Blog Posts by Subject: American Studies

The NYPL has a bevy of resources to support students and educators on this journey.

There are always new fad-diets and foodstuffs that come and go, so it’s a good thing to have a tried and true list of recipes you and your family can fall back on

Understanding that they, as young people, are historical actors and that their lives are worthy of scholarly analysis can be a profoundly empowering experience.

Our Digital Collections are rich with subway material including a collection of photographs by Alen MacWeeney that capture the quirkiness, diversity, and grittiness of late 1970s New York.

Explore our rich online-accessible resources that can help teachers tackle the Reconstruction era.

A sampling of publications whose authors relied upon the Library’s archival and rare book collections in their research.

With the centennial of women's suffrage around the corner, it's important to begin highlighting the many women that were involved both nationally and internationally in this movement.

Interested in learning more about New York's role, and the early battles of the American Revolution? Inspired by Hamilton?

To keep the spirit of adventure and travel going all month long, a look into the Writers' Project Series of American Guide books, published in the 1930s-1940s and available from The New York Public Library and online.

New! This series of Schomburg Center Research Guides will provide you with resources related to various topics and subjects related to the Global Black Experience. This research guide will provide you with an overview of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s holdings related to Black dance pioneer, Katherine Dunham.

New! This series of Schomburg Center Research Guides will provide you with resources related to various topics and subjects related to the Global Black Experience. This research guide will provide you with an overview of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s holdings related to Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

The tense New York State elections of 1800, as seen through the diary of Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker.

Why was Hamilton so important that he deserves recognition today? Find books and resources on the “10-dollar founding father without a father.”

Here is a list of biographies that will take the reader well beyond high school history and National Gallery portraits to understand these men as anything but clear-cut themselves.

Today’s letter features correspondence between Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and Langston Hughes. In the excerpt below, Schomburg speaks with Hughes regarding acquisitions for The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints—the forerunner to today’s Schomburg Center.

“It was a great oversight” of the Constitution’s framers that they did not give the United States a “proper name.”

The New York Public Library has just digitized Jefferson’s manuscript account book from 1791 to 1803. The volume is basically a day-by-day running record of Jefferson’s transactions. The account book offers a glimpse of how Jefferson interacted with his world on a daily basis.

Two unusual examples of triptychs, which combine headshots with character portraits.

When we started to think about an exhibition on Head Shots based on the Library for the Performing Arts’ collections, we discovered that almost every format in the history of photographic portraits was used as a headshot.