A Concise History of the United States of America (Cambridge Concise Histories)

New
Paperback
2012
$26.56

Born out of violence and the aspirations of its early settlers, the United States of America has become one of the world's most powerful nations. The book begins in colonial America as the first Europeans arrived, lured by the promise of financial profit, driven by religious piety and accompanied by diseases which would ravage the native populations. It explores the tensions inherent in a country built on slave labour in the name of liberty, one forced to assert its unity and reassess its ideals in the face of secession and civil war, and one that struggled to establish moral supremacy, military security and economic stability during the financial crises and global conflicts of the twentieth century. Woven through this richly crafted study of America's shifting social and political landscapes are the multiple voices of the nation's history: slaves and slave owners, revolutionaries and reformers, soldiers and statesmen, immigrants and refugees. These voices help define the United States at the dawn of a new century.

Synopsis

Born out of violence and the aspirations of its early settlers, the United States of America has become one of the world's most powerful nations. The book begins in colonial America as the first Europeans arrived, lured by the promise of financial profit, driven by religious piety and accompanied by diseases which would ravage the native populations. It explores the tensions inherent in a country built on slave labour in the name of liberty, one forced to assert its unity and reassess its ideals in the face of secession and civil war, and one that struggled to establish moral supremacy, military security and economic stability during the financial crises and global conflicts of the twentieth century. Woven through this richly crafted study of America's shifting social and political landscapes are the multiple voices of the nation's history: slaves and slave owners, revolutionaries and reformers, soldiers and statesmen, immigrants and refugees. These voices help define the United States at the dawn of a new century.

$26.56

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 472
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 29 Feb 2012
ISBN 10: 0521612799
ISBN 13: 9780521612791
Book Overview: A history of America's nation-building project told through the voices of its peoples, from the early settlers to its multicultural citizens of the twenty-first century.

Media Reviews

Susan-Mary Grant's vigorous new history of the United States is the ideal text for our troubled times. A fast-paced account of the martial roots of American national identity, it fairly bristles with insight, information, and indignation. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the making of today's uneasy superpower. - Robert Cook, Professor of American History, University of Sussex
In this elegantly written, immensely readable and fresh distillation of American history, Susan-Mary Grant brings a keen eye to bear on the processes that created and have since sustained the United States' sense of nationhood. Notably, she shows how war and conflict, from colonial times to the present, have shaped and redefined American identity, and how - despite the gap between civic ideals and reality - national ligaments have remained remarkably strong. A Concise History of the United States provides the general reader with a superb introduction to the American past, while the author's authoritative but lightly-worn scholarship offers much to reward the specialist, too. - Professor Richard Carwardine, President, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Recommended. -Choice

Author Bio

Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at Newcastle University. She is the author of North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000), The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006) and editor of Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War (2003) and Themes of the American Civil War: The War Between the States (2010).