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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

Who Built America? Textbook

Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History presents history from the perspective of working men and women, pairing a lively narrative with extensive visual and written documentary evidence. For the third edition (2008, Bedford/St. Martin’s), the authors restructured the chapters to make Who Built America? a more teachable textbook. This new arrangement is designed to help students more easily read the narrative and grasp the essential concepts and conflicts of American history. A rich visual program offers both well-known and rarely seen images to supplement the text and teaches that images matter. Numerous excerpts from letters, diaries, autobiographies, poems, songs, journalism, fiction, official testimony, oral histories, and other historical documents are also included in each chapter and convey the experiences and beliefs of working people. Who Built America’s unique point of view and accessible format provide an engaging resource for students and a solid course foundation for instructors.

Who Built America? is one of the best examples of a textbook telling history from the bottom up. It does more than simply insert the history of the majority of Americans into a more traditional top-down political history. Who Built America? makes the people on the ground the focus of the textbook, and it does so without sacrificing political history.
– Thomas Humphrey, Cleveland State University

“I cannot imagine going back to the usual U.S. survey textbooks after using Who Built America? Simply unthinkable.”
– Michael Botson, Houston Community College

Volume One (to 1877)

  • By Christopher Clark and Nancy Hewitt
  • Ellen Noonan, Supervising Editor
  • Stephen Brier, Executive Editor
  • Joshua Brown and David Jaffee, Visual Editors

View the Table of Contents of Volume One.

Volume Two (1877 to the present)

  • By Roy Rosenzweig and Nelson Lichtenstein
  • Pennee Bender, Supervising Editor
  • Stephen Brier, Executive Editor
  • Joshua Brown and David Jaffee, Visual Editors

View the Table of Contents of Volume Two.

The third edition of Who Built America? is now out of print. We are now in the process of revising and updating an online digital version. Please check the News feature on this website for further developments of the eWBA? project.

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