Inventing America: A History Of The United States, Vol. 1

Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol. 1

W. W. Norton presents Inventing America, a balanced new survey of American history by four outstanding historians. The text uses the theme of innovation-the impulse in American history to "make it new"-to integrate the political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of the American story. From the creation of a new nation and the invention of the corporation in the eighteenth century, through the vast changes wrought by early industry and the rise of cities in the nineteenth century, to the culture of jazz and the new nation-state of the twentieth century, the text draws together the many ways in which innovation-and its limits-have marked American history.About the AuthorPauline Maier is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her specialty is the period of the American Revolution, on which she has published extensively, including the Norton paperback From Resistance to Revolution. Her most recent book is American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Merritt Roe Smith is Leverett and William Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the history of technological innovation and social change, and his publications include Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology and Military Enterprise and Technological Change. Professor Smith is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Alexander Keyssar is Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard University. He is a specialist in late nineteenth and twentieth century social and political history. His first book, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts, won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians. His most recent book is The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, taught American history for many years at the California Institute of Technology. He has written extensively on the history of science and its relationship to American politics and society in the twentieth century. His works include The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America and In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Society of American Historians, and is currently a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians.