Synopsis

THE AMERICAN PAGEANT enjoys a reputation as one of the most popular, effective, and entertaining texts in American history. The colorful anecdotes, first-person quotations, and trademark wit bring American history to life. The 14th edition places an even greater emphasis on the global context of American history through a new feature, "Thinking Globally." Revised primary source features excite student interest and help them learn to examine documents the way historians do. Additional pedagogical features make THE AMERICAN PAGEANT accessible to students: part openers and chapter-ending chronologies provide a context for the major periods in American history, while other features present primary sources, scholarly debates, and key historical figures for analysis.

Biography

David M. Kennedy received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and co-director of The Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West at Stanford University. His first book, BIRTH CONTROL IN AMERICA: THE CAREER OF MARGARET SANGER, was honored with both the Bancroft Prize and the John Gilmary Shea Prize. He has won numerous teaching awards at Stanford, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in American political, diplomatic, intellectual, and social history, and in American literature. Dr. Kennedy published a volume in the OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FREEDOM FROM FEAR: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN DEPRESSION AND WAR, 1929-1945, for which he was honored with the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and he serves on the board of the Pulitzer Prizes.

Lizabeth Cohen received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies and chair of the history department of Harvard University. In 2007-2008, she was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. Previously, she taught at New York University and Carnegie Mellon University. The author of many articles and essays, Dr. Cohen was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her first book, MAKING A NEW DEAL: INDUSTRIAL WORKERS IN CHICAGO, 1919-1939, for which she later won the Bancroft Prize. Her recent book, CONSUMPTION IN POSTWAR AMERICA, addresses the political consequences of a mass-consumption economy and culture in post-World War II America. She is writing a book on urban renewal in American cities after World War II. At Harvard, she teaches courses in twentieth-century American history, with particular attention to the intersection of social and cultural life and politics.

Thomas A. Bailey (1903-1983) taught history at his alma mater, Stanford University, for nearly forty years. Long regarded as one of the nation's premier historians of American diplomacy, he was honored by his colleagues in 1968 with election to the presidencies of both the Organization of American Historians and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was the author, editor, or co-editor of some twenty-books, but the work in which he took the most pride was The American Pageant through which, he liked to say, he had taught American history to several million students.