A chronological look at how the United States took shape -- from its origins as an obscure set of colonies on the Atlantic coast a little more than 200 years ago into what one political analyst today calls "the first universal nation." This fully illustrated edition has been completely revised and updated by Alonzo L. Hamby, Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University.
The monuments of American history span a continent in distance and centuries in time. They range from a massive serpent-shaped mound created by a long-gone Native-American culture to memorials in contemporary Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Abolitionist and former slave Sojourner Truth gives her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?" to the Ohio Women's Rights Convention. She was an eloquent champion of the rights of African Americans and and women.
Related article: Sojourner Truth
Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross, expanding on the original concept of the International Red Cross to include assisting in national disasters as well as wars.
Related article: Clara Harlowe Barton
In individual essays, historians explain how specific moments, decisions, and intellectual or legislative or legal developments altered the course of U.S. history.
The first title in the new "In Brief" series, this publication summarizes in a few thousand words the history of how the United States was founded and the forces and events that shaped the dynamic and varied country that it has become today.
Jamestown is regarded as the cradle of U.S. democracy by many historians, but scholar Warren Billings points out that this was not what the settlement's founders originally had in mind.
