Essays on The New American History
Representative of the "new history," these essays were edited for the AHA by noted historian Eric Foner. They were first published as a volume in 1990 by Temple University Press, then published as individual pamphlets in 1991 by the AHA. Initially developed to acquaint high school history teachers with recent trends in historical scholarship, the scope of this series extends well beyond the secondary school classroom. These essays have become indispensable study tools for those in higher education as well.
Revised and expanded in 1997, the original essays have been joined by additional essays on intellectual history, the history of the West, and the histories of the family and sexuality. Sixteen prominent scholars have contributed thought-provoking interpretations of historically significant issues, including the roles of gender, ethnicity, labor, economy, politics, and culture. Nearly all essays have been revised (and some entirely rewritten) to bring the texts and bibliographies up to date.
Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and was president of the AHA in 2000.
African American History
THOMAS C. HOLT
This essay examines new scholarship in an attempt to understand the past as African Americans have experienced it. The author examines recent scholarly interpretations of the three watersheds in the history of black people in America: forced migration from Africa and enslavement; emancipation, followed by a half-century of sharecropping and tenancy; and the great 20th-century northern migrations.
Thomas C. Holt is a professor of history at the University of Chicago.
1997. 22 pages
ISBN 0-87229-083-2
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American Labor History
LEON FINK
Explore labor history beyond the study of official labor organizations and wage work in factories and workshops. This essay discusses the lives of slaves on plantations, women at home, and such diverse groups as nurses, migrant farm laborers, and department store employees. Changes and developments in work from the colonial period to the late 20th century are reviewed.
Leon Fink is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
1997. 20 pages
ISBN 0-87229-085-9
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America since 1945
WILLIAM H. CHAFE
"Few periods of history have witnessed as much profound change as has occurred in America since World War II," writes author William H. Chafe. American life in the postwar period was a time of profound social, cultural, political, and economic change. This essay examines change and continuity during three distinct phases in the postwar period: the end of World War II to the early 1950s, the years surrounding the tumultuous civil rights revolution, and the rise of cultural and political conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s.
William H. Chafe is Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History at Duke University.
1997. 19 pages
ISBN 0-87229-084-0
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Beneficiaries of Catastrophe: The English Colonies in America
JOHN M. MURRIN
This essay uses historical demography and epidemiology to examine the internal development of settler communities in colonial North America, going beyond a single "American" colonial experience to cover a variety of patterns and customs in the Chesapeake, mid-Atlantic, and New England regions.
John M. Murrin is a professor of history at Princeton University.
1997. 28 pages
ISBN 0-87229-086-7
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Ethnicity and Immigration
JAMES P. SHENTON AND KEVIN KENNY
This essay details the significant modifications that the study of American ethnicity and immigration has undergone since the 1960s, as historians have begun to reappraise, reconsider, and revise the history of American immigration and ethnicity as a whole. The essay focuses on the analysis and reinterpretation of such traditional concepts as "the melting pot" and cultural pluralism. Also discussed are decreases in European immigration, increases in immigration from Asia and Latin America, and changes in U.S. immigration policies.
James P. Shenton is a professor of history at Columbia University. Kevin Kenny is an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
1997. 21 pages
ISBN 0-87229-087-5
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The History of the Family and the History of Sexuality
ESTELLE B. FREEDMAN
This essay introduces the growing and complex literature of family and sexual history, providing an overview of historical change from preindustrial to modern America and highlighting three fruitful areas of recent scholarship: race and class dynamics within family and sexual history; the recurrent controversies over reproductive policies; and the emergence of the identity categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality.
Estelle B. Freedman is a professor of history at Stanford University.
1997. 26 pages
ISBN 0-87229-082-4
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Intellectual and Cultural History
THOMAS BENDER
"A field that in the 1970s feared being swept aside by social history," writes author Thomas Bender, "now finds itself insinuated into nearly every corner of the discipline." This essay traces the development of intellectual and cultural history, assesses the often wrenching changes in the field in the past two decades, and highlights the practitioners and topics in the field.
Thomas Bender is University Professor of the Humanities and professor of history at New York University.
1997. 22 pages
ISBN 0-87229-088-3
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Liberty and Power: U.S. Diplomatic History, 1750–1945
WALTER LAFEBER
This essay traces the history and scholarship of U.S. diplomacy, discussing "realist" and "revisionist" perspectives. The roles of peace groups and the changes in the Constitution and presidential powers in shaping American foreign policy are also examined.
Walter LaFeber is Noll Professor of History at Cornell University.
1997. 20 pages
ISBN 0-87229-089-1
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Prosperity, Depression, and War, 1920–1945
ALAN BRINKLEY
"Most Americans who lived through the period from the end of World War I to the end of World War II," writes author Alan Brinkley, "believed they were experiencing events of special historical importance: an unprecedented capitalist expansion, the greatest economic crisis in the nation’s history, a dramatic experiment in political reform, a cataclysmic world conflict, and the rise of the United States to unchallenged global preeminence." This essay investigates emerging scholarship on the interwar years, particularly those concerned with social, economic, and political changes.
Alan Brinkley is Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University.
1997. 26 pages
ISBN 0-87229-090-5
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Public Life in Industrial America, 1877-1917
RICHARD L. McCORMICK
This essay sketches the public and often political ways that men and women--through legislation, organization, and public proclamation--coped, failed, or assimilated within the changing economic and social forces in the years between the collapse of Reconstruction and World War I and the unsettling consequences of industrialization.
Richard L. McCormick is the president of the University of Washington and a professor of history.
1997. 26 pages
ISBN 0-87229-091-3
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The Revolutionary Generation: Ideology, Politics, and Culture in the Early Republic
LINDA K. KERBER
The American Revolution is traditionally interpreted through political leaders, lawyers, and pamphleteers. This essay offers recent research on the experiences of artisans, farmers, the working class, middle-class women, Native Americans, slaves, and free African Americans as a means of exploring changing interpretations of the American Revolution.
Linda K. Kerber is May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and a professor of history at the University of Iowa.
1997. 21 pages
ISBN 0-87229-087-5
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Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
ERIC FONER
The Civil War era has proven perennially fascinating to Americans. In this essay recent scholarship offers new answers to old historical questions and raises new concerns, such as regional differences in the institution of slavery, the impact of the Civil War on non-slaveholding whites, and the role of black people in the sectional crisis.
Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and president-elect of the AHA.
1997. 22 pages
ISBN 0-87229-092-5
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Social History
ALICE KESSLER-HARRIS
What is social history? What accounts for its rapid transition from the easily dismissible periphery of historical scholarship to its center? Has all history become social history? This essay attempts to come to terms with these questions by looking at how the field emerged, the methods on which it relies, and some of the salient issues it raises.
Alice Kessler-Harris is a professor of history at Rutgers University.
1997. 25 pages
ISBN 0-87229-093-X
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Society, Politics, and the Market Revolution, 1815–1848
SEAN WILENTZ
During the Jacksonian era the United States economically transformed itself and laid the groundwork for becoming a major economic power. This essay illustrates how the market revolution was not only of economic importance; it also gave rise to new forms of social life, consciousness, and politics.
Sean Wilentz is a professor of history and director of the American Studies Program at Princeton University.
1997. 24 pages
ISBN 0-87229-094-8
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U.S. Women's History
LINDA GORDON
Women’s history offers concrete and intimate images of the past, often addressing such daily life experiences as courtship, childbirth, child raising, and sexuality. This essay discusses the development of women’s history as a discipline and elaborates on its themes and emphases, such as labor and gender formation and culture.
Linda Gordon is Florence Kelley Professor of History and Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
1997. 28 pages
ISBN 0-87229-095-6
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Western History
RICHARD WHITE
This new addition to the series explores the rich and multifaceted histories currently being written about the western United States. While the field seemed largely dormant just two decades ago, the author highlights the resurgence in this field that sprang from new attention to regional histories, social and cultural approaches, and fresh work on such traditional topics as settlement and community formation, the history of the American Indians, and environmental history.
Richard White is Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University.
1997. 28 pages
ISBN 0-87229-081-6
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Last Updated: October 9, 2007 10:29 AM
