THE AMERICAN PAGEANT enjoys a reputation as one of the most popular, effective, and entertaining texts in American history. The colorful anecdotes, first-person quotations, and trademark wit bring American history to life. The 14th edition places an even greater emphasis on the global context of American history through a new feature, "Thinking Globally." Revised primary source features excite student interest and help them learn to examine documents the way historians do. Additional pedagogical features make THE AMERICAN PAGEANT accessible to students: part openers and chapter-ending chronologies provide a context for the major periods in American history, while other features present primary sources, scholarly debates, and key historical figures for analysis.
Thomas A. Bailey (1903-1983) taught history at his alma mater, Stanford University, for nearly forty years. Long regarded as one of the nation's premier historians of American diplomacy, he was honored by his colleagues in 1968 with election to the presidencies of both the Organization of American Historians and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was the author, editor, or co-editor of some twenty-books, but the work in which he took the most pride was The American Pageant through which, he liked to say, he had taught American history to several million students.