Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (revised, 1883) tells of the author's years as a steamboat pilot through a series of short articles.

Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) is the most prominent slave narrative written, and depicts his development from slave to free man.

A Short History of Reconstruction (1990) by Eric Foner, an abridged version of his award winning study Reconstruction" America's Unfinished Revolution, explains the complex reasons for the failure of Reconstruction.

In Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South (1990), James Oakes presents a thorough history of slavery as it was practiced and preached during the period in which Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) depicts the inhumanity of an institution which separates slave families on the auction block and corrupts southern whites by giving them absolute...