Excerpting American History from 1492 to 1877: Primary Sources and Commentary provides students with a fresh and engaging exploration of key themes in America's past via a collection of documents and narratives. The text examines the themes of cultural interaction, the growth of the American Empire, freedom, and violent arguments over human bondage. This volume, the first in a two-book series, analyzes the period from 1492 to 1877. Each chapter features an introductory essay by the author to provide readers with critical context and perspective, excerpts from primary documents, and questions to stimulate reflection and deep learning. The book also includes five maps, which serve as critical references. Throughout the text, readers explore frozen Beringia, encounter historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, and learn about the Bostonians who helped toss East Indian tea into the harbor in 1773. They read the arguments of women fighting for gender equality at Seneca Falls, perspectives on freedom from emancipated slaves, and ideas surrounding Reconstruction. Excerpting American History from 1492 to 1877 is an enlightening text for courses in American history. Students can continue their exploration of American history in the second volume in the series, which features primary sources and commentary chronicling 1877 to 2001.

Excerpting American History from 1877 to 2001: Primary Sources and Commentary provides students with a collection of government documents, newspaper accounts, manuscripts, letters, diaries, speeches, and more to provide them with an immersive and intimate exploration of the United States from the dawn of the Gilded Age to the harrowing events of September 11, 2001. This volume, the second in a two-book series, analyzes American history from 1877 to 2001. Each chapter features an introductory essay by the author to provide readers with critical context and perspective, excerpts from primary documents, and questions to stimulate reflection and deep learning. Readers learn about the industry, invention, and economic growth that boomed during the Gilded Age, but which also excluded many Americans, including new immigrants, farmers, African Americans, and women. They read about the progressive policies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Select primary sources share perspectives on the Great War, the Second World War, the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, the economic challenges of the 1970s, and more. Excerpting American History from 1877 to 2001 is an exemplary text for courses in American history. Students can rewind their exploration of American history and revisit the past in the first volume in the series, which features primary sources and commentary chronicling 1492 to 1877.

Although modern authors continually produce important studies of the War Between the States, the firsthand accounts of those who were in the conflict remain the most valuable tools for understanding. This collection of letters and diaries provides glimpses into the lives of a diverse group of South Carolinians. Among the seventeen accounts are the voices of women, including a Confederate spy; of officers like Captain Obidiah Hardin, who left his beloved Palmetto State to fight and die in Virginia before the war was even a year old; and of common men, like German immigrant Augustus Franks, whose love for his adopted state compelled him to staunchly defend the Confederacy. Collected from the archives of Winthrop University, these remarkable documents give voices and faces to the war as it affected South Carolina and her citizens.

South Vietnam fell because of events occurring thousands of miles away from the battlefields--in China, the Soviet Union, Latin America, the Middle East, and Washingtons corridors of power, along protest lines, and around Americas dinner tables. These other wars being fought by American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford profoundly impacted what happened in Vietnam. This work examines those other conflicts and the political, social, and economic factors involved with them that distracted and crippled the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and led to the eventual abandonment of the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese regime. Nixon entered office with the goal of bringing the world together, but saw that goal ruined by the 1973 war in the Middle East, preoccupations with China and the Soviet Union, a weak economy, Watergate, and his disgraceful exit from the White House. Fords presidency was tainted almost from the beginning because of the pardon he granted to Nixon, but the American public, tired of war and concerned about the economy, was ready to hear that the war had come to an end. An argument is presented that the war could have been won if the "other wars" had been fought by presidents willing to honor the American commitment to its allies in South Vietnam.