Inventing America : A History of the United States : From 1865

by Pauline Maier, Merritt Roe Smith, Alexander Keyssar

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.

Author Biography: Pauline Maier is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Merritt Roe Smith is Leverett and William Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alexander Keyssar is Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard University. Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, taught American history for many years at the California Institute of Technology.

Genres: History

656 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2002

About the author

Dr. Pauline Maier was a historian of the American Revolution, though her work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Maier achieved prominence over a fifty-year career of critically acclaimed scholarly histories and journal articles. She was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and taught undergraduates. She authored textbooks and online courses. Her popular career included series with PBS and the History Channel. She appeared on Charlie Rose, C-SPAN2's In Depth and wrote 20 years for The New York Times review pages. Maier was the 2011 President of the Society of American Historians. She won the 2011 George Washington Book Prize for her book Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788. She died in 2013 from lung cancer at the age of 75.

Reviews

[Matthew Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reference.