Books with author Michael L. Cooper

Two-term president. Nobel Peace Prize winner. Commander of the Rough Riders. Avid conservationist. Adventurer. All of these and more, Theodore Roosevelt lived his long life to the fullest and left a legacy still remembered more than ninety years after his death. He started his long, successful political career at just twenty-three in New York State, and continued working in the public arena until well after his second term as president. Up Close biographer Michael C. Cooper takes readers beyond T.R.'s bold-faced achievements and explores the driving forces behind one of this country's greatest leaders.

In May of 1607, the first English colony on American soil was established in Virgina, at Jamestown. The settlers faced harsh weather, the threat of starvation, and violence among themselves. Although the colonists were dependent on Native Americans for food and lessons in survival, relationships between the two groups were often hostile. Captain John Smith emerged as the most able leader of the settlers. He helped the faltering colony make it through its first winter, but at great cost. The colony became the home of Princess Pocahontas, the center of the new tobacco industry, the meeting place of America's first representative assembly, and fatefully the landing place of the first African slaves in America. Published on the eve of the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, this book includes maps, time line, glossary, excerpts from original sources, source notes, index.

In this close look at the first relocation camp built for Japanese evacuees living on the West Coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, social historian Michael Cooper makes extensive use of the actual words—from diaries, journals, memoirs, and news accounts—of the people who were held behind barbed wire in the high California desert. Many were American citizens who felt betrayed by their country. They had to leave their jobs, their homes, and their friends and go live in crowded barracks, eat in noisy mess halls, and do without supplies or books for work or schooling. They showed remarkable bravery and resilience as they tried to lead normal lives, starting their own schools, playing baseball, attending Saturday night dances, and publishing their own newspaper. Archival photographs, some by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, augment the informative text. Manzanar is now a National Historic Site and hosts an annual pilgrimage that is attended by former internees, their families, and friends. Endnotes, Internet resources, index.

The 1930s in America will always be remembered for twin disasters-the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Michael L. Cooper takes readers through this tumultuous period, beginning with the 1929 stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression and continuing with the severe drought in the Midwest, known as the Dust Bowl. He chronicles the everyday struggle for survival by those who lost everything, as well as the mass exodus westward to California on fabled Route 66. The crisis also served as a turning point in American domestic policy, prompting the establishment of programs, such as welfare and Social Security, that revolutionized the role of the federal government. Vivid personal anecdotes from figures such as John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, and an extensive selection of photographs by Dorothea Lange and others, illuminate the individuals who faced poverty, illness, and despair as they coped with this extraordinary challenge. Endnotes, bibliography, Internet resources, index.

Many slave spirituals—songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” and “Go Down, Moses”—have become interwoven into the fabric of American culture. For centuries these deeply moving songs were sung by slaves as they worked in the fields. In 1871, six years after the end of slavery, a group from Fisk University known as the Jubilee Singers toured the United States and abroad, raising money for their bankrupt school and, more important, bringing slave spirituals to the attention of a wide audience. This engrossing account, illustrated with archival prints and photographs and appended with the words and music to seven songs, tells the inspiring story of the Jubilee Singers and reveals spirituals to be an invaluable and unique history of American slavery.