Preface

Preface

Overview

U.S. History is designed for a two-semester American history sequence. It is traditional in coverage, following a roughly chronological outline, and using a balanced approach that includes political, economic, social, and cultural developments. At the same time, the book includes a number of innovative and interactive features designed to enhance student learning. Instructors can also customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom.

Welcome to U.S. History, an OpenStax resource. This textbook has been created with several goals in mind: accessibility, customization, and student engagement—all while encouraging students toward high levels of academic scholarship. Instructors and students alike will find that this textbook offers a strong foundation in U.S. history in an accessible format.

About OpenStax

OpenStax is a non-profit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. Our free textbooks go through a rigorous editorial publishing process. Our texts are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of today’s college courses. Unlike traditional textbooks, OpenStax resources live online and are owned by the community of educators using them. Through our partnerships with companies and foundations committed to reducing costs for students, OpenStax is working to improve access to higher education for all. OpenStax is an initiative of Rice University and is made possible through the generous support of several philanthropic foundations. Since our launch in 2012 our texts have been used by millions of learners online and over 1,200 institutions worldwide.

About OpenStax’s Resources

OpenStax resources provide quality academic instruction. Three key features set our materials apart from others: they can be customized by instructors for each class, they are a “living” resource that grows online through contributions from educators, and they are available free or for minimal cost.

Customization

OpenStax learning resources are designed to be customized for each course. Our textbooks are developed to meet the scope and sequence of a typical course and; therefore, provide a solid foundation on which instructors can build, and our resources are conceived and written with flexibility in mind. Instructors can select the sections most relevant to their curricula and create a textbook that speaks directly to the needs of their classes and student body. Teachers are encouraged to expand on existing examples by adding unique context via geographically localized applications and topical connections.

U.S. History can be easily customized using our online platform (http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/latest/). Simply select the content most relevant to your current semester and create a textbook that speaks directly to the needs of your class. U.S. History is organized as a collection of sections that can be rearranged, modified, and enhanced through localized examples or to incorporate a specific theme of your course. This customization feature will ensure that your textbook truly reflects the goals of your course.

Cost

Our textbooks are available for free online, and also in low-cost print and iBook textbook editions.

About U.S. History

U.S. History has been developed to meet the scope and sequence of most introductory U.S. History courses. At the same time, the book includes a number of innovative features designed to enhance student learning. Instructors can also customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom.

Coverage and Scope

To develop U.S. History, we solicited ideas from historians at all levels of higher education, from community colleges to Ph.D.-granting universities. They told us about their courses, students, challenges, resources, and how a textbook can best meet their and their students’ needs.

The result is a book that covers the breadth of the chronological history of the United States and also provides the necessary depth to ensure the course is manageable for instructors and students alike. U.S. History explores the key forces and major developments that together form the American experience, with particular attention paid to considering issues of race, class, and gender.

The pedagogical choices, chapter arrangements, and learning objective fulfillment were developed and vetted with feedback from educators dedicated to the project. They thoroughly read the material and offered critical and detailed commentary. Reviewer feedback centered around achieving equilibrium between the various political, social, and cultural dynamics that permeate history. The outcome is a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience).

While the book is organized primarily chronologically, as needed, material treating different topics or regions over the same time period is spread over multiple chapters. For example, chapters 9, 11, and 12 look at economic, political, social, and cultural developments during the first half of the eighteenth century in the North, West, and South respectively, while chapters 18 to 20 closely examine industrialization, urbanization, and politics in the period after Reconstruction.

Chapter 1: The Americas, Europe, and Africa before 1492
Chapter 2: Early Globalization: The Atlantic World, 1492–1650
Chapter 3: Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
Chapter 4: Rule Britannia! The English Empire, 1660–1763
Chapter 5: Imperial Reforms and Colonial Protests, 1763–1774
Chapter 6: America’s War for Independence, 1775–1783
Chapter 7: Creating Republican Governments, 1776–1790
Chapter 8: Growing Pains: The New Republic, 1790–1815
Chapter 9: Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800–1850
Chapter 10: Jacksonian Democracy, 1820–1840
Chapter 11: A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 1800–1850
Chapter 12: Cotton is King: The Antebellum South, 1800–1860
Chapter 13: Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses, 1820–1860
Chapter 14: Troubled Times: The Tumultuous 1850s
Chapter 15: The Civil War, 1860–1865
Chapter 16: The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877
Chapter 17: Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840–1900
Chapter 18: Industrialization and the Rise of Big Business, 1870–1900
Chapter 19: The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870–1900
Chapter 20: Politics in the Gilded Age, 1870–1900
Chapter 21: Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890–1920
Chapter 22: Age of Empire: Modern American Foreign Policy, 1890–1914
Chapter 23: Americans and the Great War, 1914–1919
Chapter 24: The Jazz Age: Redefining the Nation, 1919–1929
Chapter 25: Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Great Depression, 1929–1932
Chapter 26: Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1941
Chapter 27: Fighting the Good Fight in World War II, 1941–1945
Chapter 28: Postwar Prosperity and Cold War Fears, 1945–1960
Chapter 29: Contesting Futures: America in the 1960s
Chapter 30: Political Storms at Home and Abroad, 1968–1980
Chapter 31: From Cold War to Culture Wars, 1980–2000
Chapter 32: The Challenges of the Twenty-First Century
Appendix A: The Declaration of Independence
Appendix B: The Constitution of the United States
Appendix C: Presidents of the United States
Appendix D: United States Political Map
Appendix E: United States Topographical Map
Appendix F: United States Population Chart
Appendix G: Suggested Reading

Pedagogical Foundation

Throughout the OpenStax version of U.S. History, you will find featured material that engage the students in historical inquiry by taking selected topics a step further. Our features include:

  • Americana: This feature explores the significance of artifacts from American pop culture and considers what values, views, and philosophies are reflected in these objects.
  • Defining “American”: This feature analyzes primary sources, including documents, speeches, and other writings, to consider important issues of the day and present varying points of view on them, while keeping a focus on the theme of what it means to be American.
  • My Story: This feature presents first-person accounts (diaries, interviews, letters) of significant or exceptional events from the American experience.
  • Link It Up: This feature is a very brief introduction to a website with an interactive experience, video, or primary sources that help improve student understanding of the material.

Questions for Each Level of Learning

The OpenStax version of U.S. History offers two types of end-of-module questions for students.

  • Review Questions are simple recall questions from each module in the chapter and are in either multiple-choice or open-response format. The answers can be looked up in the text.
  • Critical Thinking Questions are higher-level, conceptual questions that ask students to demonstrate their understanding by applying what they have learned in each module to the whole of the chapter. They ask for outside-the-box thinking, for reasoning about the concepts. They push the student to places they wouldn’t have thought of going themselves.

About Our Team

Our team is a diverse mix of historians representing various institutions across the nation. We’d like to extend a special thanks to our senior contributors who worked tirelessly to ensure the coverage and level is appropriate for students.

Senior Contributing Authors

P. Scott Corbett, PhD—Ventura College Dr. Corbett’s major fields of study are recent American history and American diplomatic history. He teaches a variety of courses at Ventura College, and he serves as an instructor at California State University’s Channel Islands campus. A passionate educator, Scott has also taught history to university students in Singapore and China.

Volker Janssen, PhD—California State University–FullertonBorn and raised in Germany, Dr. Janssen received his BA from the University of Hamburg and his MA and PhD from the University of California, San Diego. He is a former Fulbright scholar and an active member of Germany's advanced studies foundation "Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes." Volker currently serves as Associate Professor at California State University’s Fullerton campus, where he specializes in the social, economic, and institutional history of California, and more recently, the history of technology.

John M. Lund, PhD—Keene State College Dr. Lund’s primary research focuses on early American history, with a special interest in oaths, Colonial New England, and Atlantic legal cultures. John has over 20 years of teaching experience. In addition to working with students at Keene State College, he lectures at Franklin Pierce University, and serves the online learning community at Southern New Hampshire University.

Todd Pfannestiel, PhD—Clarion UniversityDr. Pfannestiel is a Professor in the history department of Clarion University in Pennsylvania, where he also holds the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Todd has a strong history of service to his institution, its students, and the community that surrounds it.

Paul Vickery, PhD—Oral Roberts UniversityEducating others is one of Dr. Vickery’s delights, whether in the classroom, through authoring books and articles, or via informal teaching during his travels. He is currently Professor of History at Oral Roberts University, where his emphasis is on the history of ideas, ethics, and the role of the church and theology in national development. Paul reads Portuguese, Italian, French, and Hebrew, and has taught on five continents.

Sylvie Waskiewicz, PhD—Lead EditorDr. Waskiewicz received her BSBA from Georgetown University and her MA and PhD from the Institute of French Studies at New York University. With over 10 years of teaching experience in English and French history and language, Sylvie left academia to join the ranks of higher education publishing. She has spent the last eight years editing college textbooks and academic journals.

Reviewers

Amy BixIowa State University
Edward BondAlabama A&M University
Tammy ByronDalton State College
Benjamin CarpBrooklyn College, CUNY
Sharon DeubreauRhodes State College
Gene FeinFordham University
Joel FranksSan Jose State University
Raymond FreyCentenary College
Richard GianniIndiana University Northwest
Larry GraggMissouri University of Science and Technology
Laura GravesSouth Plains College
Elisa GuernseyMonroe Community College
Thomas Chase HagoodUniversity of Georgia
Charlotte HallerWorcester State University
David HeadSpring Hill College
Tamora HoskissonSalt Lake Community College
Jean KellerPalomar College
Kathleen KennedyMissouri State University
Mark KlobasScottsdale Community College
Ann KordasJohnson & Wales University
Stephanie LafferMiami International University of Art and Design
Jennifer LangDelgado Community College
Jennifer LawrenceTarrant County College
Wendy Maier-SartiOakton Community College
Jim McIntyreMoraine Valley Community College
Marianne McKnightSalt Lake Community College
Brandon MorganCentral New Mexico Community College
Caryn NeumannMiami University of Ohio
Michelle NovakHouston Community College
Lisa OssianDes Moines Area Community College
Paul RingelHigh Point University
Jason RipperEverett Community College
Silvana SiddaliSaint Louis University
Brooks SimpsonArizona State University
Steven SmithCalifornia State University, Fullerton
David TrowbridgeMarshall University
Eugene Van SickleUniversity of North Georgia
Hubert van TuyllAugusta State University

Ancillaries

OpenStax projects offer an array of ancillaries for students and instructors. Please visit http://openstaxcollege.org and view the learning resources for this title.