Writing Local History Today


Book Description

Writing Local History Today guides local historians through the process of researching, writing, and publishing their work. Mason & Calder present step-by-step advice to guide aspiring authors to a successful publication and focus not only on how to write well but also how to market and sell their work. Highlights include: Discussion of how to identify an audience for your writing project Tips for effective research and planning Sample documents, such as contracts and requests for proposals Discussion of how to use social media to leverage your publication Discussion of the benefits and drawbacks to self-publishing An essay by Gregory Britton, the editorial director of John Hopkins University Press, about financial pitfalls in publishing This guide is useful for first-time authors who need help with this sometimes daunting process, or for previously published historians who need a quick reference or timely tip.




Historians Across Borders


Book Description

In this stimulating and highly original study of the writing of American history, twenty-four scholars from eleven European countries explore the impact of writing history from abroad. Six distinguished scholars from around the world add their commentaries. Arguing that historical writing is conditioned, crucially, by the place from which it is written, this volume identifies the formative impact of a wide variety of institutional and cultural factors that are commonly overlooked. Examining how American history is written from Europe, the contributors shed light on how history is written in the United States and, indeed, on the way history is written anywhere. The innovative perspectives included in Historians across Borders are designed to reinvigorate American historiography as the rise of global and transnational history is creating a critical need to understand the impact of place on the writing and teaching of history. This book is designed for students in historiography, global and transnational history, and related courses in the United States and abroad, for US historians, and for anyone interested in how historians work.







A Sense of History


Book Description

For almost 50 years, American Heritage magazine has been telling America's story in fresh and vivid articles that have come to represent the best of responsible popular history. In this compre-hensive and informative book, the editors of American Heritage have combed through every issue to find the most entertaining and illuminating pieces. The result -- by turns stirring, moving, funny, evocative, horrifying -- is an unusually revealing informal history of American civilisation from the first settlements to the close of the twentieth century. "A Sense of History" proves that the best history is always the best reading. And the authors are numbered among the foremost historians, novelists, and public figures of recent years.




How to Write the History of the New World


Book Description

An Economist Book of the Year, 2001. In the 18th century, a debate ensued over the French naturalist Buffon’s contention that the New World was in fact geologically new. Historians, naturalists, and philosophers clashed over Buffon’s view. This book maintains that the “dispute” was also a debate over historical authority: upon whose sources and facts should naturalists and historians reconstruct the history of the New World and its people. In addressing this question, the author offers a strikingly novel interpretation of the Enlightenment.




Reading and Writing American History


Book Description

As American colleges and universities strive to prepare twenty-first-century students for an ever-changing world, the importance of studying history within a liberal arts curriculum can be forgotten. Noting that the students of today are very present-minded, the authors of Reading and Writing American History show how learning about history can be seamlessly integrated with up-to-the-minute technology, blending the past, the present, and even the future. Following the philosophy that students should become doers rather than simple consumers, the book aims to teach historical methods and skills while engaging students in a way no ordinary textbook can. The book is thus really a work-text, with opportunities for students to pause and reflect on what they are learning every few pages. Each chapter presents students not only with a period of American history, but also with a specific task to help them become better historians; for example, the chapter on the Civil War encourages students to use the Internet for research but also instructs them on how to tell valid online sources from spurious ones. The chapters include in-depth examinations of previously ignored or marginalized peoples, fulfilling the new multicultural mandates of history departments. By bringing students face to face with the questions that every history teacher and scholar confronts, the authors ensure that history becomes a living and breathing field of study for today's students.




These Truths: A History of the United States


Book Description

“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.




U.S. History, Grades 6 - 12


Book Description

The Mark Twain U.S. History: People and Events 1607–1865 social studies book highlights the decisions and events that have played an important part in shaping America during that time. This middle school history book includes profiles of the people who made those decisions and a timeline of events. U.S. History: People and Events takes your students on a journey through America’s past and challenges them with activities to spark discussion and deepen their understanding for how America came to be. These activities include: -map analysis -discussion questions -graphic organizers -research opportunities Mark Twain Media Publishing Company proudly creates engaging supplemental books and decorations for middle-grade and upper-grade classrooms. Designed by leading educators, Mark Twain products cover a range of subjects, including science, language arts, fine arts, government, social studies, history, character, and conduct.