Ray Allen Billington – författare

Charlotte L. Forten (1838-1914) was sensitive, intelligent, and educated in the culture and conventions of pre-Civil War America. But one thing distinguished her from other young Philadelphia women: she was black, destined to endure the constant insults that were accorded any person of color in her day. Her remarkable diary reveals how her resentment against the prejudice of the white world became transformed into an iron determination to excel. Impatient to help the self-advancement of other blacks, she went to Massachusetts to become a teacher and became active in literary and abolitionist circles. Then, during the Civil War, she traveled to South Carolina to participate in a unique social experiment involving newly freed blacks of the Sea Islands. In 1878 she married the Reverand Francis J. Grimké, the son of Henry Grimké whose two sisters, Sarah and Angelina, were prominent abolitionists. Charlotte Forten’s zeal for justice and her personal renderings of the events and people of her day make her journal an important document in American social history. Her bequest to humanity, Ray Allen Billington writes, “was a journal which could reveal to a later generation her undying belief in human decency and equality.”

The book is divided into several parts: the historical uses of the limerick, concentrating on the American frontier and on World War II; limericks assembled from the files of the Society of the Fifth Line, and organization of scholars whose job it is to produce an original verse for each meeting of the membership; samples of the classic limerick form, some original, some contributed, some culled from published and unpublished collections; and an assortment of limericks that reflect the limerick's role as a mirror of social change.In the arrangement of the material, Billington could not resist "inflict[ing] my academic standards in an area where art should reign, using chapter headings, explanations, some variant readings, and such footnotes as needed to make the page unattractive."

This first part of Billington's popular American history has basic facts, names and dates underlined so that important information can be seen at a glance. Includes typical questions and answers, as well as helpful hints on how to prepare for examinations.

The hypothesis advanced in Frederick Jackson Turner's famous 1893 essay, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, has been debated by three generations of scholars. The pioneering experience, Turner suggested, accounted for some of the distinctive characteristics of the American people: during three centuries of expansion their attitudes toward democracy, nationalism and individualism were altered, and they developed distinctively American traits, such as wastefulness, inventiveness, mobility, and a dozen more.After opening with a summary of the appearance, acceptance, and subsequent dismissal of the theory, the author carefully defines the ""frontier"" and reviews recent evidence on its political, social, and economic characteristics. He discusses the compulsion to migrate and examines other behavioral patterns and traits in his explanation of how and why pioneers moved west. His extensive bibliographic notes constitute a remarkable guide to the literature of many disciplines dealing with the frontier concept.

When it appeared in 1949, the first edition of Ray Allen Billington's 'Westward Expansion' set a new standard for scholarship in western American history, and the book's reputation among historians, scholars, and students grew through four subsequent editions. This abridgment and revision of Billington and Martin Ridge's fifth edition, with a new introduction and additional scholarship by Ridge, as well as an updated bibliography, focuses on the Trans-Mississippi frontier. Although the text sets out the remarkable story of the American frontier, which became, almost from the beginning, an archetypal narrative of the new American nation's successful expansion, the authors do not forget the social, environmental, and human cost of national expansion.

This book examines text books used in English and American schools and determines the way in which national bias has been instilled into school children by the use of history books. This study reveals that the deliberate distortion common a generation ago has disappeared, but has been displaced by a more subtle form of bias that is more dangerous because it is less easily recognised. It deals in particular with the treatment of the American War of Indepdendence, the War of 1812 and World War I. The report contains positive suggestions to authors and publishers designed to eliminate all bias and to help them achieve historical objectivity.

This book examines text books used in English and American schools and determines the way in which national bias has been instilled into school children by the use of history books. This study reveals that the deliberate distortion common a generation ago has disappeared, but has been displaced by a more subtle form of bias that is more dangerous because it is less easily recognised. It deals in particular with the treatment of the American War of Indepdendence, the War of 1812 and World War I. The report contains positive suggestions to authors and publishers designed to eliminate all bias and to help them achieve historical objectivity.