A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, Brief Edition

Authors : Mary Beth Norton; Jane Kamensky; Carol Sheriff; David W. Blight; Howard P. Chudacoff; Fredrik Logevall; Beth Bailey; Debra Michals

9781285430843

960 Pages Paperback

10th Edition | Previous Editions: 2012, 2010, 2007

$111.75

Request Print Sample Buy

Learn More

The Brief Edition of A PEOPLE AND A NATION offers a succinct and spirited narrative that tells the stories of all people in the United States. The authors' attention to race and racial identity, and their inclusion of everyday people and popular culture brings history to life, engaging readers and e... more

Features

“Visualizing the Past” features in each chapter treat images (such as artifacts, paintings, photographs, and advertisements) as primary sources to explore major themes. The illustrations and extended captions help students understand how the careful examination of visual materials can reveal aspects... more

New to this Edition

A PEOPLE AND A NATION, Brief Tenth Edition, offers the most complete revision in the text's history. The number of chapters has been reduced from 33 to 29 (14 in Volume 1 and 15 in Volume 2), making the text easier to assign in a typical semester. Rather than simply combining sections into fewer cha... more

Authors

Mary Beth Norton

Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She teaches courses in the history of exploration, early America, women’s history, Atlantic world and American Revolution. Her many books have won awards from the Society of American Historians, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and English-Speaking Union. Her book, FOUNDING MOTHERS & FATHERS, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2011 her book SEPARATED BY THEIR SEX: WOMEN IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IN THE COLONIAL ATLANTIC WORLD was published. She was the Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge in 2005-2006. The Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation and Huntington Library, among others, have awarded her fellowships. Dr. Norton has served on the National Council for the Humanities and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has appeared on Book TV, the History and Discovery Channels, PBS and NBC as a commentator on Early American history.

...more
Jane Kamensky

Jane Kamensky earned her B.A. and Ph.D. in history from Yale University. She is the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her most recent book, A REVOLUTION IN COLOR: THE WORLD OF JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY, won four major awards and was a finalist for several others awards. A former commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, she serves as a trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution. She is also one of the principal investigators on the NEH/Department of Education-funded initiative, Educating for American Democracy.

...more
Carol Sheriff

Carol Sheriff received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She has taught at the College of William and Mary since 1993, where she has received the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, the Alumni Teaching Fellowship Award and the University Professorship for Teaching Excellence. Dr. Sheriff teaches a U.S. history survey course and an introduction to historical methodology as well as classes on the early republic, the Civil War era, and the American west. She has co-authored A PEOPLE AT WAR: CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS IN AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR, 1854–1877 and has written THE ARTIFICIAL RIVER: THE ERIE CANAL AND THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS, which earned the Dixon Ryan Fox Award from the New York State Historical Association and the Award for Excellence in Research from the New York State Archives. Dr. Sheriff has published pieces about the history of textbooks, written sections of a teaching manual for the New York State history curriculum and given presentations to public school teachers. She has also worked on public history projects marking the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, appeared in documentaries on the Erie Canal, and is involved in public and scholarly projects to commemorate the Erie Canal’s bicentennial.

...more
David W. Blight

David W. Blight received his B.A. from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is the Sterling Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. In 2019 he won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his work, FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM. He has also written FREDERICK DOUGLASS’S CIVIL WAR and RACE AND REUNION: THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN MEMORY, 1863–1915, which received eight awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize and four prizes awarded by the Organization of American Historians. His book, A SLAVE NO MORE: THE EMANCIPATION OF JOHN WASHINGTON AND WALLACE TURNAGE earned three awards. Dr. Blight has edited or co-edited six other books, and his essays have appeared in numerous journals. In 2013-2014 he was the Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. A consultant to several documentary films, Dr. Blight appeared in the 1998 PBS series, Africans in America, and has served on the Council of the American Historical Association. In 2023 he will serve as president of the Organization of American Historians.

...more
Howard P. Chudacoff

Howard P. Chudacoff is the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History and Professor of Urban Studies at Brown University. He earned his A.B and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has written MOBILE AMERICANS; HOW OLD ARE YOU; THE AGE OF THE BACHELOR; THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN URBAN SOCIETY (with Judith Smith); CHILDREN AT PLAY: AN AMERICAN HISTORY; and CHANGING THE PLAYBOOK: HOW POWER, PROFIT, AND POLITICS TRANSFORMED COLLEGE SPORTS. He has also co-edited MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN URBAN HISTORY. His articles have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Family History, Reviews in American History, the Journal of Sport History and the Journal of American History. At Brown University, Dr. Chudacoff has co-chaired the American Civilization Program and chaired the department of history. He currently serves as Brown’s faculty representative to the NCAA. Dr. Chudacoff has also served on the board of directors of the Urban History Association. He has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, all of which have given him awards to advance his scholarship.

...more
Fredrik Logevall

A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Fredrik Logevall is Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University, where he holds appointments in the Department of History and the Kennedy School of Government. He received his B.A. from Simon Fraser University and his Ph.D. from Yale University. His most recent book is EMBERS OF WAR: THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA'S VIETNAM (2012), which won the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Francis Parkman Prize, in addition to other awards. His other publications include CHOOSING WAR (1999), which won three prizes, including the Warren F. Kuehl Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR); AMERICA'S COLD WAR: THE POLITICS OF INSECURITY (with Campbell Craig, 2009); THE ORIGINS OF THE VIETNAM WAR (2001); TERRORISM AND 9/11: A READER (2002); and, as co-editor, THE FIRST VIETNAM WAR: COLONIAL CONFLICT AND COLD WAR CRISIS (2007); and NIXON AND THE WORLD: AMERICAN FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1969-1977 (2008). A past president of SHAFR, Dr. Logevall is a member of the Society of American Historians and the Council of Foreign Relations, and serves on numerous editorial advisory boards.

...more
Beth Bailey

Beth Bailey is Foundation Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Military, War and Society Studies at the University of Kansas (KU). She earned her B.A. (1979) from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. (1986) from the University of Chicago. At KU, she teaches courses on U.S. military, war and society and on the history of gender and sexuality in the United States. Her books include AMERICA'S ARMY: MAKING THE ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE (2009), which received the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award; THE COLUMBIA GUIDE TO AMERICA IN THE 1960s (2001, co-authored with David Farber); SEX IN THE HEARTLAND (1999); THE FIRST STRANGE PLACE: RACE AND SEX IN WORLD WAR II HAWAII (1992, co-authored with David Farber); and FROM FRONT PORCH TO BACK SEAT: COURTSHIP IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA (1988). She is co-editor of UNDERSTANDING THE U.S. WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN (2015); AMERICA IN THE SEVENTIES (2004); and A HISTORY OF OUR TIME (multiple editions). Dr. Bailey is a trustee of the Society of Military History and a member of the Society of American Historians. The National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars have supported her work.

...more
Debra Michals

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Debra Michals received her BS magna cum laude from Boston University (1984) and her Ph.D. from New York University (2002). She is an instructor of women’s history and women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, where in 2008 she also served as acting chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. In 2013, Debra co-authored a permanent exhibit for the National Women’s History Museum entitled “From Ideas to Independence: A Century of Entrepreneurial Women” (http://entrepreneurs.nwhm.org/ ). She is currently completing a book on the emergence of women entrepreneurs and the growing number of female breadwinners since World War II, and she has also begun research for a book about gender and modern fatherhood. Debra has been a visiting scholar to Northeastern University (2003), and served as the Acting Associate Director of Women's Studies at New York University (1994-1996), where she helped obtain and administer a Ford Foundation Grant in Women's and Area Studies and earned the university's President's Leadership Service Award. She has contributed to several anthologies, including Sisterhood Is Forever (2003), Image Nation: American Countercultures in the 1960s and '70s (2002); and Reading Women's Lives (2003), as well as the encyclopedia Notable American Women (2004). Debra has served as a consultant/editor for The History Channel and has written for the History Channel Magazine. She was the content director for The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future (1998-2000), a consultant to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust, and currently sits on the advisory board for the International Museum of Women. In addition to her own research, Debra is a frequent editor and advisor for scholarly books and pedagogical materials in U.S. history.

...more

Table of Contents

1. Three Old Worlds Create a New, 1492–1600.
2. Europeans Colonize North America, 1600–1650.
3. North America in the Atlantic World, 1650–1720.
4. Becoming America, 1720–1760.
5. The Ends of Empire, 1754–1774.
6. American Revolutions, 1775–1783.
7. Forging a Nation, 1783–1800.
8. Defining the Nation, 1801–1823.
9. The Rise of the South, 1815–1860.
10. The Restless North, 1815–1860.
11. The Contested West, 1815–1860.
12. Politics and the Fate of the Union, 1824–1859.
13. Transforming Fire: The Civil War, 1860–1865.
14. Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution, 1865–1877.
15. The Ecology of the West and South, 1865–1900.
16. Building Factories, Building Cities, 1877–1900.
17. Gilded Age Politics, 1877–1900.
18. The Progressive Era, 1895–1920.
19. The Quest for Empire, 1865–1914.
20. Americans in the Great War, 1914–1920.
21. The New Era, 1920–1929.
22. The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1929–1939.
23. The Second World War at Home and Abroad, 1939–1945.
24. The Cold War and American Globalism, 1945–1961.
25. America at Midcentury, 1945–1960.
26. The Tumultuous Sixties, 1960–1968.
27. A Pivotal Era, 1969–1980.
28. Conservatism Revived, 1980–1992.
29. Into the Global Millennium: America Since 1992.

...more

Downloads