These United States

Description

• New sections on various aspects of social history, particularly on slavery, on the Salem witch trials, and on daily life.
• Extends the story through the events of the 2008 presidential campaign.  (Volume 2)
• Discusses the onset of the post-2007 recession.  (Volume 2)
• Examines the first six months of the new administration of Barack Obama., including its efforts to check the economic decline and to reverse the direction of the Bush administration on issues of health care, the environment and America’s relations with the rest of the world. (Volume 2)

A thematic approach, with chapters each organized around a significant question – designed to challenge students with the complexity, and often ambiguity, of the past and to compel them to evaluate critically different points of view – makes the learning of history a quest, and exploration, rather than a mere absorption of facts.

 

Multidisciplinary perspectives – reaches beyond discussions of political, diplomatic, and military events to include in-depth considerations of social, cultural, and economic matters – aims to broaden the horizon of students by showing them that history is so much more than they expected.

 

A focus on the enormous diversity of the American people-  Expands the canon to include those who have traditionally been excluded from the Americn past and seeks to embrace the enormous diversity of the American people. The reader will find inThese United States  the experiences of women as well as men; people of color, native Americans, as well as those of European extraction; youths as well as adults; the poor as well as the rich; artists, writers and musicians as well as politicians and diplomats.

 

“Everyday life” in America – describes how ordinary people got through the day, the week, the year in certain points in history – exposes students to the customs, behavior, ways of life, work, and play of the predecessors so that they can see their own daily life in broader perspective.

BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS 16 RECONSTRUCTION 17 THE TRIUMPH OF INDUSTRIALISM 18 AGE OF THE CITY 19 THE TRANSMISSOURI WEST 20 THE GILDED AGE 21 THE AMERICAN EMPIRE 22 PROGRESSIVISM 23 WORLD WAR I 24 THE TWENTIES 25 THE NEW DEAL 26 WORLD WAR II 27 POSTWAR AMERICA 28 THE DISSENTING SIXTIES

29 THE UNCERTAIN SEVENTIES

30 THE “REAGAN REVOLUTION”

31 POST-COLD WAR AMERICA: Triumphant or Troubled?

APPENDIX

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

INDEX

For introductory-level survey courses in American History.

Using a thematic approach, this concise survey explores the many and varied threads of American history-social, intellectual, cultural, political, diplomatic, economic, and military-from the arrival of the first native American inhabitants thousand of years ago throught the historic 2008 election and the new administration of Barack Obama.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Irwin Unger has been teaching American history for over forty years on both coasts. Born and largely educated in New York, he has lived in California, Virginia, and Washington State. He is married to Debi Unger and they have five children, now all safely past their college years. Professor Unger formerly taught at California State University at Long Beach, the University of California at Davis, and New York University. He is now professor emeritus at NYU..

Professor Unger’s professional interests have ranged widely within American history. He has written on Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, and on the 1960s. His first book, The Greenback Era, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1965. Since then he has written The Movement: The New Left and (with Debi Unger) The Vulnerable Years, Turning Point: 1968, The Best of Intentions (about the Great Society), LBJ: A Life, The Guggenheims, A Family History. He has just completed a book on the 1960s and he and Debi Unger are working on a biography of General George C. Marshall.

For introductory-level survey courses in American History.