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The American Pageant, 18th Edition

David M. Kennedy, Margaret O'Mara

  • Copyright 2025
  • {{checkPublicationMessage('Published', '2024-06-25T00:00:00+0000')}}
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The American Pageant 18th Edition by David M. Kennedy/Margaret O'Mara
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Overview

Kennedy/O'Mara's THE AMERICAN PAGEANT, 18th Edition, enjoys a reputation as one of the most popular, effective and entertaining texts on American history, and for good reasons. Colorful anecdotes, vivid maps, charts, illustrations, highlighted first-person quotations and the authors' trademark wit bring American history to life. Learning aids make the book's content as accessible as it is enjoyable. Brief essays opening each of the text’s nine chronological sections, along with chapter-ending chronologies, help students develop a coherent understanding of the pace, phases and grand sweep of the American story. Other features present primary sources, scholarly debates and lastingly consequential historical developments for analysis.

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Meet the Authors

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David M. Kennedy

David M. Kennedy is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus and founding Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. He also serves as General Editor of the OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES series. His volume in the series, FREEDOM FROM FEAR: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN DEPRESSION AND WAR, 1929–1945, won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ambassador's Prize and the California Gold Medal for Literature. He is also the author of OVER HERE: THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND AMERICAN SOCIETY, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and BIRTH CONTROL IN AMERICA: THE CAREER OF MARGARET SANGER, which won the Bancroft and John Gilmary Shea Prizes. He is also editor of THE MODERN AMERICAN MILITARY, and co-editor of WORLD WAR II AND THE WEST IT WROUGHT. He lives in Stanford, California.

Margaret O'Mara

Margaret O’Mara holds the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American History at the University of Washington. She is the author of THE CODE: SILICON VALLEY AND THE REMAKING OF AMERICA; PIVOTAL TUESDAYS: FOUR ELECTIONS THAT SHAPED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY and CITIES OF KNOWLEDGE: COLD WAR SCIENCE AND THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT SILICON VALLEY. She also is an editor of the POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN MODERN AMERICA series at Princeton University Press. Her writing and historical commentary appear regularly in national and international media outlets and she is a former contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She received her MA/PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, her BA from Northwestern University and she is an alumna of Little Rock Central High School. She lives in Mercer Island, Washington.

What's New

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  • The authors have given special attention throughout the text to issues of Black history and race relations and have substantially expanded on earlier editions’ coverage of Native American and Asian American history.
  • The 18th edition introduces The Presence of the Past, a feature designed to help students understand the evolution of important contemporary issues. Topics discussed include the Electoral College, the concept of judicial review, the legacies of the Fourteenth Amendment, the rules of the Senate, the narrative of the Confederate South’s “Lost Cause,” the consequences of real estate “redlining” and the complexities of modern immigration policy. These essays provide especially useful platforms for teaching civics in an historical context.
  • Significantly revised and expanded discussions of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow and the origins and evolution of the civil rights movement in the early twentieth century south have been added. These revisions incorporate insights of the most recent scholarship and help students understand and historicize contemporary debates around racial justice and American democracy.
  • The text offers streamlined and revised discussions of both the Civil War and World War II, with particular attention to the economic and political legacies of WWII mobilization, including Sunbelt and Western migration, the growth of the Cold War military-industrial complex and the rise of the modern technology industry.

Features

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  • A global focus throughout the text includes graphics to help students compare American developments to developments around the world in areas such as railroad building, cotton production, city size and urban reform strategies, immigration, automobile ownership, the economic effects of the Great Depression and women's participation in voting and the workforce. Thinking Globally essays (now totaling 13) present a different aspect of the American experience contextualized within world history.
  • Boxed quotations, many relating to international events or figures, add personal voices to the events chronicled in the text's historical narrative. This edition further incorporates more non-white voices as well as women’s voices. In addition, Contending Voices boxes pair quotes from original historical sources, accompanied by questions that prompt students to think about conflicting perspectives on controversial subjects.
  • Updated Varying Viewpoints essays reflect new interpretations of significant trends and events as well as concern for their global context.
  • Pedagogical aids help students through the material. Examining the Evidence focuses on primary sources such as correspondence between Abigail and John Adams to illuminate the role of women in the American Revolution, how the Gettysburg Address sheds light on President Lincoln's vision of the nation and more.
  • Pedagogy includes visual material (documentary images, graphs and tables) to illuminate complex and important historical ideas, maps with topographical detail and clear labeling to communicate analytical points and to reinforce students' understanding of U.S. geography and its global context, bolded key terms with a related glossary, charts and tables updated with the most recent available statistical information.
  • Every chapter begins with a topical preview as well as focus questions to guide student engagement with the narrative and concludes with an expanded chronology and a list of approximately 10 approachable books to consult for additional information.
  • A chapter-ending list of People to Know helps students focus on the most significant people introduced, while a list of key terms help students review chapter highlights.

Table of Contents

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PART I: PEOPLING A CONTINENT c. 33,000 B.C.E.–1700 C.E.
1. New World Beginnings 33,000 B.C.E.–1680 C.E.
2. Aspiring Empires in North America 1500–1664.
3. Settling the English Colonies 1619–1700.
PART II: BUILDING A BRITISH NORTH AMERICA 1607–1775.
4. American Life in the Seventeenth Century 1607–1692.
5. Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution 1700–1775.
6. The Road to Revolution 1754–1775.
PART III: FOUNDING A NEW NATION 1775–1800.
7. America Secedes from the Empire 1775–1783.
8. The Confederation and the Constitution 1776–1790.
9. Launching the New Ship of State 1789–1800.
PART IV: BUILDING THE NEW NATION 1800–1860.
10. The Triumphs and Travails of the Jeffersonian Republic 1800–1812.
11. The War of 1812 and the Upsurge of Nationalism 1812–1824.
12. The Rise of a Mass Democracy 1824–1840.
13. Forging the National Economy 1790–1860.
14. The Ferment of Reform and Culture 1790–1860.
15. The South and Slavery 1793–1860.
PART V: TESTING THE NEW NATION 1841–1877.
16. Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy 1841–1848.
17. Renewing the Sectional Struggle 1848–1854.
18. Drifting Toward Disunion 1854–1861.
19. Girding for War: The North and the South 1861–1865.
20. The Furnace of Civil War 1861–1865.
21. The Ordeal of Reconstruction 1865–1877.
PART VI: FORGING AN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 1865–1900.
22. The Industrial Era Dawns 1865–1900.
23. Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age 1869–1896.
24. America Moves to the City 1865–1900.
25. The Conquest of the West 1865–1896.
26. Rumbles of Discontent 1865–1900.
PART VII: STRUGGLING FOR JUSTICE AT HOME AND ABROAD 1890–1945.
27. Empire and Expansion 1890–1909.
28. Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt 1901–1912.
29. Wilsonian Progressivism in Peace and War 1913–1920.
30. American Life in the "Roaring Twenties" 1920–1932.
31. The Great Depression and the New Deal 1933–1939.
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War 1933–1941.
33. America in World War II 1941–1945.
PART VIII: MAKING AN AMERICAN SUPERPOWER 1945–1980.
34. The Cold War Begins 1945–1952.
35. American Zenith 1952–1963.
36. The Stormy Sixties 1963–1973.
37. A Sea of Troubles 1973–1980.
PART IX: SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY IN A GLOBAL AGE 1980 to the present.
38. The Resurgence of Conservatism 1980–1992.
39. America Confronts the Post-Cold War Era, 1992–2000.
40. The American People Face a New Century, 2001–2018.

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  • ISBN-10: 0357898958
  • ISBN-13: 9780357898956
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  • ISBN-10: 0357899059
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Cengage provides a range of supplements that are updated in coordination with the main title selection. For more information about these supplements, contact your Learning Consultant.

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ISBN: 9780357898956
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