Books in Our American Century series

In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s.His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and brings to life the famous and the humble, from Arthur Koestler to Emma, the Black Mammy of Moscow. It is the continuously amusing, wise revelation of an American writer journeying around the often strange and always exciting world he loves.

James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. In the 1920s and since, it has also given white readers a startling new perspective on their own culture, revealing to many the double standard of racial identity imposed on black Americans. Narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century--from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast. This is a powerful, unsentimental examination of race in America, a hymn to the anguish of forging an identity in a nation obsessed with color. And, as Arna Bontemps pointed out decades ago, "the problems of the artist [as presented here] seem as contemporary as if the book had been written this year."

What were Americans doing in the 1920s? Dancing the Charleston, listening to jazz music, and watching Rudolph Valentino at the movies. It was illegal to make or sell liquor during the 1920s, but Americans drank anyway. They sneaked into secret nightclubs called speakeasies and cooked up "bathtub gin" at home. The 1920s were a time of prosperity in the United States. Americans bought new devices such as radios and refrigerators. They watched as the stock market rose higher and higher. But the decade ended tragically when the stock market crashed in late 1929, ushering in the Great Depression. The decade's newsmakers included President Calvin Coolidge, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, silent film star Greta Garbo, and bandleader Duke Ellington. They helped set the tone for a decade of celebration, wealth, and excitement. From flappers to Frigidaires, from bootleggers to Babe Ruth, read about this fascinating decade from start to finish.

The classic history of women on America's frontiers, now updated and thoroughly revised. FRONTIER WOMEN is an imaginative and graceful account of the extraordinarily diverse contributions of women to the development of the American frontier. Author Julie Roy Jeffrey has expanded her original analysis to include the perspectives of African American and Native American women.

The amazing adventure that is the American century begins -- and what an adventure it is! The Land Rush sweeps thousands of settlers into the Great Plains, devouring Indian land. Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the Vanderbilts build their empires. Henry Ford builds his Model Ts., W.e.b. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey fight for blacks, Susan Anthony and Margaret Sanger for women, and Samuel Gompers and Joe Hill for working stiffs. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan do battle in the Scopes monkey trial, and the Treasury Department battles Al Capone.Beyond our borders, Panama falls under American sway. We go to war against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines. When the Maine explodes and sinks, she becomes our battle cry. And when our policy of isolation ends in 1917, millions of Yanks are drafted and sent "over there" to save the world for democracy. A parade of presidents passes before us: McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover -- men both great and flawed who will change the world forever.Harold Evans, picture researcher Gail Buckland, and historical researcher Kevin Baker worked diligently to ensure accuracy throughout this landmark work. This audio program intrigues and involves, vividly bringing to life the power and passion of the American century, a century like no other.