The Great American Documents: Volume I: 1620-1830 (The Great American Documents, 1) - Softcover

Ashby, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374534535 ISBN 13: 9780374534530

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2014

Synopsis

In the Great American Documents series, the teacher and graphic-book author Ruth Ashby and the renowned illustrator Ernie Colón tell the story of the United States through the major speeches, laws, proclamations, court decisions, and essays that shaped it.

The Great American Documents: Volume 1 introduces as series narrator none other than Uncle Sam, who walks us through twenty essential documents bookended by the Mayflower Compact in 1620 and the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Each document gets a chapter, in which Uncle Sam explains its key passages, its origins, how it came to be written, and its impact. In the chapter "The Maryland Toleration Act," we learn that this document was one of the first blueprints for modern religious tolerance. "Common Sense" depicts the Boston Tea Party and the British response as the prelude to Paine's stirring pamphlet. And "The Louisiana Purchase" closes with Lewis and Clark setting off to map Jefferson's "empire of liberty."

As Ashby and Colón show, the creation of that empire resulted in immense prosperity but also meant the extension of slavery and the forcible removal of the Native Americans. Their balanced and teachable theme is that these twenty documents reveal our early struggles to live up to the principles of liberty and equality. This graphic primer is an indispensable resource for students and anyone else who wants the facts of American history close at hand.

About this title

About the Author:

Ruth Ashby is the author of more than thirty books for children and young adults. A former book editor, she teaches English at the Portledge School in Locust Valley, New York.

Ernie Colón is the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001― ), Che: A Graphic Biography, and Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography (all published by Hill and Wang). He has worked at Marvel and at DC Comics, where he oversaw the production for Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Blackhawk, and The Flash.

Ruth Ashby and Ernie Colón live in Huntington, New York

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Ashby, the author of many biographies and histories for youth (The Amazing Mr. Franklin, 2004), and her well-known cartoonist husband, Colón (Inner Sanctum, 2011), breathe accessible and cogent life into the written documents that formed U.S. policy, beginning with the Mayflower Compact (1620) and ending with the Indian Removal Act (1830). With a knowledgeable, engaging Uncle Sam as narrator, Ashby and Colón lay out the events and beliefs leading to the development of each document, and quoted snippets from each give further insight into their powerful words. Colón uses well-designed, full-color panel layouts to eloquently blend charts and other informative graphics with straightforward images of events, clothing, and customs as well as clear, concise metaphors, all with an eye toward promoting a solid understanding of the basic facts and their impact. For readers unmoved by the importance of the documents alone, Ashby and Colón emphasize how words that were controversial in the past continue to be controversial today—for instance, a spread exploring the Constitution’s goal of promoting “the general welfare” includes an illustration of a line of people at a contemporary Social Security office. School libraries would do well to include this engaging volume in their history collections. Grades 9-12. --Francisca Goldsmith

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0374534535
• ISBN 13: 9780374534530
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Colón Ernie