The History of the United States explores our young nation's precolonial history through present day.The first chapter establishes the central theme of the book--the struggle to define the meaning of "We the People." Chapters 2 and 3 focus on America between 1400 and 1763, highlighting the diversity of early America and the interactions and conflicts between Native Americans, Africans, and various Europeans. Chapter 4 focuses on the Revolutionary Era (1763-1815), emphasizing the republican ideas that sparked the Revolution and debates over the shape of the new nation. Chapters 5-7 take the story through the antebellum years, the political crisis of the 1850s, and the Civil War and Reconstruction, with issues of slavery at the center. Chapters 8-9 discuss the social, political, and economic conflicts of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, concluding with America's participation in World War I and the 1920s. Chapters 10-12 cover the 1930s through the present, focusing on the expanding role of the United States in the world and the competing progressive and conservative impulses of the era.


A. Glenn Crothers is associate professor of history at the University of Louisville.