Description
Book SynopsisForging America speaks to both the complexities of historical experience and the meanings of the past for our present-day lives. Warning against the assumption of pre-ordained outcomes, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Steve Hahn focuses the reader''s attention on those moments when historical change occurs. He weaves a history that is continental and transnational, a history of the many peoples whose experiences and aspirations-oftentimes involving struggle and conflict-went into the forging of a nation.
Trade ReviewForging America is superb: the treatment of power, conflict, and crisis within the US is convincingly located within the dynamics of global transformation. The narrative is illuminating and vivid - sometimes troubling, in the best of ways - as it charts how American history is marked not only by achievements won in the realms of equity, autonomy, and human dignity but also by longstanding as well as unprecedented threats to social justice and human survival. It judiciously explores clashing perspectives. And it highlights turning-points and ruptures, making contingency come alive while also tracing long patterns of change over time, helping students to understand the relationship between past and present." -Amy Dru Stanley, University of Chicago
Forging America is a brilliant effort to reimagine the complex history of the United States by placing events in a global context, establishing the central role race and gender played in the emergence of the republic, and demanding that we recognize the nation's development as a contingent process rather than a pre-determined outcome. It demands that students reflect on history, consider alternative outcomes, and find viable explanations when confronted with a wide range of causal factors." -Thomas Summerhill, Michigan State University
This is an innovative, sharply written, fast moving history of the United States, one that places the US within broader worlds not of the country's own making. It demonstrates the role of everyday people, particularly non-white people, in shaping the country." -Gregory P. Downs, University of California, Davis
Steven Hahn's Forging America is a tour-de-force. His fast-moving narrative provides a global history of US history while simultaneously centering the experiences of people of color whose lives are often marginalized in survey texts. It is a major scholarly achievement." -Karlos K. Hill, University of Oklahoma
Table of ContentsMaps, Tables, and Figures Features Sources for Forging America Preface Learning Resources for Forging America Acknowledgments About the Author Part One: New Worlds for All Chapter 1 Beginnings to 1519 Chapter 2 Contact Zones 1450-1600 Chapter 3 Settler Colonies and Imperial Rivalries 1585-1681 Chapter 4 Colonial Convulsions and Rebellions 1640-1700 Part Two: Revolutions and Reversals Chapter 5 Colonial Societies and Contentious Empires1625-1786 Chapter 6 Global War and American Independence 1750-1776 Chapter 7 A Political Revolution 1776-1791 Chapter 8 Securing a Republic, Imagining an Empire 1789-1815 Part Three: Unmaking a Slaveholders' Republic Chapter 9 Expansion and Its Discontents, 1815-1840 Chapter 10 Social Reform, and the New Politics of Slavery 1820-1840 Chapter 11 Warring for the Pacific 1836-1848 Chapter 12 Coming Apart 1848-1857 Chapter 13 A Slaveholders' Rebellion 1856-1861 Chapter 14 The War of the Rebellion 1861-1863 Chapter 15 Ending the Rebellion and Re(constructing) the Nation 1863-1865 Part Four: Industrial Society and Its Discontents Chapter 16 The Promise and Limits of Reconstruction 1863-1877 Appendix A: Historical Documents Appendix B: Historical Facts and Data Photo Credits Index
