Blaine T. Browne is professor of history at Broward College. Robert C. Cottrell is professor of history at California State University. Together, they have co-authored Uncertain Order: The World in the Twentieth Century, Lives and Legacies: Biographies in Western Civilization, and Modern American Lives: Biographies in American History since 1945.

• PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1: Orthodoxy and Dissent in Puritan England: Mary Dyer, Cotton MatherChapter 2: The American Mind in the Eighteenth Century: Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin FranklinChapter 3: Revolutionaries: Thomas Paine, Mercy Otis WarrenChapter 4: Republicans, Federalists, Virginians: Thomas Jefferson, John MarshallChapter 5: Popular Culture in Antebellum America: David Crockett, Stephen FosterChapter 6: Clash of Civilizations: Native Americans and the New Republic: Tecumseh, Andrew JacksonChapter 7: Slavery in Theory and Practice: George Fitzhugh, Harriet TubmanChapter 8: Reforming Self and Society: Henry David Thoreau, Margaret FullerChapter 9: Defining Women's Roles: Catharine Esther Beecher, Elizabeth Cady StantonChapter 10: Manifest Destinies: William Walker, Brigham YoungChapter 11: Abolitionists: John Brown, Abraham LincolnChapter 12: Uncivil War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Nathan Bedford ForrestChapter 13: A New Birth of Freedom Deferred: Benjamin R. Tillman, Ida B. Wells

Readers of this book will meet some of the most interesting, important, and memorable characters in American history—men and women whose stories are expertly and beautifully recounted in these pages. But they will also see reflected and illuminated in these lives great forces and momentous issues, the passions and motives and movements that have shaped our country. The authors' approach humanizes what might have been lifeless abstractions, showing how the largest of matters can touch and change the lives of individuals and how individuals can give life and voice to things bigger than themselves.