Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (Volume II, Since 1863) [Paperback]

John M. Murrin (Author), Paul E. Johnson (Author), James M. McPherson (Author), Gary Gerstle (Author), Emily S. Rosenberg (Author), Norman L. Rosenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 18, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0155061321 | ISBN-13: 978-0155061323 | Edition: 3rd

This best-selling introductory American history survey text provides students with a clear understanding of how power is gained, lost, and used in both public and private life. Central to this text are the themes of liberty, equality, and power, as well as the shifting relationships and tensions between these evolving concepts. The authors use these themes to convey the complex reality and diversity of America's history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

To The Student: Why Study History? Analyzing Historical Sources. 1. When Old Worlds Collide: Contact, Conquest, Catastrophe. 2. The Challenge to Spain and the Settlement of North America. 3. England Discovers Its Colonies: Empire, Liberty, and Expansion. 4. Provincial America and the Struggle for a Continent. 5. Reform, Resistance, Revolution. 6. The Revolutionary Republic. 7. Completing the Revolution, 1789-1815. 8. Northern Transformations, 1790-1850. 9. The Old South, 1790-1850. 10. Toward an American Culture. 11. Whigs and Democrats. 12. Antebellum Reform. 13. Manifest Destiny: An Empire for Liberty--or Slavery? 14. The Gathering Tempest, 1853-1860. 15. Secession and Civil War, 1860-1862. 16. A New Birth of Freedom, 1862-1865. 17. Reconstruction, 1863-1877. 18. A Transformed Nation: The West and the New South, 1865-1900. 19. The Rise of Corporate America, 1865-1914. 20. Cities, Peoples, Cultures, 1890-1920. 21. Progressivism. 22. Becoming a World Power, 1898-1917. 23. War and Society, 1914-1920. 24. The 1920s. 25. The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1929-1939. 26. America during the Second World War. 27. The Age of Containment, 1946-1953. 28. Affluence and Its Discontents, 1953-1963. 29. America during Its Longest War, 1963-1974. 30. Uncertain Times, 1974-1992. 31. Economic, Social, and Cultural Change in the Late 20th Century. 32. A Time of Hope and Fear, 1993-2011.

About the Author

John M. Murrin is a specialist in American colonial and revolutionary history and the early republic. He has edited one multivolume series and five books, including two co-edited collections, COLONIAL AMERICA: ESSAYS IN POLITICS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, Fifth Edition (2001) and SAINTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES: ESSAYS IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY (1984). His own essays on early American history range from ethnic tensions, the early history of trial by jury, the rise of the legal profession, and the political culture of the colonies and the new nation, to the rise of professional baseball and college football in the 19th century. Professor Murrin served as president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in 1998-99. He is the author of Chapters 1-6.

Paul E. Johnson. A specialist in early national social history, he is also the author of SAM PATCH, THE FAMOUS JUMPER (2003); A SHOPKEEPERS MILLENNIUM: SOCIETY AND REVIVALS IN ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, 1815-1837 (1978); coauthor (with Sean Wilentz) of THE KINGDOM OF MATTHIAS: SEX AND SALVATION IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA (1994); and editor of AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY: ESSAYS IN HISTORY (1994). He has been awarded the Merle Curti Prize of the Organization of American Historians (1980), a National Endowment for the Humanities-American Antiquarian Society Fellowship (1985), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1995), and a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship (2001). He is the author of Chapters 7-12.

James M. McPherson is a distinguished Civil War historian, he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for his book BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM: THE CIVIL WAR ERA. His other publications include MARCHING TOWARD FREEDOM: BLACKS IN THE CIVIL WAR, Second Edition, (1991); ORDEAL BY FIRE: THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, Third Edition, (2001); ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1991); FOR CAUSE AND COMRADES: WHY MEN FOUGHT IN THE CIVIL WAR (1997), which won the Lincoln Prize for 1998; and HALLOWED GROUND: A WALK AT GETTYSBURG (2003). In addition he is, along with Gary Gerstle, a consulting editor of AMERICAN POLITICAL LEADERS: FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT (1991) and AMERICAN SOCIAL LEADERS: FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT (1993). Professor McPherson was president of the American Historical Association (2003-04). He is the author of Chapters 13-19.

Gary Gerstle is a historian of the twentieth century United States, with expertise in the history of politics, nationalism, immigration and ethnicity, and labor. He has published four books: WORKING-CLASS AMERICANISM: THE POLITICS OF LABOR IN A TEXTILE CITY, 1914-1960 (1989); THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW DEAL ORDER, 1930-1980 (1989); AMERICAN CRUCIBLE: RACE AND NATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (2001); and E PLURIBUS UNUM: IMMIGRANTS, CIVIC CULTURE, AND POLITICAL INCORPORATION (2001). His articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, American Quarterly, and other journals, and he is a consulting editor, along with James M. McPherson, of AMERICAN POLITICAL LEADERS: FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT (1991) and AMERICAN SOCIAL LEADERS: FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT (1993). He has been awarded many honors, including the 2001 Saloutos Prize for the best book in immigration and ethnic history, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He chairs the Department of History at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Chapters 20-25.

Emily S. Rosenberg specializes in United States international relations in the 20th century and is the author of SPREADING THE AMERICAN DREAM: AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL EXPANSION, 1890-1945 (1982); FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES TO THE WORLD: THE POLITICS AND CULTURE OF DOLLAR DIPLOMACY (1999), which won the Ferrell Senior Book Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations; and A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE: PEARL HARBOR IN AMERICAN MEMORY (2003). Her other publications include (with Norman L. Rosenberg) IN OUR TIMES: AMERICA SINCE 1945, Seventh Edition, (2003) and numerous articles on international finance, gender issues, and international relations. She was an associate editor of the OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN HISTORY, and edits a book series called "American Encounters/Global Interactions" with Duke University Press. She has served on the board of the Organization of American Historians, on the board of editors of the Journal of American History, and as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. She is coauthor, along with Norman L. Rosenberg, of chapters 26-31. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt College Pub; 3rd edition (July 18, 2001)
• ISBN-10: 0155061321
• ISBN-13: 978-0155061323
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,380,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real gem to any history reference library, October 27, 2009

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CGScammell (Cochise County, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Concise Edition (Paperback)

How can a book that is co-authored by James McPherson be bad? This book is a gem! Filled with archived paintings, political cartoons, maps and even sections on "History Through Film, Music Art", readers quickly realize that they aren't reading just boring political history as seen by the dominant Anglo society, but a social and cultural history of the United States; while politicians are politicking, common people are creating literature, music and art. Everything comes together in these chapters.

With this book come accessories via the internet. Primary sources can be easily opened from other domains to help the reader with critical thinking.

This is a great college-level history book. Events are brought together to make a history student realize how events of the last century still apply today. Focusing on events that show their significance and subsequent results to other events is what learning about history is about, it's not just memorizing tables and facts and dates. The following is an excerpt on a section called Ethnicity, Religion and the Schools:

The argument between Whig centralism and Democratic localism dominated the debate over public education until the children of Irish and German Catholic immigrants entered schools by the thousands in the mid 1840s. Most immigrant families were poor and relied on their children's earned income. Consequently, the children's attendance at school was irregular at best. Most immigrants were Catholics. The Irish regarded Protestant prayers and the King James Bible as heresies. Some of the textbooks were worse. Olney's Practical System of Modern Geography , a standard textbook, declared that "The Irish in general are quick of apprehension, active, brave and hospitable, but passionate, ignorant, vain and superstitious."

Many Catholic parents refused to send their children to school. Others demanded changes in textbooks, the elimination of the King James Bible, tax-supported Catholic schools, or at least tax relief for parents who sent their children to parish schools. Whigs, joined by many native-born Democrats, saw Catholic complaints as popish assaults on the Protestantism that they insisted was at the heart of American republicanism.

Many school districts, particularly in the rural areas to which many Scandinavian and German immigrants found their way, created foreign-language schools and provided bilingual instruction. In other places, state support for church-run schools persisted. But in northeastern cities, where immigrant Catholics often formed militant local majorities, demands for state support led to violence and to organized nativist (anti-immigrant) politics. In 1844 the Native American Party, with the endorsement of the Whigs, won the New York City elections. That same year in Philadelphia, riots that pitted avowedly Whig Protestants against Catholic immigrants, ostensibly over the issue of Bible reading in schools, killed 13 people. (291/292)

The book's only downfall is that this book is already two years old, and in the textbook genre that's old. Newer editions will follow, brining in more money to the publisher. This book nonetheless should be in every historian's library.