Overview: The American Pageant enjoys a reputation as one of the most popular, effective, and entertaining texts on American history. The colorful anecdotes, first-person quotations, and trademark wit bring American history to life. The 16th edition includes a major revision of Part Six (the period from 1945 to the present), reflecting recent scholarship and providing greater thematic coherence. The authors also condensed and consolidated material on the Wilson presidency and World War I (formerly Chapters 29 and 30) into a new single chapter. A new feature, “Contending Voices,” offers paired quotes from original historical sources, accompanied by questions that prompt students to think about conflicting perspectives on controversial subjects. Additional pedagogical aids make THE AMERICAN PAGEANT accessible to students: part openers and chapter-ending chronologies provide a context for the major periods in American history, while other features present additional primary sources, scholarly debates, and key historical figures for analysis. Available in the following options: THE AMERICAN PAGEANT, Sixteenth Edition (Chapters 1−41); Volume 1: To 1877 (Chapters 1−22); Volume 2: Since 1865 (Chapters 22−41).

About the Author(s): David M. Kennedy is an American historian specializing in American history. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University and the former director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic analysis and cultural analysis with social history and political history. Co-author Lizabeth Cohen is the current Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies in the History Department at Harvard University, as well as a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. From 2011 to 2018, she served as the Dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Currently, she teaches courses in 20th-century America, with a focus on urbanism, the built environment, and public history. She has also served as the Chair of the History Department at Harvard, director of the undergraduate program in history, and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.

Overview: A People’s History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, it is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of—and in the words of—America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles—the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality—were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history.

About the Author: Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. At 18, he became a shipyard worker and flew bomber missions during World War II. These experiences helped shape his opposition to war and passion for history. After attending college under the GI Bill and earning a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, he taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he became active in the Civil Rights Movement. After being fired from Spelman for his support for student protesters, Zinn became a professor of political science at Boston University, where he taught until his retirement in 1988. Zinn was the author of many books, including an autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the play Marx in Soho, and Passionate Declarations. He received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Eugene V. Debs Award for his writing and political activism.