The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, to 1877

Providing students with a thought-provoking account of America’s past, The American People examines how American society assumed its present shape and developed its present forms of government.

Emphasizing the interaction of ordinary Americans with extraordinary events, the text combines the discussion of political events with analysis of their impact on social and economic life. The comprehensive narrative encompasses description of the lives and experiences of Americans of all national origins and cultural backgrounds, at all class levels of society, and in all regions of the country. The thoughtful analysis seeks the connections among the political, social, economic, technological, and cultural factors that have shaped and reshaped American society over four centuries.

Gary B. Nash received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is currently Director of the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he teaches colonial and revolutionary American History. Among the books Nash has authored are Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1726 (1968); Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (1974, 1982, 1992, 2000); The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (1979); Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840 (1988); First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (2002); and The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005). A former president of the Organization of American Historians, his scholarship is especially concerned with the role of common people in the making of history. He wrote Part One and served as general editor of this book.

Julie Roy Jeffrey earned her Ph.D. in history from Rice University. Since then she has tought at Goucher College. Honored as an outstanding teacher, Jeffrey has been involved in faculty development activities and curriculum evaluation. She was Fulbright Chair in American Studies at the university of Southern Denmark, 1999-2000 and John Adams Chair of American History at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2006. Jeffrey’s major publications include Education for Children of the Poor (1978); Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 (1979-1997); Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman (1991); The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (1998) and Abolitionists Remember (forthcoming 2008). She collaborated with Peter Frederick on American History Firsthand, two volumes (2002, 2007). She is the author of many articles on the lives and perceptions of nineteenth-century women. Her research continues to focus on abolitionism as well as on history and film. She wrote Parts Three and Four in collaboration with Peter Frederick and acted as a general editor of this book.

John R. Howe received his Ph.D. from Yale University. At the University of Minnesota, he has taught the U.S. history survey and courses on the American revolutionary era and the early republic. His major publications include The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (1966), From the Revolution Through the Age of Jackson (1973), The Role of Ideology in the American Revolution (1977), and Language and Political Meaning in Revolutionary America (2003). His present research deals with the social politics of verbal discourse in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Boston. He has received a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship, and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Research Fellowship from the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. Howe wrote Part Two of this book.

Peter J. Frederick received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. His career of innovative teaching began at California State University, Hayward, in the 1960s and continued at Wabash College (1970-2004) and Carleton College (1992-1994). He also served as distinguished Professor of American History and Culture at Heritage University on the Yakama Nation reservation in Washington between 2004 and 2006. Recognized nationally as a distinguished teacher and for his many articles and workshops on teaching and learning, Frederick was awarded the Eugene Asher Award for Excellence in Teaching by the AHA in 2000. He has also written several articles on life-writing and a book, Knights of the Golden Rule: The Intellectual as Christian Social Reformer in the 1890s. Wish Julie Jeffrey, he recently published American History Firsthand. He coordinated and edited all the “Recovering the Past” sections and coauthored Parts Three and Four.

Allen F. Davis earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. A former president of the American Studies Association, he is a professor emeritus at Temple University and editor of Conflict and Consensus in American History (9th ed., 1997). He is the author of Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement (1973); and Postcards from Vermont: A Social History (2002). He is coauthor of Still Philadelphia (1983); Philadelphia Stories (1987); and One Hundred Years at Hull-House (1990). Davis wrote Part Five of this book.

Allan M. Winkler received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He has taught at Yale and the University of Oregon, and he is now Distinguished Professor of History at Miami University of Ohio. An award-winning teacher, he has also published extensively about the recent past. His books include The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (1978); Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II (1986, 2000); Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (1993, 1999); The Cold War: A History in Documents (2000); and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Making of Modern America (2006). His research centers on the connections between public policy and popular mood in modern American history. Winkler wrote Part Six of this book.

Charlene Mires earned her Ph.D. in history at Temple University. At Villanova University, she teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. history, public history, and material culture. She is the author of Independence Hall in American Memory (2002) and serves as editor of the Pennsylvania History Studies Series for the Pennsylvania Historical Association. A former journalist, she was a co-recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for general local news reporting with other staff members of the Fort Wyne (Indiana) News-Sentinel. She has contributed to Part Five of The American People.

Carla Gardina Pestana received her Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles. She taught at Ohio State University, where she served as a Lilly Teaching Fellow and launched an innovative on-demand publishing project. Currently she holds the W. E. Smith Professorship in History at Miami University. Her publications include Libertyof Conscience and the Growth of Religions Diversity in Early America (1986), Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991); and The English Stlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661 (2004). She is also the co-editor, with Sharon V. Salinger, of Inequality in Early America (1999). At present, she is completing a book on religion in the British Atlantic world to 1930 for classroom use. She has contributed to Part One of The American People.