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The "Critical Period" of American history—the years between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789—was either the best of times or the worst of times. While some historians have celebrated the achievement of the Constitutional Convention, which, according to them, saved the Revolution, others have bemoaned that the Constitution’s framers destroyed the liberating tendencies of the Revolution, betrayed debtors, made a bargain with slavery, and handed the country over to the wealthy. This era—what John Fiske introduced in 1880 as America’s "Critical Period"—has rarely been separated from the U.S. Constitution and is therefore long overdue for a reevaluation on its own terms. How did the pre-Constitution, postindependence United States work? What were the possibilities, the tremendous opportunities for "future welfare or misery for mankind," in Fiske’s words, that were up for grabs in those years? The scholars in this volume pursue these questions in earnest, highlighting how the pivotal decade of the 1780s was critical or not, and for whom, in the newly independent United States. As the United States is experiencing another, ongoing crisis of governance, reexamining the various ways in which elites and common Americans alike imagined and constructed their new nation offers fresh insights into matters—from national identity and the place of slavery in a republic, to international commerce, to the very meaning of democracy—whose legacies reverberated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present day. Contributors:Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon * Hannah Farber, Columbia University * Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University * Dael A. Norwood, University of Delaware * Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi * Nicholas P. Wood, Spring Hill College

"This volume re-examines the 1780s in American history, a crucial period when the Revolutionary generation worked out new political, economic, and social parameters that came to define the subsequent trajectory of the United States"--

"The Critical Period of American History" by John Fiske. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Originally released in 1990, The New American Historyedited for the American Historical Association by Eric Foner, has become an indispensable volume for teachers and students. In essays that chart the shifts in interpretation within their fields, some of our most prominent American historians survey the key works and themes in the scholarship of the last three decades. Along with substantially revised essays from the first edition, this volume presents three entirely new ones - on intellectual history, the history of the West, and the histories of the family and sexuality. The second edition of The New American Historyreflects, in Foner's words, "the continuing vitality and creativity of the study of the past, how traditional fields are being expanded and redefined even as new ones are created." Author note: Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books, including Reconstruction, 1863-1877which was awarded the Bancroft Prize.

American History Now collects eighteen original historiographic essays that survey recent scholarship in American history and trace the shifting lines of interpretation and debate in the field. Building on the legacy of two previous editions of The New American History, this volume presents an entirely new group of contributors and a reconceptualized table of contents. The new generation of historians showcased in American History Now have asked new questions and developed new approaches to scholarship to revise the prevailing interpretations of the chronological periods from the Colonial era to the Reagan years. Covering the established subfields of women's history, African American history, and immigration history, the book also considers the history of capitalism, Native American history, environmental history, religious history, cultural history, and the history of "the United States in the world." American History Now provides an indispensible summation of the state of the field for those interested in the study and teaching of the American past.