The American Pageant continues to enjoy a reputation as one of the most popular and effective textbooks in the field of American history. The text's colorful anecdotes, first-person quotations, and trademark wit bring American history to life. Revisions have been guided by the inclusion of the histories of previously overlooked individuals or groups, as well as the belief that the main drama of American history resides in the public arena, where these and other peoples have both cooperated and contended with one another. The Thirteenth Edition places greater emphasis on the global context for American history and provides expanded coverage of cultural innovation and intellectual ideas. Additionally, the new edition retains the pedagogical features that make The American Pageant accessible for students: part openers and chapter-ending chronologies provide a context for the major periods in American history, while other features present primary sources, scholarly debates, and key historical figures for analysis.

Supported by colorful anecdotes, first-person quotations, and its trademark wit, The American Pageant is one of the most readable, popular, and effective American history textbooks available. Pedagogy includes chapter-ending chronologies, numerous interesting quotes from historical figures, and incisive part openers that contextualize six major periods in American history. The Appendix includes "Suggested Readings" for every chapter, an annotated Constitution of the United States, and an extensive statistical profile of the United States.

12th Edition

David M. Kennedy (Ph.D., Yale University) is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and co-director of The Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West at Stanford University. His first book, BIRTH CONTROL IN AMERICA: THE CAREER OF MARGARET SANGER, was honored with both the Bancroft Prize and the John Gilmary Shea Prize. He has won numerous teaching awards at Stanford, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in American political, diplomatic, intellectual, and social history, and in American literature. Dr. Kennedy published a volume in the OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929 & 1945, for which he was honored with the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and he serves on the board of the Pulitzer Prizes.Lizabeth Cohen (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies and chair of the history department of Harvard University. In 2007-2008, she was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. Previously, she taught at New York University and Carnegie Mellon University. The author of many articles and essays, Dr. Cohen was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her first book, MAKING A NEW DEAL: INDUSTRIAL WORKERS IN CHICAGO, 1919-1939, for which she later won the Bancroft Prize. Her recent book, CONSUMPTION IN POSTWAR AMERICA, addresses the political consequences of a mass-consumption economy and culture in post-World War II America. She is writing a book on urban renewal in American cities after World War II. At Harvard, she teaches courses in 20th century American history, with particular attention to the intersection of social and cultural life and politics.Thomas A. Bailey (1903-1983) taught history at his alma mater, Stanford University, for nearly forty years. Long regarded as one of the nation's premier historians of American diplomacy, he was honored by his colleagues in 1968 with election to the presidencies of both the Organization of American Historians and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was the author, editor, or co-editor of some twenty-books, but the work in which he took the most pride was The American Pageant through which, he liked to say, he had taught American history to several million students.

I. Founding the New Nation, c. 33,000 B.C.-A.D. 1783 1. New World Beginnings, 33,000 B.C.-A.D. 1769 2. The Planting of English America, 1500-1733 3. Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619-1700 4. American Life in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1692 5. Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700-1775 6. The Duel for North America, 1608-1763 7. The Road to Revolution, 1763-1775 8. America Secedes from the Empire, 1775-1783 II. Building the New Nation, 1776-1860 9. The Confederation and the Constitution, 1776-1790 10. Launching the New Ship of State, 1789-1800 11. The Triumphs and Travails of the Jeffersonian Republic, 1800-1812 12. The Second War for Independence and the Upsurge of Nationalism, 1812-1824 13. The Rise of a Mass Democracy, 1824-1840 14. Forging the National Economy, 1790-1860 15. The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790-1860 III. Testing the New Nation, 1820-1877 16. The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793-1860 17. Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy, 1841-1848 18. Renewing the Sectional Struggle, 1848-1854 19. Drifting Toward Disunion, 1854-1861 20. Girding for War: The North and the South, 1861-1865 21. The Furnace of Civil War, 1861-1865 22. The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 IV. Forging an Industrial Society, 1869-1909 23. Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869-1896 24. Industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900 25. America Moves to the City, 1865-1900 26. The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865-1896 27. Empire and Expansion, 1890-1909 V. Struggling for Justice at Home and Abroad, 1901-1945 28. Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901-1912 29. Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912-1916 30. The War to End War, 1917-1918 31. American Life in the "Roaring Twenties," 1919-1929 32. The Politics of Boom and Bust, 1920-1932 33. The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1933-1939 34. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War, 1933-1941 35. America in World War II, 1941-1945 VI. Making Modern America, 1945-Present 36. The Cold War Begins, 1945-1952 37. The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1960 38. The Stormy Sixties, 1960-1968 39. The Stalemated Seventies, 1968-1980 40. The Resurgence of Conservatism, 1980-1992 41. America Confronts the Post-Cold War Era, 1992-2004 42. The American People Face a New Century