The Oxford Guide United States History

A NEW VOLUME FOR A NEW CENTURY, The Oxford Guide to United States History covers everything from Jamestown and the Puritans to the Human Genome Project and the Internet. Written in clear, graceful prose for researchers, browsers, and general readers alike, this is the volume that addresses the totality of the American experience, its triumphs and heroes as well as its tragedies and darker moments.

Here are the familiar political heroes, from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin to Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But here, too, are scientists, writers, radicals, sports figures, and religious leaders, with incisive portraits of such varied individuals as Thomas Edison and Eli Whitney, Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali, Black Elk and Crazy Horse, Margaret Fuller, Emma Goldman, and Marian Anderson, even Al Capone and Jesse James. The Guide illuminates events that have shaped the nation (the Great Awakening, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Wounded Knee Tragedy, the Vietnam War); major Supreme Court decisions (Marbury v. Madison, Roe v. Wade); landmark legislation (the Fugitive Slave Law, the Pure Food and Drug Act); social movements (Suffrage, Civil Rights); influential books (The Jungle, Uncle Tom's Cabin); ideologies (conservatism, liberalism, Social Darwinism); even natural disasters and iconic sites (the Chicago Fire, the Johnstown Flood, Niagara Falls, the Lincoln Memorial). Here, too, is the nation's social and cultural history, from Films, Football, and the 4-H Club to Immigration, Courtship and Dating, Marriage and Divorce, and Death and Dying. Extensive multi-part essays cover such key topics as the Civil War, Indian History and Culture, Slavery, and the Federal Government.

Here is a volume that is as big and as varied as the nation it portrays. With over 1,400 entries written by some 900 historians and other scholars, it illuminates not only America's political, diplomatic, and military history, but also social, cultural, and intellectual trends; science, technology, and medicine; the arts; and religion. 

Author: Paul S Boyer

Publisher: Oxford

Released Date: 2001

ISBN: 9780195340914