Encyclopedias

Hip-hop began in the 1970s in New York City’s South Bronx neighborhood as a street-born cultural movement based on four pillars: DJ-ing, MC-ing (later known as rap), breakdancing, and graffiti…

Automobiles became an integral part of U.S. culture in the 1920s. There were about 3 million miles of road in the nation at the start of the decade, but only…

Patrick Henry was a Virginian who advocated colonial rebellion against Great Britain. He had a successful law practice and served in public office as both a legislator and as governor…

Ernest Hemingway is praised as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. With an understated prose style, his fiction features a narrow range of characters and a…

William Randolph Hearst is best remembered as the father of yellow journalism, a type of reporting that focused on sensationalism to sell newspapers and magazines. (See News Media.) Hearst was…

U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes was the victor in one of the most fiercely fought elections in American history. Hayes was born on October 4, 1822. He was the youngest…

Hawaii was the last state to join the Union when it was admitted on August 21, 1959. It is actually a group of 132 islands situated in the northern Pacific…

William Henry Harrison attained national recognition at an early age for his military victory over Shawnee leader Tecumseh (1768–1813) at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. He enjoyed a long…

Benjamin Harrison was born in 1833 in North Bend, Ohio. The grandson of the ninth U.S. president, William Henry Harrison (1773–1841; served 1841), Benjamin Harrison became a lawyer and moved…

John Brown (1800–1859) was an American abolitionist and insurrectionist who planned an all-out war on slavery beginning with a violent raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in…