If you’re curious about the Irish famine, whaling, or the California gold rush, try the following titles written for young readers:
Lyons, Mary E., ed. Feed the Children First: Irish Memories of the Great Hunger. New York: Atheneum, 2001.
McKissack, Patricia and Frederick. Black Hands, White Souls: The Story of African-American Whalers. New York: Scholastic, 1999.
Murphy, Jim. Gone A-Whaling: The Lure of the Sea and the Hunt for the Great Whale. New York: Clarion, 1997.
Stanley, Jerry. Hurry Freedom: African Americans in Gold Rush California. New York: Crown Publishers, 2000.
If you want to learn more about nineteenth-century race relations, try these more challenging books written for adults:
Grover, Kathryn. The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Handlin, Oscar. Boston’s Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation. New York: Atheneum, 1968.
Lapp, Rudolph M. Blacks in Gold Rush California. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Starr, Kevin and Richard J. Orsi, eds. Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture and Community in Gold Rush California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.