What is the best way to engage and teach students in their history survey course? From the beginning, The American Promise has been shaped by our firsthand knowledge that the survey course is one of the most difficult to teach and, for many, also the most difficult to take. From the outset we have met this challenge by providing a story students enjoy for its readability, clear chronology, and lively voices of ordinary Americans, and by providing a full-featured text that instructors prize for its full narrative with political backbone, abundant documents and features for analysis and discussion, and the overall support for teaching. With this edition of The American Promise we have made meeting the challenges of the survey course a great deal easier through the introduction 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 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 an easy-to-read printed format as well as our highly acclaimed digital resources and tools designed for active learning and deep understanding. LaunchPad is loaded with the full-color e-book plus LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool; the popular Reading the American Past documents collection; additional primary sources; special skills-based assessment activities; videos; chapter summative quizzes; and more.

New Tools for Teaching and Measuring Outcomes

With requests for clear and transparent learning outcomes coming from all quarters and with students who bring increasingly diverse levels of skills to class, even veteran teachers can find preparing for today’s courses a trying matter. The introduction of LaunchPad to the sixth edition offers a breakthrough for instructors. With LaunchPad we have reconceived the textbook as a suite of tools in multiple formats that allows each format do what it does best to capture students’ interest and help instructors create meaningful lessons. But one of the best benefits is that instructors using LaunchPad will find they have a number of assessment tools that allow them to see what it is their students do and don’t know and measure student achievement all in one convenient space. For example, LaunchPad comes with LearningCurve—an adaptive learning tool that garners over a 90 percent student satisfaction rate and helps students master book content. When LearningCurve is assigned, the grade book results show instructors where the entire class or individual students may be struggling which in turn allows instructors to adjust lectures and course activities accordingly—a benefit not only for traditional classes but invaluable for hybrid, online, and newer “flipped” classes as well. In addition, not only can instructors assign all of the questions that appear in the print book and view the responses in the grade book, they have the option to assign automatically graded multiple choice questions for all of the book features. Plus many more pre-built activities to foster critical reading and chronological reasoning skills are available in LaunchPad along with a test building tool, as well as additional primary sources and videos that all can be used for customized assignments that will report into the grade book for simplified assessment. With LaunchPad for The American Promise we make the tough job of teaching simpler by providing everything an instructor needs in one convenient space so instructors can set and achieve the learning outcomes they desire. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and LaunchPad, see the “Versions and Supplements” section on page xii.

What Makes The American Promise Special

Our experience as teachers and our frustrations with available textbooks inspired us to create a book that we could use effectively in our own classrooms. Our knowledge of classroom realities has informed every aspect of each edition and version of The American Promise. We began with a clear chronological, political framework. We have found that students need both the structure a political narrative provides and the insights gained from examining social and cultural experience. To write a comprehensive, balanced account of American history, we focus on the public arena—the place where politics intersects social and cultural developments—to show how Americans confronted the major issues of their day and created far-reaching historical change.

The unique approach of our narrative is reflected in our title, The American Promise. We emphasize human agency and demonstrate our conviction that the essence of America has been its promise. For millions, the nation has held out the promise of a better life, unfettered worship, equality before the law, representative government, democratic politics, and other freedoms seldom found elsewhere. But none of these promises has come with guarantees. Throughout the narrative we demonstrate how much of American history is a continuing struggle over the definition and realization of the nation’s promise.

We also give special attention to the promise theme in our Seeking the American Promise biographical features. Each of the 19 essays explores a different promise of America—the promise of home ownership or the promise of higher education, for example—while recognizing that the promises fulfilled for some have meant promises denied to others. Popular essays profile people such as indentured servant Anne Orthwood and her struggle in colonial America, Stamp Act protestor Ebenezer Mackintosh, black Civil War soldiers, Russian Jews escaping the pogroms, progressive reformer Alice Hamilton, World War I servicewoman Nora Saltonstall, and Vietnamese immigrant-turned-politician Joseph Cao. All Seeking the American Promise features conclude with a set of short-answer questions that help students explore the subject further and understand its significance within the chapter and the book as a whole. In LaunchPad, these questions plus a multiple choice quiz for assessing comprehension can be assigned easily.

Our narrative also reflects our conviction that it is essential to situate American history in the global world in which students live. To underscore this emphasis in the narrative, we include 17 Beyond America’s Borders features which consider the reciprocal relationships between the United States and the wider world and challenge students to think about the effects of transnational connections over time. In this edition we have added “Corn: An Ancient American Legacy” and brought back favorites such as “American Tobacco and European Consumers,” “Transatlantic Abolition,” “Imperialism, Colonialism, and the Treatment of the Sioux and the Zulu,” “Bolshevism,” and “Transnational Feminism.” With the goal of widening students’ perspectives and helping students see that this country did not develop in isolation, these features are enhanced by short answer questions at the end of the essay, which can be easily assigned in LaunchPad, along with multiple choice quizzes that measure student comprehension.

We kept the needs and interests of the student reader foremost in our minds while writing and revising The American Promise. To engage students in this American story and to portray fully the diversity of the American experience, we stitch into our narrative the voices of hundreds of contemporaries. We further animate this story with a vivid art and map program with captions and activities that prompt students to think critically about what they see. To help students of all levels understand American history, we provide the best in primary sources and pedagogical aids. To help instructors teach important skills and evaluate student learning, we provide a rich assortment of assignments and assessments in both the print and LaunchPad formats. While this edition rests solidly on our original goals and premises, it has taken on a new role to address the specific needs of today’s courses.

Better Prepared Students

Every instructor knows it can be a challenge to get students to complete assigned readings, and then to fully understand what is important once they do the reading. The American Promise addresses these problems head on with a suite of tools in LaunchPad that instructors can choose from.

To help students fully understand their reading and come to class prepared, instructors who adopt LaunchPad for The American Promise can assign the LearningCurve formative assessment activities. This online learning tool is popular with students because it helps them rehearse content at their own pace in a nonthreatening, game-like environment. LearningCurve is also popular with instructors because the reporting features allow them to track overall class trends and spot topics that are giving their students trouble so they can adjust their lectures and class activities. When LearningCurve is assigned, students come to class better prepared and instructors can better evaluate and adjust their classes.

Encouraging active reading is another means for making content memorable and highlight what is truly important. To help students read actively and understand the central idea of the chapter, instructors who use LaunchPad can also assign our new Guided Reading Exercises. This new exercise, which appears at the start of each chapter, prompts students to collect information to be used to answer a broad analytic question central to the chapter as a whole.

To further encourage students to read and fully assimilate the text as well as measure how well they do this, instructors can assign the new multiple-choice summative quizzes in LaunchPad, where they are automatically graded. These secure tests not only encourage students to study the book, they can be assigned at specific intervals as high stakes testing and thus provide another means for analyzing class performance.

Extra Support

Another big challenge for survey instructors is meeting the needs of a range of students, particularly the students who need the most support. In addition to the formative assessment of LearningCurve, which adapts to the needs of students at any level, The American Promise offers a number of tools for the underprepared.

For those who need to know how to sort out what is important, each chapter opener includes new Content Learning Objectives to prepare students to read the chapter with purpose.

Once into the heart of the chapter, students are reminded to think about main ideas through Review Questions placed at the end of every major section. In print and LaunchPad these questions can be assigned as a chapter review activity.

Some students also have trouble connecting events and ideas, particularly with special boxed features. To address this, we have added a new Connect to the Big Idea question to each feature to help students understand the significance of the featured topic to the chapter as a whole. These questions are also available in the print and LaunchPad versions of the book.

Critical Thinking and Analysis

The American Promise also strives to turn students into critical thinkers who read actively and can analyze what they read. We have put this goal at the center of this revision through several activities that invite critical reading, evaluation of primary sources, and geographical literacy.

Critical Reading

To foster not only active reading but critical reading of the narrative, we introduce a new Reflections assignment at the end of each major section in LaunchPad, which uses a series of multiple choice and short answer questions to challenge students to think critically about the narrative as historical interpretation. To bring students’ critical thinking skills to the next level, the new Chronological Reasoning Activity in LaunchPad encourages students to make connections among events and evaluate their importance, while the new “What’s Your Question” activity, which builds naturally from the Reflections activities, presses students to formulate a solid historical question of their own based on their introspections about the chapter.

To demonstrate and engage students in various methods and perspectives of historical thinking, our 16 Historical Questions feature essays pose and interpret specific questions of continuing interest. Perennial favorites brought back in this edition range from “Was the New United States a Christian Country?” and “How Often Were Slaves Whipped?” to “Was There a Sexual Revolution in the 1920s?” and “Why Did the Allies Win World War II?” Short-answer questions at the end of the features prompt students to consider things such as evidence, beliefs and values, and cause and effect as they relate to the historical question at hand. Avail-able both in print and online these features can be easily assigned in LaunchPad, along with multiple choice quizzes that measure student comprehension.

With this edition we also bring back two popular sets of end-of-chapter questions that help widen students’ focus as they consider what they have read. Making Connections questions ask students to think about broad developments within the chapter, while Linking to the Past questions cross-reference developments in earlier chapters, encouraging students to make comparisons, see causality, and understand change over longer periods of time. Both sets of questions are assignable from the print and LaunchPad versions.

Evaluation of Primary Sources

Primary sources form the heart of the feature program in this edition as a means to engage students with history and to actively develop their critical thinking skills. We are pleased to offer more Documenting the American Promise features than ever before—now 23 in all and 7 more than in the last edition. Each of these features juxtaposes two to four primary documents to reveal varying perspectives on a topic or an issue and to provide students with opportunities to build and practice their skills of historical interpretation. Feature introductions and document headnotes contextualize the sources, and short-answer questions at the end of the features promote critical thinking about primary sources. In addition to bringing back some favorites enjoyed in the past, new topics have been added that are rich with human drama and include “Reactions to the Boston Port Act Outside of Massachusetts,” “The Gold Rush,” “Ida B. Wells and Her Campaign to Stop Lynching,” “The Songs of the Knights of Labor,” “Americans Encounter the New Deal,” and “Ending the War in Vietnam.” These features are available both in print and online and they can be easily assigned in LaunchPad, along with multiple choice quizzes that measure student comprehension.

In addition, over 150 documents in the accompanying collection Reading the American Past are available free to users who package the documents collection with the main print text, and they are automatically included in the LaunchPad e-book. Not only can the short answers be easily assigned from within LaunchPad, but multiple choice questions are also available for assignment to measure comprehension and hold students accountable for their reading.

LaunchPad for The American Promise also comes with a collection of over 135 additional primary sources that instructors can choose to assign. These sources include letters, memoirs, court records, government documents, and more, and they include items by or about such people as John Smith, William Penn, Anne Hutchinson, Jonathan Edwards, Mary Jemison, Black Hawk, John C. Calhoun, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Elizabeth Lease, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Huey P. Long, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Paul Robeson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and more.

This edition encourages students to think critically about visuals as primary source as well. Because students are so attuned to visuals and instructors deeply value their usefulness as primary sources, we have added 8 more Visualizing History features for a total of 20 across the book. A painting of colonial urban life, powder horns, early sketches of the great seal of the United States, a painting of a slave auction, Native American recreation, paintings with differing viewpoints of Custer’s last stand, Marshall Plan posters, and popular art about desegregation enrich this edition as sources for examination. By stressing the importance of historical context in the accompanying essay and, through new short-answer questions prompting critical analysis, each feature shows students how to mine visual documents for evidence about the past. Visualizing History features are available both in print and online and they can be easily assigned in LaunchPad, along with multiple choice quizzes that measure student comprehension.

To give students ample opportunity to practice thinking critically about primary source images, four pictures in each chapter—four times more than in the last edition—include a special visual activity caption that reinforces this essential skill. One set of questions in these activities prompts analysis of the image, while a second set of questions helps students connect the images to main points in the narrative. In LaunchPad, the answers to these questions can be submitted directly to the gradebook for convenient assessment.

Geographical Literacy

To help students think critically about the role of geography in American history, with two maps in each chapter we include a map activity caption. One set of questions in these activities prompts map analysis, while a second set of questions helps students connect the maps to main points in the narrative. In LaunchPad, the answers to these questions can be submitted directly to the gradebook for convenient assessment.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge all of the helpful suggestions from those who have read and taught from previous editions of The American Promise, and we hope that our many classroom collaborators will be pleased to see their influence in the sixth edition. In particular, we wish to thank the talented scholars and teachers who gave generously of their time and knowledge to review this book: LeNie Adolphson, Sauk Valley Community College; Daniel Anderson, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College; Ian Baldwin, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Dustin Black, El Camino College; Nawana Britenriker, Pikes Peak Community College; Elizabeth Broen, South Florida State College; Robert Bush, Front Range Community College; Brian David Collins, El Centro College; Alexandra Cornelius, Florida International University; Sondra Cosgrove, College of Southern Nevada; Rodney E. Dillon, Jr., Palm Beach State College; Wayne Drews, Georgia Institute of Technology; Edward J. Dudlo, Brookhaven College; E. J. Fabyan, Vincennes University; Cecilia Gowdy-Wygant, Front Range Community College; William Grose, Wytheville Community College; Jeff Janowick, Lansing Community College; Juneann Klees, Bay College; Leonard V. Larsen, Des Moines Area Community College; Charles Levine, Mesa Community College; Mary Linehan, University of Texas at Tyler; Annie Liss, South Texas College; Patricia Loughlin, University of Central Oklahoma; Walter Miszczenko, College of Western Idaho; Rick Murray, Los Angeles Valley College; Richard Owens, West Liberty University; Stacey Pendleton, University of Colorado Denver; Michael J. Pfeifer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Chris Rasmussen, Fairleigh Dickinson University; Robert Sawvel, University of Northern Colorado; Benjamin G. Scharff, West Virginia University; Christopher Sleeper, MiraCosta College; Janet P. Smith, East Tennessee State University; John Howard Smith, Texas A&M University–Commerce; William Z. Tannenbaum, Missouri Southern State University; Ramon C. Veloso, Palomar College; and Kenneth A. Watras, Paradise Valley Community College.

A project as complex as this requires the talents of many individuals. First, we would like to acknowledge our families for their support, forbearance, and toleration of our textbook responsibilities. Naomi Kornhauser contributed her vast knowledge, tireless energy, and diligent research to make possible the useful and attractive illustration program.

We would also like to thank the many people at Bedford/St. Martin’s and Macmillan Education who have been crucial to this project. No one has done more than our friend, senior editor Heidi Hood, who managed the entire revision and supplements program. Heidi, with help from senior editor Leah Strauss and associate editor Jennifer Jovin, guided us through every part of this complex revision, used unfailing good judgment, and saved us from many a misstep. Thanks also go to editorial assistant Victoria Royal for her assistance coordinating the pre-revision review, preparing the manuscript, and for working on the supplements, along with Jennifer Jovin. We are also grateful to Jane Knetzger, director of development for history; William J. Lombardo, senior executive editor for history; and Mary Dougherty, publisher for history, for their support and guidance. For their imaginative and tireless efforts to promote the book, we want to thank Sandi McGuire and Alex Kaufman. With great skill and professionalism, production editor Kerri Cardone pulled together the many pieces related to copyediting, design, and composition, with the guidance of managing editor Michael Granger. Production manager Joe Ford oversaw the manufacturing of the book. Designer Jerilyn Bockorick, copyeditor Lisa Wehrle, and proofreaders Jan Cocker and Nancy Benjamin attended to the myriad details that help make the book shine. Leoni McVey provided an outstanding index. The book’s gorgeous cover was designed by William Boardman. Media producer Michelle Camisa managed the process that made sure that The American Promise remains at the forefront of technological support for students and instructors. Denise Wydra, vice president of editorial for the humanities, provided helpful advice throughout the course of the project. Finally, Charles H. Christensen, former president of Bedford/St. Martin’s, took a personal interest in The American Promise from the start, and Joan E. Feinberg, former co-president of Macmillan Higher Education, encouraged us through each edition.