A People & a Nation: A History of the United States

A wonderful book that teaches you the things they weren't going to tell you in high school. It's great for college students who have the intelligence to look at things objectively.

There is no such thing as a "facts and figures" kind of text book-- all texts books are subjective in what they choose to include and focus on and what they dont...and guess what, "facts and figures" can be made from false or misleading scholarship. The book in which you are being so critical of is written by the top historians in America!!! They have done more research than you could imagine...just because America's past is complicated and full of ugly events doesnt mean telling that story makes them really "left". It is our history and the sooner we own up to it the better off our country will be. Great book and great primary source use for the classroom- loved it!

I used this textbook as a junior in high school and recently purchased a later edition. Although the wonderful charts plotting the states and electoral numbers of the Presidential elections are long gone it is still a great reference book on our nations history.

My students really enjoyed this textbook because it was so inclusive of all American heritages. It is up-to-date with current trends in American history and has a little bit of everything your students might be interested in.

This book handles about the history of the U.S. from the time of the first settlers until the 1990's. The autors divided the American history in 13 themes. This themes sometimes overlap eachother in time. The result is a book which create a very complete view on the American history. Of course, it is not possible to review such an period of time, without making any choices. The authors of "A People" choose to put the book in a more or less social historical perspective. Every ethnic and social group in the American society is handled in the perspective of every theme. This makes the book sometimes a little boring to read, but the whole story is very political correct. In my view gives the book to little attention to the complex American polital history. Especially the very complex evolution of the American political history in late 18th and 19th century deserves more attention. In the book "The limits of liberty American history 1607-1992" (M.A. Jones) is more complete in this matter. Though you can say that the latter gives very little attention to the problem of the native Americans. I would recommand to read them both to get most complete view on the history of the United States. After finishing the book you have a really understanding of the large events in the American history in context of the normal people. Norton does this by putting a large number of "real life" cases in the book. This microhistorical perspective isn't nesessary for the understanding of the general line of events. But it brings history to life. Bringing history to life should be the objective of every historian, but most of them never succeed in it. Norton does and I think that that is greatest achievement of this book.