Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, Cobbs/Blum/Walker’s “Major Problems in American History, Volume II” 5th Edition, introduces you to primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. The text serves as the primary anthology for the introductory survey course, covering the subject’s entire chronological span. Topical coverage includes politics, economics, labor, gender, culture and social trends. The revised edition reflects two new historiographical trends: the emergence of the history of religion as an exceptionally lively field and the internationalization of American history. Chapters include images, songs and poems to give you a better feel for the time period and events under discussion. Key pedagogical elements of the text have been retained, including chapter introductions, headnotes and suggested readings.
Volume II.
1. Reconstruction.
2. Western Settlement and the Frontier.
3. Industrialization, Workers, and the New Immigration.
4. Imperialism and World Power.
5. The Progressive Movement.
6. World War I.
7. The Twenties.
8. The Great Depression and the New Deal.
9. World War II.
10. The Cold War and the Nuclear Age.
11. American Cold War Affluence and Anxiety.
12. The Civil Rights Revolution.
13. End of the Cold War Consensus.
14. Rise of the Reagan Coalition.
15. Globalization and the New Nationalism.
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Elizabeth Cobbs
Elizabeth Cobbs, Professor and Dwight E. Stanford Chair in American Foreign Relations at San Diego State University, has won literary prizes for both history and fiction: the Allan Nevins Prize, Stuart Bernath Book Prize, San Diego Book Award, and Director’s Mention for the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. Her books include AMERICAN UMPIRE (2013), BROKEN PROMISES; A NOVEL OF THE CIVIL WAR (2011), ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: THE PEACE CORPS AND THE 1960s (2000), and THE RICH NEIGHBOR POLICY (1992). She has served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in History and on the Historical Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department. She has received awards and fellowships from the Fulbright Commission; Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Organization of American States; American Philosophical Society; Rockefeller Foundation, and other distinguished institutions. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, China Daily News, National Public Radio, Washington Independent, San Diego Union, and Reuters. Her current project is a history of women soldiers in World War One.
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Edward J. Blum
Edward J. Blum is a Professor of History at San Diego State University. A scholar of religion and race, he is the co-author of THE COLOR OF CHRIST: THE SON OF GOD AND THE SAGA OF RACE IN AMERICA (2012) and the author of W. E. B. DU BOIS, AMERICAN PROPHET (2007) and REFORGING THE WHITE REPUBLIC: RACE, RELIGION, AND AMERICAN NATIONALISM, 1865–1898 (2005). An award-winning author and teacher, Blum is currently at work on a project that explores issues of radical evil during the era of the Civil War. Blum has been a fellow with the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Vanessa Walker
Vanessa Walker is the Gordon Levin Associate Professor of Diplomatic History at Amherst College, where she teaches classes on U.S. politics, foreign relations, and human rights. She received her B.A. from Whitman College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U.S. Human Rights Diplomacy (Cornell University Press, 2020), which was awarded the 2020 William M. LeoGrande prize for best book on U.S.-Latin American Relations, and is the author of several articles on the Carter administration’s human rights policy. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, the George Mosse Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Stanton Foundation Applied History Program. She is currently working on a project exploring U.S. domestic human rights campaign as a response to the decline of the liberal state in the 1970s.
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Using primary and secondary sources enhances student analysis. Secondary essays that reference primary documents show historians using evidence integration in interpretation.
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The introduction, “How to Read Primary and Secondary Sources,” helps students distinguish types of sources and teaches them how to read and interpret critically.
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The section, “Major Problems to Consider,” leads students and teachers to consider broad historical questions as they read the primary and secondary sources.
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A chapter overview provides broad context for the material within the chapter.
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Descriptive timelines provide context and specific events to enhance the chapter overview.
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A "Further Reading" section provides students with a wealth of classic and cutting-edge scholarships, relating to key themes in each chapter.
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Descriptive timelines are in every chapter.
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Each primary source now has contextual explanations and discussions of its uniqueness.