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Research Guides

History : American: Books & eBooks

A research guide to primary and secondary sources for American history. Also see the African American & Asian American history guides.

Selected eBooks

The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000
Fritzie: The Invented Life and Violent Murder of a Flapper
California, a Slave State
Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State
Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange across Three Centuries
Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York
Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon
Purple Power: The History and Global Impact of SEIU
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South
Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War
The Seattle General Strike
Lured by the American Dream: Filipino Servants in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, 1952-1970
Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West
This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War
Japanese America on the Eve of the Pacific War: An Untold History of the 1930s
Race, Law, and Culture: Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education
America Divided: The Civil War of The 1960s
Votes for College Women: Alumni, Students, and the Woman Suffrage Campaign

Using UW Libraries Search to Find Books

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Find eBooks

You can find eBooks in two ways:

  • Do your search and then on the results screen, filter your results by using the toolbar:
    • Choose Availability: "Available Online" and Resource Type: "eBooks"
    • And then click on the green "Apply Filters" button
       
  • Use the Advanced Search option
    • Change "Show Only" to "UW Libraries" and "Material Type" to "eBooks"
       
  • See the eBook FAQ for more information

Search Tips

 

  • By Topic - Type in the keywords that broadly describe your topic. For example: civil war united states women history
     
  • By Title - search for a specific book by title. Type in the first few words of the book title in quotations. For example: "inescapable ecologies"
     
  • By Author - search for books written by a specific author. Type in the last name followed by the first name of the author in quotations. For example: "jung moon-ho"

History eBook Collections

 Additional collections of eBooks can be found on eBook Collections guide. The following collections have strong history content:

Finding Books Beyond the UW

If you can't find the books you need at the UW or through our Summit partner libraries (Summit material can be found in UW Libraries Search), use the following catalogs. Books not available at the UW can be requested through Interlibrary Loan. 

Browsing American History

The UW Libraries arranges books by Library of Congress call numbers. Though history is covered in every discipline (e.g., women's history may be locatedin the women's studies call numbers while the medical history may be in the medicine call numbers), the major sections for American history are listed below.

E11-E143 America Suz 3
E75-E99 Native Americans Suz 3
E101-E135 Discovery of America Suz 3
E151-E889 United States Suz 3
E186-E199 Colonial History Suz 3
E201-E298 Revolution Suz 3
E456-E665 Civil War Suz 3
E740-E837 20th Century Suz 3
E838-E889 Late 20th Century Suz 3
E895-E904 21st Century Suz 3
F1-F975 State & Local history Suz 3
F886-F900 Washington State Suz 3


For a more specific breakdown of the call numbers see the Library of Congress Classification Online.