The American Journey: A History of the United States - Couverture souple

David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.  A native of Memphis, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and attended the University of Maryland.  He is the author or editor of thirteen books dealing with the history of the American South, including two works, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region (1982) and Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history, and both received the Mayflower Award for Non-Fiction.  Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History appeared in 2002 and received the Jules and Frances Landry Prize and was named by Choice as an Outstanding Non-fiction Book.  His most recent book is Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2003.  He is currently working on a re-interpretation of the Civil War, “Rebirth of a Nation: America during the Civil War Era,” for Holt Publishing Co.  The Organization of American Historians named him Distinguished Lecturer in 2001.  Goldfield is the editor of the Journal of Urban History and a co-author of The American Journey: A History of the United States (2005). He also serves as an expert witness in voting rights and death penalty cases, as a consultant on the urban South to museums and public television and radio, and serves with the U.S. State Department as an Academic Specialist, leading workshops on American history and culture in foreign countries.  He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Lincoln Prize.  Among his leisure-time activities are reading southern novels, listening to Gustav Mahler and Buddy Holly, and coaching girls’ fastpitch softball.

Carl Abbott is a professor of Urban Studies and planning at Portland State University. He taught previously in the history departments at the University of Denver and Old Dominion University, and held visiting appointments at Mesa College in Colorado and George Washington University. He holds degrees in history from Swarthmore College and the University of Chicago. He specializes in the history of cities and the American West and serves as co-editor of the Pacific Historical Review. His books include The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities (1981, 1987), The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (1993), Planning a New West: The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (1997), and Political Terrain: Washington, D. C. from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (1999). He is currently working on a comprehensive history of the role of urbanization and urban culture in the history of western North America.

Virginia DeJohn Anderson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received her B.A. from the University of Connecticut. As the recipient of a Marshall Scholarship, she earned an M.A. degree at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Returning to the United States, she received her A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. She is the author of New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) and several articles on colonial history, which have appeared in such journals as the William and Mary Quarterly and the New England Quarterly. She is currently finishing a book entitled Creatures of Empire: People and Animals in Early America.

Jo Ann E. Argersinger received her Ph.D. from George Washington University and is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University. A recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is a historian of social, labor, and business policy. Her publications include Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression (1988) and Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry (1999).

Peter H. Argersinger received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University. He has won several fellowships as well as the Binkley-Stephenson Award from the Organization of American Historians. Among his books on American political and rural history are Populism and Politics (1974), Structure, Process, and Party (1992), and The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism (1995). His current research focuses on the political crisis of the 1890s.

William L. Barney is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A native of Pennsylvania, he received his B.A. from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has published extensively on nineteenth century U.S. history and has a particular interest in the Old South and the coming of the Civil War. Among his publications are The Road to Secession (1972), The Secessionist Impulse (1974), Flawed Victory (1975), The Passage of the Republic (1987), and Battleground for the Union (1989). He is currently finishing an edited collection of essays on nineteenth-century America and a book on the Civil War. Most recently, he has edited A Companion to 19th-Century America (2001) and finished The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Student Companion (2001).

Robert M. Weir is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He received his B.A. from Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. He has taught at the University of Houston and, as a visiting professor, at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. His articles have won prizes from the Southeastern Society for the Study of the Eighteenth Century and the William and Mary Quarterly. Among his publications are Colonial South Carolina: A History, "The Last of American Freemen": Studies in the Political Culture of the Colonial and Revolutionary South, and, most recently, a chapter on the Carolinas in the new Oxford History of the British Empire (1998).

Volume I: Pre-1492 to 1877

For one and two-semester, freshman/sophomore-level survey courses in U.S. History.

Get the book that gets your students. The authors of The American Journey get your students with the best storyline, the best pedagogy, the best maps, the best in-text documents and the most inspiring student-oriented material available in a U.S. History text. Written in a clear, engaging style with a straightforward chronological organization, The American Journey motivates students to learn more about the key features of American political, social, and economic history. Prominent coverage is given to the West and the South, and the text highlights the importance of religion in American history.

The path that led the authors to The American Journey began in the classroom with their students. The goal of this text 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 the authors tell it in an engaging, forthright way, while providing students with an abundance of tools to help them absorb that story and put it into context. This text combines political and social history, to fit the experiences of particular groups into the broader perspective of the American past, and to give voice to minor and major players alike in the story this text tells.