This primary source reader in the popular DISCOVERING series contains a six-part pedagogical framework that guides students through the process of historical inquiry and explanation. The text emphasizes historical study as interpretation rather than memorization of data. Each chapter is organized around the same pedagogical framework: The Problem, Background, The Method, The Evidence, Questions to Consider, and Epilogue. Volume I of the Eighth Edition integrates new documents and revised coverage throughout. For example, there are new chapters on creation stories and culture in colonial America, the transition to racial slavery in Virginia, women’s rights, and Civil War nurses.

1. The Beginning of the World: Creation Accounts and Cultural Values in the Americas and Europe.
2. The Threat of Anne Hutchinson.
3. From English Servants to African Slaves: Creating Racial Slavery in Colonial Virginia.
4. What Really Happened in the Boston Massacre? The Trial of Captain Thomas Preston.
5. The Evolution of American Citizenship: The Louisiana Purchase, 1803–1812.
6. Church, State, and Democracy: The Sunday Mail Controversy, 1827–1831.
7. Land, Growth, and Justice: The Removal of the Cherokees.
8. “Women Out of Their Latitude”: Gender in the American Republic.
9. The “Peculiar Institution”: Slaves Tell Their Own Stories.
10. Caring for the Sick and Wounded: Women Nurses in the Civil War.
11. Reconstructing Reconstruction: Political Cartoonist Thomas Nast and Public Opinion.
12. History Skills in Action: Designing Your Own Project.

This primary source reader in the popular DISCOVERING series contains a six-part pedagogical framework that guides students through the process of historical inquiry and explanation. The text emphasizes historical study as interpretation rather than memorization of data. Each chapter is organized around the same pedagogical framework: The Problem, Background, The Method, The Evidence, Questions to Consider, and Epilogue. Volume I of the Eighth Edition integrates new documents and revised coverage throughout. For example, there are new chapters on creation stories and culture in colonial America, the transition to racial slavery in Virginia, women’s rights, and Civil War nurses. A new Chapter 3, “From English Servants to African Slaves: Creating Racial Slavery in Colonial Virginia,” allows students to explore the evolution of racial slavery in late 17th and early 18th century Virginia. A new Chapter 8, “Women Out of Their Latitude,” examines the debate on the nature of the sexes and gender equality, and includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s defense of women’s rights. Chapter 9, “The ‘Peculiar Institution’: Slaves Tell Their Own Stories,” includes some of the writings of Solomon Northup (whose experiences came to life in the Academy Award winning film “Twelve Years a Slave”). The chapter retains many of the materials from the WPA ex-slave interviews, but has been revised to include freedom suits from antebellum St. Louis. These depositions allow students to see another way in which slaves told their own stories. A new Chapter 10, “Caring for the Sick and Wounded,” highlights Civil War nurses of the Union and Confederacy using women’s letters, diaries, and memoirs to understand the conflict through their eyes A new Chapter 12, “History Skills in Action,” offers students guidance on the process of designing a research project, giving them an opportunity to practice applying what they’ve learned in the text. All the chapters have been revised, some dramatically. Each chapter is organized around the same proven pedagogical framework: The Problem, Background, The Method, The Evidence, Questions to Consider, and Epilogue. By using a variety of sources such as letters, maps, statistics, drawings, song lyrics, photography, laws, and cartoons, students learn to examine sources critically, the way historians do.