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"Presents United States history from the viewpoints of observers from all over the world. Using the voices of people who lived furing the time periods covered, as well as some present-day international scholars, these readings put American history in a truly international context."--From back cover.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, no area of study is outdated more quickly than history, and no time has been more turbulent for the discipline than our own. This classic point/counterpoint reader in American history, now in a completely revised and updated seventh edition, takes note of history's impermanence, giving voice to the new without disposing of the old. In ten lively chapters, essays by the editors introduce dialectical readings by distinguished historians on topics from Reconstruction to the present. The essays and readings address history's timeless questions: "Reconstruction: Change or Stasis?," "American Imperialism: Economic Expansion or Ideological Crusade?," and "The Civil Rights Movement: Top-Down or Bottom-Up?" New readings are included on African Americans, women, and immigrants. In the fray of debate, eminent historians from Samuel Hays and Alfred Chandler to John Lewis Gaddis, Walter LaFeber, and Kathryn Kish Sklar struggle to interpret the past. The editors'essays moderate.

More than any other nation, the US has shaped the course of world history during the 20th century which has been referred to as 'The American Century'. In this absorbing and accessible book, leading scholars of American history examine the century as a whole, highlighting the continuities underlying the cyclical change and apparent diversity that have marked America's development since 1900.

This study is the first interpretive text for the study of American exceptionalism and the first overall assessment of geographic, political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of the American past written from a global perspective. Russo argues that life in the United States can be better understood if it is examined from either a wider perspective-the English speaking world, the Western Hemisphere, Western Civilization-or a narrower perspective-regional and local variations. Even when the Americans were innovative-in their multi-ethnic and multi-racial society, in their egalitarian social beliefs, in their political democracy-their innovations were soon copied by others. Therefore, Russo argues, they are no longer distinctly American. Using nations as the basis for fields of study can both reveal and distort the historical record. When one considers different perspectives, America's uniqueness recedes in importance. American culture was a variant of a wider Western culture. The American economy was an extension of Western capitalism, whether agrarian, commercial, or industrial. American society was a Western society with racial castes and multi-ethnic additions to the population. American government functioned like other Western governments, even with innovative forms: Republican, then democratic. The American past is thus seen to be far less distinctive than previous syntheses have assumed.

This book is a student reader of the key topics in American economic history.