America's Promise

William J. Rorabaugh is professor of history at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition, The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age, Berkeley at War: The 1960s and Kennedy and the Promise of the Sixties. Donald T. Critchlow is professor of history at Saint Louis University. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Policy History, and the author of a number of books, including Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government and Studebaker: The Life and Death of an American Corporation. Paula Baker is associate professor of history at the Ohio State University and is the author of The Moral Framework of Public Life: Gender, Politics, and the State in Rural New York, 1870–1930, editor of Money and Politics, and co-editor of Major Problems in American History since 1945.

• Chapter 1: A Big CountryChapter 2: The Plantation South, 1607–1771Chapter 3: Religious New England, 1620–1760Chapter 4: The Diverse Middle Colonies, 1624–1760Chapter 5: The American Revolution, 1750–1783Chapter 6: The New Nation, 1783–1800Chapter 7: Thomas Jefferson's America, 1801–1829Chapter 8: The Market Revolution, 1790–1850Chapter 9: Evangelical Religion and Reform, 1790–1850Chapter 10: Andrew Jackson and the WestChapter 11: The Problem of SlaveryChapter 12: Americans at Mid-century: Unbounded OptimismChapter 13: The Sectional Crisis, 1852–1861Chapter 14: Civil War, 1861–1865Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1863–1877Appendix I: The Declaration of IndependenceAppendix II: The Constitution of the United States of AmericaAppendix III: U.S. Population CharacteristicsAppendix IV: Population for Selected Large CitiesAppendix V: Presidential ElectionsAppendix VI: ChronologyGlossary

America’s Promise offers a well-written and insightful account of American history. Students will find it highly engaging and informative. Unlike most textbooks, the authors blend political, social, cultural, and economic history into a synthetic account of where our country came from, where it has been, and where it might be going.