American history

America: History and Life.

Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1964–. This companion to Historical Abstracts provides citations and abstracts of articles, books, dissertations, and book reviews on U.S. and Canadian history and culture. Searchable by keyword, author, subject, and source, the index offers in-depth coverage of scholarly publications in North American history and allows for interdisciplinary examinations of American culture.

American Women’s History: A Research Guide

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html. Offers clearly organized information on more than 2,000 print and online resources. Includes a subject guide, a state index, and an introduction to research tools for primary and secondary sources. The site is maintained by Ken Middleton, a reference librarian at Middle Tennessee State University.

WWW Virtual Library: History: United States

http://vlib.iue.it/history/USA. Organized by period and topic, with links to research tools and associations, this selective directory focuses on history sites of interest to scholars.

American National Biography.

Ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Compiled under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, this is the most important and comprehensive biographical reference work on American historical figures. Each sketch is a detailed scholarly profile followed by a critical bibliography.

Dictionary of American History.

Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3rd ed. 10 vols. New York: Scribner, 2003. An encyclopedia of terms, places, and concepts in U.S. history, with maps and illustrations as well as references for further research.

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History.

Ed. Colin A. Palmer. 2nd ed. 6 vols. Detroit: Gale, 2006. A wide-ranging encyclopedia covering people, places, events, concepts, and topics of all sorts. Articles are written by specialists and feature bibliographies.

Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History.

Ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 2001. Provides in-depth articles on American thought and culture. Topics include historical approaches, cultural groups, major cultural regions, and political thought.

Encyclopedia of American Social History.

Ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton et al. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 1993. Fills in the gaps left by conventional political-biographical history sources. The work presents lengthy and well-documented articles covering topics such as religion, class, gender, race, popular culture, regionalism, and everyday life in the United States from pre-Columbian to modern times. Organized thematically rather than alphabetically.

Encyclopedia of the American Civil War.

5 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Subtitled A Political, Social, and Military History, this source offers over 1,600 articles on topics related to the Civil War and its contexts, including events leading up to the war and its consequences. A special section is devoted to primary sources; photographs, drawings, and maps are included.

Encyclopedia of the Confederacy.

Ed. Richard N. Current. 4 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993. Covers Confederate society, culture, and politics as well as events and people in the Civil War–era South. Articles are arranged alphabetically.

Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies.

Ed. Jacob Ernest Cook. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 1993. A collection of lengthy essays covering government and law, economic life, labor, social issues, families, the arts, education, and religion, arranged thematically. The third volume contains a thorough index.

Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century.

Ed. Paul Finkelman. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 2001. Covers major ideas and issues in American social, political, and military history.

Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century.

Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 4 vols. New York: Scribner, 1996. An ambitious survey of U.S. cultural, social, and intellectual history in broad articles arranged topically. Each essay is followed by a thorough bibliography.

United States History: A Multicultural, Interdisciplinary Guide to Information Sources.

By Ron Blazek and Anna Perrault. 2nd ed. Westport: Libraries Unlimited, 2003. A selective and descriptive guide to research materials in U.S. history.