Interpretations of American History Vol. 1 : Through Reconstruction - Patterns and Perspectives

by Couvares, Francis G.; Saxton, Martha; Grob, Gerald N.; Billias, George Athan

• ISBN13: 9780312480493
• ISBN10: 0312480490
• Edition: 8th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-05
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

Now in a new edition from Bedford/St. Martin's, Interpretations of American Historyoffers 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.

Author Biography

Francis G. Couvares is the E. Dwight Salmon Professor of History and American Studies at Amherst College. He is the author of The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City 1877-1919 (1984) and editor of Movie Censorship and American Culture, Second Edition (2006).

Martha Saxton is an Associate Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies and the Elizabeth Bruss Reader at Amherst College. She has written biographies of Louisa May Alcott and Jayne Mansfield, as well as Being Good: Women’s Moral Values In Early America (2003), and numerous essays on women in early America.
 

Founding editors of Interpretations of American History Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Billias are Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine Emeritus at Rutgers University and Hyatt Professor of History Emeritus at Clark University, respectively.

Table of Contents

Volume One: Through Reconstruction

Chapter 1 Introduction to U.S. Historiography

 

Chapter 2 The Puritans: Orthodoxy or Diversity?

Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans (1938)

David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment (1989) **

 

Chapter 3 American Indians: New Worlds in the Atlantic World

Colin G. Calloway, New Worlds for All (1997)

Claudio Saunt, "‘Our Indians’: European Empires and the History of the Native American South" (2007) **

 

Chapter 4 The Atlantic Slave Trade: Racism or Profit?

Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944) **

David Eltis, "Atlantic History in Global Perspective" (1999) **

 

Chapter 5 The American Revolution: Moderate or Radical?

T. H. Breen, "Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution" (1997)

Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution (2005) **

 

Chapter 6 The Constitution: Conflict or Consensus?

Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969)

Woody Holton, "Did Democracy Cause the Recession That Led to the Constitution?" (2005) **

 

Chapter 7 Jacksonian Democracy: How Democratic?

Sean Wilentz, "Slavery, Antislavery, and Jacksonian Democracy" (1996) **

Lacy K. Ford, Jr., "Making the ‘White Man’s Country’ White: Race, Slavery, and State-Building in the Jacksonian South" (1999) **

 

Chapter 8 Antebellum Reform: Evolving Causes and Strategies

Mary Hershberger, "Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s" (1999) **

Lori Ginzberg, "Moral Suasion is Moral Balderdash: Women, Politics, and Social Activism in the 1850s" (1986)

 

Chapter 9 Slave Culture: African or American?

Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998) **

Michael Gomez, "African Identity and Slavery in the Americas" (1999) **

 

Chapter 10 The Civil War: Repressible or Irrepressible?

Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (1950)

William W. Freehling, "Democracy and the Causes of the Civil War" (1994)

 

Chapter 11 The Reconstruction Era: How Large Its Scope?

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988)

Elliott West, "Reconstructing Race" (2003) **

** new to this edition