An open textbook in two connected courses
United States History
A Primary-Source Approach
This book follows the American past from the worlds before 1492 through the twenty-first century. Its narrative is paired with speeches, letters, laws, images, and other evidence so that history appears not as a finished story, but as an argument readers can examine.
Choose the half you are studying.
The two courses meet at Chapter 16. That overlap is deliberate: Reconstruction closes one historical problem while opening many of the questions that define modern America.
Course half I · Chapters 1–16
Early American History
Before 1492 through Reconstruction
How did Indigenous worlds, European empires, revolution, slavery, and expansion produce the United States—and bring it to civil war and a contested new birth of freedom?
Concludes with the shared hinge: Chapter 16, The Era of Reconstruction.
Enter Early American History · Chapter 1Course half II · Chapters 16–32
Modern American History
Reconstruction through the twenty-first century
How did the unsettled meanings of emancipation and citizenship shape industrialization, empire, reform, civil rights, political realignment, and the nation we inherit?
Begins with the shared hinge: Chapter 16, The Era of Reconstruction.
Enter Modern American History · Chapter 16