Reading the American Past: Selected Historical Documents

by Michael P. Johnson and Annabel and Edgar Johnson

This two-volume primary-source collection provides a wide array of voices from the nation’s past while emphasizing the important social, political, and economic themes of U.S. history courses.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312139101
• ISBN13: 9780312139100
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Bedford Books
• Length: 2 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

neat!

This was assigned as supplemental reading in an American History class i took. I actually ended up reading the whole thing! Excerpts from various documents throughout history, such as the diary of Martha Washington for example. There are a lot of neat narratives in this book that give you the more humanistic side of history.

Much needed book

I wasn't to happy about how long it took the book to get to me, but I got it just in time for my class.

is there a need for this 3rd edition?

Johnson offers the student excerpts from a sampling of primary historical sources, covering the period till 1877. The stress here is on the student reading for herself contemporaneous accounts, that convey an immediacy that texts written much later often lack. There is a good sweep, from Spanish to British to American narratives, as a reminder of the complexity of the historical experiences. Having said this, I am uncertain as to the actual need for this 3rd edition, as contrasted to the 2 earlier editions. It's not like a vast new source of documents has suddenly emerged that necessitates a radically changed presentation.