Writing the American Past


Book Description

Writing the American Past reproduces dozens of untranscribed, handwritten documents, offering students the opportunity to transcribe, decipher, and interpret primary sources. Documents include diary entries from Massachusetts in the 1690s, a woman detailing the Great Awakening, an eighteenth-century treaty with Native Americans, a journal describing antebellum train travel, and a letter by a slave Skillfully teaches students to engage with the raw material of pre-1877 US history: the written document An introduction and headnotes to each document contextualize the sources and provide a foundation from which the student can explore the material







Writing Early American History


Book Description

How is American history written? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alan Taylor answers this question in this collection of his essays from The New Republic, where he explores the writing of early American history.







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.




On the Teaching and Writing of History


Book Description

Bailyn, a professor at Harvard and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, writes of the impossibility of teaching history without bias, and that history itself is constantly open to new interpretations and viewpoints.




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.




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.