USA

Making New Religions: The Mighty 'I AM'

'Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.' The colourful activities of a religious movement in the 1930s were to lead to landmark Supreme Court decisions about the relations of religion and the state.

New York 1865

Gregor Dallas tells how the transition from small-town to metropolis brought enormous problems and pressures to the Big Apple. 

Black Families in the American Civil War

The newly-found voices of the slaves caught up in the American Civil War, and heard through letters to their families, are a testimony to their tenacity and unity in the struggle for emancipation.

A Patriot For Whom? Benedict Arnold and the Loyalists

'My country, right or wrong' – but which country? The dilemmas of allegiance posed for Americans by the outbreak of war between the colonies and the British Crown led a cross-section of that society into the loyalist camp, including (with an eye to the main chance) 'the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army', as Esmond Wright describes.

Elizabethan America: 'God's Own Latitude?'

'In the beginning, America was in the way'. Only slowly did 16th-century Englishmen turn from the chimera of a short-cut to Asia's riches to the vision of precious metals to be mined and colonies planted in the New World.