Patterns and Perspectives

Contrary to conventional wisdom, no area of study is outdated more quickly than history, and no time has been more turbulent for the discipline than our own. This classic point/counterpoint reader in American history, now in a completely revised and updated seventh edition, takes note of history's impermanence, giving voice to the new without disposing of the old.

In ten lively chapters, essays by the editors introduce dialectical readings by distinguished historians on topics from Reconstruction to the present. The essays and readings address history's timeless questions: "Reconstruction: Change or Stasis?," "American Imperialism: Economic Expansion or Ideological Crusade?," and "The Civil Rights Movement: Top-Down or Bottom-Up?" New readings are included on African Americans, women, and immigrants. In the fray of debate, eminent historians from Samuel Hays and Alfred Chandler to John Lewis Gaddis, Walter LaFeber, and Kathryn Kish Sklar struggle to interpret the past.

The editors'essays moderate the passionate arguments and offer a clear, distanced vision of the changing character of history. They explain how history has usually been viewed through the lens of the present and demonstrate with sparkling historiography that the discipline is as contemporary as the headlines of today, as vital as the problems of tomorrow.

Francis G. Couvares, Professor of History and American Studies at Amherst College, where he is Dean of New Students, is the author of The Remaking of Pittsburgh and editor of Movie Censorship and American Culture. Martha Saxton has written biographies of Louisa May Alcott and Jayne Mansfield and, more recently, essays on women in early America. She teaches history and women's studies at Amherst College. Founding editors of Interpretations of American History Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Billias are Sigerist Professor of History of Medicine at Rutgers University and Hyatt Professor of History Emeritus at Clark University, respectively.