A People and a Nation, Volume I: To 1877, Brief Edition

The Brief Edition of A PEOPLE AND A NATION offers a succinct and spirited narrative that tells the stories of all people in the United States. The authors' attention to race and racial identity and their inclusion of everyday people and popular culture brings history to life, engaging readers and encouraging them to imagine what life was really like in the past.

Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She teaches courses in the history of exploration, early America, women’s history, Atlantic world and American Revolution. Her many books have won awards from the Society of American Historians, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and English-Speaking Union. Her book, FOUNDING MOTHERS & FATHERS, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2011 her book SEPARATED BY THEIR SEX: WOMEN IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IN THE COLONIAL ATLANTIC WORLD was published. She was the Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge in 2005-2006. The Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation and Huntington Library, among others, have awarded her fellowships. Dr. Norton has served on the National Council for the Humanities and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has appeared on Book TV, the History and Discovery Channels, PBS and NBC as a commentator on Early American history.

Jane Kamensky earned her B.A. and Ph.D. in history from Yale University. She is an American historian whose scholarship has covered the sweep of British colonial and United States history, with books centered in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Her many books include A REVOLUTION IN COLOR: THE WORLD OF JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY, winner of the New-York Historical Society’s American History book prize, along with three others. For 30 years, she worked as a history professor and higher education leader, most recently as Trumbull Professor of American history at Harvard University and director of the Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In 2024, Kamensky became the president of Monticello/The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Carol Sheriff is a Professor of History at William & Mary in Virginia, where she has taught since 1993. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She specializes in 19th century United States social and cultural history, with an emphasis on the period from 1815-1865, and she has an allied interest in early 20th century Civil War memory. She is completing a monograph on controversies surrounding 20th century history textbooks’ portrayals of the Civil War and Reconstruction; a piece of this project won the John T. Hubbell Prize from Civil War History. She has co-authored A PEOPLE AT WAR: SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS IN AMERICA'S CIVIL WAR, 1854-1877, and has written THE ARTIFICIAL RIVER: THE ERIE CANAL AND THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS, 1817-1862, which earned the Dixon Ryan Fox Award from the New York State Historical Association and the Award for Excellence in Research from the New York State Archives. At William & Mary, she has won several teaching awards.

David W. Blight received his B.A. from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is the Sterling Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. In 2019, he won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his work, FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM. His RACE AND REUNION: THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN MEMORY, 1863-1915, received eight awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize and four prizes awarded by the Organization of American Historians. Blight’s essays and op-eds have appeared in numerous journals and newspapers. From 2013-2014, he was the Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge in the UK. For the first seven years of his career Dr. Blight was a high school history teacher in his hometown of Flint, MI. In 2023, he served as president of the Organization of American Historians.

Howard P. Chudacoff, the George L. Littlefield Emeritus Professor of American History at Brown University, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned his A.B. (1965), M.A. (1967) and Ph.D. (1969) at the University of Chicago. He has written MOBILE AMERICANS (1972), THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN URBAN SOCIETY (eight editions between 1975 and 2014), HOW OLD ARE YOU: AGE CONSCIOUSNESS IN AMERICAN CULTURE (1989), THE AGE OF THE BACHELOR: CREATING AN AMERICAN SUBCULTURE (1999), CHILDREN AT PLAY: AN AMERICAN HISTORY (2007) and CHANGING THE PLAYBOOK: HOW POWER, PROFIT, AND POLITICS TRANSFORMED COLLEGE SPORTS (2015). His articles have appeared in The Journal of American History, The Journal of Family History, Reviews in American History and The Journal of Sport History. At Brown, he has served as Co-Chair of the Program in American Civilization, Chair of the History Department, Executive Committee of the Urban Studies Program and Faculty Representative to the NCAA. The National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation have funded his scholarship.