Robert A. Divine, George W. Littlefield Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1954. A specialist in American diplomatic history, he taught from 1954 to 1996 at the University of Texas, where he was honored by both the student association and the graduate school for teaching excellence. His extensive published work includes The Illusion of Neutrality (1962); Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (1967); and Blowing on the Wind (1978). His most recent work is Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2000), a comparative analysis of twentieth-century American wars. He is also the author of Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981) and editor of three volumes of essays on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. His book, The Sputnik Challenge (1993), won the Eugene E. Emme Astronautical Literature Award for 1993. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and has given the Albert Shaw Lectures in Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins University.

T. H. Breen

T. H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History at North­ western Uni­ versity, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. He has taught at Northwestern since 1970. Breen’s major books include The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England (1974); Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (1980); Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (1985); and, with Stephen Innes of the University of Virginia, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (1980). His Imagining the Past (1989) won the 1990 Historic Preservation Book Award. His most recent book is Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2004). In addition to receiving several awards for outstanding teaching at Northwestern, Breen has been the recipient of research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. He has served as the Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University (1987–1988), the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Cambridge University (1990–1991), the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University (2000–2001), and was a recipient of the Humboldt Prize (Germany). He is currently completing a book tentatively entitled America ’s Insurgency: The People’s Revolution, 1774–1776.

George M. Fredrickson

George M. Fredrickson is Edgar E. Robinson Professor Emeritus of United States History at Stanford Uni­ versity. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Inner Civil War (1965), The Black Image in the White Mind (1971), and White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (1981), which won both the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award from Phi Beta Kappa and the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians. His most recent books are Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (1995); The Comparative Imagination: Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (1997); and Racism: A Short History (2002). He received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowships, and a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. Before coming to Stanford in 1984, he taught at Northwestern. He has also served as Fulbright lecturer in American History at Moscow University and as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford. He served as president of the Organization of American Historians in 1997–1998.

R. Hal Williams

R. Hal Williams is professor of history at Southern Methodist University. He received his A.B. from Prince­ ton Uni­ versity in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Yale Uni­ versity in 1968. His books include The Democratic Party and California Politics, 1880–1896 (1973); Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s (1978); and The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (1990). A specialist in American political history, he taught at Yale University from 1968 to 1975 and came to SMU in 1975 as chair of the Department of History. From 1980 to 1988, he served as dean of Dedman College, the school of humanities and sciences, at SMU, where he is currently dean of Research and Graduate Studies. In 1980, he was a visiting professor at University College, Oxford University. Williams has received grants from the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he has served on the Texas Committee for the Humanities. He is currently working on a study of the presidential election of 1896 and a biography of James G. Blaine, the late-nineteenth-century speaker of the House, secretary of state, and Republican presidential candidate.

Ariela J. Gross

Ariela J. Gross is Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern Cali­ fornia. She received her B.A. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is the author of Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (2000) and ­ numerous law review articles and book chapters, including “‘Caucasian Cloak’: Mexican Americans and the Politics of Whiteness in the Twentieth-Century Southwest” in the Georgetown Law Journal (2006). Her current work in progress, What Blood Won’t Tell: Racial Identity on Trial in America, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council for Learned Societies.

H. W. Brands

H. W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous works of history and ­ international affairs, including The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993), Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East (1994), The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (1995), TR: The Last Romantic (a biography of Theodore Roosevelt) (1997), What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy (1998), The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000), The Strange Death of American Liberalism (2001), The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (2002), Woodrow Wilson (2003), and Andrew Jackson (2005). His writing has received critical and popular acclaim; The First American was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller. He lectures frequently across North America and in Europe. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Atlantic Monthly. He is a regular guest on radio and television, and has participated in several historical documentary films.

1. New World Encounters.  

Clash of Cultures: The Meaning of Murder in Early Maryland.

Native American Histories Before Conquest. 

A World Transformed.  

West Africa: Ancient and Complex Societies.  

Europe on the Eve of Conquest.  

Imagining a New World.  

French Exploration and Settlement.  

The English New World.  

Rehearsal in Ireland for American Colonization.  

An Unpromising Beginning: Mystery at Roanoke.  

Conclusion: Propganda for Empire.  

2. England's Colonial Experiments

Profit and Piety: Competing Blueprints for English Settlement.  

Breaking Away.  

The Chesapeake: Dreams of Wealth.  

Reforming England in America.  

Diversity in the Middle Colonies.  

Quakers in America.  

Planting the Carolinas.  

The Founding of Georgia.  

Conclusion: Living with Diversity.  

3. Putting Down Roots 

Families in an Atlantic Empire.  

Sources of Stability: New England Colonies of the Seventeenth Century.  

The Challenge of the Chesapeake Environment.  

Race and Freedom in British America.  

Rise of a Commercial Empire.  

Colonial Factions Spark Revolt, 1676-1691.  

Conclusion: Local Aspirations Within an Atlantic Empire.  

4. Colonies in an Empire

Constructing an Anglo-American Identity: The Journal of William Byrd.  

Growth and Diversity.  

Spanish Borderlands of the Eighteenth Century.  

The Impact of European Ideas on American Culture. 

Religious Revivals in Provincial Societies.  

Clash of Political Cultures.  

Century of Imperial War.

Conclusion: Rule Britannia?  

We Americans: Learning to Live with Diversity in the Eighteenth Century: What Is an American?  

5. The American Revolution 

Rethinking the Meaning of Equality.

Structure of Colonial Society.  

Eroding the Bonds of Empire.  

Steps Toward Independence.  

Fighting for Independence.  

The Loyalist Dilemma.  

Winning the Peace.  

Conclusion: Preserving Independence.  

6. The Republican Experiment.  

A New Moral Order.

Defining Republican Culture.  

Living in the Shadow of Revolution.  

The States: Experiments in Republicanism.  

Stumbling Toward a New National Government.  

Strengthening Federal Authority.  

“Have We Fought for This?” 

Whose Constitution? Struggle for Ratification.  

Conclusion: Success Depends on the People.  

7. Democracy and Dissent  

Partisan Passions.

Principle and Pragmatism: Establishing a New Government.  

Conflicting Visions: Jefferson and Hamilton.  

Hamilton's Plan for Prosperity and Security.  

Charges of Treason: The Battle over Foreign Affairs.  

Popular Political Culture.  

The Adams Presidency.  

The Peaceful Revolution: The Election of 1800. 

Conclusion: Danger of Political Extremism.  

We Americans: Counting the People: The Federal Census of 1790.  

8. Republican Ascendancy 

Limits of Equality.

Regional Identities in a New Republic.  

Jefferson as President.  

Jefferson's Critics.  

Embarrassments Overseas.  

The Strange War of 1812.  

Conclusion: Republican Legacy.  

9. Nation Building and Nationalism.  

A Revolutionary War Hero Revisits America in 1824.

Expansion and Migration.  

A Revolution in Transportation.

Emergence of a Market Economy.  

The Politics of Nation Building after the War of 1812.  

Conclusion: The End of the Era of Good Feeling.  

10. The Triumph of White Men's Democracy.  

Democratic Space: The New Hotels.

Democracy in Theory and Practice.  

Jackson and the Politics of Democracy.  

The Bank War and the Second Party System.  

Heyday of the Second Party System.  

Conclusion: Tocqueville's Wisdom.  

11. Slaves and Masters.

Nat Turner's Rebellion: A Turning Point in the Slave South.

The Divided Society of the Old South.

The World of Southern Blacks. 

White Society in the Antebellum South. 

Slavery and the Southern Economy.  

Conclusion: Worlds in Conflict.

We Americans: Harriet Jacobs and Maria Norcom: Women of Southern Households. 

12. The Pursuit of Perfection.  

Redeeming the Middle Class.

The Rise of Evangelicalism.  

Domesticity and Changes in the American Family.  

Institutional Reform.  

Reform Turns Radical.  

Conclusion: Counterpoint on Reform.  

13. An Age of Expansionism.  

The Spirit of Young America.

Movement to the Far West.  

Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War.  

Internal Expansionism.  

Conclusion: The Costs of Expansion.

We Americans: The Irish in Boston, 1845-1865.  

14. The Sectional Crisis.  

The Brooks-Sumner Brawl in Congress.

The Compromise of 1850.  

Political Upheaval, 1852-1856.  

The House Divided, 1857-1860.  

Conclusion: Explaining the Crisis.  

We Americans: Hispanic America After 1848: A Case Study in Majority Rule.  

15. Secession and the Civil War.  

The Emergence of Lincoln.

The Storm Gathers.  

Adjusting to Total War. 

Fight to the Finish.  

Conclusion: An Organizational Revolution.

16. The Agony of Reconstruction.  

Robert Smalls and Black Politicians During Reconstruction.

The President Versus Congress.  

Reconstructing Southern Society.  

Retreat from Reconstruction.  

Reunion and the New South.  

Conclusion: The “Unfinished Revolution.”

17. The West 

Lean Bear's Changing West.

Beyond the Frontier.

Crushing the Native Americans.  

Settlement of the West.  

The Bonanza West.  

Conclusion: The Meaning of the West.

18. The Industrial Society.  

A Machine Culture.

Industrial Development.  

An Empire on Rails.  

An Industrial Empire.  

The Sellers.  

The Wage Earners.  

Conclusion: Industrializations Benefits and Costs.

19. Toward an Urban Society, 1877-1900.  

The Overcrowded City.  

The Lure of the City.  

Social and Cultural Change, 1877-1900.  

The Stirrings of Reform.  

Conclusion: A Pluralistic Society.

We Americans: Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears.  

20. Political Realignments in the 1890s.  

Hardship and Heartache.  

Politics of Stalemate.  

Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress.  

The Rise of the Populist Movement.  

The Crisis of the Depression.  

Changing Attitudes.  

The Presidential Election of 1896.  

The McKinley Administration.  

Conclusion: A Decade's Dramatic Changes.

21. Toward Empire.  

Roosevelt and the Rough Riders.

America Looks Outward.  

War with Spain.  

Acquisition of Empire.  

Conclusion: Outcome of the War with Spain.

22. The Progressive Era.  

Muckrakers' Call for Reform.

The Changing Face of Industrialism.  

Society's Masses.  

Conflict in the Workplace.  

A New Urban Culture.  

Conclusion: A Ferment of Discovery and Reform.

23. From Roosevelt to Wilson in the Age of Progressivism.  

The Republicans' Split.

The Spirit of Progressivism.  

Reform in the Cities and States.  

The Republican Roosevelt.  

Roosevelt Progressivism at Its Height.  

The Ordeal of William Howard Taft.  

Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom.  

Conclusion: The Fruits of Progressivism.

24. The Nation at War. 

The Sinking of the Lusitania.

A New World Power.  

Foreign Policy Under Wilson.  

Toward War.  

Over There.  

Over Here.  

The Treaty of Versailles.  

Conclusion: Post-War Disillusionment.

25. Transition to Modern America. 

Wheels for the Millions.

The Second Industrial Revolution.  

City Life in the Jazz Age. 

The Rural Counterattack.  

Politics of the 1920s.  

Conclusion: The Old and the New. 

26. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.  

The Struggle Against Despair.

The Great Crash.  

Fighting the Depression.  

Roosevelt and Reform.  

Impact of the New Deal.  

End of the New Deal.  

Conclusion: Evaluation of the New Deal.  

27. America and the World, 1921-1945.  

A Pact Without Power.

Retreat, Reversal, and Rivalry.  

Isolationism.  

The Road to War.  

Turning the Tide Against the Axis.  

The Home Front.  

Victory.

Conclusion: The Transforming Power of War. 

28. The Onset of the Cold War.  

The Potsdam Summit.

The Cold War Begins.  

Containment.  

The Cold War Expands.  

The Cold War at Home.  

Eisenhower Wages the Cold War.  

Conclusion: The Continuing Cold War.

29. Affluence and Anxiety.

Levittown: The Flight to the Suburbs.

The Postwar Boom.  

The Good Life?  

Farewell to Reform.  

The Struggle over Civil Rights.

Conclusion: Restoring National Confidence.

30. The Turbulent Sixties.  

Kennedy versus Nixon: The First Televised Presidential Candidate Debate.

Kennedy Intensifies the Cold War.

The New Frontier at Home. 

“Let Us Continue.”

Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War.  

Years of Turmoil.  

The Return of Richard Nixon.  

Conclusion: The End of an Era.

We Americans: Unintended Consequences: The Second Great Migration.  

31. The Rise of a New Conservatism, 1969–1988

Reagan and America’s Shift to the Right
The Tempting of Richard Nixon

The Economy of Stagflation

Private Lives, Public Issues

Politics and Diplomacy after Watergate

The Reagan Revolution

Reagan and the World

Conclusion: Challenging the New Deal

The Christian Right

Roe v. Wade: The Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights

32. To the Twenty-first Century, 1989–2009.

“This Will Not Stand”

The First President Bush

The Changing Faces of America

The New Democrats

Clinton and the World

Republicans Triumphant

Challenges of the New Century

Conclusion: The Paradox of Power

The Dot.com Boom, Bust, and Echo

Appendix  A-1.

The Declaration of Independence 

The Articles of Confederation  

The Constitution of the United States of America  

Amendments to the Constitution  

Presidential Elections  

Glossary G-1.
Credits C-1.
Index  I-1.

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