Description
Book Synopsis.
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 U.S. 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 About the Author 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, 1865-1877 Chapter 17 CAPITALISM AND THE GILDED AGE, 1873-1890 Chapter 18 CAULDRONS OF PROTEST, 1873-1896 Chapter 19 CONSTRUCTING PROGRESSIVISM, 1886-1914 Chapter 20 EMPIRE AND RACE, 1890-1914 Part Five: Social Democracy and Its Enemies Chapter 21 WAR, REVOLUTION, AND REACTION, 1910-1925 Chapter 22 LOOKING INTO THE ABYSS, 1920-1934 Chapter 23 BIRTH PANGS OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, 1933-1940 Chapter 24 FLAMES OF GLOBAL WAR, VISIONS OF GLOBAL PEACE, 1940-1945 Chapter 25 COLD WAR AMERICA, 1945-1957 Part Six: Conservatism, Neoliberalism, and Militarism Chapter 26 REBELLION ON THE LEFT, RESURGENCE ON THE RIGHT, 1957-1968 Chapter 27 DESTABILIZATIONS, 1968-1979 Chapter 28 A NEW CONSERVATISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS: 1980-1989 Chapter 29 NEW WORLD DISORDER, 1989-2004 Chapter 30 DESTINIES, 2005 - The Present Appendix A: Historical Documents Appendix B: Historical Facts and Data Credits Index
