Synopses & Reviews
Known for its clear narrative voice and impeccable scholarship, Alan Brinkley's best-selling survey text invites students to think critically about the many forces that continually create the Unfinished Nation that is the United States. In a concise but wide-ranging narrative, Brinkley shows the diversity and complexity of the nation and our understanding of its history--one that continues to evolve both in the events of the present and in our reexamination of new evidence and perspectives on the past. This sixth edition features a new series of Patterns of Popular Culture essays, as well as expanded coverage of pre-Columbian America, new America in the World essays, and updated coverage of recent events and developments that demonstrates how a new generation continues to shape the American story.
Synopsis
Known for its clear narrative voice, impeccable scholarship, and affordability, Alan Brinkleys The Unfinished Nation offers a concise but comprehensive examination of American History. Balancing social and cultural history with traditional political and diplomatic themes, it tells the story of the diversity and complexity of the United States and the forces that have enabled it to survive and flourish despite division. This fifth edition features eight new essays and enhanced coverage of recent events and developments in the continuing American story.
About the Author
Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University in New York, where he has taught since 1991. He was educated at Princeton and Harvard, and he has taught previously at M. I. T., Harvard, and the City University of New York Graduate School.His published works include Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (Knopf, 1982), which won the 1983 National Book Award; The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (Knopf, 1995); and Liberalism and Its Discontents (Harvard, 1998). He is the co-author of New Federalist Papers (Norton, 1997), Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States (Knopf, 1997); and The Teachers Handbook: A Practical Guide to the College Classroom (Chicago, 1999forthcoming).His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in scholarly journals and in such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, Time, Newsweek, the Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books. He has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, and others; and he was the recipient of the Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize at Harvard. He is a trustee of the Twentieth Century Fund, a member of the national advisory board of the PBS series “The American Experience”, and a member of the editorial board The American Prospect.He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and the University of Torino (Italy). He was the 1998-1999 Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Meeting of Cultures
~ America Before Columbus
~ Europe Looks Westward
~ The Arrival of the English
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The American Population Before Columbus
America in the World: The Atlantic Context of Early American History
Chapter 2: Transplantations and Borderlands
~ The Early Chesapeake
~ Caribbean Colonization
~ The Growth of New England
~ The Restoration Colonies
~ The Development of Empire
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 3: Society and Culture in Provincial America
~ The Colonial Population
~ The Colonial Economies
~ Patterns of Society
~ Awakenings and Enlightenments
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Origins of Slavery
Chapter 4: The Empire in Transition
~ Loosening Ties
~ The Struggle for the Continent
~ The New Imperialism
~ Stirrings of Revolt
~ Cooperation and War
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 5: The American Revolution
~ The States United
~ The War for Independence
~ War and Society
~ The Search for a National Government
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The American Revolution
America in the World: The Age of Revolutions
Chapter 6: The Constitution and the New Republic
~ Farming a New Government
~ Adoption and Adaptation
~ Federalists and Republicans
~ Establishing National Sovereignty
~ The Downfall of the Federalists
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 7: The Jeffersonian Era
~ The Rise of Cultural Nationalism
~ Stirrings of Industrialism
~ Jefferson the President
~ Doubling the National Domain
~ Expansion and War
~ The War of 1812
Conclusion
For Further Reference
America in the World: The Global Industrial Revolution
Chapter 8: Varieties of American Nationalism
~ Stabilizing Economic Growth
~ Expanding Westward
~ The "Era of Good Feelings"
~ Sectionalism and Nationalism
~ The Revival of Opposition
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 9: Jacksonian America
~ The Rise of Mass Politics
~ "Our Federal Union"
~ The Removal of the Indians
~ Jackson and the Bank War
~ The Emergence of the Second Party System
~ Politics After Jackson
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: Jacksonian Democracy
Chapter 10: Americas Economic Revolution
~ The Changing American Population
~ Transportation and Communications Revolutions
~ Commerce and Industry
~ Men and Women at Work
~ Patterns of Society
~ The Agricultural North
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 11: Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South
~ The Cotton Economy
~ Southern White Society
~ The "Peculiar Institution"
~ The Culture of Slavery
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Character of Slavery
Chapter 12: Antebellum Culture and Reform
~ The Romantic Impulse
~ Remaking Society
~ The Crusade Against Slavery
Conclusion
For Further Reference
America in the World: The Abolition of Slavery
Chapter 13: The Impending Crisis
~ Looking Westward
~ Expansion and War
~ The Sectional Debate
~ The Crisis of the 1850s
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 14: The Civil War
~ The Secession Crisis
~ The Mobilization of the North
~ The Mobilization of the South
~ Strategy and Diplomacy
~ Campaigns and Battles
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Causes of the Civil War
America in the World: The Consolidation of Nations
Chapter 15: Reconstruction and the New South
~ The Problems of Peacemaking
~ Radical Reconstruction
~ The South in Reconstruction
~ The Grant Administration
~ The Abandonment of Reconstruction
~ The New South
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: Reconstruction
Chapter 16: The Conquest of the Far West
~ The Societies of the Far West
~ The Changing Western Economy
~ The Romance of the West
~ The Dispersal of the Tribes
~ The Rise and Decline of the Western Farmer
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Frontier and the West
Chapter 17: Industrial Supremacy
~ Sources of Industrial Growth
~ Capitalism and Its Critics
~ The Ordeal of the Worker
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 18: The Age of the City
~ The New Urban Growth
~ The Urban Landscape
~ Strains of Urban Life
~ The Rise of Mass Consumption
~ Leisure in the Consumer Society
~ High Culture in the Urban Age
Conclusion
For Further Reference
America in the World: Global Migrations
Chapter 19: From Stalemate to Crisis
~ The Politics of Equilibrium
~ The Agrarian Revolt
~ The Crisis of the 1890s
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: Populism
Chapter 20: The Imperial Republic
~ Stirrings of Imperialism
~ War with Spain
~ The Republic as Empire
Conclusion
For Further Reference
America in the World: Imperialism
Chapter 21: The Rise of Progressivism
~ The Progressive Impulse
~ Women and Reform
~ The Assault on the Parties
~ Sources of Progressive Reform
~ Crusades for Order and Reform
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: Progressivism
Chapter 22: The Battle for National Reform
~ Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party
~ The Troubled Succession
~ Woodrow Wilson and the New Freedom
~ The "Big Stick": America and the World, 1901-1917
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 23: America and the Great War
~ The Road to War
~ "War Without Stint"
~ The Search for a New World Order
~ A Society in Turmoil
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 24: The New Era
~ The New Economy
~ The New Culture
~ A Conflict of Cultures
~ Republican Government
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 25: The Great Depression
~ The Coming of the Depression
~ The American People in Hard Times
~ The Depression and American Culture
~ The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: Causes of the Great Depression
America in the World: The Global Depression
Chapter 26: The New Deal
~ Launching the New Deal
~ The New Deal in Transition
~ The New Deal in Disarray
~ Limits and Legacies of the New Deal
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The New Deal
Chapter 27: The Global Crisis, 1921-1941
~ The Diplomacy of the New Era
~ Isolationism and Internationalism
~ From Neutrality to Intervention
Conclusion
For Further Reference
America in the World: The Sino-Japanese War, 1931-1941
Chapter 28: America in a World at War
~ War on Two Fronts
~ The American Economy in Wartime
~ Race and Gender in Wartime America
~ Anxiety and Affluence in Wartime Culture
~ The Defeat of the Axis
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
Chapter 29: The Cold War
~ Origins of the Cold War
~ The Collapse of the Peace
~ America After the War
~ The Korean War
~ The Crusade Against Subversion
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Cold War
Chapter 30: The Affluent Society
~ The Economic "Miracle"
~ The Explosion of Science and Technology
~ People of Plenty
~ The Other America
~ The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement
~ Eisenhower Republicanism
~ Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Cold War
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 31: The Ordeal of Liberalism
~ Expanding the Liberal State
~ The Battle for Racial Equality
~ "Flexible Response" and the Cold War
~ Vietnam
~ The Traumas of 1968
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: The Vietnam Commitment
America in the World: 1968
Chapter 32: The Crisis of Authority
~ Youth Culture
~ The Mobilization of Minorities
~ The New Feminism
~ Nixon, Kissinger, and the War
~ Nixon, Kissinger, and the World
~ Politics and Economics in the Nixon Years
~ The Watergate Crisis
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Debating the Past: Watergate
Chapter 33: From the “Age of Limits” to the Age of Reagan
~ Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate
~ The Rise of the New American Right
~ The "Reagan Revolution"
~ America and the Waning of the Cold War
Conclusion
For Further Reference
Chapter 34: The Age of Globalization
~ The Resurgence of Partisanship
~ The Economic Boom
~ Science and Technology in the New Economy
~ A Changing Society
~ A Contested Culture
~ The Perils of Globalization
Conclusion
For Further Reference