Author Description

What is an American? An Australian reporter once chastised his own editor for using the phrase, "typical American." "You cannot pick an American out of a crowd, until you begin a discussion of liberty, freedom, religion, equality, democracy, and capitalism." Those six words, which we constantly struggle to define and to apply to our everyday life, define Americans. That is the Unum of our E Pluribus Unum, our American Identity. Designed for the college survey course and the U.S. History Advanced Placement course, this text is especially useful for teaching conceptual understanding. Each chapter is a potential essay or DBQ question. This text contains neither maps nor pictures. Both are readily available on the Internet. By using additional primary and secondary documents, students should conceptually understand both the discipline of history and the major forces that created the United States, our E Pluribus Unum. Historians use various concepts to guide their research - comparison, change and continuity over time, causation, periodization, and interpretation, all while placing U.S. History in a global context. Ultimately, history is what historians say it is. And yet, historians come to different conclusions about the same topic. Those arguments are what makes history so much fun!