Major Problems in American History: To 1877

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems 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 Second Edition features integrated coverage of women in Volume I, as well as a streamlined chronology in Volume II. Key pedagogical elements of the Major Problems format have been retained: 14 to 15 chapters per volume, chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings.

• New! Chapter 7 in Volume I now focuses on foreign policy, Western expansion, and Indian removal, while Chapter 8 addresses the transportation and market revolutions.
• New! Coverage in Chapter 15, Volume II, extends through the recent past, addressing the George W. Bush administration and American life since 9/11.
• An introductory chapter?"How to Read Primary and Secondary Sources"?helps students distinguish between types of sources and teaches them how to read and interpret critically.
• An expanded Further Reading section provides students with a wealth of classic and cutting-edge scholarship that relates to key themes in each chapter.
• Revised source titles allow students to put readings in historical context.

Elizabeth Cobbs, Professor and Dwight E. Stanford Chair of American Foreign Relations at San Diego State University, received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her areas of expertise include American diplomatic, economic, and cultural history. Her book, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: THE PEACE CORPS AND THE SPIRIT OF THE 1960S (Harvard University Press, 1998), earned rave reviews from academic and popular readers alike. Professor Cobbs has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Organization of American States, and served for six years as a member of the Historical Advisory Council to the U.S. Department of State. In 2004, she held the Mary Ball Washington Chair at University College Dublin through the Fulbright Program. She writes for both scholarly and popular periodicals and is currently authoring a new synthesis of American foreign relations for Harvard University Press.

Jon Gjerde died in October 2008. He was Alexander F. and May T. Morrison professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1982. His areas of expertise included nineteenth-century America with particular reference to immigration and religion, and he published some thirty articles on these subjects. He also published FROM PEASANTS TO FARMERS: THE MIGRATION FROM BALESTRAND, NORWAY, TO THE UPPER MIDDLE WEST (1985) and THE MINDS OF THE WEST: THE ETHNOCULTURAL EVOLUTION OF THE RURAL MIDDLE WEST, 1830-1917 (1997), both of which won the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award of the Immigration History Society for the best book in agricultural history.