American History Connecting with the Past Vol 2 15th Edition by Alan Brinkley 

American History Connecting with the Past Vol 2 15th Edition by Alan Brinkley

ISBN-13: 9780077776749

ISBN-10: 0077776747

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

In addition to being a best selling textbook author, ALAN BRINKLEY is the Allan Nevins Professor of History and former Provost at Columbia University. He is the author of Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression, which won the 1983 National Book Award; The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War; and Liberalism and its Discontents. His most recent books are John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961-1963 and The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century both published recently. He was educated at Princeton and Harvard and taught previously at MIT, Harvard, and the City University Graduate School before joining the Columbia faculty In 1991. In 1998-1999, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He won the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Award at Harvard in 1987 and the Great Teacher Award at Columbia in 2003. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the board of trustees of the National Humanities Center and Oxford University Press, and chairman of the board of trustees of the Century Foundation. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and the University of Torino (Italy). He was the 1998-1999 Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.

PREFACE

WHY do so many people take an interest in history?

It is, I think, because we know that we are

the products of the past—that everything we know, everything

we see, and everything we imagine is rooted in our history. It

is not surprising that there have been historians throughout

almost all of recorded time. It is only natural that we are interested

in what the past was like. Whether we study academic

history or not, we all are connected to the past.

Americans have always had a love of their own history. It is

a daunting task to attempt to convey the long and remarkable

story of America in a single book, but that is what this volume

attempts to do. The new subtitle of this book, “Connecting

with the Past,” describes this edition’s focus on encouraging

readers to be aware of the ways in which our everyday experiences

are rooted in our history.

Like any history, this book is a product of its time and refl ects

the views of the past that historians of recent generations have

developed. A comparable book published decades from now will

likely seem as different from this one as this book appears different

from histories written a generation or more ago. The writing

of history changes constantly—not, of course, because the past

changes, but because of shifts in the way historians, and the publics

they serve, ask and answer questions about the past.

There are now, as there have always been, critics of changes

in historical understanding. Many people argue that history is

a collection of facts and should not be subject to “interpretation”

or “revision.” But historians insist that history is not and

cannot be simply a collection of facts. They are only the beginning

of historical understanding. It is up to the writers and

readers of history to try to interpret the evidence before them;

and in doing so, they will inevitably bring to the task their

own questions, concerns, and experiences.

Our history requires us to examine the experience of the

many different peoples and ideas that have shaped American

society. But it also requires us to understand that the United

States is a nation whose people share many things: a common

political system, a connection to an integrated national (and

now international) economy, and a familiarity with a shared

and enormously powerful mass culture. To understand the

American past, it is necessary to understand both the forces

that divide Americans and the forces that draw them together.

It is not only the writing of history that changes with time—

the tools and technologies through which information is delivered

change as well. Created as an integral part of the content

of this fi fteenth edition are an array of valuable learning resources

that will aid instructors in teaching and students