America's History, Volume I

Known for its interpretive voice and thoughtful analysis, America's History models exactly the kind of thinking and writing students need to be successful. An accessible and balanced narrative with built-in primary sources and skills-based pedagogy gives students practice in thinking historically, and features new ways of mastering the content so that students come to class prepared. The eighth edition rolls out Bedford/St. Martin's new digital history tools, including LearningCurve, an adaptive quizzing engine that garners over a 90% student satisfaction rate, and LaunchPad, the all new interactive e-book and course space that puts high quality easy-to-use assessment at your fingertips. Easy to integrate into your campus LMS, and featuring video, additional primary sources, a wealth of adaptive and summative quizzing, and more, LaunchPad cements student understanding of the text while helping them make progress toward learning outcomes. It's the best content joined up with the best technology.

What's in the LaunchPad

James A. Henretta is a Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications include The Evolution of American Society, 1700-1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis; "Salutary Neglect": Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle; Evolution and Revolution: American Society, 1600-1820; The Origins of American Capitalism; and an edited volume, Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850. Recent publications include "Magistrates, Common Law Lawyers, Legislators: The Three Legal Systems of British America," in The Cambridge History of Law in America and "Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America," in Law and History Review, derived from his ongoing research on the liberal state in America: New York, 1820-1975. During his career, Henretta taught at Sussex, Princeton, UCLA, and Boston University. He served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Australia and as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.

Eric Hinderaker is Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Utah.  His research explores early modern imperialism, relations between Europeans and Native Americans, and comparative colonization.  His publications include The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery, which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize; Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800; and, with Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America.  He is currently working on two books, one about the Boston Massacre and another, with Rebecca Horn, on patterns of European colonization in the Americas.

Rebecca Edwards is a Professor of History at Vassar College. Her research interests focus on the post-Civil War era and include electoral politics, environmental history, and the history of women and gender roles. She is the author of Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era and New Spirits: Americans in the "Gilded Age," 1865-1905. She is currently working on a biography of women's rights advocate and People's Party orator Mary E. Lease.Robert O. Self is Professor of History at Brown University. His research focuses on urban history, American politics, and the post-1945 United States. He is the author of American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, which won four professional prizes, including the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. He is currently at work on a book about the centrality of houses, cars, and children to family consumption in the twentieth-century United States. He teaches courses on the postwar United States; the history of political movements; the history of gender, sex, and the family; and urban history.

 

Brief Contents

Part 1: Transformations of North America, 1450-1700

Chapter 1: Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600

Chapter 2: American Experiments, 1521-1700

Part 2: British North America and the Atlantic World, 1660-1763

Chapter 3: The British Atlantic World, 1660-1750

Chapter 4: Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720-1763

Part 3: Revolution and Republican Culture, 1763-1820

Chapter 5: The Problem of Empire, 1763-1776

Chapter 6: Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789

Chapter 7: Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787-1820

Chapter 8: Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820

Part 4: Overlapping Revolutions, 1800–1860

Chapter 9: Transforming the Economy, 1800–1860

Chapter 10: A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844

Chapter 11: Religion and Reform, 1800–1860

Chapter 12: The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860

Part 5: Creating and Preserving a Continental Nation, 1844-1877

Chapter 13: Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860

Chapter 14: Two Societies at War, 1861–1865

Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1865–1877

Chapter 16: Conquering a Continent, 1854-1890