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Why This Book This Way

We are pleased to introduce the first Value Edition of our popular textbook America’s History. The Value Edition provides the same strength of breadth, balance, and the ability to explain not just what happened, but why in a two-color, trade sized format at a low price. Featuring the full narrative of the revised parent text and select images, maps, features, and pedagogical tools, the Value Edition continues to incorporate the latest and best scholarship in the field in an accessible, student-friendly manner.

We know that many students today are on a budget and that instructors want greater flexibility and more digital options in their choice of course materials. We are proud to offer a low-cost text that offers the engaging and readable narrative with a rich abundance of digital tools. With this edition of America’s History we have made meeting the challenges of the survey course a great deal easier with the use of LaunchPad, an intuitive new interactive e-book and course space with a wealth of primary sources and special critical thinking activities to help students learn key content and master essential skills. LaunchPad provides active learning assignments and dynamic course management tools that measure and analyze student progress, and LaunchPad can be used on its own or in conjunction with the printed text to give instructors and students the best of both worlds — the narrative text in a portable, inexpensive, two-color printed format as well as our highly accliamed digital resources and tools designed for active learning and deep understanding. LaunchPad is loaded with the full-color e-book with all of the features, map, and illustrations of the full-sized edition, plus LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool; the Sources for America’s History documents collection; additional primary sources; map quizzes; videos; chapter summative quizzes; and more.

This new Value Edition maintains our commitment to an integrated history. America’s 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’s History, we provide an 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.

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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 confront daily, 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’s 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’s 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 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.

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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.

Online Sources Encourage Students to Think Comparatively and Critically

For those using LaunchPad, 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. These features appear in every LaunchPad 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 companion reader, Sources of America’s History.

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The book’s illustration program is also 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.

Used together, these documents, figures, maps, and illustrations provide instructors with a trove of teaching materials, such that America’s History offers not only a compelling narrative, but also — right in the text — rich documentary materials that instructors need to bring the past alive and introduce students to historical analysis.

Study Aids Support Student 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. At the end of each chapter, we use a chronology 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’s 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. Where students are likely to stumble over a key concept, we boldface it in the text wherever it is first mentioned and provide a pop-up glossary definition for each term. 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 remind students of important events and ask 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 Introduces Students to the Latest Research and Interpretations

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In this 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 America’s History 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; Frances Mitilineos, Oakton Community College; James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville; 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

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As the authors of America’s History, we know better than anyone else how much this book is the work of other hands and minds. At Bedford/St. Martin’s we are indebted to Laura Arcari, Mary Posman, Michael Rosenberg, William J. Lombardo, and Jane Knetzger who oversaw this edition. Kerri Cardone did a masterful job seeing the book through the production process. Sandi McGuire in the marketing department understood how to communicate our vision to teachers, and the sales forces 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: Susan Zorn, who copyedited the manuscript; proofreader Angela Morrison; 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. Many thanks to all of you for your contributions to this new version of America’s History.

James A. Henretta

Eric Hinderaker

Rebecca Edwards

Robert O. Self