About the Book
Understanding the past helps us navigate the present and future. When you read this text, you will not only learn about American History, you will be exposed to movies and music that tell the stories of American History in addition to the reading material you expect in a college level history book. A highly respected, balanced, and thoroughly modern approach to US History, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER, uses themes in a unique approach to show how the United States was transformed, in a relatively short time, from a land inhabited by hunter-gatherer and agricultural Native American societies into the most powerful industrial nation on earth. This approach helps you understand not only the impact of the notions of liberty and equality, which are often associated with the American story, but also how dominant and subordinate groups have affected and been affected by the ever-shifting balance of power.
Table of Contents:
1. WHEN OLD WORLDS COLLIDE: CONTACT, CONQUEST, CATASTROPHE.
Peoples in Motion. Europe and the World in the 15th Century. Spain, Columbus, and the Americas. The Emergence of Complex Societies in the Americas. Contact and Cultural Misunderstanding. Conquest and Catastrophe.
Explanations: Patterns of Conquest, Submission, and Resistance.
2. THE CHALLENGE TO SPAIN AND THE SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AMERICA.
The Protestant Reformation and the Challenge to Spain. New France. The Dutch and Swedish Settlements. The Challenge from Elizabethan England. The Swarming of the English. The Chesapeake and West Indian Colonies. The New England Colonies. The English Civil Wars. The First Restoration Colonies. Brotherly Love: The Quakers and America.
3. ENGLAND DISCOVERS ITS COLONIES: EMPIRE, LIBERTY, AND EXPANSION.
The Atlantic Prism and the Spectrum of Settlement. The Beginnings of Empire. Indians, Settlers, Upheaval. Crisis in England and the Redefinition of Empire. The Glorious Revolution. Contrasting Empires: Spain and France in North America. An Empire of Settlement: The British Colonies.
4. PROVINCIAL AMERICA AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONTINENT.
Expansion versus Anglicization. Expansion, Immigration, and Regional Differentiation. Anglicizing Provincial America. The Great Awakening. Political Culture in the Colonies. The Renewal of Imperial Conflict. The War for North America.
5. REFORM, RESISTANCE, REVOLUTION.
Imperial Reform. The Stamp Act Crisis. The Townshend Crisis. Internal Cleavages: The Contagion of Liberty. The Last Imperial Crisis. The Improvised War.
6. THE REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLIC.
Hearts and Minds: The Northern War, 1776-1777. The Campaigns of 1777 and Foreign Intervention. The Reconstitution of Authority. The British Offensive in the South. A Revolutionary Society. A More Perfect Union.
7. COMPLETING THE REVOLUTION, 1789-1815.
Establishing the National Government. The Republic in a World at War, 1793-1797. The Crisis at Home, 1798-1800. The Jeffersonians in Power. The Republic and the Napoleonic Wars, 1804-1815.
8. NORTHERN TRANSFORMATIONS, 1800-1830.
Postcolonial Society, 1790-1815. From Backcountry to Frontier: The Northwest. The Decline of Patriarchy. Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Northeastern Farms, 1815-1860. The Northwest. Farm Families. The Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
9 THE OLD SOUTH, 1790 -1850. Old Farms: The Southeast. New Farms: The Rise of the Deep South. The Southern Yeomanry. The Private Lives of Slaves. A Balance Sheet: The Plantation and Southern Growth.
10. TOWARD AN AMERICAN CULTURE.
The Democratization of Culture. The Northern Middle Class. The Plain People of the North. A New Popular Culture. Family, Church, and Neighborhood: The White South. Race. Citizenship.
11. DEMOCRATS AND WHIGS.
The American System. 1819. Republican Revival. Adams versus Jackson. Jacksonian Democracy and The South. Jacksonian Democracy and the Market Revolution. The Second American Party System.
12. WHIGS, DEMOCRATS, AND THE REMAKING OF SOCIETY.
Constituencies. The Politics of Economic Development. The Politics Of Social Reform. Excursus: The Politics of Alcohol. The Politics of Race. The Politics of Gender and Sex.
13. MANIFEST DESTINY: AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY—OR SLAVERY?
Growth as the American Way. The Mexican War. The Election of 1848. The Compromise of 1850. Filibustering.
14. THE GATHERING TEMPEST, 1853-1860.
Kansas and the Rise of the Republican Party. Immigration and Nativism. Bleeding Kansas. The Election of 1856. The Economy in the 1850s. The Impending Crisis. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
15. SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR, 1860-1862.
The Election of 1860. The Lower South Secedes. Choosing Sides. The Balance Sheet of War. Navies, the Blockade, and Foreign Relations. Campaigns and Battles, 1861-1862. Confederate Counteroffensives.
16. A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM, 1862-1865.
Slavery and the War. A Winter of Discontent. Blueprint for Modern America. The Confederate Tide Crests and Recedes. Black Men in Blue. The Year of Decision.
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About the Author :
Alice Fahs is a specialist in American cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her book THE IMAGINED CIVIL WAR: POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH, 1861-1865 (2001) was a finalist in 2002 for the Lincoln Prize. Together with Joan Waugh, she published the edited collection THE MEMORY OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN CULTURE (2004). She also edited Louisa May Alcott's HOSPITAL SKETCHES (2004), an account of Alcott's nursing experiences during the Civil War first published in 1863. Fahs's most recent book is OUT ON ASSIGNMENT: NEWSPAPER WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF MODERN PUBLIC SPACE (2011). Her honors include an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Newberry Library, and the Huntington Library. Emily Rosenberg specializes in U.S. foreign relations in the twentieth century and is the author of SPREADING THE AMERICAN DREAM: AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL EXPANSION, 1890-1945 (1982); FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES TO THE WORLD: THE POLITICS AND CULTURE OF DOLLAR DIPLOMACY (1999), which won the Ferrell Book Award; A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE: PEARL HARBOR IN AMERICAN MEMORY (2004); and TRANSNATIONAL CURRENTS IN A SHRINKING WORLD, 1870-1945 (2014). Her other publications include (with Norman L. Rosenberg) IN OUR TIMES: AMERICA SINCE 1945, Seventh Edition (2003), and numerous articles dealing with foreign relations in the context of international finance, American culture, and gender ideology. She has served on the board of the Organization of American Historians, on the board of editors of the American Historical Review, and as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Gary Gerstle is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. He previously taught at Princeton University, the Catholic University of America, the University of Maryland, and Vanderbilt University. A historian of the twentieth-century United States, he is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of six books and the author of nearly 35 articles. His books include WORKING-CLASS AMERICANISM: THE POLITICS OF LABOR IN A TEXTILE CITY, 1914-1960 (1989); AMERICAN CRUCIBLE: RACE AND NATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (2001), winner of the Saloutos Prize for the best work in immigration and ethnic history; THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW DEAL ORDER, 1930-1980 (1989); and RULING AMERICA: WEALTH AND POWER IN A DEMOCRACY (2005). A new book on the principles underlying the use of public power in America from the Revolution to the present will soon be published by Princeton University Press. He has served on the board of editors of the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review. His honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Harmsworth Visiting Professorship of American History at the University of Oxford, and membership in the Society of American Historians. James M. McPherson is a distinguished Civil War historian. He won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for his book BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM: THE CIVIL WAR ERA. His other publications include MARCHING TOWARD FREEDOM: BLACKS IN THE CIVIL WAR, Second Edition (1991); ORDEAL BY FIRE: THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, Third Edition (2001); ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1991); FOR CAUSE AND COMRADES: WHY MEN FOUGHT IN THE CIVIL WAR (1997), which won the Lincoln Prize in 1998; CROSSROADS OF FREEDOM: ANTIETAM (2002); HALLOWED GROUND: A WALK AT GETTYSBURG (2003); and TRIED BY WAR: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF (2008), which won the Lincoln Prize for 2009. Professor McPherson served as president of the American Historical Association (2003-2004). John M. Murrin studies American colonial and revolutionary history and the early republic. He has edited one multivolume series and five books, including two essay collections-COLONIAL AMERICA: ESSAYS IN POLITICS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, Sixth Edition (2010), and SAINTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES: ESSAYS IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY (1984). His own essays cover topics ranging from ethnic tensions, the early history of trial by jury, the emergence of the legal profession, the Salem witch trials, and the political culture of the colonies and the new nation to the rise of professional baseball and college football in the nineteenth century. He served as president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in 1998-1999. Norman L. Rosenberg specializes in legal history with a particular interest in legal culture and First Amendment issues. His books include PROTECTING THE 'BEST MEN': AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY OF THE LAW OF LIBEL (1990) and (with Emily S. Rosenberg) IN OUR TIMES: AMERICA SINCE 1945, Seventh Edition (2003). He has published articles in Rutgers Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Law and History Review, and many other journals and law-related anthologies. A specialist in early national social history, Paul E. Johnson is the author of THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1789-1829 (2006); SAM PATCH, THE FAMOUS JUMPER (2003); and A SHOPKEEPER'S MILLENNIUM: SOCIETY AND REVIVALS IN ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, 1815-1837, 25th Anniversary Edition (2004). In addition, he is coauthor (with Sean Wilentz) of THE KINGDOM OF MATTHIAS: SEX AND SALVATION IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA (1994) and is editor of AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY: ESSAYS IN HISTORY (1994). He was awarded the Merle Curti Prize of the Organization of American Historians (1980), the Richard P. McCormack Prize of the New Jersey Historical Association (1989), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985-1986), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1995), the Gilder Lehrman Institute (2001), and the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People Fellowship (2006-2007).
Review :
1. WHEN OLD WORLDS COLLIDE: CONTACT, CONQUEST, CATASTROPHE. Peoples in Motion. Europe and the World in the 15th Century. Spain, Columbus, and the Americas. The Emergence of Complex Societies in the Americas. Contact and Cultural Misunderstanding. Conquest and Catastrophe. Explanations: Patterns of Conquest, Submission, and Resistance. 2. THE CHALLENGE TO SPAIN AND THE SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AMERICA. The Protestant Reformation and the Challenge to Spain. New France. The Dutch and Swedish Settlements. The Challenge from Elizabethan England. The Swarming of the English. The Chesapeake and West Indian Colonies. The New England Colonies. The English Civil Wars. The First Restoration Colonies. Brotherly Love: The Quakers and America. 3. ENGLAND DISCOVERS ITS COLONIES: EMPIRE, LIBERTY, AND EXPANSION. The Atlantic Prism and the Spectrum of Settlement. The Beginnings of Empire. Indians, Settlers, Upheaval. Crisis in England and the Redefinition of Empire. The Glorious Revolution. Contrasting Empires: Spain and France in North America. An Empire of Settlement: The British Colonies. 4. PROVINCIAL AMERICA AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONTINENT. Expansion versus Anglicization. Expansion, Immigration, and Regional Differentiation. Anglicizing Provincial America. The Great Awakening. Political Culture in the Colonies. The Renewal of Imperial Conflict. The War for North America. 5. REFORM, RESISTANCE, REVOLUTION. Imperial Reform. The Stamp Act Crisis. The Townshend Crisis. Internal Cleavages: The Contagion of Liberty. The Last Imperial Crisis. The Improvised War. 6. THE REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLIC. Hearts and Minds: The Northern War, 1776?1777. The Campaigns of 1777 and Foreign Intervention. The Reconstitution of Authority. The British Offensive in the South. A Revolutionary Society. A More Perfect Union. 7. COMPLETING THE REVOLUTION, 1789-1815. Establishing the National Government. The Republic in a World at War, 1793?1797. The Crisis at Home, 1798?1800. The Jeffersonians in Power. The Republic and the Napoleonic Wars, 1804?1815. 8. NORTHERN TRANSFORMATIONS, 1800-1830. Postcolonial Society, 1790-1815. From Backcountry to Frontier: The Northwest. The Decline of Patriarchy. Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Northeastern Farms, 1815-1860. The Northwest. Farm Families. The Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. 9 THE OLD SOUTH, 1790 -1850. Old Farms: The Southeast. New Farms: The Rise of the Deep South. The Southern Yeomanry. The Private Lives of Slaves. A Balance Sheet: The Plantation and Southern Growth. 10. TOWARD AN AMERICAN CULTURE. The Democratization of Culture. The Northern Middle Class. The Plain People of the North. A New Popular Culture. Family, Church, and Neighborhood: The White South. Race. Citizenship. 11. DEMOCRATS AND WHIGS. The American System. 1819. Republican Revival. Adams versus Jackson. Jacksonian Democracy and The South. Jacksonian Democracy and the Market Revolution. The Second American Party System. 12. WHIGS, DEMOCRATS, AND THE REMAKING OF SOCIETY. Constituencies. The Politics of Economic Development. The Politics Of Social Reform. Excursus: The Politics of Alcohol. The Politics of Race. The Politics of Gender and Sex. 13. MANIFEST DESTINY: AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY?OR SLAVERY? Growth as the American Way. The Mexican War. The Election of 1848. The Compromise of 1850. Filibustering. 14. THE GATHERING TEMPEST, 1853?1860. Kansas and the Rise of the Republican Party. Immigration and Nativism. Bleeding Kansas. The Election of 1856. The Economy in the 1850s. The Impending Crisis. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. 15. SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR, 1860?1862. The Election of 1860. The Lower South Secedes. Choosing Sides. The Balance Sheet of War. Navies, the Blockade, and Foreign Relations. Campaigns and Battles, 1861?1862. Confederate Counteroffensives. 16. A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM, 1862?1865. Slavery and the War. A Winter of Discontent. Blueprint for Modern America. The Confederate Tide Crests and Recedes. Black Men in Blue. The Year of Decision. Lincoln's Reelection and the End of the Confederacy. 17. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863?1877. Wartime Reconstruction. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. The Advent of Congressional Reconstruction. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. The Grant Administration. The Retreat from Reconstruction.
