Contrary to conventional wisdom, no area of study is outdated more quickly than history, and no time has been more turbulent for the discipline than our own. This classic point/counterpoint reader in American history, now in a completely revised and updated seventh edition, takes note of history's impermanence, giving voice to the new without disposing of the old. In ten lively chapters, essays by the editors introduce dialectical readings by distinguished historians on topics from Reconstruction to the present. The essays and readings address history's timeless questions: "Reconstruction: Change or Stasis?," "American Imperialism: Economic Expansion or Ideological Crusade?," and "The Civil Rights Movement: Top-Down or Bottom-Up?" New readings are included on African Americans, women, and immigrants. In the fray of debate, eminent historians from Samuel Hays and Alfred Chandler to John Lewis Gaddis, Walter LaFeber, and Kathryn Kish Sklar struggle to interpret the past. The editors'essays moderate.

Now in a new edition from Bedford/St. Martin’s, Interpretations of American History offers an essential collection of essays and readings on American historiography. Each chapter opens with an extended essay that explores the historiography specific to that chapter’s topic, followed by two readings by preeminent historians that highlight different — although not always diametrically opposed — historical approaches. Fully updated for the next generation of scholars, the most respected historiographical reader now comes with all the care and quality that you expect from Bedford/St. Martin’s.

First Published in 2015. This text holds four volumes of essays and entries on the early Republic and Antebellum era in America spanning the end of the American Revolution in 1781 to the outbreak of Civil War in 1861. The Americans forged a new government in theory and then in practice, with the beginnings of industrialisation and the effects of urbanisation, widespread poverty, labour strife, debates around slavery and sectional discord. By the end of the nineteenth century American had a powerhouse economy, new technologies and the emergence of major social reform movements, creation of uniquely American art and literature and the conquest of the West. This encyclopaedia offers a historic reference.

In this second installment of G. Edward White's sweeping history of law in America from the colonial era to the present, White, covers the period between 1865-1929, which encompasses Reconstruction, rapid industrialization, a huge influx of immigrants, the rise of Jim Crow, the emergence of an American territorial empire, World War I, and the booming yet xenophobic 1920s. As in the first volume, he connects the evolution of American law to the major political, economic, cultural, social, and demographic developments of the era. To enrich his account, White draws from the latest research from across the social sciences--economic history, anthropology, and sociology--yet weave those insights into a highly accessible narrative. Along the way he provides a compelling case for why law can be seen as the key to understanding the development of American life as we know it. Law in American History, Volume II will be an essential text for both students of law and general readers.

This collection of essays on American history reflects recent scholarship. Contributors new to this edition include Gary Nash, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard P. McCormick, Gerda Lerner, Ellen C. DuBois, Vicki L. Ruiz, Nathan I. Huggins, John Lewis Gaddis, Paul Kennedy and Kevin P. Philips. Edited by Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Billias.

Community is an evolving and complex concept that historians have applied to localities, counties, and the South as a whole in order to ground larger issues in the day-to-day lives of all segments of society. These social networks sometimes unite and sometimes divide people, they can mirror or transcend political boundaries, and they may exist solely within the cultures of like-minded people. This volume explores the nature of southern communities during the long nineteenth century. The contributors build on the work of scholars who have allowed us to see community not simply as a place but instead as an idea in a constant state of definition and redefinition. They reaffirm that there never has been a singular southern community. As editors Steven E. Nash and Bruce E. Stewart reveal, southerners have constructed an array of communities across the region and beyond. Nor do the contributors idealize these communities. Far from being places of cooperation and harmony, southern communities were often rife with competition and discord. Indeed, conflict has constituted a vital part of southern communal development. Taken together, the essays in this volume remind us how community-focused studies can bring us closer to answering those questions posed to Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom!: “Tell [us] about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.”

This is the first study to provide a comprehensive picture of the revolt brought about by American radical historians in the 1960s and 1970s. With the turbulent sixties as a backdrop, the work of radical luminaries like Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, Staughton Lynd, William Appleman Williams and Howard Zinn is discussed. These historians made a significant contribution to present-day notions about slavery, working-class history, the New Deal, the Cold War and a wealth of other subjects. Their main target was American liberalism. Radical criticism centered on the liberal concepts of the division of power and of the nature of man. The acrimonious debate which ensued tore the historical profession apart. Therefore most historians have stressed the disagreements between liberals and radicals. Yet, in this study it will be argued that in some respects the radicals were part and parcel of mainstream historiography, though they presented a radical version of it.

In Wil Lou Gray: The Making of a Southern Progressive from New South to New Deal, Mary Macdonald Ogden examines the first fifty years of the life and work of South Carolina's Wil Lou Gray (1883-1984), an uncompromising advocate of public and private programs to improve education, health, citizen participation, and culture in the Palmetto State. Motivated by the southern educational reform crusade, her own excellent education, and the high levels of illiteracy she observed in South Carolina, Gray capitalized on the emergent field of adult education before and after World War I to battle the racism, illiteracy, sexism, and political lethargy commonplace in her native state. As state superintendent of adult schools from 1919 to 1946, one of only two such superintendents in the nation, and through opportunity schools, adult night schools, pilgrimages, and media campaigns—all of which she pioneered—Gray transformed South Carolina's anti-illiteracy campaign from a plan of eradication to a comprehensive program of adult education. Ogden's biography reveals how Gray successfully secured small but meaningful advances for both black and white adults in the face of harsh economic conditions, pervasive white supremacy attitudes, and racial violence. Gray's socially progressive politics brought change in the first decades of the twentieth century. Gray was a refined, sophisticated upper-class South Carolinian who played Canasta, loved tomato aspic, and served meals at the South Carolina Opportunity School on china with cloth napkins. She was also a lifelong Democrat, a passionate supporter of equality of opportunity, a masterful politician, a workaholic, and in her last years a vociferous supporter of government programs such as Medicare and nonprofits such as Planned Parenthood. She had a remarkable grasp of the issues that plagued her state and, with deep faith in the power of government to foster social justice, developed innovative ways to address those problems despite real financial, political, and social barriers to progress. Her life is an example of how one person with bravery, tenacity, and faith in humanity can grasp the power of government to improve society.

Over the last thirty years, conservative evangelicals have been moving to the Northwest of the United States, where they hope to resist the impact of secular modernity and to survive the breakdown of society that they anticipate. These believers have often given up on the politics of the Christian Right, adopting strategies of hibernation while developing the communities and institutions from which a new America might one day emerge. Their activity coincides with the promotion by prominent survivalist authors of a program of migration to the "American Redoubt," a region encompassing Idaho, Montana, parts of eastern Washington and Oregon, and Wyoming, as a haven in which to endure hostile social change or natural disaster and in which to build a new social order. These migration movements have independent origins, but they overlap in their influences and aspirations, working in tandem to offer a vision of the present in which Christian values must be defended as American society is rebuilt according to biblical law. This book examines the origins, evolution, and cultural reach of this little-noted migration and considers what it might tell us about the future of American evangelicalism. Drawing on Calvinist theology, the social theory of Christian Reconstruction, and libertarian politics, these believers are projecting significant soft power. Their books are promoted by leading mainstream publishers and listed as New York Times bestsellers. Their strategy is gaining momentum, making an impact in local political and economic life, while being repackaged for a wider audience in publications by a broader coalition of conservative commentators and in American mass culture. This survivalist evangelical subculture recognizes that they have lost the culture war - but another kind of conflict is beginning.