Inventing America: A History of the United States

by Pauline Maier, Alexander Keyssar, Merritt Roe Smith

Book Overview

Integrates the cultural, social and political dimensions of the American story with the unifying theme of innovation. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393974340
• ISBN13: 9780393974348
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 1086 Pages
• Weight: 5.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 9.1" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

A history textbook is a history textbook.....

Nothing great or horrible about this book, easy to read but can be vauge sometimes, but for the most part gets to the point, wouldent read it if it wasent required for my class, I prefered for "fun" Howard Zinns book,you know the famous one....cant remember the title...

Fast and Fulfilled my expectations

Shipping was incredibly fast and the book definitely Fulfilled my expectations, i am very satisfied.

Evalutaion

This book is much better interesting than other books that I've had before in other history classes.

Inventive approach (vol. 2)

I am developing a course in the History of Technology in America for my local community college, and find this book an invaluable resource. There is a hard-back one-volume edition as well as a soft-cover two-volume edition available. The authors hail from Harvard, Yale and MIT, with backgrounds in history, politics and technology. This is an American history with a difference. While the student and instructor will find the basic chronological outline of American history that is familiar, the development of themes here often draws in much more explicitly than the normal text the issues of technological innovation, scientific discovery, manufacturing and business development as engines for growth and progress in the course of American history. The authors state in their introduction that Americans 'have long considered this penchant for innovation a distinguishing feature of their culture and history.' Technology in terms discussed here is hardly confined to the modern age. For example, very early in the text the authors state that the development of maize/corn 'was perhaps the most important plant-breeding achievement of all time' - the creation of a stable staple food crop that was adaptable and resilient spurred the growth of civilisation in dramatic ways. Technology includes that related to architecture (from the earliest buildings in the Native American cultures to modern skyscrapers, bridges and underground complexes), agriculture (the aforementioned maize development being but the earliest of these examples), transportation technologies (from canals to railroads to automobiles and aircraft), medical technologies (from early hygiene and vaccine developments to modern pharmaceutical and genetic innovations), information technology (telegraph and telephone to digital and internet), and much more. History is naturally selective, and any history text is going to have to walk the fine line between being thorough in development and being comprehensive in scope. The whole work weighs in at well over 1100 pages (inclusive of index and appendices), which is a lot of material for a two-semester course that will include supplemental readings. As an overview of American history, it hits the high points well and develops many sidelines of interest. My own particular teaching responsibilities for this will be to students who are primarily interested in technical education - this method of developing American history has more appeal for this audience, given its more direct applicability to their courses of study. In the two volume edition, the first volume covers the pre-Columbian scene in the Americas through to the era of Reconstruction following the Civil War; the second volume goes through the presidency of the current George W. Bush, and includes issues of 9-11 and the issues of ongoing wars against terrorists. There are CD-ROM supplements that come with the books, which include many helpful elements for the students, as well as som