xxiv Preface
Discontent and the Populist Challenge,” fea-
tures a new map on Populism in Texas in the
1890s. Many other new maps—unique to this
book—have been created to illuminate impor-
tant themes: the populations of Eurasian civi-
lizations in 1500; the exchange of animals,
bacteria, plants, and technologies caused by the
linkage of the Americas with Eurasia after
Columbus’s voyage; Osceola’s rebellion against
the removal of the Seminole Indians from
Florida; Socialist Party successes in rural
Oklahoma and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during
the early twentieth century; rural African
Americans’ movement to cities in the South
during the 1920s; white flight from downtown
St. Louis to the suburbs in the 1950s; and the
spread of AIDS in Ohio during the 1980s.
■ Other maps focus on the Middle East: the dis-
mantling of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s
and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent
decades. This last point warrants expansion: the
maps focusing on the Arab world are part of a
more general emphasis on global themes and
the Middle East in particular.
■ Because artists often convey deep truths about
the human experience, The American Nation
has sought to incorporate art, broadly defined.
This edition includes over 800 photographs of
paintings, sculpture, movies, and architecture.
Too often, however, art is added to history
texts uncritically. Artistic renderings of the
past do not always coincide with historical
accounts. For that reason, most captions for
the artwork in The American Nationexamine
the historical credibility of those works. This
juxtaposition of “art” and “history” is most
obvious in the Re-Viewing the Pastessays,
which show how film directors enhance (and
often undermine) historical understanding.
TheDebating the Pastessay in Chapter 3
examines the issue in some detail: “Do Artists
Depict Historical Subjects Accurately?” Much
of the art, too, is the work of actual partici-
pants or observers to the phenomena they
depicted. Soldier artists, for example, painted
many of the battle scenes in The American
Nation; such portrayals may not be factually
accurate but they are “primary sources” that
reflect the views of historical participants.
■ Sometimes historical “truths” are just as elusive
to historians. Indeed, the Debating the Past
feature shows how historians themselves dis-
agree over fundamental issues of interpretation
and fact. These disputes are so central to theNEW TO THIS EDITION
■ Each chapter has been revised to reflect new
scholarship, offer new perspectives, and stream-
line and sharpen the prose. An almost entirely
new chapter, “From Boomers to Millennials”
(Chapter 31), draws an explicit comparison
between the social and cultural foundations of
young modern Americans and their parents; it
especially explores the culture of consumption
and the impact of the Internet.
■ The essays that introduce each chapter are
either entirely new or have been updated;
nearly all pertain to events or developments
since 2008. Chapter 20 includes a new
Debating the Pastessay—“Populism—Crusade
of Cranks or Potent Grass-Roots Protest?”—
and all of the other Debatingessays are
informed by recent scholarship.
■ The Prologue and first few chapters reflect
new insights unearthed (literally) by archaeol-
ogists and anthropologists concerning the
“pre-historic” period. These chapters also
feature a more detailed comparison of the
civilizations of the Americas with those of the
“Old World”—Europe, Africa, and Asia.
■ This edition includes several new American
Lives: Davy Crockett—perhaps the first person
who became famous for being famous;
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a visionary who per-
ceived that women’s legal and political emanci-
pation was largely dependent on their gaining
paid work; civil rights leader Martin Luther
King, Jr.; Barack Obama, the first African
American to be elected president; and four ran-
domly selected heroes who were killed in the
recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
■ This edition also includes three new Re-Viewing
the Pastessays.Black Robethoughtfully explores
the interaction of Indians and colonists in the
seventeenth century. Two versions of The
Alamo: the first, released in 1960, stars John
Wayne; the second (2004) tells a different story
with Billy Bob Thornton as Davy Crockett. The
widely acclaimed There Will Be Bloodpresents
Daniel Day Lewis’s searing performance as an
unscrupulous wildcatting oilman loosely based
on the life of Edward Doheny, who opened up
the major oil fields of California and Mexico
early in the twentieth century.
■ The more than 100 maps in this book have
been completely reworked to convey new ideas
and to enhance comprehension. A new
Mapping the Pastin Chapter 20, “Agrarian