For the Record: A Documentary History of America : From Contact Through Reconstruction

Assembled by a highly successful textbook author and an accomplished scholar and teacher, For the Record is a new and exciting two-volume primary source reader for American history survey courses. Variety and substance are the text's defining qualities. Drawing on documents that range in length from one to seven pages, For the Record allows students and instructors to delve into the many themes and issues that make up our past. The selections are culled from a wealth of political, social, and cultural sources, and each reading provides students with diverse insights into the American experience. In addition, four unique chapters link the written word to the visual, teaching students how to interpret visual sources. While For the Record is ideally suited for use with the best-selling surveys America: A Narrative History and America: A Narrative History, Brief Edition, by George Brown Tindall and David F. Shi, its breadth and variety make this collection a successful stand-alone reader as well.

For the Record easily outdistances all other primary-source readers by * offering excerpts that range in length from one to seven pages and that are drawn from over three hundred primary sources;
* providing readings that draw on a rich variety of sources, including eyewitness accounts, public documents, and contemporary literature;
* using broad themes to help readers make Connections within and across historical periods;
* including introductions to each chapter as well as headnotes, noninterpretive footnotes, and review questions;
* encouraging students to interpret visual sources: colonial architecture, Mathew Brady's unsparing photographs of the Civil War, images of urban poverty as captured by the Progressive reformer Jacob Riis, and propagandistic photographs from the Vietnam War.