1. James A. Henretta & David Brody, America: A Concise History V. 2: 1877 to the Present, Fourth Edition 2010

2. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963

3. Assorted Web Documents, listed on your syllabus

Welcome to the Upper Division Survey of U.S. History, 1865 to the present. This course is a topical survey of U.S. economic, social, and political history. Your task is to comprehend and to find patterns in the broad sweep of our past, and as with most introductory courses, you will be challenged by the work required. Toward a general understanding of American history from the Civil War to the present, serious students should work for the accomplishment of three important goals:

1-knowledge of the significant events, people, and trends;

2-an understanding of major interpretations and different perspectives;

3-the development of your own opinions, and an awareness of the way in which you yourself interpret history. Do you find the economy to be the most defining of changes and continuities in the American past, or politics? On the other hand, is the American past best characterized by social changes from the bottom up, or by the ways in which mass culture is constructed in the twentieth century? I urge you to consider your own approach to the past, to be aware of your own interpretation, and to understand why you think some events, people, institutions, or movements are more important than others.

The best way to accomplish these goals is to spend thoughtful time with lectures, reading, and assignments, then to ask your own questions of the material. Lectures and assignments will provide you with themes and significant questions. Thinking about the historical themes and questions, and outlining answers, should lead you to your own questions and ideas. I suggest you read over each chapter a couple times, then study the lists of events, people, and issues listed on the exam preparation page, which you can use to analyze assigned documents.

Required reading for this class is a concise history text, Parting the Waters, and various web documents. The test is a well-written overview of U.S. History, while Taylor Branches' book is a Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Martin Luther King that begins with Reconstruction and takes us through the twentieth century to the Civil Rights Movement. The documents are your direct window into history, and you will be expected to interpret their significance.

Beginning at the crossroads of the years following the American Civil War, we will follow American expansion in time and space to the post Vietnam years, a time in which most of you were born. I urge you also to find your way through American history via the generations of your own family. What have been the experiences of your own parents? Their parents? Which people, issues, and events have been most defining in your own family, and why?