America Past and Present

America Past and Present integrates the social and political dimensions of American history into one rich chronological narrative, providing students with a full picture of the scope and complexity of the American past.

Written in a lively narrative style by award-winning historians, America Past and Present tells the story of all Americans—elite and ordinary, women and men, rich and poor, white majority and minorities. The authors, all active, publishing, and award-winning historians, bring history to life for introductory students in America Past and Present .

Robert A. Divine

Robert A. Divine, George W. Littlefield Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1954. A specialist in American diplomatic history, he taught from 1954 to 1996 at the University of Texas, where he was honored by both the student association and the graduate school for teaching excellence. His extensive published work includes The Illusion of Neutrality (1962); Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (1967); and Blowing on the Wind (1978). His most recent work is Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2000), a comparative analysis of twentieth-century American wars. He is also the author of Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981) and editor of three volumes of essays on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. His book, The Sputnik Challenge (1993), won the Eugene E. Emme Astronautical Literature Award for 1993. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and has given the Albert Shaw Lectures in Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins University.

T. H. Breen

T. H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History at North­ western Uni­ versity, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. He has taught at Northwestern since 1970. Breen’s major books include The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England (1974); Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (1980); Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (1985); and, with Stephen Innes of the University of Virginia, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (1980). His Imagining the Past (1989) won the 1990 Historic Preservation Book Award. His most recent book is Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2004). In addition to receiving several awards for outstanding teaching at Northwestern, Breen has been the recipient of research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. He has served as the Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University (1987–1988), the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Cambridge University (1990–1991), the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University (2000–2001), and was a recipient of the Humboldt Prize (Germany). He is currently completing a book tentatively entitled America ’s Insurgency: The People’s Revolution, 1774–1776.

George M. Fredrickson

George M. Fredrickson is Edgar E. Robinson Professor Emeritus of United States History at Stanford Uni­ versity. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Inner Civil War (1965), The Black Image in the White Mind (1971), and White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (1981), which won both the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award from Phi Beta Kappa and the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians. His most recent books are Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (1995); The Comparative Imagination: Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (1997); and Racism: A Short History (2002). He received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowships, and a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the B