Steven Hahn - A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910

In the past two generations, the study of American history has been transformed. Increased attention to the experience of previously-neglected groups, such as women, African Americans, and Latinos, new subfields, including the history of the family and of American capitalism, and new perspectives, notably a global approach to U.S. history, have produced an expansion of the cast of characters who populate works of history and striking new insights into the historical narrative. At the same time, the greatly enriched understanding of the American past has inspired laments about a fragmentation of historical understanding, the loss of a sense of the American experience as a coherent whole.

The Penguin History of the United States aims to present, in five volumes, an account of the main themes of American development that reflect this recent revolution in historical scholarship. The authors are historians at the forefront of their respective fields who have demonstrated an ability to present the fruits of their research in a manner accessible to a broad reading public. These works incorporate the experience of diverse groups of Americans while at the same time integrating recent concerns with older approaches such as political and intellectual history. They strive to place American history in an international context without losing sight of the distinctive qualities of the American experience. Each volume offers a personal interpretation, and no attempt has been made to impose an artificial uniformity. But taken together the books present an up-to-date narrative of the main themes of American development.

The opening volume, Alan Taylors American Colonies, admirably fulfills the purposes of the series. Ranging across the entire colonial era and devoting attention to all the places that would eventually become part of the United States (including Hawaii and Alaska, not usually included in accounts of these years), Taylor presents a remarkably original historical narrative. His account focuses on the intersections of diverse groups of Native Americans with Spanish, French, Dutch, and English empires and colonists, insisting that all were active agents in shaping the culture, economy, natural environment, and politics of colonial North America. Rather than a simple story of conquest and settlement, Taylors account shows how power was frequently contested and indeterminate, and how boundaries shifted over time. He makes clear that the history of colonial America was not simply a prelude to national independence, but an era of significance in its own right. No one who reads Taylors remarkable volume will think the same way about this formative period of our history.

The fifth volume in the series, Joshua Freemans American Empire, also integrates the history of the United States into global processes, while attending to the profound social, economic, and political changes the country experienced in the half century after World War II. He traces both the evolution of Cold War foreign policy, with its successes and failures, and the remarkable economic growth that produced a mass consumer society and, until the 1970s, an expanding standard of living for ordinary Americans. His account attends to the regional variations within the United States and also the homogenization of culture promoted by the advent of television and other forms of mass entertainment. Central to the story is the civil rights revolution, which redrew the boundaries of citizenship and launched a series of movementssecond-wave feminism, Latino activism, etc.that enabled millions to enjoy the promise of American life more fully. But he also details the economic crisis that emerged in the 1970s and the ways it affected Americans expectations and political outlooks, fueling the rise of Reaganism and the decline of postwar liberalism.

Steven Hahns book, volume three in the Penguin series, takes its place as a distinguished and original contribution to our understanding of the American past.

Eric Foner, Series Editor