Firsthand America: A History of the United States, Volume 1

by David Burner, Virginia Bernhard, Stanley I. Kutler

All comprehensive United States survey textbooks, including this one, give full coverage to standard political, economic, diplomatic, and legal events. But these elements of history are largely the story of elites. This textbook also provides social history captured in the recognizable lives of ordinary people. Presidents, congressmen, and corporate executives are quoted throughout the book. So are soldiers, slaves, indentured servants, cowboys, working girls and women, and civil rights activists. Firsthand America, using more than 2,000 quotations, therefore gives due place both to the traditional leaders and to the myriad Americans never named in formal historians.

616 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2005

About the author

A specialist in 20th century American history, David Burner taught at the State University of New York. A graduate of Hamilton College, he earned Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1965 and later founded the Brandywine Press.