For the Record

The Fifth Edition’s selection choice is heavily informed by instructor surveys and offers almost 250 primary source selections, both textual and visual. The documents range from 1–7 pages in length and offer balance, variety, and flexibility. An updated table of contents reflects a stronger correlation with America: A Narrative History, Ninth Edition, and the book works both as a core text and in conjunction with other survey texts.  

Four “Interpreting Visual Sources” essays (2 per volume) help students see how historians construct the past from images and material objects as well as textual documents. Picturing Development versus Nature reveals Americans’ fascination with the transformation of their landscape as they moved West; Picturing the Civil War explores the Civil War as the first “total war” through the camera lens of Matthew Brady and Associates; Photography and Progressive Reform explores the progressive era through the famous and controversial photos of Jacob Riis; Picturing the Civil Rights Movement introduces students to some of the most iconic images from the 1950s and 1960s.

The Fifth Edition provides carefully crafted pedagogical tools designed to help students interpret the documents. Tools include a clear introduction on how to read documents, two-page chapter introductions that contextualize the selections, head notes for each selection, review questions for each document, and non-interpretive footnotes that illuminate references and terms. 

Many of the added selections highlight the substantially updated coverage of African-American History in America: A Narrative History, Ninth Edition. Featured works include Thomas Gage’s “The English-American: A New Survey of the West Indies, 1648”; Phillis Wheatley’s “On the Death of General Wooster"; David Walker’s “Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World”; George Skipwith’s “Letters of 17 June & 8 July 1847”; Kelly Miller’s “The Risk of Woman Suffrage”; W. E. B. Du Bois’ “Returning Soldiers”; Busy Wife’s Achievements,” Life, 24 December 1956; “Their Sheltered Honeymoon,” Life, 10 August 1959; an excerpt from Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War; Jesse Jackson’s Speech to the Democratic National Convention, 1988; Alan Wolfe’s "The Politics of Privacy, Right and Left"; The Economist, "One World" (1997); William Jefferson Clinton’s Farewell Address (2001); and Barack Obama’s "A New Beginning," Inaugural Address.