Major Problems in American History Vol. 2 : Documents and Essays since 1865

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History Series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays. This volume presents a carefully selected group of readings that requires students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians, and draw their own conclusions.

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.