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U.S. History: 1877 to present - HIST202 - Primary Sources

Primary sources available in the library or on the Internet relevant to U.S. History after 1877

Resources in Library Catalog

eBooks on this list are only available to RVCC students, faculty, and staff and require a login with your G# and password.

A-train : memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman

A-Train is the story of one of the black Americans who, during World War II, graduated from Tuskegee Army Flying School and served as a pilot in the 99th Pursuit Squadron. Charles W. Dryden has prepared an honest, fast-paced, balanced, vividly written, and very personal account.

America views the Holocaust, 1933-1945 : a brief documentary history

Wrapping historical narrative around 60 primary sources, including news clippings, speeches, letters, magazine articles, and government reports, this volume's three part organization chronicles what was unfolding in Nazi Germany through the lens of American reporters and writers, traces the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the US as well as its increasingly tight immigration policies, and then reveals Americans' horror upon the realization that the reports and stories of the Holocaust were not exaggerations or fabrications.

Anne Frank : the diary of a young girl

In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during the two years her family was in hiding. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.

Anne Frank remembered : the story of the woman who helped to hide the Frank family

The reminiscences of Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Frank family in Amsterdam during the Second World War, presents a vivid story of life under Nazi occupation.

Arming the nation for war : mobilization, supply, and the American war effort in World War II

A decorated World War I veteran, Federal Judge Robert P. Patterson knew all too well the needs of soldiers on the battlefield. He was thus dismayed by America's lack of military preparedness when a second great war engulfed Europe in 1939-40. In this previously unpublished account long buried among the late author's papers and originally marked confidential, Patterson describes the vast challenges the United States faced as it had to equip, in a desperately short time, a fighting force capable of confronting a formidable enemy (eBook).

The Columbia guide to Hiroshima and the bomb

Few aspects of American military history have been as vigorously debated as Harry Truman's decision to use atomic bombs against Japan. In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive collection of key primary source documents that illuminate the behavior of the United States and Japan during the closing days of World War II.

Crowns, crosses, and stars : my youth in Prussia, surviving Hitler, and a life beyond

This is the story of a remarkable life and a journey, from the privileged world of Prussian aristocracy, through the horrors of World War II, to high society in the television age of postwar America. It is also an account of a spiritual voyage, from a conventional Christian upbringing, through marriage to Pastor Martin Niemoeller, to conversion to Judaism (eBook).

Fragments of war : a marine's personal journey

A World War II marine officer who survived three major campaigns in the Pacific offers an authentic and compelling picture of tank warfare in this chronicle of his experiences.

From Anzio to the Alps : an American soldier's story

This work is Lloyd M. Wells's firsthand account of World War II based on a journal he kept during the war, letters he sent home, and personal records, as well as recollections of people and events (eBook).

The Good Fight Continues : World War II Letters From the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers. When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) (eBook).

The good war : an oral history of World War Two

“The Good War”, for which Studs Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize, is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Terkel as interviewer. His subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history of World War II.”

Guadalcanal Marine

In Guadalcanal Marine, Kerry L. Lane recounts the dark reality of combat experienced by the men of the 1st Marine Division fighting on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. With eighty gripping photographs and his text, he brings to life the struggles of his companions as they achieve these two astonishing victories (eBook).

Haven : the dramatic story of 1,000 World War II refugees and how they came to America

Ruth Gruber, special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, tells about her experiences carrying out a mission to bring one thousand Jewish and Christian refugees from Italy in 1944, and discusses her efforts on their behalf once they arrived in America.

Hell before their very eyes : American soldiers liberate concentration camps in Germany, April 1945

Drawing on a blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts--including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections--Hell Before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.

Kamikaze : a Japanese pilot's own spectacular story of the famous suicide squadrons

Originally published in 1957, this enduring classic remains a touching and insightful look into the world of the kamikaze. From the age of 15, Yasuo Kuwahara began a life of military service that included suffering through brutal basic training, participating in ferocious aerial combat against the Allies, and avoiding a suicide mission when an atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, near his hometown (eBook).

Life behind barbed wire : the World War II internment memoirs of a Hawaiʻi Issei

Yasutaro Soga's Life behind Barbed Wire (Tessaku selkatsu) is a firsthand account of the incarceration of a Hawai'i Japanese during World War II. Although centered on one man's experiences, Life behind Barbed Wire is enhanced by Soga's trained eye and instincts as a professional journalist, which allowed him to paint a larger picture of those extraordinary times and his place in them.

Pacific skies : American flyers in World War II

From 1941 to 1945 the skies over the Pacific Ocean afforded the broadest arena for battle and the fiercest action of air combat during World War II. In vivid accounts written soon after combat and in reflective memoirs recorded in the years after peace came, both pilots and crew members detailed their stories of the action that occurred in the embattled skies. Their first-person testimonies describe a style of warfare invented at the moment of need and at a time when the outcome was anything but certain (eBook).

The purge of the Thirtieth Division

This is the only known written work by any of the eighteen National Guard division commanders mobilized in1940 and 1941. It chronicles from a National Guard perspective many of the challenges and growing pains experienced by the Army in the critical months leading up to its entry into World War II (eBook).

Queen City refuge : an oral history of Cincinnati's Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany

Oral histories of persecution and refuge as told by 27 of Cincinnati's Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

Remember for life : Holocaust survivors' stories of faith and hope

These seventy-one firsthand stories from survivors of the Holocaust teach us to choose to remember for life, for their words are not about hatred and death but about ethics, decency, and love. Although the stories are arranged to accompany the weekly Torah readings and many of the Jewish holidays, they are just as meaningful when read on their own, in any sequence (eBook).

Taps for a Jim Crow army : letters from black soldiers in World War II

Taps for a Jim Crow Army is a powerful collection of letters written by black soldiers in the 1940s to various government and nongovernment officials. The soldiers expressed their disillusionment, rage, and anguish over the discrimination and segregation they experienced in the Army.

They were expendable

Story of the Philippine campaign as told by four officers of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3.

Whispered silences : Japanese Americans and World War II

Whispered Silences presents memories and images of the American detention camps to which 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were sent during World War II.

With the 41st Division in the Southwest Pacific : a foot soldier's story

A member of the famed 41st Infantry Brigade, the 'Jungleers, ' Catanzaro saw combat at Hollandia, Biak, Zamboanga, and Mindanao. He was a part of the Japanese occupation force and writes with feeling about living among his former enemies and of the decision to drop the atom bomb (eBook).

Resources in Library Databases

Off campus, these resources are available only to RVCC students, staff, and faculty and require a login with your G# and password.

Perform a keyword search, then select Primary Sources from the tabbed results.

Primary sources

To browse, select Primary Sources and then World War II and the Forties: 1939-1949

Primary Sources       World War II

Resources on the Internet