Lives and Times Individuals and Issues in American History: To 1877

Lives And Times is a biographical reader designed to acquaint students with major issues in American history through the lives of individuals, prominent and otherwise, whose activities and ideas were crucial in shaping the course of the nation's history. Employing a narrative style, the book consists of thirteen chapters in which the lives of two individuals are examined in the broader context of major historical themes. Readers will find not only a diversity of individuals profiledincluding Mary Dyer and Cotton Mather, Andrew Jackson and Tecumseh, and John Brown and Abraham Lincolnbut also themes spanning political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual, and military history. This combined biographical/thematic approach provides the reader with more extensive biographical information and a fuller examination of key issues than is commonly offered in core texts. Each chapter also offers study questions and a bibliography. Book jacket.

Blaine T. Browne is professor of history at Broward College. Robert C. Cottrell is professor of history at California State University. Together, they have coauthored Uncertain Order: The World in the Twentieth Century, Lives and Legacies: Biographies in Western Civilization, and Modern American Lives: Biographies in American History since 1945.