Written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author, 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 crisis following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This new third edition is updated to include the War on Terror, the Iraq War, the election of 2004, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and globalization.