Publisher Description

Get an Indispensable Education in American History in One Sitting! How do you even begin to study U.S. history today? Historians now present a fractured view of American society. If any guiding national narrative remains, it is a tale of exploitation and oppression. But the acclaimed historian Wilfred M. McClay is here to correct these problems. This slim guide shows you how to study the history of our country... and why. If you have ever found studying American history tedious or irrelevant, you won't after reading McClay's short and compulsively readable introduction. And if you have ever wondered how to challenge narratives of American oppression without whitewashing the past, this is the perfect place to start.

Author Biography

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. His book Land of Hope, a one-volume history of America, has drawn widespread acclaim; the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger calls it "the most balanced, nuanced history of the United States I have read in the past fifty years." McClay is also the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, which the Organization of American Historians honored as that year's best book in American intellectual history.

Review

"Perhaps these guides should be required reading for professors to rescue them from the narrowing clutches of research agendas, professional development, and what goes by the name of scholarship."

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