History classrooms present a unique dilemma. How do we offer our students a basic understanding of key events and facts, while inviting them to see the past not as a rote list of names and dates, but as the fascinating, conflicted prelude to their lives today? How do we teach our students to think like historians? As scholars and teachers who go into the classroom every day, we know these challenges well and have composed the sixth edition of America: A Concise History to help instructors meet them.
Of course the contents of this book are only helpful if students read and assimilate the material before coming to class, so for the sixth edition we are rolling out a suite of digital tools designed to save you time and help students gain confidence and learn historical thinking skills. So that students will come to class prepared, they now receive access to LearningCurve — an adaptive learning tool that garners over a 90% student satisfaction rate that helps them master content — when they purchase a new copy of America: A Concise History. And because we know that your classroom needs are changing rapidly, we are excited to announce that America is available with LaunchPad, a new robust interactive e-book and course space with a wealth of additional content and learning aids that makes customizing and assigning the book and its resources easy and efficient. LaunchPad can be used on its own or in conjunction with this printed text, giving instructors and students the best of both worlds — the narrative text in an inexpensive, easy-to-read printed format as well as our highly acclaimed digital resources and tools, where their use and combination are limited only the imagination of the instructor. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and LaunchPad, see bedfordstmartins.com/henrettaconcise/catalog.
America has long been known for its breadth, balance, and ability to explain to students not just what happened, but why. The latest edition both preserves and substantially builds upon those strengths. The foundation of our approach lies in our commitment to an integrated history. America: A Concise History combines traditional “top-down” narratives of political and economic affairs with “bottom-up” narratives of the lived experiences of ordinary people. Our goal is to help students achieve a richer understanding of politics, diplomacy, war, economics, intellectual and cultural life, and gender, class, and race relations, by exploring how developments in all these areas were interconnected. Our analysis is fueled by a passion for exploring big, consequential questions. How did a colonial slave society settled by people from four continents become a pluralist democracy? How have liberty and equality informed the American experience? Questions like these help students understand what’s at stake as we study the past. In America: A Concise History, we provide an integrated historical approach and a dedication to why history matters to bear on the full sweep of America’s past.
One of the most exciting developments in this edition is the arrival of a new author, Eric Hinderaker. An expert in native and early American history, Eric brings a fresh interpretation of native and colonial European societies and the revolutionary Atlantic world of the eighteenth century that enlivens and enriches our narrative. Eric joins James Henretta, long the intellectual anchor of the book, whose scholarly work now focuses on law, citizenship, and the state in early America; Rebecca Edwards, an expert in women’s and gender history and nineteenth-century electoral politics; and Robert Self, whose work explores the relationship between urban and suburban politics, social movements, and the state. Together, we strive to ensure that energy and creativity, as well as our wide experience in the study of history, infuse every page that follows.
The core of a textbook is its narrative, and we have endeavored to make ours clear, accessible, and lively. In it, we focus not only on the marvelous diversity of peoples who came to call themselves Americans, but also on the institutions that have forged a common national identity. More than ever, we daily confront the collision of our past with the demands of the future and the shrinking distance between Americans and others around the globe. To help students meet these challenges, we call attention to connections with the histories of Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, drawing links between events in the United States and those elsewhere. In our contemporary digital world, facts and data are everywhere. What students crave is analysis. As it has since its inception, America: A Concise History provides students with a comprehensive explanation and interpretation of events, a guide to why history unfolded as it did and a roadmap for understanding the world in which we live.
A Nine-Part Framework Highlights Key Developments
One of the greatest strengths of America: A Concise History is its part structure, which helps students identify the key forces and major developments that shaped each era. A four-page Part Opener introduces each part, using analysis, striking images, and a detailed thematic timeline to orient students to the major developments and themes of the period covered. New “Thematic Understanding” questions ask students to consider periodization and make connections among chapters. By organizing U.S. history into nine distinct periods, rather than just 31 successive chapters, we encourage students to trace changes and continuities over time and to grasp connections between political, economic, social, and cultural events.
In this edition, we have reengineered the part structure to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship. Pre-contact native societies and European colonization are now covered in two distinct parts, allowing us to devote comprehensive attention to the whole of North America before the 1760s. We have also added an additional part bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, bringing fresh perspectives on industrialization, the “long progressive era,” and the growth of American global power. Together, the nine parts organize the complex history of North America and the United States into comprehensible sections with distinct themes.
Part 1, “Transformations of North America, 1450–1700,” highlights the diversity and complexity of Native Americans prior to European contact, examines the transformative impact of European intrusions and the Columbian Exchange, and emphasizes the experimental quality of colonial ventures. Part 2, “British North America and the Atlantic World, 1660–1763,” explains the diversification of British North America and the rise of the British Atlantic World and emphasizes the importance of contact between colonists and Native Americans and imperial rivalries among European powers. Part 3, “Revolution and Republican Culture, 1763–1820,” traces the rise of colonial protest against British imperial reform, outlines the ways that the American Revolution challenged the social order, and explores the processes of conquest, competition, and consolidation that followed from it.
Part 4, “Overlapping Revolutions, 1800–1860” traces the transformation of the economy, society, and culture of the new nation; the creation of a democratic polity; and growing sectional divisions. Part 5, “Creating and Preserving a Continental Nation, 1844–1877,” covers the conflicts generated by America’s empire-building in the West, including sectional political struggles that led to the Civil War, and during and after Reconstruction, national consolidation of power. Part 6, “Industrializing America: Upheavals and Experiments, 1877–1917,” examines the transformations brought about by the rise of corporations and a powerhouse industrial economy, including immigration, a diverse, urbanizing society; and movements for progressive reform.
Part 7, “Domestic and Global Challenges, 1890–1945,” explores America’s rise to world power, the cultural transformations and political conflicts of the 1920s, the Great Depression, and the creation of the welfare state. Part 8, “The Modern State and the Age of Liberalism, 1945–1980,” addresses the postwar period, including America’s new global leadership role during the Cold War; the expansion of federal responsibility during a new “age of liberalism"; and the growth of mass consumption and the middle class. Finally, Part 9, “Global Capitalism and the End of the American Century, 1980 to the Present,” discusses the conservative political ascendancy of the 1980s; the end of the Cold War and rising conflict in the Middle East; and globalization and increasing social inequality.
Hundreds of Sources Encourage
Comparative and Critical Thinking
America: A Concise History has long emphasized primary sources. In addition to weaving lively quotations throughout the narrative, we offer students substantial excerpts from historical documents—letters, diaries, autobiographies, public testimony, and more — and numerous figures that give students practice working with data. These documents allow students to experience the past through the words and perspectives of those who lived it, to understand how historians make sense of the past using data, and to gain skill in interpreting historical evidence.
Each chapter of the book includes two types of primary source features. American Voices features in every chapter help students to understand how important events and phenomena were viewed domestically. New America Compared features use primary sources and data to situate U.S. history in global context, while giving students practice in comparison and data analysis. Retooled from the Voices from America feature from the last edition to include data in addition to primary sources, these features appear in every chapter on topics as diverse as the fight for women’s rights in France and the United States, an examination of labor laws after emancipation in Haiti and the United States, the loss of human life in World War I, and an analysis of the worldwide economic malaise of the 1970s.
In LaunchPad, students have access to hundreds of additional primary sources, including a brand new feature to aid you in teaching historical thinking skills. Thinking Like a Historian features in every LaunchPad chapter include 5–8 brief sources organized around a central theme, such as “Beyond the Proclamation Line,” “Making Modern Presidents,” and “The Suburban Landscape of Cold War America.” Students are asked to analyze the documents and complete a “Putting It All Together” assignment that asks them to synthesize and use the evidence to create an argument. Because we understand how important primary sources are to the study of history, we are also pleased to offer in LaunchPad, the all-new companion reader, Sources of America’s History.
As in past editions, an outstanding visual program engages students’ attention and gives them practice in working with visual sources. The book’s illustration program is greatly expanded in LaunchPad, which features more than twice as many images as the print book: over 425 paintings, cartoons, illustrations, photographs, and charts. Informative captions set the illustrations in context and provide students with background for making their own analysis of the images in the book. Keenly aware that students lack geographic literacy, we have included dozens of maps that show major developments in the narrative, each with captions to help students interpret what they see.
Taken together, these documents, figures, maps, and illustrations provide instructors with a trove of teaching materials, such that America: A Concise History offers not only a compelling narrative, but also — right in the text —the rich documentary materials that instructors need to bring the past alive and introduce students to historical analysis.
Study Aids Support Understanding and Teach
Historical Thinking Skills
Each chapter in the book provides aids to student comprehension and study. New “Big Idea” questions at the start of every chapter guide student reading and focus their attention on identifying not just what happened, but why. Focus questions at the end of each major section help guide students in their reading. Where students are likely to stumble over a key concept, we boldface it in the text wherever it is first mentioned and provide a glossary that defines each term. At the end of each chapter, we use a timeline to remind students of important events and reiterate the themes in an analytic summary.
To better support students in their understanding of the material and in their development of historical thinking skills, users of LaunchPad for America: A Concise History will find a wealth of additional learning tools. Author preview videos that speak to the “big idea” of the chapter and guided reading activities for each chapter focus student learning and encourage active engagement with the text. Users of the interactive e-book will also gain proficiency in historical thinking skills via marginal review questions that ask students to “Identify Causes,” “Trace Change over Time,” and “Understand Points of View,” among other skills. In the Chapter Review section, we include a set of review questions for the chapter as a whole, along with “Making Connections” and “Thematic Understanding” questions that ask students to consider broader historical issues, developments, and continuities and changes over time. Lastly, the chapter timelines in LaunchPad are accompanied by “Key Turning Points” questions that reminds students of important events and asks them to consider periodization. The different types of formative and summative assessment in LaunchPad, including short answer, essay questions, multiple-choice quizzing, and LearningCurve, are designed to get students reading before class and can be edited, customized with your own material, and assigned in seconds.
New Scholarship Includes Latest Research and Interpretations
In the new edition, we continue to offer instructors a bold account of U.S. history that reflects the latest, most exciting scholarship in the field. Throughout the book, we have given increased attention to political culture and political economy, including the history of capitalism, using this analysis to help students understand how society, culture, politics, and the economy informed one another.
With new author Eric Hinderaker aboard we have taken the opportunity to reconceptualize much of the pre-1800 material. This edition opens with two dramatically revised chapters marked by closer and more sustained attention to the way Native Americans shaped, and were shaped by, the contact experience and highlighting the tenuous and varied nature of colonial experimentation. These changes carry through the edition in a sharpened continental perspective and expanded coverage of Native Americans, the environment, and the West in every era. We have also brought closer attention to the patterns and varieties of colonial enterprise and new attention to the Atlantic world and the many revolutions — in print, consumption, and politics — that transformed the eighteenth century.
In our coverage of the nineteenth century, the discussion of slavery now includes material on African American childhood and the impact of hired-out slaves on black identity. The spiritual life of Joseph Smith also receives greater attention, as do the complex attitudes of Mormons toward slavery. New findings have also deepened the analysis of the War with Mexico and its impact on domestic politics. But the really new feature of these chapters is their heightened international, indeed global, perspective.
In the post-Civil War chapters, enhanced coverage of gender, ethnicity, and race includes greater emphasis on gay and lesbian history and Asian and Latino immigration, alongside the entire chapter devoted to the Civil Rights Movement, a major addition to the last edition. Finally, we have kept up with recent developments with an expanded section on the Obama presidency and the elections of 2008 and 2012.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the following scholars and teachers who reported on their experiences with the last edition or reviewed features of the new edition. Their comments often challenged us to rethink or justify our interpretations and always provided a check on accuracy down to the smallest detail.
Jeffrey S. Adler, University of Florida
Jennifer L. Bertolet, The George Washington University
Vicki Black, Blinn College
Stefan Bosworth, Hostos Community College
Tammy K. Byron, Dalton State College
Jessica Cannon, University of Central Missouri
Rose Darrough, Palomar College
Petra DeWitt, Missouri University of Science & Technology
Nancy J. Duke, Daytona State College
Richard M. Filipink, Western Illinois University
Matthew Garrett, Bakersfield College
Benjamin H. Hampton, Manchester Community College and Great Bay Community College
Isadora Helfgott, University of Wyoming
Stephanie Jannenga, Muskegon Community College
Antoine Joseph, Bryant University
Lorraine M. Lees, Old Dominion University
John S. Leiby, Paradise Valley Community College
Karen Ward Mahar, Siena College
Timothy R. Mahoney, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Eric Mayer, Victor Valley College
Glenn Melancon, Southeastern Oklahoma State University
James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville
Frances Mitilineos, Oakton Community College
Anne Paulet, Humboldt State University
Thomas Ratliff, Central Connecticut State University
LeeAnn Reynolds, Samford University
Jenny Shaw, University of Alabama
Courtney Smith, Cabrini College
Timothy Thurber, Virginia Commonwealth University
Julio Vasquez, University of Kansas
Sarah E. Vandament, North Lake College of the Dallas County Community College District
Louis Williams, St. Louis Community College–Forest Park
As the authors of America: A Concise History, we know better than anyone else how much this book is the work of other hands and minds. We are indebted to Mary Dougherty, William J. Lombardo, and Jane Knetzger, who oversaw this edition, and Laura Arcari, who asked the right questions, suggested a multitude of improvements, and expertly guided the manuscript to completion. As usual, Denise B. Wydra and Joan E. Feinberg generously provided the resources we needed to produce an outstanding volume. Annette Pagliaro Sweeney did a masterful job consulting with the authors and seeing the book through the production process. Sandi McGuire in the marketing department understood how to communicate our vision to teachers and the sales force did wonderful work in helping this edition reach the classroom. We also thank the rest of our editorial and production team for their dedicated efforts: Associate Editors Robin Soule and Jen Jovin; Editorial Assistant Victoria Royal; Susan Zorn, who copyedited the manuscript; proofreaders Linda McLatchie and Barbara Price; art researchers Pembroke Herbert and Sandi Rygiel at Picture Research Consultants and Archives; text permissions researcher Eve Lehmann; and Kalina Ingham and Hilary Newman, who oversaw permissions. Finally, we want to express our appreciation for the invaluable assistance of Patricia Deveneau, who expertly suggested topics and sources for the Thinking Like A Historian feature in Chapters 8–14; Kendra Kennedy, for crucial research aid; and Eliza Blanchard and Erin Boss, for research assistance at Vassar. Many thanks to all of you for your contributions to this new edition of America: A Concise History.
James A. Henretta
Eric Hinderaker
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self