America Past and Present: Volume II Since 1865

Even though I took the class last year, I still read it in my free times.

Technically I should probably give them a 5 since the product arrived in the specified time. I got it at a great price and it took 3 weeks or so to arrive in California.

This textbook was required for a history and it is a fairly understandable read and provides key terms to study.

America: Past and Present, Brief 6th edition by Robert A. Divine, T. H. Breen, George M. Frederickson, R. Hal Williams, Ariela J. Gross, H. W. Brands, Randy Roberts (Pearson Longman Publishers) America Past and Present, Brief Sixth Edition, is de-rived from the full-length America Past and Present, Seventh Edition. The Brief Sixth Edition shares the goal of its parent text: to present a clear, relevant, and balanced history of the United States as an unfolding story of national development, from the days of the earliest inhabitants to the present. The goal of the abridgement is to produce a condensation true to the original in all its dimensions-a miniaturized replica or bonsai, as it were-retaining the style and tone, and the interpretations, with their nuances and subtleties intact. This Brief Sixth Edition contains about two-thirds of the text of the full-length book, more than one-half of the maps, charts, and figures, and a commensurate proportion of the illustration program.Presenting American history as the story of a nation in flux, America Past and Present, Brief Sixth Edition, goes beyond recounting the major events that have helped to shape the nation-the wars fought, the presidents elected, the treaties signed. The impact of change on human lives adds a vital dimension to the understanding of history. How did the American Revolution affect the lives of ordinary citizens? What was it like for both blacks and whites to live in a plantation society? How did the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy affect men and women alike? What impact did technology, in the form of the auto-mobile and the computer, have on patterns of life in the twentieth century? As the narrative explores answers to these and other questions, it blends the excitement and drama of the American experience with in-sights about the social, political, economic, and cultural issues that underlie it.America Past and Present, Brief Sixth Edition, espouses no particular ideology or point of view; instead the text encourages readers to explore the American past and reach their own conclusions about its significance in their lives. And yet the text does not avoid examining controversial issues but seeks to offer balanced and reasoned judgments on such morally charged subjects as the nature of slavery and the use of nuclear weapons. Although history may rarely repeat itself, the story of the American past is relevant to the problems and dilemmas facing the American nation and the American people today.TEXT REVISIONSThe principal revisions in America Past and Present, Brief Sixth Edition, have been undertaken with the goals of clarifying the prose and sharpening the analysis, taking account of new scholarship, and offering new perspectives. As in previous editions, the roles that women and minority groups have played in the nation's development merit particular attention. These people appear not as passive witnesses to the historical narrative but as active participant

This makes an excellent undergraduate textbook in US history -- also good just for a general read.