•  Connect History , a new web-based assignment and assessment platform, combines a fully integrated eBook* with a number of powerful tools that make managing assignments easier for instructors and learning and studying more engaging and efficient for students. A groundbreaking adaptive questioning diagnostic provides a personalized study plan for students to ensure that they understand chapter content, while engaging interactivities such as "Critical Missions" involves students deeply in situations as they use maps and primary sources to sharpen their analytical skills and increase their historical understanding of historical interpretion. Additionally, the program includes numerous primary sources and a support material that teaches students how to read and interpret primary sources as well as how to write a history paper, document sources, and avoid plagiarism. (*Fully integrated eBook included in Connect Plus History .)

•  Balanced approach . A compelling and lively narrative interweaves political, social, and cultural history. Five historians have collaborated under the direction of historian and professional writer James West Davidson to provide a narrative that offers both scholarly depth and a unified voice.

•  Interactive exercises in Connect provide students with an adaptive learning tool that helps them identify what they think they know, what they really know, and what they still need to study.

•  Global and continental perspectives . Highlighted with a globe icon, discussions throughout the text place U.S. history in global and continental contexts.

•  Strong environmental coverage . Ecological themes--highlighted throughout the text with a sun icon--place American history within a broader environmental framework.

•  After the Fact essays take a historical problem and show the detective work that goes into using and interpreting historical evidence. Eight such essays spread throughout the book examine such topics as the relationship of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, the near extinction of the American bison, the rhetoric of manliness in the Spanish-American war, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan .

•  Dueling Documents in each chapter contrast 2-3 primary sources that offer differing perspectives on key events or questions. Critical thinking questions at the end of the feature guide students in analyzing these sources. In addition, exercises in Connect reinforce the process of analyzing primary source documents by asking students to probe further into these documents. Connect also provides a library of primary source documents for instructors to choose from in making their assignments.

•  Historian's Toolbox features in every chapter show students the wide range of evidence that historians use and the questions historians pose when analyzing an artifact. Critical Thinking questions engage students in the process of analysis. Examples include political cartoons, photographs, postcards, ads, art works, comic books, mail-order catalogs, plantation inventories, clocks, calendars, money, furniture, campaign memorabilia, voting equipment, and song lyrics. In Connect , students are asked to analyze historical images from the text.

•  Daily Lives features in every chapter highlight what a particular period felt like to ordinary people, with intriguing topics that include the rise in alcohol consumption during the Revolutionary era, vaudeville shows of the 1890s, and the rebellious fashions of the 1960s.

•  Review questions at the end of each major section within a chapter challenge students to recall and synthesize what they've just read, a strategy that has show to improve retention.

•  Review charts at the end of each chapter help to visually organize some of the key information students have read in the chapter.

•  Significant Events timelines at the end of every chapter present key dates and events on a timeline engagingly illustrated with images from the chapter.