America's History, For the AP* Course

Your go-to book for the AP U.S. History redesign.
America's History offers a thematic approach and skills-oriented pedagogy that helps students succeed in the redesigned AP U.S. History course. Known for its attention to AP themes and content, the new edition features a new nine part structure closely aligned with the chronology of the new AP U.S. History course, an expanded documents program, and a wealth of supporting resources that give teachers and students the tools they need to master the course and the new exam. The eighth edition also rolls out Bedford/St. Martin's new digital history tools, including LearningCurve, an adaptive quizzing engine that garners over a 90% student satisfaction rate, and LaunchPad, the all new interactive e-book and course space that puts high quality easy-to-use assessment at your fingertips. Featuring video, additional primary sources, a wealth of adaptive and summative quizzing, and more, LaunchPad cements student understanding of the text while helping them make progress toward learning outcomes. It's the best content joined up with the best technology.
*AP is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product. View a sample chapter.

James A. Henretta is a Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications include The Evolution of American Society, 1700-1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis; "Salutary Neglect": Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle; Evolution and Revolution: American Society, 1600-1820; The Origins of American Capitalism; and an edited volume, Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850. Recent publications include "Magistrates, Common Law Lawyers, Legislators: The Three Legal Systems of British America," in The Cambridge History of Law in America and "Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America," in Law and History Review, derived from his ongoing research on the liberal state in America: New York, 1820-1975. During his career, Henretta taught at Sussex, Princeton, UCLA, and Boston University. He served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Australia and as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.

Eric Hinderaker is Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Utah.  His research explores early modern imperialism, relations between Europeans and Native Americans, and comparative colonization.  His publications include The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery, which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize; Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800; and, with Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America.  He is currently working on two books, one about the Boston Massacre and another, with Rebecca Horn, on patterns of European colonization in the Americas.

Rebecca Edwards is a Professor of History at Vassar College. Her research interests focus on the post-Civil War era and include electoral politics, environmental history, and the history of women and gender roles. She is the author of Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era and New Spirits: Americans in the "Gilded Age," 1865-1905. She is currently working on a biography of women's rights advocate and People's Party orator Mary E. Lease.Robert O. Self is Professor of History at Brown University. His research focuses on urban history, American politics, and the post-1945 United States. He is the author of American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, which won four professional prizes, including the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. He is currently at work on a book about the centrality of houses, cars, and children to family consumption in the twentieth-century United States. He teaches courses on the postwar United States; the history of political movements; the history of gender, sex, and the family; and urban history.

Brief Contents

Historical Thinking, Reading, and Writing Skills for AP U.S. History

Part 1: Transformations of North America, 1450-1700

Chapter 1: Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600

Chapter 2: American Experiments, 1521-1700

Part 2: British North America and the Atlantic World, 1660-1763

Chapter 3: The British Atlantic World, 1660-1750

Chapter 4: Growth, Diversity, and Conflict, 1720-1763

Part 3: Revolution and Republican Culture, 1763-1820

Chapter 5: The Problem of Empire, 1763-1776

Chapter 6: Making War and Republican Governments, 1776–1789

Chapter 7: Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787-1820

Chapter 8: Creating a Republican Culture, 1790–1820

Part 4: Overlapping Revolutions, 1800–1860

Chapter 9: Transforming the Economy, 1800–1860

Chapter 10: A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844

Chapter 11: Religion and Reform, 1800–1860

Chapter 12: The South Expands: Slavery and Society, 1800–1860

Part 5: Creating and Preserving a Continental Nation, 1844-1877

Chapter 13: Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844–1860

Chapter 14: Two Societies at War, 1861–1865

Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1865–1877

Chapter 16: Conquering a Continent, 1854-1890

Part 6: Industrializing America: Upheavals and Experiments, 1877-1917

Chapter 17: Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877–1911

Chapter 18: The Victorians Make the Modern, 1880–1916

Chapter 19: "Civilization’s Inferno": The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880–1917

Chapter 20: Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880–1917

Part 7: Domestic and Global Challenges, 1890-1945

Chapter 21: An Emerging World Power, 1890–1918

Chapter 22: Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust, 1919–1932

Chapter 23: Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929–1939

Chapter 24: The World at War, 1937–1945

Part 8: The Modern State and the Age of Liberalism, 1945-1980

Chapter 25: Cold War America, 1945–1963

Chapter 26: Triumph of the Middle Class, 1945–1963

Chapter 27: Walking into Freedom Land: The Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1973

Chapter 28: Uncivil Wars: Liberal Crisis and Conservative Rebirth, 1961–1972

Chapter 29: The Search for Order in an Era of Limits, 1973–1980

Part 9: Global Capitalism and the End of the American Century, 1980 to the Present

Chapter 30: Conservative America in the Ascent, 1980–1991

Chapter 31: Confronting Global and National Dilemmas, 1989 to the Present