Search -
The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People
The Unfinished Nation A Concise History of the American People Author:Alan Brinkley, John M. Giggie, Andrew Huebner The title The Unfinished Nation is meant to suggest several things. It is a reminder of America's exceptional diversity -- of the degree to which, despite all the many efforts to build a single, uniform definition of the meaning of American nationhood, that meaning remains contested. It is a reference to the centrality of change in ... more »American history -- to the ways in which the nation has continually transformed itself and continues to do so in our own time. And it is also a description of the writing of American history itself -- of the ways in which historians are engaged in a continuing, ever unfinished, process of asking new questions.
Like any history, The Unfinished Nation is a product of its time and reflects the views of the past that historians of recent generations have developed. The writing of our nation's history -- like our nation itself -- changes constantly. It is not, of course, the past that changes. Rather, historians adjust their perspectives and priorities, ask different kinds of questions, and uncover and incorporate new historical evidence. There are now, as there have always been, critics of changes in historical understanding who argue that history is a collection of facts and should not be subject to "interpretation" or "revision." But historians insist that history is not simply a collection of facts. Names and dates and a record of events are only the beginning of historical understanding. Writers and readers of history interpret the evidence before them, and inevitably bring to the task their own questions, concerns, and experiences.« less