, federal politics, and the global origins of the Civil War, by Brian Schoen

2014 The half has never been told: slavery and the making of American capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist

Why Was Cotton ‘King’? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Slavery, Abolition and Jim Crow
1688 Germantown Friends' protest against slavery

1775 African Slavery in America, [by Thomas Paine]

1799 An act for the gradual abolition of slavery.  March 29, 1799.

1836 Letters on American Slavery, by John Rankin

1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass | 1988 edition with introductions by William Lloyd Garrison and Benjamin Quarles |

1847 The North Star, a nineteenth-century anti-slavery newspaper published from the Talman Building in Rochester, New York by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In 1851, Douglass merged the North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper. Issues on line at Rochester Public Library | Accessible Archives | Gale Newspapers | Readex |

1851 "The higher law" in its application to the Fugitive slave bill A sermon on the duties men owe to God and to governments, by John C. Lord

1852 Oration delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, by Frederick Douglass, July 5th, 1852. "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?"

1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

1854 The claims of the Negro ethnologically considered: An address before the literary societies of Western Reserve College, at commencement, July 12, 1854, by Frederick Douglass.

1855 My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass

1856 African Slavery in America, by Charles Jared Ingersoll

1857 Slavery Ordained of God, by Rev. Frederick Augustus Ross

1857 Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman, by Austin Steward

1862 Origin and objects of the slaveholders' conspiracy against Democratic principles, as well as against the national union, by Henry O'Reilly (October, 1862)

1879 Gerrit Smith: a biography, by Octavius Brooks Frothingham.

1882 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass | New revised edition, 1892 |

1900 Slavery in New York: a historical sketch, by A Judd Northrup

1905 A correct history of the John Brown invasion at Harper's Ferry, West Va., Oct. 17, 1859, by John H. Zittle

1916 A reminiscence of anti-slavery days, by Horace McGuire. Read before the Rochester Historical Society, October 27, 1916.

1945 "Ives-Quinn Act --the law against discrimination," by Terry Lichtash, St. John's Law Review 19(2):170-176 (April, 1945) Outlawed employment discrimination based on race, creed, color or national origin.

1953 "Susan B. Anthony and John Brown," by Alma Lutz, Rochester History 15(3):1-16 (July, 1953)

1958 Negroes in five New York cities : a study of problems, achievements, and trends, by New York State Commission for Human Rights. Research Division;

1959 "Lights and Shadows in Local Negro History," by Blake McKelvey, Rochester History 21(4):1-27 (October, 1959)

1961 "Antislavery Legislation in New York," by Edgar J. McManus, The Journal of Negro History 46(4):207-216 (October, 1961)

1963 The liberator, William Lloyd Garrison: a biography, by John L. Thomas

1970 Gentlemen of property and standing: anti-abolition mobs in Jacksonian America, by Leonard L. Richards

1975 The problem of slavery in the age of Revolution, 1770-1823, by David Brion Davis

1984 "Growing Agitation, A: Rochester Before, During and After the Civil War," by Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, Rochester History 46(1 & 2):1-40 (January & April, 1984)

1988 Cannibals all!, or, Slaves without masters, by George Fitzhugh edited by C. Vann Woodward

1991 Nativism and slavery: the northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850's, by Tyler Anbinder

1993 Cultivation and culture: labor and the shaping of slave life in the Americas, edited by Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan

1999 Angelina Grimke?: rhetoric, identity, and the radical imagination, by Stephen H. Browne

1999 Soul by soul: life inside the antebellum slave market, by Walter Johnson

2000 The rise of African slavery in the Americas, David Eltis

2001 Brotherhoods of color: black railroad workers and the struggle for equality, by Eric Arnesen

2003 Jim Crow New York: A Documentary History of Race and Citizenship, 1777-1877, edited by David N. Gellman and David Quigley

2005 Black is a country: race and the unfinished struggle for democracy, by Nikhil Pal Singh

2009 "Frederick Douglass and John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry," by Alan Singer, Social Education 73(2):57-48 (March, 2009)

2009 Carry me back: the domestic slave trade in American life, by Steven Deyle

2010 "Rochester: A Transnational Community for Blacks Prior to the Civil War," by Dann j Broyld, Rochester History 72(2):1-28 (Fall 2010)

2011 "How Slavery Really Ended in America," by Adam Goodheart, The New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2011

2014 The half has never been told: slavery and the making of American capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist

2017 Race and Place in the Flower City:  A Case Study of Perpetual Marginalization through Urban Planning, by Brennon Thompson

2018 African American Officers in Liberia : A Pestiferous Rotation, 1910–1942, by Brian G. Shellum

2021 Critical race theory: What it is and what it isn’t

The 1619 Project (New York Times magazine) | PDF version |

Redlining in New Deal America

Admiration and Ambivalence: Frederick Douglass and John Brown

Digitizing Frederick Douglass (RRL Rare Books and Special Collections)

Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow, exhibition at the New York Historical Society

Civil War
1858 "On the Irrepressible Conflict," Speech by William Henry Seward delivered at Rochester, NY, October 25, 1858

1861 Virginia Secession Convention 

1861 By-laws of the Rochester Union Grays, Company R, 54th Regiment, N.Y.S.M.

1862 Presentation of colors to the 140th regiment N. Y. S. V, by the Young ladies of Rochester, Sept., 1862.

1863 "The Draft in Rochester.; From the Rochester Express, July 24," The New York Times, July 27, 1863, Page 3

1863 Report of the Committee of Merchants for the Relief of Colored People, Suffering from the Late Riots in the City of New York.  

1865 The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape, by Albert Deane Richardson

1866 The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, by Edward Alfred Pollard

1880-  The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

1886 The Naval History of the Civil War, by David Dixon Porter

1886 Minty and the Cavalry: A History of Cavalry Campaigns in the Western Armies, by Joseph G. Vale

1886 Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Volume 1, by Ulysses Simpson Grant | Volume 2 |

1890 New York in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 to 1865

1894 A Complete Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment N.Y. Vols. from 1862-1894, by George H. Washburn

1897 “History of the Civil War in the United States, 1860-1865,” published by The Comparative Synoptical Chart Company

1900 New York at Gettysburg, by William F. Fox

1911 The Military Memoirs of Captain Henry Cribben of the 140th New York Volunteers, by Henry Cribben

1912 The Union Blues. A brief history of the corps and its life, by William H. Samson.  Militia unit established in 1861 by socially prominent Rochesterians.

1961 "Rochester’s Part in the Civil War," by Blake  McKelvey, Rochester History 23(1):1-24 (January 1961)

1964 The defeat of the Confederacy: a documentary survey, by Henry Steele Commager

1965 Fifty basic Civil War documents, by Henry Steel Commager

1965 The organization and administration of the Union army, 1861-1865, Volume 1, by Fred A. Shannon

1973 The Blue and the Gray: the story of the Civil War as told by participants, Volume 1, by Henry Steel Commager | Volume 2 |

1985 When the war was over: the failure of self-reconstruction in the South, 1865-1867, by Dan T. Carter

1988 Battle cry of freedom: the Civil War era, by James M. McPherson

1990 The New York City draft riots: their significance for American society and politics in the age of the Civil War, by Iver Bernstein

1991 "The Civil War Draft in Rochester – Part One," by Donald M. Fisher, Rochester History 53(1):1-24 (Winter, 1991) | Part Two 53(2):1-32 (Spring 1991) |

1991 Abraham Lincoln and the second American Revolution, James M. McPherson

1994 What they fought for, 1861-1865, James M. McPherson

1998 Dr. Josephus Requa Civil War Dentist And The Billinghurst-Requa Volley Gun, by John M. Hyson and Margaret Requa DeFrancisco
Requa was a Rochester dentist.

1999 The cousins' wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America, by Kevin P. Phillips

1999 Maps and mapmakers of the Civil War, by Earl B. McElfresh

2002 Elmira: Death Camp of the North, by Michael Horigan | also here |

2003 Race and reunion: the Civil War in American memory, by David W. Blight

2003 Clash of loyalties: a border county in the Civil War, by John W. Shaffer

2005 Daughters of the Union: northern women fight the Civil War, by Nina Silber

2008 Voices of emancipation understanding slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau files, by Elizabeth Ann Regosin and Donald Robert Shaffer | also here |

2008 Tried by war : Abraham Lincoln as commander in chief, by James M. McPherson | another copy |

2010 "A Nation in Extremity: Sewing Machines and the American Civil War," by Amy Breakwell, Textile History and the Military, 41 (1) supplement, 98–107 (May 2010)

2010 The maps of Gettysburg an atlas of the Gettysburg campaign, June 3-July 13, 1863, by Bradley M. Gottfried

2011 "A Hard Road to Travel out of Dixie, Part 1," by W.H. Sheldon, Rochester History 72(2):1-31 (Fall 2011) | Part 2 74(1):1-32 (Spring 2012)

2011 Of duty well and faithfully done: a history of the regular army in the Civil War, by Claron R. Newell and Charles R. Shrader

2012 Confederate reckoning: power and politics in the Civil War South, by Stephanie McCurry

2013 "The Civil War Years:  Rochester and the Civil War," by Alan Schlageter

2013 "On Cemetery Ridge," Rochester Review

2016  This vast southern empire : slaveholders at the helm of American foreign policy, by Matthew Karp.

Atlas of the American Civil War

Civil War Every Day (video)

Rochester Civil War veterans: roster and scrapbook, Grand Army of the Republic, Dept. of New York and auxiliaries. Grand Army of the Republic, Dept. of New York [1948]. Includes: Personal war sketches of the members of E.G. Marshall Post No. 397 of Rochester [by Richard Curran] which was presented to the Post in 1892.

Civil War Medicine and the RCH

The University of Rochester and the Civil War

How I Learned About the “Cult of the Lost Cause”

The Frontier and Empire
1874 My life on the plains.: Or, Personal experiences with Indians, by George Armstrong Custer

1890 The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, by Alfred Thayer Mahan

2001 "Naval Innovation:  From Coal to Oil," by Erik J. Dahl, Joint Force Quarterly 27:50-56 (Winter 2000-2001)

Spanish American War
1897 Facts and Fakes about Cuba, by George Bronson Rea

1899 Story of the Rough Riders, by Edward Marshall

1900 New York in the Spanish-American war 1898 : Part of the report of the Adjutant-General of the State for 1900.

1903 New York and the War with Spain: History of the Empire State Regiments

1951 "Rochester and the Spanish American War," by Patricia E. Fisler, Rochester History 13(2):1-24 (April, 1951)

1998 One hundred years of sea power: the U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, by George W. Baer

Atlas of the Spanish American War

World War I
1912 The "1912 War Map" of the Balkan States

1917 Our part in the great war, by Arthur Gleason.

1918 French trench map ("Tranchees francaises schematique") of the Argonne Forest (Forêt D'Argonne), 1918

1918 Our first year in the great war. by Francis Vinton Greene

1919 Official Report of Jane Addams and Dr. Alice Hamilton.  A graphic picture of hunger and disease stricken Central Europe.  An eloquent appeal to the hearts of generous Americans.

1920 How we advertised America; the first telling of the amazing story of the Committee on public information that carried the gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe, by George Creel

1921 The Plattsburg Movement: A Chapter of America's Participation in the World War, by Ralph Barton Perry

1922 Rochester in History with portraits and Our Part in the World War        

1924 World war service record of Rochester and Monroe County, New York

1930 Rochester in the war work of the American Library Association, by William. F. Yust

1943 "Rochester and World War I," by Sylvia R. Black and Harriett J. Naylor, Rochester History 5(4):1-24 (October, 1943)

1959 The World War and American isolation, 1914-1917, by Ernest R. May

1970 The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell

1977 "The Wilsonians as War Managers:  Coal and the 1917-18 Winter Crisis," by James P. Johnson, Prologue 7:193-208 (Winter, 1977)

1982 Over here: the First World War and American society, by David M. Kennedy | another copy |

1989 "Rochester During World War One:  Women On The Homefront," by Al Mancini, Rochester History 51(3):1-11 (Summer, 1989)

1989 "Rochester Over There," by Dr. Ellen More, Rochester History 51(3):12-32 (Summer, 1989)

1992  History of the First World War, by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

1994 America in the Great War: the rise of the war welfare state, by Ronald Schaffer

1997 Reel patriotism: the movies and World War I, by Leslie Midkiff DeBauche

1998 One hundred years of sea power: the U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, by George W. Baer

2001 The coming of the First World War, edited by Robert John Weston Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann

2002 The First World War and British military history, by Brian Bond

2002 Armaments and the coming of war: Europe, 1904-1914, by D. Stevenson

2002 The poisonous cloud: chemical warfare in the First World War, by L. F. Haber

2004 Over Here: The First World War and American Society, by David M. Kennedy

2007 The regulars: The American Army, 1898-1941, by Edward M. Coffman

2007 Dynamic of destruction: culture and mass killing in the First World War, by Alan Kramer

2007 Pershing, general of the armies, by Donald Smythe

2008 Unsafe for democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department's covert campaign to suppress dissent, by William H. Thomas

2010 "The U.S. Military and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919," Carol R. Byerly, Public Health Report 125(Suppl3):82-91 (2010) | also see other articles in this issue |

2014 World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. 5 vols

2015 Striking the hornets' nest : naval aviation and the origins of strategic bombing in World War I, by Geoffrey Louis Rossano and Thomas Wildenberg

2016 London : bombed, blitzed and blown up : the British capital under attack since 1867, by Ian Jones

2020 The Lenin Plot:  The Unknown Story of America's War Against Russia, by Barnes Carr

2020 These three women were the first American military casualties of WWI  

1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War  

Atlas of World War I

Historical Summary of the U.S. Naval Railway Batteries

[Records of service in the European War]. Young Men’s Christian Associations, Rochester N.Y. [1922?]. Contains listing of names of those from Monroe and Livingston counties who served in the YMCA of Rochester N.Y. during the first World War, along with completed information forms of participants. Also contains a history of the Municipal Museum Rest &Recreation Room.

World War II
1942 A pocket Guide to Northern Ireland, by United States. Army Service Forces. Special Service Division.

1943 "Rochester’s First Year in the War for Survival," by Blake McKelvey, Rochester History 5(1):1-24 (January, 1943)

1943 Report on the Army: July 1, 1939 to June 30, 1943. Biennial Reports of General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War

1944 Our Navy At War:  Official Report by Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations, Report Covering Combat Operations up to March 1, 1944

1945 Men Without Guns; The Abbott Collection of Paintings of Army Medicine

1945 The story of the second world war, by Henry Steele Commager

1945 The pocket history of the Second World War, by Henry Steele Commager

1962 Pearl Harbor:  Warning and Decision, by Roberta Wohlstetter

1964 The United States and the Far Eastern crisis of 1933-1938: from the Manchurian incident through the initial stage of the undeclared Sino-Japanese war, by Dorothy Borg

1978 "Restricted Areas: German Prisoner-of-War Camps in Western New York, 1944–1946," by George T. Mazuzan and Nancy Walker, New York History 59(1):54-72 (January, 1978)

1978 Allies of a kind: the United States, Britain, and the war against Japan, 1941-1945, by Christopher G. Thorne

1981 “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” by Paul Fussell , The New Republic (August 1981)

1986 American nuclear guinea pigs: three decades of radiation experiments on U.S. citizens | also here |

1986 War Without Mercy: race and power in the Pacific War by John Dower

1988 Commander in chief : Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his lieutenants, and their war, by Eric Larrabee | another copy |

1993 "Rochester in World War Two: The Kodakids," by Mary Jo Lanphear Barone, Rochester History 55(4):21-44 (Fall, 1993)

1993 "Rochester High Schools and the War Effort," by Jeffrey Scott Brown, Rochester History 55(4):1-20 (Fall, 1993)

1993 War without mercy: race and power in the pacific war, by John W. Dower

1994 "Not in Our Back Yard – POW Encampment at Cobbs Hill," by Terry Lehr, Rochester History 56(3):3-16 (Summer, 1994)

1994 American samurai: myth, imagination, and the conduct of battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951, by Craig M. Cameron

1994 A world at arms: a global history of World War II, by Gerhard L. Weinberg

1997 "Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications," by D.M. Giangreco, Journal of Military History 61(3):521-581 (July 1997)

1998 One hundred years of sea power: the U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, by George W. Baer

1999 The Plutonium Files, by Eileen Welsome

1999 Their day in the sun: women of the Manhattan Project, by Ruth Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg

2001 How effective is strategic bombing? lessons learned from World War II and Kosovo, by Gian P. Gentile

2002 Radio goes to war: the cultural politics of propaganda during World War II, by Gerd Horten

2002 A time for trumpets : the untold story of the Battle of the Bulge, by Charles B. MacDonald

2002 An army at dawn : the war in North Africa, 1942-1943, by Rick Atkinson

2004 Leadership and responsibility in the Second World War: essays in honour of Robert Vogel, edited by Brian P. Farrell

2004 "Arsenal of Freedom – Part One: Rochester Products that Helped Win World War II," by Bob Marcotte, Rochester History 66(1):1-36 (Winter, 2004)

2004 "Arsenal of Freedom – Part Two: Rochester War Plant Workers During World War II, by Bob Marcotte, Rochester History 66(2):1-32 (Spring, 2004)

2005 The battle of Leyte Gulf: the last fleet action, by H. P. Willmott

2005 American Prometheus : the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird.

2006 Bombing the European Axis Powers : A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive, 1939-1945, by Richard G. Davis

2007 The day of battle : the war in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, by Rick Atkinson

2009 German POWs on the American Homefront, by J. Malcolm Garcia

2009 Men against fire : the problem of battle command, by S.L.A. Marshall | also here |

2010 "Prisoners of War Camps in Rochester - Were they humane?" by Ryan McKelvie, St. John Fisher College

2011 "Operation Pied Piper: The Evacuation of English Children During World War II," by Dwight John Zimmerman

2012 World War II: The Essential Reference Guide, by Priscilla  Roberts

2013 Sounds of war: music in the United States during World War II, by Annagret Fauser

2013 The guns at last light : the war in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson | another copy |

2014 The American way of bombing : changing ethical and legal norms, from flying fortresses to drones, by Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue

2014 Combined round the clock bombing offensive : attacking Nazi Germany : rare photographs from wartime archives, by Philip Kaplan and Jack Currie

2016 London : bombed, blitzed and blown up : the British capital under attack since 1867, by Ian Jones

2016 World War II : the definitive encyclopedia and document collection, edited by Spencer C. Tucker

2018 "Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943," by Alan Rice, The Conservation (June 22, 2018)

2019 The American GI in WWII, Uncensored, by  Edward J. K. Gitre
An unprecedented survey of US GIs that began in 1941, preserved on microfilm, provides a raw and uncensored story of average Americans grappling with both national ideals and practical necessities.

2020 Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, by James L. Nolan

2022 The Bloody Hell of Okinawa

2022 The Nazi concentration camps on British soil the UK government tried to forget  

2022 How a Long-Lost Soldier’s Survival Story Riveted—and Confounded—’70s Japan  

2023 The Complicated Legacy Of The V-2 Rocket And Its Designer  

2023 Go for Broke: The 442nd Infantry Regiment, May 2, 2023 by Sarah Bseirani,

The Manhattan Project:  An Interactive History

Atlas of World War II in Europe | Atlas of World War II in the Pacific

The Manhattan Project: A New and Secret World of Human Experimentation

Atomic Heritage Foundation - University of Rochester 

The American Soldier in World War II   

The Cold War
1948 Civil Defense for National Security, Office of Civil Defense Planning, October 1, 1948

2006 Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing 1951-1963 

2007 Cold War at 30,000 feet: the Anglo-American fight for aviation supremacy, by Jeffrey A. Engel

2007 The Encyclopedia of the Cold War:  A Political, Social, and Military History (5 vols)

2012 Reconstructing the Cold War: the early years, 1945-1958, by Ted Hopf

2021 The 2nd Cuban Missile Crisis you didn’t know about, by Alex Hollings, April 7, 2021

2022 The Rise and Fall of the Pentomic Army, by R.F.M. Williams, November 25, 2022

Korean War
1963 This kind of war : a study in unpreparedness, by T. R. Fehrenbach

1976 Korean War Scrapbook, Volume 1 | Volume 2 |

1998 One hundred years of sea power: the U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, by George W. Baer

Atlas of the Korean War

Vietnam War
1966 Hell in a very small place:  The siege of Dien Bien Phu, by Bernard B. Fall

1967 The Viet-Nam reader : articles and documents on American foreign policy and the Viet-Nam crisis

1983 The best and the brightest, by David Halberstam

1986 "A City in Conflict: Rochester During the Vietnam War," by Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, Rochester History 48(3&4):1-48 (July & October, 1986)

1986 Intervention: how America became involved in Vietnam, by George McTurnan Kahin

1986 The army and Vietnam, by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. | another copy | copy in Rush Rhees Library |

1988  A bright shining lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan

1995 Vietnam 1945: the quest for power, by David G. Marr

1997 Dereliction of duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam by H. R. McMaster

1998 One hundred years of sea power: the U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, by George W. Baer

2002 We were soldiers once - and young : Ia Drang : the battle that changed the war in Vietnam, by Harold G.   Moore

2005 Assuming the burden: Europe and the American commitment to war in Vietnam, by Mark Atwood Lawrence

2008 Ghosts of war in Vietnam, by Heonik Kwon

2008 Vietnam's forgotten army: heroism and betrayal in the ARVN, by Andrew A. Wiest

2013 The pro-war movement: domestic support for the Vietnam War and the making of modern American conservatism, by Sandra Scanlon

Atlas of the Vietnam War

Conflict in the Middle East
2010 Breaking ranks: Iraq veterans speak out against the war, by Matthew C. Gutmann and Catherine Lutz

2013 Shadow Wars Chasing Conflict in an Era of Peace, by David Axe

2014 The American way of bombing : changing ethical and legal norms, from flying fortresses to drones, by Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue

2016 Shadow wars : the secret struggle for the Middle East, by Christopher M. Davidson

Conscription and the All-Volunteer Army
1996 The U.S. Army's Transition to the All-Volunteer Force 1968-1974, by Robert K. Griffith, Jr., Center of Military History, 1996

2013 The All-Volunteer Force:  A Selected Bibliography, U.S. Army War College Library, February 2013

2006 I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force, by Bernard D. Rostker

2023 "The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join," The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2023

2023 "The All-Volunteer Army at 50 – Does Milton Friedman’s Case Still Make Sense?" By Michael Mai, Real Clear Defense, July 1, 2023

Racial and Religious Discrimination in the U.S. Military
1925 "Memorandum for the Chief of Staff regarding Employment of Negro Man Power in War, November 10, 1925,"

1976 Filipinos in the United States Navy

1981 Integration of the Armed Forces 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor, Jr.

1985 Black Americans in defense of our nation 

1999 "The Racial History of the U.S. Military Academies," by Susan D. Hansen, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 26:111-116 (Winter 1999-2000)

2000 The "Jewish threat" : anti-semitic politics of the U.S. Army, by Joseph W. Bendersky

2013 "Black Power Cadets: The Reaction to Nixon’s Confederate Monument at West Point, 1971-1972," by James Tyrus Seidule, Avery Messenger, March 21, 2013

2017 "From Slavery to Black Power:  Racial Intolerance at West Point, 1778-2015,: by Ty Seidule, from Intolerance : political animals and their prey, edited by Bruce Chilton and Robert E. Tully

2018 "Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943," by Alan Rice, The Conservation (June 22, 2018)

2019 "Black Power Cadets: How African American Students Defeated President Nixon’s Confederate Monument and Changed West Point, 1971–1976," by Ty Seidule, The Hudson River Valley Review 36(1):55-82 (August 2019)

2021 The African American Experience in the U.S. Navy

2021 Critical race theory: What it is and what it isn’t

2023 761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers Trailer  

Women in the Military
1866 Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac, by Jonathan Letterman

1999 Their day in the sun: women of the Manhattan Project, by Ruth Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg

2005 Daughters of the Union: northern women fight the Civil War, by Nina Silber

2015 Ashley's war : the untold story of a team of women soldiers on the Special Ops battlefield, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

2020 These three women were the first American military casualties of WWI  

The best books about women in the United States military 

Disease and Medicine
1866 Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac, by Jonathan Letterman

1883 Memoir of Jonathan Letterman

1916 Card records in use in the Bureau of pensions

1917 Manual of Military Hygiene for the Military Services of the United States, Third Revised Edition, By Valery Havard, M.D.

1919 Shell shock and other neuropsychiatric problems presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the War literature, 1914-1918, by Elmer Ernest Southard

1923 The Bureau of Pensions; its history, activities and organization, by Gustavus A. Weber.

1945 Men Without Guns; The Abbott Collection of Paintings of Army Medicine

1947 Physiology of man in the desert, by Edward F. Adolph | also here |
Adolph was a member of the Department of Physiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry from 1925 until his death in December 1986.  Before the invasion of North Africa in November 1942, the U.S. Army hired him to study the effects of heat on soldiers, which was declassified in 1947 and published.

1952 The "Average Man"?, by Gilbert S. Daniels | also here |

1953 Anthropometry of Male Basic Trainees, by Gilbert S. Daniels and H. C. Meyers

1954 Anthropometry of Flying Personnel - 1950, by H.T.E. Hertzberg and  Gilbert S. Daniels

2007 "Lack of Health Coverage Among US Veterans From 1987 to 2004," by Karen Lasser, David Himmelstein, David Bor, American Journal of Public Health 97:23:2199-2203 (December, 2007)  This issue contains several articles about military health care

2008 Failure Masquerading as Success: The Veterans Healthcare System: a Microcosm of the Current Federal Government, by Rudolph Cumberbatch

2010 "The U.S. Military and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919," Carol R. Byerly, Public Health Report 125(Suppl3):82-91 (2010) | also see other articles in this issue |

2015  Bacteria and bayonets : the impact of disease in American military history, by David R. Petriello

2016 When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages, by Todd Rose.  Average-sized man?  No such person.

2017 "How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America," by John M. Barry, Smithsonian Magazine (November 2017)

2017 Burdens of war: creating the United States Veterans Health System, by Jessica L. Adler
"During and after World War I, policy makers, soldiers, and veterans laid the groundwork for the extension of government-sponsored medical care to millions of former service members. In the process, they built a pillar of the American welfare state. Legislation and rehabilitation plans formulated shortly after the U.S. entered the Great War aimed to minimize the government's long-term obligations to veterans, but within a decade, those who had served gained conditional access to their own direct assistance agency and a national system of hospitals. Burdens of War explains why that drastic transition occurred, and how one group of citizens won the right to obtain publicly funded health services. The story of the early roots of service-related health policies has a variety of larger implications. It shows how veterans' welfare shifted from centering on pension and domicile care programs rooted in the nineteenth century to the provision of access to direct medical services; how shifting ideals about hospitals and medical care influenced policy at the dusk of the Progressive Era; how race, class, and gender shaped the health-related experiences of soldiers, veterans, and caregivers; and how interest groups capitalized on a tense political and social climate to bring about change. On a general level, an examination of the roots of a nationwide veterans' hospital system demonstrates how privileges were won in the twentieth-century United States. It reveals a moment of state expansion, but also illustrates the wider tendency of the U.S. government to award entitlements selectively. The policies that paved the way for the advent of a veterans' medical system thus deserve to be considered as foundational in the development and shape of the American welfare state."

2019 "The Secret History of Fort Detrick, the CIA’s Base for Mind-Control Experiments," by Stephen Kinzer, Politico Magazine, September 15, 2019

2020 Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, by James L. Nolan

VA History in Brief

US Army Medical Department Office of Medical History

Horses
1803 A Treatise on the Cavalry and Saddle Horse: With Remarks on Pacing and Leaping, Observations on Breeding, &c. &c. &c., by George Orr

1805 An Analysis of Horsemanship; Teaching the Whole Art of Riding in the Manege, Military, Hunting, Racing and Travelling System, Volume 1, by John Adams (ridingmaster.)

1853 On the deteriorated condition of our saddle-horses ... The state of our cavalry, and the imperfect system under which this force and that of our army generally is administered

1859 A Practical Treatise on Street Or Horsepower Railways: Their Location, Construction and Management: With General Plans and Rules for Their Organization and Operation; together with examinations as to their comparative advantages over the Omnibus System and Inquiries as to Their Value for Investment; Including Copies of Municipal Ordinances Relating Thereto, by Alexander Easton {Easton later built a failed water works system in Rochester.}

1862 A revised system of cavalry tactics : for the use of the cavalry and mounted infantry, C.S.A., by Joseph Wheeler

1862 Nolans̓ System for Training Cavalry Horses, by Kenner Garrard and Lewis Edward Nolan

1863 Cavalry: Its History, Management, and Uses in War, by Jean Roemer

1872 "The Position of the Horse in Modern Society," The Nation 383:277-278 (October 31, 1872)

1878 The World on Wheels; or Carriages, with Their Historical Associations from the Earliest Time to the Present Time, Including a Selection from the American Centennial Exhibition, by Ezra M. Stratton

1886 Minty and the Cavalry: A History of Cavalry Campaigns in the Western Armies, by Joseph G. Vale

1888 Five Years a Cavalryman : Or, Sketches of Regular Army Life on the Texas Frontier, Twenty Odd Years Ago, by H. H. McConnell

1894 The Animal as a Machine and Prime Mover, by Robert Henry Thurston

1903 The army horse in accident and disease, by School of Application for Cavalry and Field Artillery (Fort Riley, Kan.)

1903 Principles of horse feeding, by C. F. Langworthy

1912 The Army Horseshoer

1941 Technical Manual of The Horseshoer, March 11, 1941.

1997 "The Centrality of the Horse to the Nineteenth-Century American City,” by Joel Tarr and Clay McShane, from The Making of Urban America, pp. 105-130 | excerpt here |

1999 “A Note on the Horse as an Urban Power Source,” by Joel Tarr, Journal of Urban History 25:434-448 (March, 1999)

2007 The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century, by Clay McShane and Joel Tarr | also here |

2008 "The Horse as an Urban Technology," by Joel A. Tarr and Clay McShane, Journal of Urban Technology 15(1):5-17 (April, 2008)

2009 Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America, by Ann Norton Greene | also here |

2018 Farewell to the Horse: A Cultural History, by Ulrich Raulff

Military Technology and Logistics
1849 The Marine Steam-engine: Designed Chiefly for the Use of Naval Officers and Engineers, by Thomas Main and Thomas Francis Brown

1864 Military Bridges: With Suggestions for New Expedients and Constructions for Crossing Streams and Chasms; Including, Also, Designs for Trestle and Truss Bridges for Military Railroads, Adapted Especially to the Wants of the Service in the United States, by Herman Haupt

1866 United States Military Railroads, Report of Bvt. Brig. Gen. D.C. McCallum 

1882 The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States, Volume 1, by William Rattle Plum | Volume 2 |

1944 Military Railroads and the Military Railway Service, March, 1944

1977 Harpers Ferry armory and the new technology: the challenge of change, by Merritt Roe Smith

2001 "Naval Innovation:  From Coal to Oil," by Erik J. Dahl, Joint Force Quarterly 27:50-56 (Winter 2000-2001)

2010 "A Nation in Extremity: Sewing Machines and the American Civil War," by Amy Breakwell, Textile History and the Military, 41 (1) supplement, 98–107 (May 2010)

2021 Powering the U.S. Army of the Future, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Academy Tells Army to Stick With Fossil Fuels; All-Electric Vehicles Not Practical

2021 A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says, NPR, June 1, 2021

2022 Dog Tags: Identifying our Deceased Military Veterans 

Military Law
1951  10 U.S. Code Chapter 47 - Uniform Code of Military Justice

1959 The Background of the Uniform Code of Military Justice  

War Reporting
 1754 The Journal of Major George Washington: Sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie to the Commandant of the French Forces in Ohio, by George Washington

1775 The Massachusetts Spy, May 3, 1775

1904 The Russo-Japanese War: A Photographic and Descriptive Review of the Great Conflict in the Far East, Gathered from the Reports, Records, Cable Despatches, Photographs, Etc., Etc., of Collier's War Correspondents

1944 "The Newspaper Coverage of Lexington and Concord," by Frank Luther Mott, The New England Quarterly 17(4):289-505 (December 1944)

1967 "Television’s War," by Michael J. Arlen, The New Yorker, May 20, 1967

1997 Vietnam: A Television History

2002 The first casualty : the war correspondent as hero and myth-maker from the Crimea to Kosovo, by Phillip Knightly

2009 "Forever Bear In Mind:" Spreading the News of Lexington and Concord, by James David Moran

2010 Pen and Sword: American War Correspondents, 1898-1975, by Mary S. Mander

2012 "Introduction: Reporting war – history, professionalism and technology," Journal of War and Cultures Studies

2016  The woman war correspondent, the U.S military, and the press, 1846-1947, Carolyn M. Edy

2018 Vietnam: The First Television War

2020 American Women War Correspondents of World War I by Chris Dubbs

2023 From drone videos to selfies at the front, Ukraine is the most documented war ever, NPR, August 2, 2023

Maps
1612 Map of New France by Samuel Champlain

1632 Map of New France by Samuel Champlain

1656 Le Canada, ou Nouvelle France, & c., ca. 1656, par Nicholas Sanson d'Abbeville

1684 Franquelin's map of Louisiana.

1685? British Map of North America

1771 Map of the Country of the Six Nations

1774 Map of British North America, from Shepherd (1923)

1804 Map of the State of New York

1804 Map of the United States, exhibiting the post-roads, the situations, connections & distances of the post-offices, stage roads, counties & principal rivers

1808 A map of the State of New York : compiled from the latest authorities : including the turnpike roads now granted, as also the principal common roads connected therewith : intended as well for the student in geography as a directory to the traveller

1809 Western New York in 1809

1812 Map of the northern part of the state of New York

1814 Map of the United States

1823 Map of New York

1827 Voyage du Général Lafayette aux États-Unis. June 7, 1825: Marquis de Lafayette stops in Rochester on his tour of the United States.

1827 Map of Rochester by E. Johnson

1830 A Connected View of The Whole Internal Navigation of the United States.

1834 Map of the railroads and canals, finished, unfinished, and in contemplation, in the United States

1850 Disturnell's new map of the United States and Canada : showing all the canals, rail roads, telegraph lines and principal stage routes

1853 Map of the various channels for conveying the trade of the north west to the Atlantic sea-board exhibiting the tributaries & drainage of the trade into each and the effect of the enlargement of the Erie Canal, illustrating the position taken by William J. McAlpine, C.E. in his Annual Report as State Engineer and Surveyor of the State of New York, 1853.

1855 Map of the state of New-York showing its water and rail road lines. Jan 1855, by direction of John T. Clark State Engineer & Surveyor.

1864 Lloyd's New Map of the United States, the Canadas and New Brunswick, showing every Railroad.

1931 The Histomap, Four Thousand Years of World History

West Point Military History Atlases

United States Military Academy at West Point
1862 Cadet Life at West Point, by George Crockett Strong

1874 Cadet Life at West Point as I Saw it 

1891 Register of Graduates and Former Cadets | 1802-1840 | 1840-1867 | 1868-1878 | 1802-1878 | 1802-1900 | 1890-1900 | 1900-1910 | 1910-1920A | 1910-1920B | 1920-1930 | 1930-1940 | 1940-1950 | 1920-1930 | 1890-1969 |

1896 Cadet Life at West Point, by Hugh T. Reed

1898 Catholic Chapel Law

1899 Facing the Twentieth Century: Our Country, Its Power and Peril by James Marcus King, catholic chapel opposition

1904 The Centennial of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, 1802-1902 | Volume 1 | Volume 2 |

1911 Cadet Life at West Point, by Hugh T. Reed

1929 Bugle Notes Volume 21

1936 "West Point," Life Magazine, November 30, 1936
Pages 45-49:  West Point

1942 Assembly 

1958 Catalogue of the United States Military Academy Preparatory School

1968-1969 USMA Catalog 

1970 Bugle Notes Volume 62

1971-1972 Catalog  

1974 Howitzer Yearbook - Class of 1974

1980 "The Founding of West Point: Jefferson and the Politics of Security," by Theodore Joseph Crackel, Armed Forces & Society 7(4):529-543 (Summer 1981)

1982 "Jefferson, Politics, and the Army: An Examination of the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802," by Theodore J. Crackel, Journal of the Early Republic 2(1):21-38 (Spring, 1982)

1999 "The Racial History of the U.S. Military Academies," by Susan D. Hansen, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 26:111-116 (Winter 1999-2000)

2000 The "Jewish threat" : anti-semitic politics of the U.S. Army, by Joseph W. Bendersky

2010 Register of Graduates and Former Cadets 1932-2010

2011 West Point and WPAOG Highlights

2013 "Black Power Cadets: The Reaction to Nixon’s Confederate Monument at West Point, 1971-1972," by James Tyrus Seidule, Avery Messenger, March 21, 2013

2015 "An Officer and a Scholar: Nineteenth-Century West Point and the Invention of the Blackboard," by Christopher J. Phillips, History of Education Quarterly 55(1):82-108 (February 2015)

2017 "From Slavery to Black Power:  Racial Intolerance at West Point, 1778-2015,: by Ty Seidule, from Intolerance : political animals and their prey, edited by Bruce Chilton and Robert E. Tully

2019 "Black Power Cadets: How African American Students Defeated President Nixon’s Confederate Monument and Changed West Point, 1971–1976," by Ty Seidule, The Hudson River Valley Review 36(1):55-82 (August 2019)