This popular reader uses both primary and secondary sources to explore social history topics and sharpen students' interpretive skills. Each chapter includes one secondary source essay and several related primary source documents. Chapter introductions tie the readings together and pose questions to consider. New content in Volume I includes an essay about slavery from the ports of Africa to the plantations of America, and a new essay that focuses on immigrants and the conditions which led to emigration from their native lands. New content in Volume II includes an essay about women who worked in the wheat fields of the West in the 1880s, an essay about the ordeal of the American people during the Depression, and an essay about the Little Rock crisis of 1957 concerning separate but equal schools.