The New American History

Revised and Expanded Edition

Edited by Eric Foner
Book Cover

PB: $37.95
EAN: 978-1-56639-552-6
Publication: Jul 90

HC: $77.50
EAN: 978-1-56639-551-9
Publication: Jul 90

400 pages
6 x 9
3 tables

Leading historians define key trends in the field of history and reflect on how the experience of previously neglected groups has fundamentally redefined U.S. history

Read the Introduction (pdf).

Description

Originally released in 1990, The New American History, edited for the American Historical Association by Eric Foner, has become an indispensable volume for teachers and students. In essays that chart the shifts in interpretation within their fields, some of our most prominent American historians survey the key works and themes in the scholarship of the last three decades. Along with substantially revised essays from the first edition, this volume presents three entirely new ones -- on intellectual history, the history of the West, and the histories of the family and sexuality. The second edition of The New American History reflects, in Foner's words, "the continuing vitality and creativity of the study of the past, how traditional fields are being expanded and redefined even as new ones are created."

Table of Contents

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition – Eric Foner Introduction to the First Edition – Eric Foner

Part I: Eras of the American Past 1. Beneficiaries of Catastrophe: The English Colonies in America – John M. Murin 2. The Revolutionary Generation: Ideology, Politics, and Culture in the Early Republic – Linda K. Kerber 3. Society, Politics, and the Market Revolution, 1815-1848 – Sean Wilentz 4. Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction – Eric Foner 5. Public Life in Industrial America, 1877-1917 – Richard L. McCormick 6. Prosperity, Depression, and War, 1920-1945 – Alan Brinkley 7. America since 1945 – William H. Chafe

Part II: Major Themes in American Experience 8. Intellectual and Cultural History – Thomas Bender 9. Western History – Richard White 10. Social History – Alice Kessler-Harris 11. U.S. Women's History – Linda Gordon 12. The History of the Family and the History of Sexuality – Estelle B. Freedman 13. African-American History – Thomas C. Holt 14. American Labor History – Leon Fink 15. Ethnicity and Immigration – Thomas B. Shenton and Kevin Kenny 16. Liberty and Power: U.S. Diplomatic History, 1750-1945 – Walter LaFeber

About the Contributors

About the Author(s)

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books, including Reconstruction, 1863-1877, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize.


Subjects

History

In the Series

  • Critical Perspectives on the Past edited by Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig

    Critical Perspectives on the Past, edited by Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, is concerned with the traditional and nontraditional ways in which historical ideas are formed. In its attentiveness to issues of race, class, and gender and to the role of human agency in shaping events, the series is as critical of traditional historical method as content. Emphasizing that history is itself an interpretation of material events, the series demonstrates that the historian's choices of subject, narrative technique, and documentation are politically as well as intellectually constructed.