A Student's Guide to U.S. History

by McClay, Wilfred M

• ISBN13: 9781882926459
• ISBN10: 1882926455
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Regnery Pub

Summary

Get an Indispensable Education in American History in One Sitting!

How do you even begin to study U.S. history today? Historians now present a fractured view of American society. If any guiding national narrative remains, it is a tale of exploitation and oppression.

But the acclaimed historian Wilfred M. McClay is here to correct these problems. This slim guide shows you how to study the history of our country... and why. If you have ever found studying American history tedious or irrelevant, you won’t after reading McClay’s short and compulsively readable introduction. And if you have ever wondered how to challenge narratives of American oppression without whitewashing the past, this is the perfect place to start.

Author Biography

Wilfred M. McClay holds the Sun Trust Bank Chair of Excellence in the Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Academy of Education, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Table of Contents

What This Guide Is, and Isn't	1	(3)
History as Laboratory	4	(7)
History as Memory	11	(8)
Rethinking American History	19	(3)
American Myths and Narratives	22	(9)
Your History Is America's History---Sometimes	31	(4)
A Gallery of Windows	35	(51)
America and Europe	36	(3)
Capitalism	39	(4)
The City	43	(2)
Equality	45	(4)
Founding	49	(1)
Frontier	50	(1)
Immigration	51	(3)
Liberty	54	(4)
Nation and Federation	58	(3)
Nature	61	(3)
Pluralism	64	(6)
Redeemer Nation	70	(3)
Religion	73	(4)
Revolution	77	(2)
Self-Making	79	(4)
The South	83	(3)
Caveats	86	(5)
An American Canon	91	(4)
Student Self-Reliance Project: Embarking on a Lifelong Pursuit of Knowledge?	95