Uni Reading List
Index / 001 EN
American History Now cover

History

History

American History Now

Eric Foner; Lisa McGirr

A collection of historiographical essays, edited by Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr and published for the American Historical Association, that surveys recent scholarship across the span of United States history. Each specialist author explains how interpretations of a period or theme have changed, which questions are now central and which works define the field.

Prerequisites: A full survey course in United States history, such as one using Foner's Give Me Liberty!, so the basic narrative is already known.

Difficulty Level
Intermediate
Academic Level
Undergraduate
american historyhistoriographyunited stateshistorical debatesreader

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Foner, E., & McGirr, L. (Eds.). (2011). American History Now. Temple University Press.

Chapter Summary

The volume collects eighteen original historiographic essays, edited for the American Historical Association, on recent scholarship in American history. It runs to about 440 pages in two parts: eight essays on eras of the American past, then ten on major themes. The publisher describes it as building on two earlier editions of The New American History with an entirely new group of contributors and a reconceptualised table of contents, and as tracing "the shifting lines of interpretation and debate". It opens with a volume editors' preface and a series editor's preface, and closes with a list of contributors. Each chapter has a different author, so the essays differ in voice and structure.

Part I: Eras of the American Past (Chapters 1–8)

Chapter 1, Alan Taylor's "Squaring the Circles: The Reach of Colonial America", is the chapter the publisher offers as a sample. It opens with a 1721 deerskin map given to the royal governor of South Carolina by Catawba chiefs and uses it to argue that colonial America has to be seen through native diplomacy and trade as well as European expansion. Chapter 2, Woody Holton's "American Revolution and Early Republic", and Chapter 3, Seth Rockman's "Jacksonian America", continue through the early national period. Chapter 4, Adam Rothman's "Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction", covers the mid-nineteenth century.

For the later periods, Robert D. Johnston writes on "The Possibilities of Politics: Democracy in America, 1877 to 1917" (Chapter 5); Lisa McGirr, one of the editors, on "The Interwar Years" (Chapter 6); Meg Jacobs on "The Uncertain Future of American Politics, 1940 to 1973" (Chapter 7); and Kim Phillips-Fein on "1973 to the Present" (Chapter 8). The publisher says the periods run from the Colonial era to the Reagan years.

Part II: Major Themes in the American Experience (Chapters 9–18)

The second part follows themes through the whole span of American history.

  • Chapter 9, Erez Manela, "The United States in the World".
  • Chapter 10, Lawrence B. Glickman, "The 'Cultural Turn'".
  • Chapter 11, John T. McGreevy, "American Religion".
  • Chapter 12, Stephen Aron, "Frontiers, Borderlands, Wests".
  • Chapter 13, Sarah T. Phillips, "Environmental History".
  • Chapter 14, Sven Beckert, "History of American Capitalism".
  • Chapter 15, Rebecca Edwards, "Women's and Gender History".
  • Chapter 16, Mae M. Ngai, "Immigration and Ethnic History".
  • Chapter 17, Ned Blackhawk, "American Indians and the Study of U.S. History".
  • Chapter 18, Kevin Gaines, "African-American History".

The publisher notes that the themes include the established subfields of women's history, African American history and immigration history, as well as the history of capitalism, Native American history, environmental history, religious history, cultural history and "the United States in the world".

Key Concepts

Part I: Eras

  • Historiography: the history of how historians' interpretations of a period have changed, which is what each essay surveys.
  • Periodisation: the book's eight era chapters divide American history from the colonial period to the present (Chapters 1–8), and several titles contain the dates or turning points they use.

Part II: Themes

  • Subfield and approach: women's and gender history, African American history, immigration and ethnic history, Native American history, and the cultural turn (Chapters 10, 15–18).
  • New fields: environmental history, the history of capitalism, and the United States in the world (Chapters 9, 13, 14).
  • Region and religion: frontiers, borderlands and Wests, and American religion (Chapters 11–12).

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • Written by specialists. The publisher stresses a new generation of contributors who have asked new questions and developed new approaches. The editors are Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, and Lisa McGirr, at Harvard.
  • Two complementary ways in. The same field is surveyed twice, by period in Part I and by theme in Part II, so a reader can approach a topic either way.
  • A review's verdict. The Journal of Southern History review quoted by the publisher calls the essays thoughtful and the volume useful to historians at various stages of their careers.
  • Concise. Eighteen essays in about 440 pages, so most essays run to roughly 20 to 30 pages.

Limitations

  • Not a narrative history. The book assumes that the reader already knows the outline of American history and wants to know how historians have argued about it. It cannot be used to learn the events.
  • Dated by its year. The essays were written for 2011, and the later periods end in the Reagan years in the publisher's description. Newer scholarship, including on topics added or reshaped since, is outside the book.
  • Uneven coverage by design. With eighteen chapters, some subfields have a chapter and others do not; the volume is a selection and not a full map of the field.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the American history titles, American History Now is the one about historians' arguments. Paul Boyer's American History: A Very Short Introduction and the open textbook The American Yawp are surveys of the country's history that give the story the essays assume, and Eric Foner's own Give Me Liberty! is a survey textbook told as the story of freedom. James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is a one-volume narrative of the period from the Mexican War to the end of the Civil War, covered in the volume by Chapter 4.

A sensible order is a survey or narrative first, then the relevant essays here to see how the interpretations changed, and finally the monographs and articles each essay cites.

How to Use This Book

The book is for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and teachers who have already completed a survey of United States history and want to see how scholarship in the field is organised and debated. It can also help with preparing for a historiography seminar or a field examination.

A practical plan:

  • By period: read the Part I chapter that matches the period you are studying, alongside a narrative history of that period.
  • By theme: read the Part II chapters for the themes in your course or research topic. Chapters 14–18 give a quick map of the leading subfields.
  • Reading actively: for each essay, list the older interpretation it describes, the new questions that replaced it and the works it cites most. Treat each essay's references as a reading list.

Read the essays that are closest to your interest, then use the bibliographies of those essays to continue.