The depth of research and care in including pertinent information is well done. While there could have been more information on minority contributions to US History, this text was accurate and well-balanced when it came to telling different sides of the stories of History.
Because it was well written and comprised, this text will be used for a long time in this reviewer's classes. Students will find this text easy to use because of the highlighted words of importance and the end of chapter questions. When the book refers to certain topics, such as the presidency of Andrew Johnson and the turmoil that brought, the text was very down to earth as well as technical when explaining certain situations.
This will help students be able to increase their historical acumen and not make it so difficult for them to learn. The modularity of the book is rather linear. Most everything in the text was very easy to read and understanding was aided by the comprehensive definitions given throughout the text.
While the text was not personally offensive or insensitive, many aspects of the true telling of history are. The text gracefully handles this and allows the reader to dive into the "why" of things rather than dwell on the acts of bigotry and hatred themselves. This textbook could be a welcome main reader in any classroom.
Students will be able to relate to the information and synthesize what they learned by utilizing the comprehensive helps contained at the end of each chapter, as well as studying the important vocab words in each section.
Well-written and this text will be utilized by this professor for years to come. The books covers the political narrative relatively thoroughly, but skews its attention to England and Europe over other areas of the Atlantic World in early chapters.
The book is weakest in terms of coverage pre and post Mostly free of major errors, though I would question some of the points of emphasis. The book generally isn't focused in bringing the most current historical arguments into the text, which can at times make it feel a bit flat and free of argument. This does have the advantage that the book is unlikely to become dated in the short term.
The book is clearly written and the reading level is appropriate for high school and early college students. Professors will not have much work to do setting up the book or explaining difficult concepts.
The disadvantage of having avoided jargon and technical terminology is that more complex concepts also seem to have been avoided. The structure of chapters is consistent and the tone is fairly uniform throughout the text. The sections on the mid- to lateth century seems a little different from the bulk of the book.
This helps greatly with modularity, but limits what the text offers students in terms of connecting different aspects of US history. There is a clear chronological approach to the text that students will find easy to follow and accessible. The interface is not particularly visually appealing, but is intuitive and easy to navigate. There are a number of excellent images that I haven't seen in other texts. These images could be presented in a larger format, rather than the default presentation being shrunk to a fraction of the width of the page.
As at least one other review has noted, stating that Americanization "left them bereft of their culture and history" is not accurate and a potentially damaging statement. Asian American history is not dealt with in any sustained manner.
This textbook does an exceptional job of providing a comprehensive though still nuanced portrait of US history. It also does a great job of introducing elements of environmental history. However, the primary sources integrated into the text would allow an instructor to consider cultural shifts with students in class.
There are some mention of Asian -Americans, Latinos and immigrants from the Middle East, but they are not woven deeply into the text the way African Americans and, at times, Native Americans are.
I think moving forward this would be an ideal place for expansion. They might also give more attention to the experiences of African Americans in the South post reconstruction and before the Civil Rights Movements of the s. For the most part, the text has no explicit bias and is relatively error free. When the authors are outside the bounds of their expertise there tends to be more errors. For example, their coverage of pre-Columbian societies in Meso America includes outdated information regarding to Florentine Codex and the belief that Montezuma believed Cortes to be a god.
In other places, the lack of accuracy is more the stories that have been left out. These are relatively minor in an otherwise excellent history.
In those areas where the text provides, extensive coverage, it is up to date. Breaking up the standard narratives of history would make it far more applicable to the new ways that U. History is being taught. Necessary updates — as long as they stay within the general narrative structure— will be easy to incorporate. Overall, the writing is clear and engaging.
Moreover, by providing framing questions at the beginning of each chapter as well as a brief summary at the end of each chapter, the authors highlight the important take away for students. When writing this review I had to look again and see if this was written by more than one author! The text is very consistent and keeps the same narrative focus and tone throughout.
Text is divided into reasonable chapters with subheadings. It is not overly referential. Chapters and sections could be rearranged, skipped and emphasized at will. I think this does an excellent job of emphasizing the many different ways historians think about the past, and different areas of students learning. Within each chapter, I found the structure and flow excellent. The maps, images and primary sources and very well integrated into the text.
In fact, this is perhaps the best integration of images and maps that I have seen! I found no problems with the interface. Images are clear. Text is clear. Many of the primary sources are integrated into the text limiting how much students would need to have multiple browsers open at the same time.
Within each chapter, the text is not culturally insensitive. Yet, there is considerable weight given to the traditional players in US history. I would like to see this integrated into the text. I found that the text does broadly covers significant historical events and people in a broad overview. While there is not a lot of depth in the chapters, it makes a great overview do use if the instructor adds supplemental readings.
The review The review and critical thinking questions are a great supplement, as well as the glossary. For example, U. History's first chapter's sections about Pre-Columbia America and pre Europe and Africa I will make required reading because it is important, but my students have had to rely on my lectures for this information.
I can utilize "U. History" as supplemental assigned readings to reinforce my lectures on different important themes, such as the U. I plan to incorporate portions of this text in my Spring classes. The text was written in , so there is a gap of some of current issues facing America. But as for the rest of the text it is wll done.
The text is easily readable and does not use unnecessary complex words or jargon. Also, I was pleased to see the historic maps, illustrations and photographs included within each section. This helps keep the attention of the reader rather that having long stagnant readings. Yes, the composition of the chapters are in a standard format that is consistent throughout the text.
I like how the chapters are broken into subsections without sacrificing the content's chronology. This will enable me to assign subsections of chapters for my students to read to supplement my lectures and other readings without compelling them to read the entire chapter. I had no problem with interface issues with navigating the text or distractions from images presented.
The text is a great example of how today's "revisionist" history should be written. It is inclusive of a variety of peoples and their cultural and ethnic background. Again, as I said at the beginning of this review, I will be using this text to supplement my lectures and other assigned readings in my Multicultural America courses in the Spring My students should find this text a welcome addition to the course.
One of the strengths of this text is its comprehensiveness. The text hits all of the major topics in American history that one can find in a The text hits all of the major topics in American history that one can find in a typical survey text, ending around with the administration of Barack Obama.
That being said, the text is far more broad than it is deep. One example of this is the aforementioned first chapter on the pre-Columbian world. Europe gets an extensive treatment here, with a robust description of life as far back as the end of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Some of this seems unnecessary, especially since Africa and the Americas do not get the same treatment. The American section is far too vague, mentioning no names of important leaders like Pachacuti and Montezuma.
This is one of the major criticisms I have about the text. The depth of topics is varied; some topics are treated with great detail and nuance while other areas are glossed over too quickly.
I detected a good bit of bias in the latter sections of the text that deal with the politics of the last few decades.
Having examined many different texts for US History courses over the years, the bias I see here is nothing new or exceptional, but it is worth noting. One of the greatest benefits of using an internet text like this is the supposed ability for revision and addition as needed, in a timely fashion.
The text ends at , and it seems the time has come for an update. This is one of the most readable texts I have ever encountered for an American history course, but I also feel that it is perhaps too simplistic for some of my students. The language, vocabulary, and sentence structure seem more fitting for high school students than college students. For certain student populations, this would be a benefit, but instructors should be aware of this, especially if their goal is to get students to write and speak in more formal, academic terms.
The glossaries at the end of the chapters reveal the simplicity of language. The overall framework of the text is consistent, with review questions, glossaries, and learning objectives attached to each chapter. I found that the depth of coverage on topics is very inconsistent throughout the text, however, and this was a major drawback.
The modularity of the text was one of its strongest points, especially when compared to a similar online text for US History I have looked at in the past.
I liked that the Table of Contents could be turned on to show continually in the margin so that the reader can move easily between sections. I did not have to scroll back up to the top of the page to get to another chapter of the text. I also found the search bar to be very helpful, pulling up a short excerpt from the text with each instance of the search term. All of these made this particular text very easy to navigate.
The chapter titles were also generally well-labeled so that I could locate a specific section quickly. The organizational structure makes sense. It is largely chronological, though some topics are grouped together instead of in a strictly chronological sense. This allows for continuity of ideas within topics. I did not notice any issues with this. There are quite a few embedded links to outside resources, and the ones I looked at were all intact. I hope the editors maintain good links.
I did notice a couple of links that took me to a general website instead of the specific article mentioned in the text; it would have been helpful to have the links go to the actual page mentioned. This text did an excellent job including a variety of voices, both within the text itself and through the use of sources from historically-marginalized groups.
For example, there were links to slave narratives and a site about the Carlisle Indian School. If your main criteria for a US History text are cost and readability, this is a text worth examining. It is most comparable to "brief edition" texts I have seen, and I often find those type of texts to be too brief to benefit my students very much. I do not think this is a text that would work for every U. History course, but for some student populations, it would provide a nice alternative to expensive textbooks.
The text addresses significant historical points, but without great depth. Content limitations do allow an instructor the flexibility to tailor each chapter's content. The links to ancillary materials are helpful for examining documents pertinent to chapter learning outcomes, but these are limited. Chapter glossaries provide an opportunity to discuss terms and phrases necessary to the historical context pertinent to the chapter topics. As for the learning objectives, they are directed to the content of the online text; at times the brevity of chapter content alone does not allow sufficient information for developing critical thinking responses.
Finally, the review and critical thinking questions serve as a reasonable guide for considering chapter content. Additional questions will need to be developed respectively for those points deemed more important for understanding chapter topics. The absence of historical details limits a broader understanding of the historical events discussed; thus, the accuracy of the material is limited in this context.
There exists in spots some level of bias: for example, the terminology used in Chapter In Chapter The summary in Chapter Additionally, the same Chapter Chapter Six years of history since has substantively impacted the American political dynamics that should be addressed for its contemporary value. Overall, the composition of the text is easy to read and does not integrate complicated syntax or terminology.
In places the brevity of the discussion can lead to questions, but this is not due to the language used itself. For example, in Chapter The amount of discussion is roughly the same per chapter. The "modularity" of the text is reasonable using four to five subsections that for some chapters can be reordered without jeopardizing the content chronology.
No particular problems were noted as far as navigating the online links for access to the appropriate information. Some of the chapter images could be displayed more clearly: for example, time-line images, such as the one in Chapter No particular grammatical errors were noticed. The language is readable and should not present a problem for college level students. The text makes an effort to address culturally related issues, focusing mostly on African Americans and women to the exclusion or coverage of other minority and racial groups.
For example, Chapter In its attempt to be culturally attentive, While it's impossible to cover everything, this book does an admirable job of going into detail about important topics. The opening chapters provide a breathtaking panorama of the early origins of human life in the Americas and the global scene The opening chapters provide a breathtaking panorama of the early origins of human life in the Americas and the global scene on the eve of transatlantic exploration; it proceeds to explain colonization with very meaningful emphasis on how it fit in with the larger context of global trade and comparative labor systems, free and unfree.
In the chapter on the road to the Civil War, the sense of a compelling story with personalities and passions comes through clearly, and in the chapter on the Great Depression, its harsh ravages and the struggle to figure out what to do are expressed with suitable poignancy.
The book is, in fact, so detailed that instructors of the two-semester sequence may need to do some selective trimming in what they assign, especially in colleges where students have full-time jobs and families as well as 15 credit hours of coursework.
And in the context of the impossibility of being detailed enough about everything, and of all instructors having certain pet topics that they wish their textbook said more about, I would have liked to see more explanation of how the Salem witch trials fit in with the Puritan experience, on the family and community lives of the enslaved population in the pre-Civil War years, and a few other points here and there.
In the discussion of both the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment, they might want to connect them with the impending revolution by pointing up their spirit though affecting sharply divergent constituencies of questioning traditional authority. Where the authors mention that there was talk in the early s in the Virginia legislature of making manumission of slaves easier but that the idea was shot down, they might want to point out that the sentiment for regarding slavery as more trouble and danger than it was worth came largely from the state's western counties where land was less conducive to plantation agriculture, and that these counties would secede from the state and form West Virginia during the Civil War.
Also, discussion of Henry George's single-tax theory is oversimplified to the point of being slightly misleading. They write that, according to George, there should be a land tax "in order to disincentivize private land ownership. George believed that making land speculating in the West unprofitable would open up so much land for workers to migrate to that it would reduce the size of the urban workforce, thus giving those remaining in the cities greater bargaining power.
Mentioning "Progress and Poverty" without some sense of the sweeping utopian vision, one that fits in with the general popularity of magic-bullet economic theories in those years, is a missed opportunity.
I had the same reaction to the fleeting, teasing reference to Henry Ford's ill-fated attempt to open a factory in the Amazon jungle and impose Puritan morality on the workers.
Speaking of Henry Ford, I also wonder whether any discussion of his life and work can be complete without some mention of what a prolific author of Jewish conspiracy theories he was. In the discussion of the election, the significance of the George Wallace campaign and the conservative backlash could be given more value; merely calling him "segregationist George Wallace" leaves much out. But every textbook leaves a few things for instructors to impress their students by giving more detail about, so I still rate the book highly for thoroughness.
Throughout the book, treatment of both the social and political dimensions of American life is meaningful and inclusive. Every textbook has a few booboos here and there, and the ones I found in this one were mostly of a trivial pursuit variety rather than what would affect students' comprehension of concepts.
In the section about the Stamp Act crisis of , the book is imprecise about the specifics of when and how the Boston mob ransacked Lieut. Thomas Hutchinson's mansion, and also seems to treat the Sons of Liberty and the Boston mob as interchangeable terms for the same set of people.
Also, it incorrectly states that Coxey's Army set out from Cincinnati. Actually, the marchers began their trek from Jacob Coxey's own town of Massillon. Cincinnati, being about miles off in the other direction from where Coxey's Army was heading, played no part in the march.
In the chapter on the New Deal, it gives the age range for enrollees in the Civilian Conservation Corps as While some year-olds did get into the CCC, they only did so by lying about their age; the intended minimum was never lower than The National Youth Administration another New Deal program is depicted as having been terminated in ; it lasted until The book is also imprecise about what President Johnson and the Democratic National Committee offered to the Mississippi Freedom delegation at the party convention.
Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Taken together, the debates highlight enduring issues and themes in American life, such as the effort to balance freedom and equality as well as liberty and order; the struggle for inclusion and full participation of African-Americans, women, and working people; the conflict over how America should organize its economy and what role government should have in American economic life; and the argument over how America should use its power in the world.
This volume and its companion, which covers American history to , are part of an ongoing series of document volumes produced by the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University. Selected and introduced by David Tucker. Documents Introduction Documents. This collection of documents presents American history from to as a series of 14 chronologically arranged topics. Following her triumphant reintroduction in the pages of Young Justice, the new Amethyst miniseries follows teenager Amy Winston-a.
Princess Amethyst-as she returns to her magical kingdom to celebrate her 16th birthday in style. The only problem? Her kingdom is missing, her subjects have vanished, and none in the realm of Gemworld-even her best friend, Lady Turquoise-remain loyal to her house! Comic Book. Tuesday, November 23rd, DC VS. ROBIN 8. But the New World offered opportunity that the Old World would exploit.
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