Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. This collection serves as the primary anthology for the introductory survey course, covering the subject’s entire chronological span. Comprehensive topical coverage includes politics, economics, labor, gender, culture, and social trends. The fourth edition has been revised to reflect two new historiographical trends: the emergence of the history of religion as an exceptionally lively field and the internationalization of American history. Several chapters include images, songs, and poems to give students a better “feel” for the time period and events under discussion. Key pedagogical elements of the Major Problems format have been retained: 15 to 16 chapters per volume, chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings.

1. Reconstruction.
2. Western Settlement and the Frontier.
3. Industrialization, Workers, and the New Immigration.
4. Imperialism and World Power.
5. The Progressive Movement.
6. World War I and the League of Nations.
7. Crossing a Cultural Divide: The Twenties.
8. The Depression, New Deal, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
9. The Ordeal of World War II.
10. The Global Cold War and the Nuclear Age.
11. The Post-War “Boom”: Affluence and Anxiety.
12. The Civil Rights Revolution.
13. The Sixties and Vietnam.
14. The Emergence of the New Right.
15. End of the Cold War and Rise of Terrorism.
16. Globalization and the Economic Challenge.

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. This collection serves as the primary anthology for the introductory survey course, covering the subject’s entire chronological span. Comprehensive topical coverage includes politics, economics, labor, gender, culture, and social trends. The fourth edition has been revised to reflect two new historiographical trends: the emergence of the history of religion as an exceptionally lively field and the internationalization of American history. Several chapters include images, songs, and poems to give students a better “feel” for the time period and events under discussion. Key pedagogical elements of the Major Problems format have been retained: 15 to 16 chapters per volume, chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings. To execute the biggest change in this edition, the shift to “America in the world,” the authors include at least one document in every chapter that reflects globalization: the ways that the perspectives of people in other parts of the world profoundly affected the United States. These documents and essays also highlight the connections between American and world trends. Examples include English Suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst Recalls American Role Models, 1914 (Ch. 5); Canadian-Japanese Mother Writes About Her Coming Internment, 1942 (Ch. 9); and Egyptian Youth Rock Out, 1957 (Ch. 11). Although this edition retains many documents and essays that reviewers say worked well in their survey courses, each chapter has also been updated to reflect the latest scholarship and replace excerpts that instructors found difficult to use. Recognizing that America’s story is getting longer with time (and that some instructors minimize attention to Reconstruction in the second half of the survey course), Chapters 15 and 16 now cover American history up through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Great Recession that began in 2008. Heeding suggestions from professors around the nation, the fourth edition incorporates more voices of everyday folk. The inclusion of both primary and secondary sources in a single collection provides a rich analytical experience for students. The primary sources give students evidence to explore; the secondary sources expose students to key historical debates. Often the secondary essays refer to one of the primary documents, so students can see how historians integrate evidence in an interpretation. An introduction -- “How to Read Primary and Secondary Sources” -- helps students distinguish types of sources and teaches them how to read and interpret critically.