If you are just starting your research, you may need to develop your topic further. Ask yourself:
As you consider these questions, take a look at a few of our reference resources for general, background information about your topic. The information you find in these resources will help you determine what you need to know, what search terms or keywords to use, and what, exactly, it is that you hope to discover through your research.
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by
Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations such as "manifest destiny" and "Jacksonian democracy," and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism. Drawing on rich narratives and primary source documents, Ortiz links racial segregation in the Southwest and the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, known as International Workers' Day, when migrant laborers--Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth--united in resistance on the first "Day Without Immigrants." As African American civil rights activists fought against Jim Crow laws and Mexican labor organizers warred against the suffocating grip of capitalism, Black and Spanish-language newspapers, abolitionists, and Latin American revolutionaries coalesced around movements built between people from the United States and people from Central America and the Caribbean. And in stark contrast to the resurgence of "America first" rhetoric, Black and Latinx intellectuals and organizers today have urged the United States to build bridges of solidarity with the nations of the Americas. Incisive and timely, this bottom-up history, told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans, reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights.
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment by
These volumse contain over 500 essays on the major American Enlightenment figures, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, Jonathan Edwards and others.
Handy African American History Answer Book by 
The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History by
Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the connections among Africa, the Americas, and Europe transformed world history--through maritime exploration, commercial engagements, human migrations and settlements, political realignments and upheavals, cultural exchanges, and more. This book, the first encyclopedic reference work on Atlantic history, takes an integrated, multicontinental approach that emphasizes the dynamics of change and the perspectives and motivations of the peoples who made it happen. The entries--all specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of leading scholars--synthesize the latest scholarship on central themes, including economics, migration, politics, war, technologies and science, the physical environment, and culture. Part one features five major essays that trace the changes distinctive to each chronological phase of Atlantic history. Part two includes more than 125 entries on key topics, from the seemingly familiar viewed in unfamiliar and provocative ways (the Seven Years' War, trading companies) to less conventional subjects (family networks, canon law, utopias).
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior by
Explores the intersection of psychology, political science, sociology, communications, and human behavior to better understand why and how people interact with political processes. Bringing together scholars from around the world, the encyclopedia integrates theories, research, and case studies from a variety of disciplines to help readers better understand the complexities of political behavior.
The SAGE Handbook of Political Science by
Comprising three volumes of contributions from expert authors from around the world, The SAGE Handbook of Political Science aims to frame, assess and synthesize research in the field, helping to define and identify its current and future developments.
The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda by
The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda unpacks the topic of propaganda to explain how it invades the human psyche, in what ways it does so, and in what contexts.
The Wisconsin Story by
The Wisconsin Story was published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the occasion of the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial in 1998. Columnist Dennis McCann was given total freedom to choose 150 topics for columns that ran in the newspaper through the year and were then published as a book. The topics cover a broad spectrum of state history, from significant figures such as Robert and Belle LaFollette, Golda Meir, Edna Ferber, W.D. Hoard, and many more, to important times such as the Black Hawk War, campus protests, the legal oleo era, and others. The strange and unusual are also represented here, including that time a cow was milked in an airplane, medical quacks convincing people that uranium would heal them, and of course the origins of Watertown's famous stuffed geese.
