American Journey

The path that led us toThe American Journeybegan in the classroom with our students. Our goal is to make American history accessible to students. The key to that goal--the core of the book--is a strong clear narrative. American history is a compelling story and we seek to tell it in an engaging, forthright way. But we also provide students with an abundance of tools to help them absorb that story and put it in context. We introduce them to the concerns of the participants in America's history with primary source documents. The voices of contemporaries open each chapter, describing their own personal journeys toward fulfilling their dreams, hopes, and ambitions as part of the broader American journey. These voices provide a personal window on our nation's history, and the themes they express resonate throughout the narrative. But if we wrote this book to appeal to our students, we also wrote it to engage their minds. We wanted to avoid academic trendiness, particularly the restricting categories that have divided the discipline of history over the last twenty years or so. We believe that the distinctions involved in the debates about multiculturalism and identity, between social and political history, between the history of the common people and the history of the elite, are unnecessarily confusing. What we seek is integration--to combine political and social history, to fit the experience of particular groups into the broader perspective of the American past, to give voice to minor and major players alike because of their role in the story we have to tell. APPROACH In telling our story, we had some definite ideas about what we might include and emphasize that other texts do not--information we felt that the current and next generations of students will need to know about our past to function best in a new society. CHRONOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION.A strong chronological backbone supports the book. We have found that the jumping back and forth in time characteristic of some American history textbooks confuses students. They abhor dates but need to know the sequence of events in history. A chronological presentation is the best way to be sure they do. GEOGRAPHICAL LITERACY.We also want students to be geographically literate. We expect them not only to know what happened in American history, bur where it happened as well. Physical locations and spatial relationships were often important in shaping historical events. The abundant maps in The American Journey--all numbered and called out in the text--are an integral part of our story. REGIONAL BALANCE.The American Journeypresents balanced coverage of all regions of the country. In keeping with this balance, the South and the West receive more coverage in this text than in comparable books. POINT OF VIEW.The American Journeypresents a balanced overview of the American past. But "balanced" does not mean bland. We do not shy away from definite positions on controversial issues, such as the nature of early contacts between Native Americans and Europeans, why the political crisis of the 1850s ended in a bloody Civil War, and how Populism and its followers fit into the American political spectrum. If students and instructors disagree, that's great; discussion and dissent are important catalysts for understanding and learning. RELIGION.Nor do we shy away from some topics that play relatively minor roles in other texts, like religion. Historians are often uncomfortable writing about religion and tend to slight its influence. This text stresses the importance of religion in American society both as a source of strength and a reflection of some its more troubling aspects. Historians mostly write for each other. That's too bad. We need to reach out and expand our audience. An American history text is a good place to start. Our studenAbbott, Carl is the author of 'American Journey', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131825529 and ISBN 0131825526.