Why Documents Matter: American Originals and the Historical Imagination, Selections From the Gilder Lehrman Collection, 3rd Edition

by James G. Basker (editor)

This new edition of Why Documents Matter features more than 40 documents spanning American history from 1622 through 1989. They include letters, official documents, broadsides, and photographs with images, transcripts, and historical introductions. In this new edition we have added more documents from the West Coast, the Civil War, and the twentieth century.

76 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2013

About the author

James G. Basker is President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author or editor of several books, including Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1600–1810; Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings 1760–1820; and Slavery in the Founding Era: Literary Contexts.