The result - by turns stirring, moving, funny, evocative, horrifying - is an unusually revealing informal history of American civilization from the first settlements to the close of the twentieth century.
A Sense of History proves that the best history is always the best reading. And the authors are numbered among the foremost historians, novelists, and public figures of recent years.
| Foreword | ix | |
| Introduction to the 1995 Edition | xi | |
| I Wish I'd Been There | 1 | |
| How to Write History | 38 | |
| "And the Mound Builders Vanished from the Earth" | 46 | |
| The Hunt for the Regicides | 60 | |
| "Then and There the Child Independence was Born" | 72 | |
| "In the Name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" | 84 | |
| Our two Greatest Presidents | 105 | |
| The Garden of Eden and the Decon's Meadow | 113 | |
| The Battle of Lake Erie | 120 | |
| The Peace of Christmas Eve | 136 | |
| Primer from a Green World | 153 | |
| Children of Darkness | 160 | |
| Jackson's Fight with the 'Monster' | 176 | |
| Johnny Appleseed | 186 | |
| The Minister and the Mill Girl | 199 | |
| The Hawthorne's in Paradise | 217 | |
| The Tammany Pioneers | 233 | |
| The Farther Continent of James Clyman | 250 | |
| Prairie Schooner | 264 | |
| A Barbarian at the Shogun's Court | 279 | |
| A Family Divided | 297 | |
| Hayfoot, Strawfoot! | 315 | |
| The First Modern Man of War | 326 | |
| The Unexpected Mrs. Stowe | 337 | |
| Fear of the City | 351 | |
| The Great Vanderbilt will Battle | 361 | |
| The Historian as Celebrity | 410 | |
| The Machine That Kept Them Honest | 418 | |
| Carnegie & Rockefeller | 430 | |
| Should the Historian Make Moral Judgments? | 461 | |
| Henry Adams in the South Seas | 473 | |
| "You'll Have to See Morgan" | 480 | |
| The Father of Oz | 493 | |
| The Winds of Ruin | 505 | |
| The Old Fall River Line | 515 | |
| "You Press the Button, We do the Rest" | 521 | |
| The Woods Were Tossing with Jewels | 537 | |
| "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead" | 548 | |
| The American Game | 561 | |
| Big Bill Taft | 569 | |
| An Iowa Christmas | 582 | |
| The World's Tallest Building | 589 | |
| Still Quiet on the Western Front | 602 | |
| Were Sacco and Vanzetti Innocent? | 622 | |
| Quiet Earth, Big Sky | 636 | |
| The Conundrum of Corn | 645 | |
| Henry Ford's Village | 658 | |
| Why the Money Stopped | 670 | |
| "I Am the Law" | 681 | |
| St. Lo | 705 | |
| The Man Who Could Speak Japanese | 728 | |
| When I Landed, the War was over | 744 | |
| The Place of Franklin D. Roosevelt in History | 760 | |
| Revising the Twentieth Century | 773 | |
| A Nation of Immigrants | 783 | |
| How Have We Changed? 1954-1994 | 810 | |
| Contributors | 845 |
Overview
The result - by turns stirring, moving, funny, evocative, horrifying - is an unusually revealing informal ...