Discovering America: Exceptional Nation

The quest for resources, from farmland to gold to oil, has shaped much of U.S. history. Ensuing competition for these resources has had a tangible effect on both American geography and the environment. This book shows how American communities formed over time in response to environmental factors and how policy, culture, and day-to-day life in the United States is a response to the land itself. Also included is a look at modern debates over the best way to protect the environment while encouraging innovation, including the role of the EPA and other government organizations in regulation.

The United States is constantly evolving in all ways, including how individuals, groups, and institutions define what it means to be an American. This essential guidebook leads readers through this development, from the early days of European invasion, exploration, and settlement to the creation of the Constitution, a living document that continues to change and to be read from new perspectives, to the issues and debates of today. It considers how key historical events, including the establishment of democracy, major wars and conflicts, and social upheavals such as Reconstruction, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, and the advent of new and ever-changing technology, have shaped and reshaped American values and ideals.

From the arrival of English settlers in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, American society was rooted in British Puritanism. Although whispers of that earlier Puritanical society remain, today's American culture is dramatically different. This volume traces the events that led to these societal changes, discussing such occurrences as the American Revolution, the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, spikes in immigration, and the devastating world wars of the twentieth century. This book includes an in-depth look at the way specific groups define themselves, how those definitions have evolved over time, and how these evolving ideas shape the nation as a whole.

No country grows or changes in isolation, and the history of the United States demonstrates the interdependence of countries around the world. The United States' Role in the World explores how government policy and military intervention have influenced daily life, economics, culture, and more. The book analyzes major conflicts and policy changes from the earliest days of America until present day, including the American Revolution, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In doing so, The United States' Role in the World stimulates critical thinking about how foreign and domestic policy can change the trajectory of the nation.

Though the United States is often referred to as "a nation of immigrants," the history of migration to, and settlement in, America is much more tumultuous than such a simple descriptor implies. This history encompasses not just the hopeful Europeans that famously passed through Ellis Island in the late nineteenth century, but Central and South Americans fleeing poverty and violence in the twentieth century, as well as refugees from war-torn regions in Asia and the Middle East. It also includes the hundreds of thousands of African slaves imported to the New World during the colonial era and the Native American peoples who were displaced by settlers. Through pictures and primary sources, this book explores different aspects of migration and settlement in American history and demonstrates how the legacies of immigration restriction, chattel slavery, western conquest, and manifest destiny continue to define the country today.

The foundation of the United States was defined by wide-ranging debates about what a government should be. Those debates continue today and have day-to-day effects on Americans and, through foreign policy, countries around the world. Politics and Power in the United States traces the history of America's government and other political institutions, including major political parties like the Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Whigs, Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. The book examines how politics in the United States has domestic and international impacts and how the country's activists and reformers work toward realizing their vision of America.

The United States is known as a nation of innovators, from the first colonists who endeavored to find religious freedom and economic opportunity in the New World to business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie to the cutting-edge inventors in Silicon Valley today. From its first days as a nation to the Industrial Revolution and beyond, America has focused on creating new businesses, technologies, labor systems, and trade patterns. In turn, this focus has fostered breakthroughs and widespread change in American society. This essential volume places American labor and innovation in context, examining how policy and cultural shifts are influenced by work and exchange.