A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, Volume I: To 1877, 8th Edition by Mary Beth Norton, David W. Blight, Carol Sheriff, David M. Katzman, Howard Chudacoff

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Synopsis

A People and a Nation offers a spirited narrative that challenges students to think about American history. The authors' attention to race and racial identity and their inclusion of everyday people and popular culture brings history to life, engaging student readers and encouraging them to imagine what life was really like in the past. The Eighth Edition offers highly readable stories and the latest scholarship throughout.

Biography

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mary Beth Norton received her B.A. from the University of Michigan (1964) and her Ph.D. from Harvard University (1969). She is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University. Her dissertation won the Allan Nevins Prize. She has written The British-Americans (1972), Liberty's Daughters (1980, 1996), Founding Mothers & Fathers (1996), which was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History, and In the Devil's Snare (2002), which was one of five finalists for the 2003 LA Times Book Prize in History and which won the English-Speaking Union's Ambassador Book Award in American Studies for 2003. She has coedited Women of America (with Carol Berkin, 1979), To Toil the Livelong Day (with Carol Groneman, 1987), and Major Problems in American Women's History (with Ruth Alexander, 2007). She was general editor of the American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature (1995). Her articles have appeared in such journals as the American Historical Review, William and Mary Quarterly, and Journal of Women's History. Mary Beth has served as president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, as vice president for research of the American Historical Association, and as a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Humanities. She has received four honorary degrees and in 1999 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Starr Foundations, and the Henry E. Huntington Library. In 2005-2006, she was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University ofCambridge and Newnham College.

Born in Washington, DC and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, Carol Sheriff received her B.A. from Wesleyan University (1985) and her Ph.D. from Yale University (1993). Since 1993, she has taught history at the College of William and Mary, where she has won the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, the Alumni Teaching Fellowship Award, and the University Professorship for Teaching Excellence. Her publications include The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress (1996), which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Award from New York State Historical Association and the Award for Excellence in Research from the New York State Archives, and A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War, 1854-1877 (with Scott Reynolds Nelson, 2007). Carol has written sections of a teaching manual for the New York State history curriculum, given presentations to a Teaching American History grant project, consulted on an exhibit for the Rochester Museum and Science Center, appeared in the History Channel's Modern Marvels show on the Erie Canal, and is serving as a consultant for "The Inland Voyage," an forthcoming television documentary on the Erie Canal. At William and Mary, she teaches the U.S. history survey as well as upper-level classes on the Early Republic, the Civil War Era, and the American West.

Born in Flint, Michigan, David W. Blight received his B.A. from Michigan State University (1971) and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin (1985). He is now professor of history and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. For the first seven years of his career, David was a public high school teacher in Flint. He has written Frederick Douglass's Civil War (1989) and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, 1863-1915 (2000). His most recent book is A Slave No More: the Emancipation of John Washington and Wallace Turnage (2007). His edited works include When This Cruel War Is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster (1992), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1993), W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (with Robert Gooding Williams, 1997), Union and Emancipation (with Brooks Simpson, 1997), and Caleb Bingham, The Columbian Orator (1997). David's essays have appeared in the Journal of American History, Civil War History, and Gabor Boritt, ed., Why the Civil War Came (1996), among others. In 1992-1993 he was senior Fulbright Professor in American Studies at the University of Munich, Germany. A consultant to several documentary films, David appeared in the 1998 PBS series, Africans in America. In 1999 he was elected to the Council of the American Historical Association. David also teaches summer seminars for secondary school teachers, as well as for park rangers and historians of the National Park Service. His book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2000), received many honors in 2002, including The Bancroft Prize, Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize. From the Organization of American Historians, he has received the Merle Curti Prize in Social History, the Merle Curti Prize in Intellectual History, the Ellis Hawley Prize in Political History, and the James Rawley Prize in Race Relations.

Howard P. Chudacoff, the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History and Professor of Urban Studies at Brown University, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned his A.B. (1965) and Ph.D. (1969) from the University of Chicago. He has written Mobile Americans (1972), How Old Are You? (1989), The Age of the Bachelor (1999), The Evolution of American Urban Society (with Judith Smith, 2004), and Children at Play: An American History (2007). He has also coedited with Peter Baldwin Major Problems in American Urban History (2004). His articles have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Family History, Reviews in American History, and Journal of American History. At Brown University, Howard has cochaired the American Civilization Program, chaired the Department of History, and serves as Brown's faculty representative to the NCAA. He has also served on the board of directors of the Urban History Association. The National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation have given him awards to advance his scholarship.