M.E. Sharpe, 2008. - 279 pages.
For any introductory American history instructor who wants to make the subject more appealing, this book is ideal. It's designed to supplement a main text, and focuses on personalized history presented through engaging biographies of figures from 1865 to the present.
This book tells the history of the United States through the story of its inhabitants. As you tu the pages, an argumentative and yet cooperative mess of people will be found recovering from the Civil War; struggling to gain full civil rights; struggling to prevent others from achieving full civil rights; figuring out how to make a buck; tickling old slave spirituals through the piano keys to give the blues jazz; knocking baseballs past the diamond and past the last fence in the park; knocking the German military over not once but twice; tinkering into creation the gas-and-oil-hungry inteal combustion automobile; creating a whole sector of the economy (i.e., advertising) designed to make us feel bad enough about our hair, our breath, and our good health that we would buy conditioner, mouthwash, and cigarettes — along with anything else an inventor with a patent could chu out from a factory floor. Each chapter features at least one (but usually two or three) prominent biographies, which travel the historical continuum from the philanthropic New England teacher Mary Ames to the eloquent pan-American activist W.E.B. DuBois to the progressive New York first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the alarm-ringing citizen of the world Al Gore.
For any introductory American history instructor who wants to make the subject more appealing, this book is ideal. It's designed to supplement a main text, and focuses on personalized history presented through engaging biographies of figures from 1865 to the present.
This book tells the history of the United States through the story of its inhabitants. As you tu the pages, an argumentative and yet cooperative mess of people will be found recovering from the Civil War; struggling to gain full civil rights; struggling to prevent others from achieving full civil rights; figuring out how to make a buck; tickling old slave spirituals through the piano keys to give the blues jazz; knocking baseballs past the diamond and past the last fence in the park; knocking the German military over not once but twice; tinkering into creation the gas-and-oil-hungry inteal combustion automobile; creating a whole sector of the economy (i.e., advertising) designed to make us feel bad enough about our hair, our breath, and our good health that we would buy conditioner, mouthwash, and cigarettes — along with anything else an inventor with a patent could chu out from a factory floor. Each chapter features at least one (but usually two or three) prominent biographies, which travel the historical continuum from the philanthropic New England teacher Mary Ames to the eloquent pan-American activist W.E.B. DuBois to the progressive New York first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the alarm-ringing citizen of the world Al Gore.